The aroma of warm coal-burnt spices drifted out the moment Sandhya tore open the Zomato container. She didn't even have the energy to wash her face or change out of her dust-laden civilian clothes. It was Paneer Tikka Masala, thick gravy bubbling against the foil edge, accompanied by fresh butter rotis. Sandhya stared at it, a tired, faint scoff leaving her lips. "Why does this man order paneer every single time?" she muttered to herself. It wasn't a coincidence. Ever since she had joined, whenever he secretly tracked her missed meals, this specific dish arrived. It was as if he had memorized a single vegetarian comfort menu and refused to deviate from it. She ate ravenously, the food warming her hollow chest, before crawling into bed and collapsing into a dead, dreamless oblivion.
Until the nightmare struck.
In her sleep, the sterile hospital walls melted away into an ancient, dust-blown battlefield. She saw Dr. Rohan, but he wasn’t wearing blue surgical scrubs. He was clad in heavy, traditional Rajasthani warrior armor—a gilded breastplate clanking over his chest, his eyes burning with an unhinged, ancient fury. He was sprinting directly toward her, a heavy, unsheathed steel sword raised high above his head, aiming straight for her throat. Sandhya gasped, snapping her eyes open as she bolted upright in bed. Her skin was drenched in cold sweat. Her heart was hammering like a trapped bird.
Before she could even process the bizarre imagery of the Rajasthani warrior, a sharp, buzzing vibration cut through the silence of her room. Her phone screen was flashing.
Caller ID: Chief Dr. Rohan.
She glanced at the wall clock. 11:00 AM. A cold dread flooded her veins. She had completely fucked up. Protocol mandated that after a grueling 36-hour shift—which she had stretched into a punishing 41 hours—a resident was strictly entitled to 18 hours of uninterrupted rest. But her internal clock had betrayed her. She had over-slept, and she was now severely late. She had been supposed to come at 6:00 AM in the morning.
Meanwhile, down in the surgical ward, the atmosphere had been thick enough to choke on. Dr. Rohan had been standing at the central nursing station since morning. His face was entirely devoid of emotion—stiff, rigid, and deadly calm. But the aura radiating off him was terrifying. Without breaking eye contact with the floor, his thumb had hit the redial button over and over. He had called her straight 20 times in front of the junior residents and Dr. Rishabh, without changing his emotions, yet radiating a rage that looked like he was gonna explode Dr. Sandhya with a bomb the instant she picked up.
The newly joined junior residents had stood frozen like statues against the wall, exchanging panicked, wide-eyed glances. Realizing how hyper-strict Dr. Rohan was towards Dr. Sandhya, they whispered to Rishabh, "Sir... is the Chief always this terrifying with her?" Rishabh had just watched Rohan's knuckles turn white around the phone, knowing the explosion was imminent.
With trembling fingers back in her room, Sandhya finally slid the green button on the 21st call, realizing that khadus man was calling. She pressed the phone to her ear.
"DR. SANDHYA!" Rohan’s voice roared through the speaker so violently that she had to pull the phone away from her ear. "Are you running a country or a residency?! If your royal highness is finished sleeping through the morning critical rounds, get your incompetent self to the department this exact second! If you are not in front of me in ten minutes, consider your residency canceled!"
The line went dead. Panic exploded inside her. Sandhya scrambled out of bed, barely matching her clothes. She didn't even have the time to find a hair tie. She ran out of her apartment, her wild, thick curly hair flowing chaotically over her face and shoulders, catching the wind as she sprinted toward the hospital.
The moment her feet hit the floor of the General Surgery wing, she realized something was profoundly wrong. It wasn't Rohan's roar echoing today—the loud, chaotic noise was coming from the central doctors' duty room.
Sandhya pushed past a couple of frightened nurses at the door and froze. Inside, sheets of white paper were flying through the air like a localized blizzard. Dr. Rishabh, usually the calmest, most grounded person in the building, was in a state of absolute, unhinged rage. He was violently throwing research papers, clinical files, and textbooks across the room, smashing them against the lockers.
"Rishabh!" Sandhya gasped, her curls flying as she ducked beneath a flying medical journal. "What the hell happened?!"
Before Rishabh could answer, the room fell dead silent. The shadow of a towering figure blocked the doorway, and the air instantly turned to ice.
Dr. Rohan stepped into the chaotic room. He didn't even glance at the papers littered across the floor. Instead, he stood tall, his jaw set, and folded his arms over his chest as he turned a piercing, deadly glare toward Dr. Rishabh and the trembling junior residents.
"Let me make the rules of this surgery department clear to everyone once and for all," Rohan announced, his voice a low, terrifying rumble that echoed off the metal lockers. He stared directly at Rishabh, his eyes burning with an unhinged, cold fury. "There is strictly no dating in this hospital. If you want to satisfy your personal desires, do it outside the campus boundaries. No two people are permitted to date within the same hospital. And absolutely no phone calls to lovers or family during critical rounds."
