PROLOGUE

The clock kept ticking but they stood right there, frozen — as if time was an illusion, as if memories were mere hallucinations, as if none of this was real at all.

Flashes of reminiscence returned to him but Vivaan couldn't piece them together. His med school knowledge was blurry as ever, recent memories occupying his mind, leaving a bitter aftertaste. No one knew where this patient had come from or who he was. And not a body in the operation theatre could figure out what was wrong with him.

Senses on a high alert now, he could hear the wheels of the stretcher screech against the tiled floor outside. His heart kept racing with each passing moment as the cacophony of voices inside the operation theatre subsided into an eerie silence. Though all his seniors had themselves covered in scrubs and masks, he didn't need a look at their faces to fathom the anxiety written over them.

Unlike him, everyone else in the room tried to summon the lost information, scrambling their brain for anything that could help the case before them. The patient lay still but he wasn't dead. They didn't know if he could be termed alive either. Giving in to the urge, Vivaan found his eyes squeezed shut, hoping to recollect something, anything about such a vague occurrence.

To any onlooker, this patient was asleep — probably in deep sleep but a look at his vitals told a completely different story. What looked like quite a simple issue shook these doctors' to the very core.

"Why, after all, did he faint all of a sudden?" Vivaan's batchmate, Abby, voiced her thoughts in an attempt to brainstorm with their mentor.

Carsen's — the mentor's — eyebrows furrowed deeply and seemed to blend into one as he tried to focus in recollection. The scene played out like a loop; everyone in the operation theatre shared the same experience. His brain tried to scan through any possible reminiscence of his university lectures but nothing seemed to come to his rescue. A pit grew in his stomach and he frantically ran his fingers through his hair, trying to hide the way his fingers were shivering. He needed to set a better example in front of his juniors.

Sighing in defeat, he finally spoke after what felt like a haunting silence. "I can't figure this out but I'm sure it's not as straightforward as it seems. Something is terribly, terribly wrong with this boy. I wouldn't even call his condition rare because I don't think I have ever seen a human do this before."

"What do you think happened to him?" Vivaan couldn't hold his curiosity. "Why isn't he responding to any medicines at all?"

"I-" Shrugging with his hands in the air, Carsen let out a loud exhale and pulled off his mask. "I don't know, okay?" Though he was supposed to be training these clinical rotation students, today was not a day to teach them about medicines and handling patients. Today was a tough lesson about honesty. Admitting to yourself that you may not have the solution to everything.

Washing his hands with soap, he quickly summarised to himself. "He seems to be hibernating. Rather, his brain is. Neither is he responding to any of our medicines nor to any stingy injections. As if his body is here but he isn't able to feel anything at all. As if he is somehow hibernating. So weird."

Wiping his hands on a napkin, he reached for his emergency pager and Vivaan took it as a cue to look this patient's condition up. Taking his gloves off, he rubbed a generous amount of sanitiser on his palms and reached for his phone. As expected, he found tons of unread messages, all from the same person. Shaking his head with mirth, he smiled and began to type her a quick reply.

[Alt Text:

From Angeline: Hey Viv, need the cake recipe ASAP for mom's bday. Hello?!?!?! You there???

Reply by Vivaan Arora: Hi sorry ttyl busy with a case rn. will call you once it's done. tc.]

When he looked back up, he saw Carsen's face light up as if he finally found an answer. Maybe that or maybe he found a ray of light at the end of a dark tunnel. Either way, Vivaan dropped his phone in an instant and his mentor announced. "We needn't worry."

The sudden shift in his stance left him stunned but before he could ask any further questions, the door swung open and walked in a man - who looked like he was in probably in his late fifties. His white hair and wrinkled face told tales of his extensive experience and Vivaan suspected this was the man Carsen often talked about.

Greetings aside, he silently walked to the patient's bed, making no attempt at returning eye contact or acknowledging anyone else's existence in the room. It was clear that he had no time to waste. Plucking the charts clipped to the patient's bed, he began shuffling through the papers and the interns' mentor took it upon himself to introduce the new presence in the operation theatre. "This is Doctor Martin. He was my mentor back when I was an intern here."

