The world was a muffled hum, a distant shore of sound lapping against the edges of his consciousness. Beeps from a cardiac monitor, the soft rush of a ventilator, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum—they were the lullabies of his life, and now, the soundtrack to his brief, stolen slumber. Dr. Akash Waker was not dreaming of meadows or oceans; he was dreaming of sutures and steel, of the delicate, bloody geography of the human heart laid bare under the glare of an operating lamp.
He was folded over his desk in the cramped, sterile confines of the on-call room, a space that smelled perpetually of stale coffee and antiseptic wipes. His cheek was pressed against the unyielding spine of Gray's Anatomy, a far more familiar pillow than any he owned. His white coat, slung over the back of his chair, was a ghost in the dim light filtering through the blinds, its pockets bulging with pens, a reflex hammer, and the quiet weight of responsibility. The room was a testament to a life lived in the margins of other people's crises: stacks of patient files teetered precariously, a half-eaten sandwich surrendered to time, and an archipelago of empty caffeine-delivery vessels littered the desk's surface.
A soft, hesitant knock on the door was the first intrusion. He stirred, a low groan vibrating through the textbook. The knock came again, a little firmer this time, followed by the gentle turning of the handle.
"Akash?" The voice was warm, a familiar melody in the cacophony of the hospital. "Dr. Waker, are you in here?"
Nurse Priya stepped into the room, her presence immediately softening its harsh angles. She held a chart in her hand, but her eyes, full of a gentle, weary concern, were fixed on the slumped figure at the desk.
"Akash," she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper as she moved closer. She placed a light hand on his shoulder. "Wake up."
He jolted, not with a start, but with the slow, groggy ascent of a deep-sea diver surfacing too quickly. He lifted his head, a red imprint of the book's title branding his cheek. He blinked, the fluorescent lights of the room stabbing at his sleep-deprived eyes. "Priya?" His voice was a gravelly ruin. "What time is it?"
"Time for you to stop pretending you're a medical student cramming for finals," she said, her lips thinning into a fond, exasperated line. "It's past seven in the morning. You've been here all night again, haven't you?"
He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, trying to smooth the chaos. "Had to monitor the post-op on 302. Didn't want to leave until the night vitals were stable for six hours straight."
"The aortic valve replacement? He was stable when I checked an hour ago. Rock solid." She tapped the chart in her hand. "This hospital will still be standing if you sleep in a real bed for one night, you know. It has a whole staff of very capable people who aren't named Akash Waker."
He offered a weak, tired smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Old habits."
"They're bad habits," she countered gently. "You work too much, Akash. You pour everything into this place, into them." She gestured vaguely towards the hallway, towards the hundreds of lives unfolding in various states of pain and recovery. "What's left for you?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and unanswered, because they both knew the answer: nothing. There was no one waiting for him at home. No missed calls from a loved one on his phone, only reminders for surgical supply meetings. His small apartment was less a home and more a charging station, a place to launder his scrubs and collapse for a few hours before the magnetic pull of the hospital drew him back in. The hospital wasn't his job; it was his entire ecosystem. It gave him purpose, and in return, it consumed him whole.
"Time for rounds," he said, deflecting. He pushed his chair back, his joints cracking in protest. He stood and stretched, a wince flickering across his face. "Let's go see our handiwork."
As he shrugged on his white coat, he felt the familiar transformation. The exhausted man who used a textbook as a pillow receded, and the calm, authoritative Dr. Waker took his place. It was armor as much as it was a uniform.
Their first stop was room 302. Before he pushed the door open, Akash paused. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a fresh, blue surgical mask, hooking it over his ears. Priya watched him, a silent question in her eyes. The patient was no longer in isolation; a mask wasn't clinically necessary.
He knew what she was thinking. But this wasn't for the patient. It was for the parents.
He stepped inside. The room was bathed in the soft grey light of dawn. The young man in the bed, Rohan, was asleep, his breathing even and deep. Seated in chairs on either side of the bed were his mother and father, their faces etched with the sleepless anxiety of the past week. They looked up as he entered, their eyes immediately finding the white coat, the name tag, the man who had held their son's life in his hands.
"Doctor," the mother whispered, rising slightly from her chair.