The junior residents pressed themselves harder against the wall as Rohan took a menacing step forward, his eyes still locked onto a breathless Rishabh.
"People seem to completely forget that they are in a noble profession," Rohan hissed, his lip curling. "They are too busy being lovey-dovey to their partners, ignoring their responsibilities. Meanwhile..." He suddenly paused, his eyes snapping like whips onto Sandhya. "...a woman right next to him is giving her absolute ass off, working 36 hours straight. Yet, some shitty people get tired after just 24 hours, constantly making their co-resident work their share of the part just so they can play house."
The silence in the room was suffocating. Rohan finally let his eyes lock onto Sandhya, taking in her disheveled appearance—her thick, wild curly hair flowing untamed over her face, her cheeks flushed from sprinting. A cold, sarcastic smirk twisted his lips.
"Ah, Dr. Sandhya," Rohan said, his voice dripping with venomous mockery. "Did you finally finish your beauty sleep? Do you feel well-rested while your department is falling apart?"
Sandhya tried to push her wild curls out of her eyes, her breath catching in her throat. "Chief, I—"
"Save it," Rohan cut her off, his eyes turning to ice. "Dr. Rishabh is going on leave for his wedding starting tomorrow morning. Because of his absence, the workload doubles. You are on a straight, mandatory 36-hour duty starting right now."
Sandhya gasped, her heart dropping straight into her stomach. "Sir! But... if Rishabh leaves tomorrow, do I get the rest of today off? I desperately need to complete my thesis. The final submission date is coming dangerously near, and I haven't—"
"Dr. Sandhya, why dr. Sandhya ... you always help Dr. Rishabh to meet his chick while you worked straight for 72 hours one time? Don't you " Rohan interrupted, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet, venomous murmur. He stepped closer, his shadow falling over her completely. "I think you are a very kind-hearted woman. Let this kindness be shared for the department now."
Sandhya froze, her face draining of color. She hadn't realized he had ever found out about that grueling, endless weekend she had pulled just so Rishabh could catch a flight.
"No," Rohan barked, his face turning back into a wall of stone as he completely dominated her space. He spat out her name with a heavy, brutal stress, making the syllables sound like an insult. "What do you think of yourself, Dr. Sandhya? You are no one to decide your own schedule. Today, Rishabh will be managing the department here. The junior residents will be under his wing to help out. And you... don't act smart with me."
He glanced down at his watch, completely ignoring her look of sheer exhaustion and the dark circles bruising the skin under her eyes.
"You've had enough time to sleep. Change your coat. You are attending a seminar with me today."
Before she could even process the whiplash of the order, she was forced to turn on her heels and follow his rigid posture out to the parking lot. Rohan didn't say a single word as he slammed his door and started the sharp engine of his car. Sandhya sat incredibly stiff in the passenger seat, the heavy, metallic silence inside the vehicle suffocating her as she stared out the window.
As the car ate up the miles, the dense, crowded concrete buildings of their tertiary care hospital slowly faded away. Rohan drove them away from the chaos, heading toward the coastal bay of the city. Slowly, the concrete transformed into a breathtaking expanse of lush green gardens, misty mountains, and ancient, beautiful temples lining the waterfront. Under any other circumstances, the view would have been deeply romantic. To Sandhya, it felt like being driven to an execution.
They finally pulled up to a massive civil hospital hall overlooking the crashing waves of the bay. Inside, the grand seminar room was already packed with senior clinicians and whispering medical students. Sandhya took a seat next to Rohan, her eyes scanning the glowing presentation slide on the main projector screen:
"Systemic Manifestations: Advanced Management of SLE, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and Scleroderma."
Sandhya blinked in sheer surprise. Her mind began to whirl as she stared at the screen, a sudden thought piercing through her fatigue: Why is he attending a rheumatology seminar? Does he know about...no no
She shook her head slightly, quickly vanishing the terrifying thought from her mind. No, it's not possible. How would he know anything about me? He never asks for the personal details of anyone and not that he cares. Just then, feeling a sudden chill, she tucked her trembling hands safely inside her long white sleeves.
With her heavy exhaustion momentarily replaced by deep confusion, she leaned slightly toward him, keeping her voice to a tight whisper. "Sir... this is a Rheumatology and Internal Medicine seminar. What is the use of this in a General Surgery department?"
Rohan didn't even turn his head to look at her. His jaw remained set like carved granite, his eyes fixed firmly forward on the stage. He completely ignored her question, settling deeper into his front-row seat as the overhead lights dimmed and the medicine professors took the stage.
The lecture hall droned on for hours, discussing the complex cellular destruction of autoimmune diseases. Sandhya dutifully took notes, but as the session entered its final stretch, she noticed the heavy weight beside her.
