Chapter 3: Where It All Began
The operating theater was dark, except for a single light over the patient's bed. It looked like a lone glimmer of hope in a void.
As Aman entered, the first thing he noticed was the heartbeat monitor. The lines flickered up and down—unsteady, uncertain. Like life itself.
The patient was... different. Aman had operated on the young and the old, but this man wasn't just aged. He looked like a monk who had seen eons pass. Aman could sense it; this man had seen life, and now he was fighting for what was left of it.
There were no visible injuries on the body. Whatever was killing him was internal. Deep.
A surgeon needs a foundation, and Aman needed his. There was only one person he trusted to stand across from him at the table: his colleague and best friend, Sophie. They had grown up together, survived medical school together, and moved through the world as a team.
Sophie was his anchor—kind, calm, and unshakable.
She entered the theater with a familiar grin. "Couldn't do anything without me, can you?"
A faint smile touched Aman's lips beneath his mask. "Let's start the operation before he dies."
With those few words, they began doing what they did best: cutting into the mystery of the human body. The problem was clear—a clogged heart.
The surgery stretched past the four-hour mark. They didn't speak; after years of working together, words were unnecessary. They moved in a silent dance of scalpels and sutures.
But today, something felt different.
Sophie was a redhead. Usually, Aman didn't pay attention to such things in the heat of a surgery. But today, he couldn't stop looking at her. Her blue eyes seemed less like eyes and more like a deep, swirling ocean.
She noticed his gaze. She didn't say anything—perhaps she liked it. Women are a mystery that no medical textbook can explain.
Finally, the operation ended. The patient was safe. The monitor that had been so erratic was now a steady, rhythmic pulse.
Aman stepped back, peeling off his gloves. As he began washing his hands with Sophie beside him, a strange sensation surged through him—like a bolt of raw electricity running through his veins.
He brushed it off. Just exhaustion, he told himself. Just the adrenaline leaving the system.
He left the room, satisfied with a job well done.
Behind him, in the silent, dark theater, the monitor that had been stable... suddenly
Became flat