Akash gave a slow, reassuring nod. "Good morning," he said, his voice muffled by the mask, but his eyes conveying a calm he did not feel. The mask was a shield. It hid the dark circles under his eyes. It concealed the exhaustion pulling at the corners of his mouth. It allowed him to be the flawless, omniscient physician they needed him to be, not the tired man who was running on fumes. He knew it hurt them to see the toll this had taken on everyone; hiding his own was a small mercy he could offer.
He moved to the bedside, his movements economical and precise. He picked up the chart, his eyes scanning the neatly recorded numbers, the elegant, life-affirming waves of the ECG. He checked Rohan's pulse, his touch light on the young man's wrist.
"Everything looks perfect," he said, turning to the parents. "The pressure is stable, oxygen saturation is excellent. The new valve is performing beautifully. He's healing exactly as he should be."
The mother's face crumpled with relief. A sob she had been holding back for days finally escaped, and she pressed a hand to her mouth. The father, a stoic man who had barely spoken a word, simply reached out and squeezed his wife's shoulder, his own eyes glistening with unshed tears. He looked at Akash, and in that single, profound gaze, Akash saw a universe of gratitude, of awe, of a faith he felt he hadn't earned. It was a weight heavier than any textbook.
"Thank you, Doctor," the father said, his voice thick. "You gave us back our son."
Akash just nodded again. There were no words for this. He was a mechanic of the body, a plumber of arteries. He had done his job. But in their eyes, he was a miracle worker. He finished his checks, gave them a few more words of encouragement, and quietly excused himself, leaving them to their private dawn of hope.
Back in the hallway, he stripped off the mask and took a deep, shuddering breath, the sterile air feeling inadequate.
"You're good at that," Priya said softly, walking beside him.
"At what? Reading a chart?"
"No. At carrying it for them."
He didn't reply. They continued their rounds, a silent ritual of brief consultations and quiet reassurances. But after they parted ways, Akash didn't go back to his room for a break. He took a different turn, towards a wing of the hospital he both dreaded and was drawn to, a place where his skills as a surgeon were often rendered moot. He pushed through the double doors, and the stark white of the hospital gave way to a riot of defiant color.
This was the Pediatric Oncology ward.
The walls were painted with cartoon animals and superheroes. Children's drawings were taped everywhere, showcasing lopsided suns and stick-figure families. It was a place of enforced cheerfulness, a desperate, beautiful lie against the stark reality of the IV poles that stood sentinel by every small bed, their plastic bags dripping clear, life-altering chemicals. The air here was different, thick with a strange mixture of antiseptic, childish innocence, and a grief so profound it felt like a physical presence.
Akash's shoulders, which had been straight and confident in the cardiac ward, seemed to slump here. The armor of his white coat felt thin, useless. He wasn't here for rounds. He was here for his routine. His penance.
He walked past rooms where tiny, bald heads rested on oversized pillows, their eyes holding a wisdom no child should possess. He finally stopped at a doorway, leaning against the frame. Inside, a little girl of about seven was sitting up in her bed, a drawing pad balanced on her lap. Her name was Meera. She had a glioblastoma. He had performed the initial debulking surgery himself, a grueling eight-hour procedure. It was a temporary fix. A stolen moment of time. They both knew it.
She looked up, her dark, luminous eyes lighting up when she saw him. "Dr. Akash!"
He smiled, a genuine smile this time, one that broke through the fatigue. "Hello, superstar. What are you drawing today?"
"A castle," she said, holding up the pad. It was a magnificent, sprawling thing with purple towers and a green moat. "And a dragon. But he's a friendly dragon. He breathes bubbles, not fire."
"I see that," Akash said, stepping into the room. "A bubble-breathing dragon. Very rare. Very powerful." He noticed her box of crayons. "I think I have something for you." He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a single crayon, a specific, shimmering silver one he'd gone to three different stores to find the previous weekend. "For the castle's windows."
Her eyes went wide. "The sparkly one! You remembered!"
"A doctor never forgets," he said, handing it to her.
She took it with a reverence usually reserved for holy relics. She worked on her drawing for a moment in contented silence, the scratch of crayon on paper the only sound. Akash just watched her, his heart a painful, knotted thing in his chest. He worked himself to the bone, surrounded himself with the mechanics of medicine, to forget moments like these. And he sought them out for the very same reason. This was the core of it all. This was why he had no one. He had a hundred children like Meera. They were his family, and they were his heartbreak, a constant, revolving door of love and loss.
Meera stopped drawing and looked at him, her expression suddenly serious. "Dr. Akash?"
"Yes, Meera?"