Dr. Rohan’s chin had dropped to his chest. The terrifying, unyielding HOD of Surgery was fast asleep right in the front row.
Seeing him like this—vulnerable, stripped of his sharp defense mechanisms—made him look human for the first time. Sandhya hesitated, then reached over and gently nudged his arm. "Sir... the seminar is over."
Rohan snapped awake instantly, his posture jerking upright. A fleeting look of panic crossed his features before his face tightened into a stiff, overly aggressive mask. He cleared his throat forcefully, desperate to hide any trace of sleepiness.
"If you wanted to sleep, you should have just stayed home," Sandhya murmured under her breath, turning her eyes back to her notepad.
Rohan’s sharp eyes pivoted toward her. "You noted everything down, right? I need every detail of that clinical information. Come."
He stood up abruptly and led her out of the hall toward the adjoining hospital café. Without asking what she wanted, he ordered a warm paneer sandwich and pushed it into her hands. Sandhya stared down at the grilled bread. Paneer again. It felt less like a meal and more like a psychological puzzle. Why was he constantly feeding her while simultaneously running her into the ground?
As she lifted the sandwich, a sudden, violent tremor shook her hand. The bread nearly slipped from her fingers. Sandhya tried to clench her fist to control it, but a wave of nausea and weird, unsettling dizziness washed over her. "Sir, I need to use the washroom," she blurted out, her voice cracking.
She rushed into the restroom, leaning heavily against the sink. Her body shivered violently for a few seconds before the trembling finally subsided.
Outside the restroom door, Rohan stood waiting, his arms crossed. His mind was racing. When her hand had shaken, he had noticed something else—the tips of her fingers had turned a distinct, ghostly blue. He was a surgeon; he knew that look. It wasn't just exhaustion. It looked like a severe vascular response, possibly Raynaud’s phenomenon, common in the very autoimmune diseases they had just spent hours studying.
When Sandhya finally emerged, her face pale but composed, he didn't question her. "Let's go," he muttered.
The sky had split open by the time they reached the parking lot. A sudden monsoon downpour drenched them in seconds. They scrambled into his car, the windows quickly fogging up as he drove them back through the misty mountain roads toward their base hospital.
When they finally pulled into the surgical department’s open parking bay, the rain was still hammering against the concrete. Through the blurred windshield, a lone figure stood under the awning. It was the OBGYN HOD, Dr. Sandhya, just finishing her shift.
The older Dr. Sandhya watched her ex's car pull to a stop, and her heart violently skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat as she noticed the passenger door open. The young resident was sitting right there in the front seat—the sacred space where Rohan had never allowed anyone else to sit, not even when they were actively dating. A sudden, bitter realization hit her, making her chest tighten with an acute ache.
The HOD of OBGYN was the exact same age as Dr. Rohan, making her just three years older than the young general surgery resident, Dr. Sandhya. Yet, looking at the girl emerging from the car, the older Sandhya felt a sharp, unexpected pang of jealousy twist in her chest. She looked down at herself—lean, very thin, with short, messed curly long hair touching her waist . She was the epitome of sophisticated elegance, but looking at the young resident, she saw a raw, vibrant youth that she no longer possessed in Rohan's eyes.
But as the young resident stepped fully into the gray light, the older Sandhya's jealousy momentarily transformed. She gasped softly to herself. The little 4'11" resident looked completely decimated. Her face was deathly pale, and an overwhelming wave of sheer exhaustion radiated off her. He is really torturing her, the HOD thought, a familiar dread settling in her stomach. She knew Rohan's brutal, unforgiving standards better than anyone, and it was clear he was driving this young girl straight to the edge of collapse.
The resident's thick, black curly hair was completely wet, clinging to her fuller cheeks and cascading all the way down past her waist. Despite her short height, she had an undeniable, striking grace.
Before the resident could run inside, Rohan stepped out of the driver's seat into the rain. He didn't glance toward his ex's Instead, he reached into the back seat, pulled out a waterproof plastic bag, and handed it directly to the younger Sandhya.
"Your thesis data files," Rohan barked over the sound of the rain, his voice tight. "I pulled them from the registry. Review them tonight during your shift. Don't say I didn't give you time to work on it."
Sandhya stared at the heavy waterproof bag in her hands. Inside were the very data files she had been drowning trying to find for her thesis. She stood there in absolute shock. In these past twelve months, he had never helped her with anything other than the food—which she had tried to deny many times, though she never truly had the guts to fully ask him to stop. Clutching the bag tightly against her chest, a deep glare of confusion crossed her face as she wondered how on earth he even knew what thesis topic she was working on. He was a man completely full of unpredictable moods and inexplicable gestures.
