The outskirts of the city were not merely quiet; they had been abandoned by the momentum of the living world. This was not a place where people lingered or dreamed. Tall, gray apartment blocks rose like concrete gravestones, their crumbling facades resembling wet ash under the pale wash of moonlight. Time had peeled their paint and cracked their walls, leaving scars no one bothered to repair. Nearby, warehouses loomed in heavy silence, their shattered windows gaping open to the elements like broken teeth.
Evenings emptied the streets early, surrendering them to the low whistle of wind sliding through alleyways and the distant, rhythmic barking of stray dogs. The city's heart beat far away from here. What remained was a forgotten edge—functional, lifeless, tolerated rather than lived in.
A weak, sickly glow from the streetlights seeped through the dirty windows of a third-floor apartment, flickering faintly as if even the electricity struggled to justify its existence.
Inside, the two-room space smelled of cold coffee left too long in its cup, old paper, and a pervasive sense of disuse. The air felt thick, stale, as though the walls themselves had absorbed three years of silence and were now slowly breathing it back into the room. Nothing moved unless touched. Nothing invited comfort.
Through the unwashed window, Tomas could see only the mirrored face of another gray apartment block and the empty parking lot below. The asphalt was cracked and uneven, weeds pushing stubbornly through the seams. Beyond it, a small playground stood abandoned. Rust crept along the metal frame of the swing set, its chains stiff and unmoving—a monument to children who no longer played there, to laughter that had long since faded from the neighborhood.
The apartment's interior was sparse to the point of sterility. An old coffee table, scarred with deep scratches and white rings left by hot mugs, sat at the center of the room. A gray-upholstered sofa, long past its firmness, faced a bookshelf packed tightly with heavy medical textbooks. Their spines were faded, titles half-erased by time. A fine, undisturbed layer of gray dust coated them all, thick enough to mark the passing of months, perhaps years.
Tomas sat on the sofa, his body sunk deep into the worn cushions as if the furniture itself were slowly swallowing him. His bare, pale feet rested on the table. The floor beneath them was cold, the chill creeping steadily into his bones, but he made no move to put on socks. He wore a gray T-shirt with a small tear near the shoulder seam. The thin cotton clung damply to his skin, carrying the stale scent of cardboard dust and tobacco from the warehouse where he had spent the last ten hours.
He was twenty-two years old, though the stillness of his posture made him seem far older. His dark brown hair was cut short for utility rather than style, but now it had grown unruly; a single strand fell across his forehead, brushing his eyelashes. His eyes—an arresting shade of green—stared forward without focus. There was no spark in them. No curiosity. No anticipation. They were fixed not on the room around him, but on a point far beyond the walls—something distant, unreachable, and perhaps already gone.
A small white scar marked his chin, a relic of childhood. A faded line from a time when pain was simple—a fall from a bicycle, a scrape against pavement, a bandage applied by loving hands. Back when pain had an end. Back when everything had still meant something.
Why am I still here?
The thought surfaced as it always did. It wasn't frantic. It wasn't a plea or a cry for help. It arrived calmly, logically, like a question posed by an indifferent observer.
And, as always, it went unanswered.
Inside him was an emptiness—vast, hollow, and echoing. It wasn't the sharp sting of grief anymore, nor the crushing weight of despair. Those had burned themselves out long ago. What remained was a void. Since his parents' death, Tomas felt less like a man and more like a shadow—a biological mechanism that breathed, ate, slept, and worked, but did not live.
Every morning, when the sun filtered weakly through the peeling wallpaper, the same question arrived.
Why not today?
Yet something weak and stubborn anchored him to existence. It wasn't hope. He had searched for that word and found nothing it could attach itself to. It was duty—rigid, inherited, unyielding. Duty to his parents.
His father's voice rose unbidden from memory, as clear as if it were spoken beside him. It carried warmth, paired with the familiar sensation of a large hand ruffling his hair.
"You'll be a surgeon, son," his father had said proudly. "Scars will be your true beauty. You'll fix what's broken."
Once, those words had filled Tomas with purpose.
Now, they sounded like a judgment.
He was a surgeon. Technically.