Everyone in Blackmount Hospital had certainly heard of this man before, Vivaan remarked to himself. He didn't think Doctor Martin worked for the hospital anymore as he ran his own research facility but owing to his roots, he visited certain patients with complex abnormalities on the hospital's special request.

Today was obviously such a day. Unique, weird, complex. Carsen continued talking. "When I pinged everyone in my contact list about this case, Doctor Martin showed some interest and since he was here anyway, he has come to help."

Before the interns could get accustomed to being in the presence of Doctor Martin - the senior doctor everyone had heard so much about - he raised a wrinkly hand and signalled the nurse to bring the injection. "Sodium Pentothal." Stunned as ever by his authoritative, thick voice, Carsen stepped back and simply observed the way his mentor's nerve popped out when he injected the solution into the anonymous patient's vein.

"What- why?" Vivaan blurted out. The name rang a bell in his head and in an instant, he could figure the chosen solution was. Informally known as the truth serum in fiction, technically known as Sodium Pentothal in the field of medicine, he couldn't believe the all-nighters he had pulled for his midterms recently were about to pay off.

The material still fresh in mind, he raised an eyebrow at his mentor who abruptly cut him off. "You never question Doctor Martin." Vivaan wasn't sure if Carsen's reply was out of respect or fear. Or probably both.

The old man raised his palm and waved it off. "If he has any questions, let him ask them right away, Car. Better now than later." Disposing the syringe, he faced Vivaan for the first time and casually answered. "We are trying a Narco test on him."

Wasn't a Narco test usually done to find out the truth? Vivaan wondered. It was a well-believed concept that it was almost impossible to lie under the influence of this truth serum but he still couldn't figure why this was supposed to help their patient's case. "Do we not need the court's permission to do this?"

Confusion obvious on Vivaan's face, Carsen found himself rolling his eyes at the day his junior was going to have. Questioning Doctor Martin never came with easy consequences.

"We aren't doing this for legal reasons, Mr. Vivaan Arora." He squinted his eyes at the intern's batch. "Narco will simply neutralise his imagination and make him semi-conscious."

"But-"

Clearing this throat, he continued. "I know from the little knowledge you have yet, you think Narco is just tried on a semi-conscious brain to get the truth out of it, for judicial reasons mostly. But we are going to try this to bring his currently unconscious brain out of imagination. Into a semi-conscious state. Understand?"

Vivaan nodded, out of words. Slowly digesting the information, he chose to confirm it once. "You mean he isn't hibernating?"

"Nope." Doctor Martin pursed his lips. "The traits are different. Maybe he is just lost in a deep slumber of imagination. Or maybe he just isn't in the right headspace."

The silence in the room slowly grew into an active information exchange.

"Is his blood tested?"

"Yes. We expect the reports in a few hours." Carsen replied.

"Good." The senior doctor turned towards Vivaan this time. "Take him to the ward and get him ready for the test. We are supposed to be recording this procedure, for legal reasons."

Vivaan nodded and Abby was overwhelmed with the pace of events. Giving Carsen puppy eyes, she pleaded to get out — she wasn't sure if this was the right field for her anyway. Smiling mockingly at her impatience, he took it as his cue to leave as well. "None of us need to be here, Doctor Martin is enough. We'll be visiting the patient in Room 501-"

"Uh." Vivaan's feet stay stuck, affixed to the ground. A gut feeling told him he could learn much more in the next few hours than he could probably in his entire medical career. Plus, the case had already sparked his interest.

"He can handle this alone, Viv. Let him be-"

"Actually-" Doctor Martin saw a younger version of him standing in front of him right now. Just as curious, just as stubborn and eager to learn. "-let him stay back. I need someone to assist me as well. In case we need to hold the patient down or something."

Still mesmerised and intimidated that these two were the only people attending to this complex case, Vivaan shrugged when Doctor Martin asked him the patient's name. "We don't know as of now. He fainted in the middle of the day and some people brought him here. He has a mobile — locked — but we have called our technicians to crack his password."

"Good call." He settled on a seat across the patient and began scribbling down his observations. Sensing the intern's hesitation, Doctor Martin tried his hardest to make small talk. "Don't think I've seen you here in Blackmount before?"

