Dr. Arjun Malhotra stared at the folder in his hands, the thin paper trembling slightly between his fingers. He had read it once, twice, three times, and each time the words seemed to rearrange themselves, daring him to believe them. It made no sense. It couldn't. Yet the evidence was there, black on white. Ananya Rao, five months pregnant, and she swore she hadn't been with anyone. She hadn't even been out of her apartment in weeks. And she was the fifth nurse assigned to Room 412-C to announce a pregnancy like this in just over a year.
Arjun's mind refused to settle. He paced the narrow office, his shoes scuffing the hospital floor. Each step echoed against the sterile walls, a reminder that this was a place of science, of reason, where human error could be cataloged, measured, and controlled. And yet, for the first time in his career, the rules he trusted were crumbling beneath him.
He looked at the files on the desk. Each one meticulously noted the nurse's shift hours, their medical history, and the dates of their positive tests. There was no pattern in their personal lives, no hint of infidelity or secret liaisons. The common denominator was Rohan Mehta. Room 412-C. The man who had been in a coma for over three years after falling from a burning building during a rescue. The man who had never spoken, never moved, and never given the slightest sign of awareness.
Arjun ran a hand through his hair, his scalp prickling. He had always believed that science had answers, that reason could explain every anomaly, every strange occurrence. He had built his life on it. And now, he was being forced to confront the impossible.
He remembered the first nurse, Priya, who had come to him quietly, red-eyed and trembling. At first, he had dismissed it. She was young, perhaps careless, or perhaps something had been misreported. Then came Meera, and after her, Aisha. Each story mirrored the others, each one insisting they were unaware, that they had not engaged in any relationship, and that their lives outside the hospital had been ordinary, mundane, and untouched by romance. And yet, the outcome was the same. Each nurse was pregnant. Each nurse had worked the night shift, each nurse had cared for Rohan.
The thought made Arjun's stomach twist. He had consulted colleagues, infectious disease specialists, geneticists, and endocrinologists. He had run every test he could think of and scrutinized the environment for chemical contaminants, hormonal imbalances, and even rare infections. Every result came back normal. Stable vitals. Minimal brain activity. No signs of anything that could explain conception. Nothing.
And now Ananya Rao, a quiet, disciplined nurse who had never missed a shift, was holding a positive test in his office, crying and swearing she had no idea how it had happened. Arjun looked at her, a lump forming in his throat. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her it would be okay, but he couldn't. Not when he didn't understand what was happening. Not when his entire life of logic had been rendered useless.
He closed the folder and sank into his chair, running his hands over his face. The smell of jasmine oil lingered faintly in the air, mixed with antiseptic and the distant hum of ventilators. The hospital had a way of creating this uneasy calm, a quiet undercurrent that made every heartbeat echo in the corridors. But this calm had been shattered. The whispers, the gossip, the fear in the nurses' eyes—it was spreading, infecting the hospital with paranoia.
Arjun's thoughts returned to Rohan. The young firefighter lying in a coma, his strong features serene, almost peaceful in their stillness. Flowers arrived every festival, letters from grateful families were tucked beside his bed, and nurses would often comment on how calm he looked. It had always been ordinary. Until now. Until the pattern emerged, a thread pulling at the fabric of reality, threatening to unravel it completely.
He knew what had to be done. He had to see. He had to know. And yet, a part of him hesitated, a part of him terrified that some truths were better left unknown. That fear drove him to his next decision with a mix of dread and resolve. Late that evening, after the last nurse had left for her shift, he walked down the quiet, fluorescent-lit corridor to Room 412-C. Each step felt heavier than the last, the echoes bouncing off the walls like warnings.
The door slid open with a hiss, and he entered alone. The room smelled of disinfectant, with faint jasmine lingering from the flowers brought by visiting families months ago. The machines hummed steadily, their rhythmic beeping the only sign of life in the otherwise silent space. And there he was, lying motionless on the bed, his chest rising and falling with the soft, shallow rhythm of a coma. Rohan Mehta, a man who had been trapped between life and death for years, oblivious to the world yet somehow at the center of it.
Arjun's hands shook as he adjusted the small camera he had installed earlier that day. Discreet, carefully hidden inside the ventilation, and angled perfectly to capture every corner of the room. A tool of science, a way to witness the impossible, to uncover the truth. He pressed record, his fingers trembling, and stepped back, his heart hammering.
For the first time in years, he felt fear, raw and unfiltered. The fear of the unknown, of forces beyond understanding, of the fragility of the human mind when confronted with phenomena that defied explanation. The fear that perhaps, in his pursuit of truth, he was crossing into something far older, far stranger, than he had ever imagined.
He remembered Ananya's face, pale and tear-streaked, and the way she had begged him to understand, to believe her when she said she had done nothing. And he did believe her. He wanted to. But the evidence was undeniable, insistent, and terrifying.
Arjun's thoughts raced. What if it wasn't just coincidence? What if there was something in the room, in the man himself, that was influencing life in ways no doctor, no scientist, and no rational mind could comprehend? The very idea was preposterous, absurd, yet he could not ignore it. His hands tightened into fists, nails digging into his palms, as he tried to force logic to return.
He had always trusted the clarity of data and the absoluteness of numbers, but here, numbers were silent, and silence was screaming. And now, as he stared at the still figure of Rohan Mehta, a man suspended between consciousness and oblivion, he realized that perhaps some forms of life did not merely exist—they acted. They touched the world in ways subtle and unseen, leaving behind traces that no science could fully map.
Arjun's chest tightened. He had to watch. He had to understand. He had to know whether this was a phenomenon waiting to be explained or something far more sinister, far more alive than he had ever dared imagine. The camera was his only witness, the only ally he had in a world that was rapidly turning incomprehensible.
He pressed a button on the device, and the tiny red light blinked once. Recording. Watching. Waiting.
The night stretched ahead of him, quiet and oppressive, and Arjun could feel the weight of every heartbeat in the room, every silent breath, every unspoken secret. He stepped back, his eyes fixed on Rohan, who remained utterly still, yet somehow present, somehow aware.
A cold shiver ran down his spine. He whispered the words under his breath, almost as if saying them aloud could summon them into reality: "What have you done, Rohan? What are you?"
And in that instant, as the machines hummed and the shadows stretched across the walls, Arjun knew that nothing would ever be the same. The rules had changed. The world he understood had shifted, and at the center of it lay a man who had been asleep for years, touching lives in ways no one could explain, leaving behind a mystery that would consume everything.
The first flicker of movement caught the corner of his eye. A subtle twitch of a finger, a barely perceptible shift in the bed. Arjun's breath caught in his throat. He leaned forward, eyes wide, heart pounding. This was it. The moment he had been both dreading and craving.
And in the silence of Room 412-C, under the watchful lens of the hidden camera, the impossible began to stir.