The best the faculty had ever seen.
And the title felt completely hollow.
He had saved lives. He had held hearts in his hands—felt their slick warmth, the desperate strength of life struggling to continue beneath his fingers. He had watched monitors stabilize, heard relief ripple through operating rooms.
And still, hearts stopped.
Just not the ones he needed to save.
His parents' hearts had stopped on the highway three years ago. A chaotic collision—shrieking metal, exploding glass, sirens tearing through the dark. They had been driving to the city to surprise him, rushing straight from their shifts to congratulate him on his nineteenth birthday.
He hadn't been there to operate. He hadn't been there to hold their hands.
Because of him—because of a date circled on a calendar—they were gone.
His body was athletic, hardened not by training for pleasure but by necessity. Repetitive labor had shaped him more than any gym ever could. His hands were rough now, calloused from lifting crates and dragging pallets. Beneath the worn skin, their structure remained elegant: long fingers, strong bones, veins standing out sharply along the backs of his hands.
Those fingers drifted aimlessly over the open pages of Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy resting on his lap. The book was heavy, its pages yellowed and soft from years of turning.
Page 214: The aortic valve.
The diagram was complex—a precise network of arteries, chambers, and muscle fibers—but Tomas didn't need the labels. He knew the anatomy more intimately than he knew the streets of his own neighborhood. Pencil markings crowded the margins: arrows, notes, small corrections written in tight, efficient script.
These weren't a student's notes.
They were the tactical annotations of a surgeon.
They still seemed to carry the scent of sterile air, disinfectant, and iron.
Now, they were just memories trapped on paper.
Three years ago, Tomas had been a third-year medical student in name only. In reality, he had already been operating beside Professor Julian—the country's finest heart surgeon.
He wasn't observing from the gallery. He wasn't holding the suction tube.
He was operating.
At nineteen, beneath blinding surgical lights that erased all shadows, he had stood with unnervingly steady hands. The scalpel rested in his grip like an extension of his body. The air in the operating room always smelled the same—sharp antiseptic layered over blood. Heart monitors beeped in a hypnotic rhythm.
Beneath his gloved fingers, he could feel the living heartbeat.
He was a prodigy. His physical abilities came with terrifying ease—whether it was martial arts in the university gym or the microscopic precision required to suture fragile vessels. His hands obeyed his mind perfectly.
People called him a genius.
To Tomas, it felt mechanical.
What was the point of being exceptional if you felt nothing?
He never laughed. Laughter felt like a language he had never learned to speak. He never went to parties after shifts—the music, the noise, the alcohol all felt like hollow rituals everyone else understood instinctively. He never answered messages from women; typing words on a screen felt like wasted energy.
He didn't socialize. He had no friends.
After the funeral, loneliness became his baseline state. It wrapped itself around him, seeped into the apartment's silence, and turned him into a quiet observer of his own life.
Loneliness was the only thing that stayed.
The last operation he remembered with absolute clarity had taken place a year and seven months ago.
The turning point.
The patient was a thirty-four-year-old woman in her fourth pregnancy. A ruptured aortic wall—catastrophic. They fought for her life for six relentless hours. Tomas remembered every sensation: sweat sliding down his spine, the ache in his neck, his hands slick with fluid. Alarms screamed. Machines flashed red.
They saved her.
The bleeding stopped. The pressure stabilized.
A healthy baby boy was delivered moments later. His cries echoed down the corridor, loud and full of life.
The team celebrated.
The next morning, Tomas placed his scalpel on the metal table. It made a soft clink. He removed his gloves, dropped them into the bin, and walked out. The automatic doors slid shut behind him with a final, dull thud.
He never entered an operating room again.
Now, he worked wherever paid cash. Warehouses. Stores. Factories.
Today, he had clocked out at 22:47.
Tomorrow was a day off.
The realization lingered.
"Maybe I'll go to a bar," he muttered.
The word echoed in the empty room.
He stood, pulled on his coat, and left.
The door closed behind him with a dull click, locking the apartment back into its waiting silence.
Outside, the wind chased dry leaves across cracked pavement.
And somewhere ahead, a neon sign pulsed faintly in the darkness.