"When my hair grows back again... do you think it will be curly this time? I've always wanted curly hair."
The question, so innocent, so full of a future she was fighting for with every poisoned drip from the IV bag, struck him with the force of a physical blow. The air left his lungs. The cheerful walls, the bubble-breathing dragon, the entire facade of hope they built here every day, crumbled into dust around him. He saw the ghost of her future, the one she was imagining, and the one the scans predicted. They were not the same.
He swallowed, forcing the lump in his throat down. He forced his lips into a smile. "I think there's a very good chance," he said, his voice miraculously steady. "And if it is, you'll have to teach me how to braid it."
She giggled, the sound like tiny, fragile bells. "Okay, it's a deal."
He stayed a few more minutes, then said his goodbyes and walked out of the ward, the colors and the forced cheerfulness feeling like an assault. He felt hollowed out, scoured clean by the purity of that little girl's hope. That was his real work. Not the cutting and the stitching, but the bearing of this impossible, sacred weight.
He finally made it back to his on-call room. The day shift was in full swing now, the hospital humming with a new energy. But for him, the day was over. A crushing, bone-deep exhaustion settled over him, heavier than ever before. He stripped off the white coat, letting it fall onto the chair. It looked like a shed snakeskin, a hollow man left behind. He gathered his keys and his wallet, the simple, mundane act of preparing to go home feeling alien.
He walked through the corridors, a ghost moving against the tide of bustling nurses and purposeful doctors. He didn't make eye contact. He just wanted out. The automatic glass doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and he stepped out into the evening. The air was thick with the city's smog and the promise of rain, but it was fresh compared to the recycled air of the hospital. It was the air of the world outside, the one he was never truly a part of.
He was halfway across the hospital driveway, heading towards the parking lot, when the first sign came. It wasn't a sharp pain, but a sudden, intense pressure in the center of his chest, as if a giant, icy fist were slowly clenching around his heart. He stopped, confused. Indigestion? Stress?
He took another step, and the pressure radiated outwards, a hot, searing pain that shot up into his jaw and down his left arm, making his fingers tingle and go numb. A wave of dizziness washed over him, the world tilting violently on its axis. The sounds of the city—the distant traffic, the horns—faded into a roaring in his ears.
No, his clinical mind thought with terrifying clarity. This is not indigestion. This is a massive myocardial infarction.
His legs gave out. He stumbled, catching himself against a parked car before sliding down its side to the cold, gritty pavement. His breath came in ragged, useless gasps. He had to call for help. The irony was suffocating: he was a cardiac expert, dying of a heart attack a hundred feet from one of the best cardiac centers in the country.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, he fumbled in his trouser pocket for his phone. It was his lifeline. His only hope. He pulled it out, his thumb smearing across the screen as he tried to unlock it, to get to the emergency dialer.
The screen flickered to life.
But it wasn't the home screen. It wasn't the keypad.
By some cruel twist of digital fate, his fumbling had opened his web novel app. He sometimes read them late at night, a mindless escape from his own reality. The screen glowed with the stark white page of a new chapter, one the author must have just posted. The title materialized in crisp, black font at the top of the screen:
"Book 3: The Celestial Physician - Chapter 284: An Unexpected Epilogue"
Panic, cold and absolute, seized him. "No… no, no…" he wheezed, the words stolen by the fist in his chest.
His vision was tunneling, the world shrinking to the mocking rectangle of light in his hand. He tapped at the screen with his numb thumb, trying to close the app, to get back, to do anything. But the screen was frozen. The text remained, defiant and unmoving. He stabbed at it again and again, his movements becoming more frantic, more desperate. The phone, his one connection to salvation, had become his final prison.
He could feel his own life, a concept he understood with such intimate, biological detail, slipping away. The electrical impulses in his heart were falling into chaos. His brain was being starved of oxygen. He was a machine breaking down, and he could diagnose every single stage of his own system failure.
His head fell back against the car's tire. His desperate gasps softened into a final, shuddering sigh. His last conscious sight was not of a loved one's face, or a cherished memory, but of the glowing, indifferent words on his phone's screen, the beginning of a story he would never read, an epilogue to a life of a thousand consultations, with his own being the last, and the only one he couldn't win. The phone slipped from his limp fingers, landing face up on the pavement, its light a solitary, absurd beacon in the growing darkness, illuminating a brilliant doctor's face, now a mask of silent, final agony.