"That's right." Vivaan stuttered once. "I'm here just for my medical internship." The mention of his pending tenure brought along a plethora of memories — of home, of family, of the past and people he wanted to run away from. He wondered how one action ended up changing the course of his entire life — from India to Sanguis Rosa. Shaking his head at the thoughts that threatened to overtake him, he sighed and pressed the video recording button on the camera.

Doctor Martin sprang up on his feet and gave him a curt nod before turning to the patient. "Okay, here. Can you hear me?" He lightly touched the patient's arm, trying to wake him up. "Hello?"

No response.

A quick look at the beeping machine reflected that his heart rate was still low and his pulse was below normal. A few minutes later, Vivaan gasped as they could see the injection begin to show its effects. His heart was beating fast, as if he was scared or something but his pulse was still abnormal.

"No need to get scared, boy." The doctor spoke. "All you have to do is answer some simple questions. Okay?"

The patient shook his head. His throat was parched and it burned, longing for air - as if he had either cried way too much or forgotten how to breathe at all. Pouring a few drops of water into his throat, Vivaan helped hold the patient in his place.

"What is your name, young man?" Doctor Martin raised his voice.

"D- Die- Diego-" Came back a parched reply. "Diego Foster."

Vivaan breathed a sigh of relief, finally understanding why Carsen trusted his mentor so much. Undoubtedly, things were going the right way. He could finally find the answers he was seeking all along.

"And how old are you, Diego?"

"I- no. Don't- Can't remember." He kept shaking his head violently.

"Alright, that's okay." They tried to pacify him. If Doctor Martin were to guess, he would say this patient was anywhere between 17 to 20 years old. "Who do you love the most, Diego?"

Vivaan widened his eyes at the extremely personal question until it dawned on him that Doctor Martin intentionally chose to ask something as sensitive, probably to be able to toy with this boy's heart rate in an instant.

"Mom." He repeated. "My mom." As tossed towards his side.

"Where is she? Do you recollect a way we can reach out to her?"

"She left me when I was 6. She died."

"Oh." Was all Doctor Martin could say.

Vivaan pitched in. "What happened to her?"

Diego seemed to lapse and Vivaan patted his arm until he woke up again. "Pills." They didn't need more than a word to understand what must've happened.

"Okay." The doctor tried to tread carefully this time. "Is there someone else? Possibly a best friend or-"

"Lyra!" Diego screamed, causing Vivaan to jump in his seat once. "Come back." He kept on pleading, agony dripping from his tone. "Please don't leave me, Lyra. Please."

The boy's heart rate and pulse became unstable.

"Lyra, please. Don't die."

Vivaan felt a shudder run down his spine — not sure if it was the name or the mention of death that made him react this way. "What happened to her?" He heard Doctor Martin ask.

"She died." After an uncertain pause, he added. "Just like mom."

"Did she take some pills too?"

"She jumped. From our school's terrace." He tossed and turned again, face completely red, tears spilling out of his eyes. "In front of me. I couldn't save her."

"W- When did she die?" Vivaan asked.

"Can't forget. Ninth. 9 June. 2015." He barely managed to speak.

"That's just a day ago, Sir. June 9th was yesterday." Vivaan gasped at the senior who didn't hide the shock from his face either.

"I suspect this incident has something to do with his condition. The way he ended up like this- couldn't be a coincidence. He seemed pretty close to this girl he is talking about. She's our biggest hint in finding out what's wrong with him." When Vivaan nodded and confirmed the doctor's theory, the latter dared to ask the patient a question that would unravel all his hidden emotions and secrets. Possibly even the ones he would want to carry to his grave.

"Tell us what happened, Diego. Tell us your story."

* * *

AUTHOR'S NOTE 

Hello, you! Thank you for reading this chapter without even knowing much about this book (as it hasn't started, exactly). I really value and appreciate the way you chose to invest your time in this book other than the big number of books available in this orange world. Your support means the world to me. Keep voting and commenting to show your bonding with the characters and towards this book. Hope you like the story ahead.

Any theories on this mysterious patient so far?

Edit: I guess I'm going to lose all inline comments on this story as I turn this (previously a) short story into a novel now *cries*

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