April Fool !!!

At last , April 1st had arrived. Another April Fool's Day , only today it was not he who was going to be fooled, Ashish thought. The day held bitter memories for him. It was exactly one year before that Remya had told him she was going to marry someone else. The pressure from her parents had been too much, she said. At first he had thought it was a prank, she was making a fool out of him. Her earnest face soon convinced him otherwise.

And so they had decided to part. They had not seen each other since, not once talked over the phone. In two months she was married, her husband a doctor at the same hospital she worked.

His mind went over the happenings earlier in the day as he waited for Remya. Ashish had called the hospital and asked for Dr Remya. He had wrapped a kerchief around the phone to disguise his voice. When Remya came over the phone, he gave the address he was at and told her that a person had suffered a heart attack and no one there knew how to handle it. "And please hurry", he had added in a screeching voice, for good measure.

Nothing to do but wait now, Aashish thought. How would Remya react , he wondered, when she saw him after all this time. He could now hear the loud siren of the ambulance as it slowly threaded its way up the busy road. He smiled.

The ambulance stopped. Dr Remya and the attendants rushed out. Quite odd , Dr Remya thought. For a place where someone was dying,surrounded by a crowd presumably, this place is pretty quiet. The loud report of the gun took them by surprise. Remya rushed to the room from which the noise had come. She pushed open the door and rushed in. The sight that greeted her was like something from a movie. Ashish was lying on the ground, a bullet hole on his forehead, the pool of blood slowly expanding under his head.

Her hand automatically felt for the pulse. There was none.He had a tissue paper clutched in his hand. Shocked, still in a trance , Remya removed the paper and opened it. It had two words - 'April Fool'.