A sudden, quiet lump formed in her throat. She looked up at him through her wet, curly hair, her voice barely a whisper against the wind. "Thank you, Chief."
Rohan didn't step back into his car. Instead, he took a slow step closer to her, his towering frame shielding her tiny body from a fierce slant of the monsoon wind. His eyes briefly dipped down to her hands, which she had quickly hidden back into the pockets of her oversized, drenched lab coat.
"From tomorrow onwards," Rohan said, his voice dropping to a low, quiet register that was leaning downward, barely audible over the roaring rain, "I’ll be assisting you during the night duties."
Sandhya’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. The Head of Department doing night calls alongside a second-year resident was completely unheard of in the entire history of the hospital.
Before she could even open her mouth to question him, Rohan leaned in slightly, his tone shifting into something strictly commanding but undeniably protective. "And wear something with long sleeves tomorrow. Come with a heavy sweater and thick socks. We will be in the central ICU for continuous monitoring. The air conditioning in there is turned down to maximum."
He turned on his heel and walked straight back into the pouring rain before she could see the intense calculation swirling in his eyes. He had fully connected the dots. The blue fingertips, the sudden shivering in the bathroom, the deep tremors—he knew the freezing ICU environment would ruthlessly trigger her vascular spasms, and he was already taking silent measures to prevent it without letting her know he had diagnosed her.
As he walked away, he glanced back at her looking down toward her hands. To a surgeon, hands are the only truly precious thing they possess. It is the only gift a surgeon is born with, and he couldn't comprehend how she had landed herself in this fragile situation. In these twelve months, he had acted like he never cared, but he knew the ultimate importance of a surgeon's hands. He also somehow knew the unfathomable level of patience and tolerance she possessed; no other human being could have ever borne his harshest, rudest, most cruel way of running a residency.
As Sandhya finally turned to walk into the dry, quiet hospital corridors, leaving the rain behind, her mind drifted heavily back to six months ago.
🕒 Flashback: Six Months Ago
The surgical theater was deathly quiet, the harsh overhead lights reflecting sharply off the stainless steel scrub sinks. Rohan had been standing by the observation glass, his eyes narrowed as he watched the new first-year resident, Dr. Sandhya, perform a standard inguinal hernia closure under senior supervision.
She was doing exceptionally well. Her movements were remarkably precise for a fresher. But then, Rohan's razor-sharp eyes caught it—a microscopic, barely perceptible tremor in her non-dominant hand as she held the suture needle. It wasn't the shaking of a nervous novice; it was a strange, rhythmic stutter in her fingers. He had frowned deeply, filing the image away into the dark corners of his mind.
That very afternoon, a heavy, devastating blow had landed squarely on his office desk.
The hospital administration had forwarded him a formal letter that made his blood run cold. Two of the first-year residents had officially quit the program effective immediately. The resignation letter was brutal, detailing explicitly how inhumanly the surgery department was being run. The resident had written:
> *“A high-volume tertiary surgery department requires at least five senior faculty members to train and support residents. Instead, there are only two—Dr. Rohan, who runs the department like a military camp, and his father, the senior consultant, who rarely ever visits the hospital.”*
>
The pressure on Rohan’s chest had tightened to a suffocating degree. If the medical council chose to inspect them now, the residency seats would be permanently revoked, ruining the department's future.
Just then, a soft, hesitant knock had interrupted his spiraling thoughts. The tiny, 4'11" Dr. Sandhya had stepped into his office, looking deathly pale and completely exhausted.
"Sir," she had whispered, holding her hands firmly behind her back. "I... I need to request a two-day leave. I’m not feeling very well."
Rohan had looked up from the quitting letters, his face hardening instantly into an unyielding, cruel mask to hide his own rising panic. If she left now, the entire department would completely collapse. Rishabh couldn't handle the monstrous load alone.
"Leave is denied, Dr. Sandhya," Rohan had barked, his voice echoing coldly against the concrete walls. "Two of your batchmates just packed their bags and walked out because they couldn't cut it. As of this moment, only you and Dr. Rishabh are left to keep this department alive. You are going on a straight 36-hour duty starting right now. Go back to the wards."
He wasn't a person who genuinely wanted to make a woman's life so brutally hard that she would die one day, but he had absolutely no choice.
Yet, Dr. Sandhya was making things infinitely harder on herself. Instead of resting during her tiny breaks, she was constantly helping others. She was covering Dr. Rishabh's shifts so he could leave, and she was even running papers for other departments, like OBGYN. Because she was doing back-to-back night duties, she was always physically present in the hospital, which made other departments reach out to her *only* in the middle of severe emergencies. This reality made Dr. Rohan incredibly angry—why was this little brat helping everyone else when absolutely no one was going to stand up and help her?
To Rohan, Sandhya was a complete mystery. No one in the hospital knew why she was willingly enduring this agonizing pain.
But from Sandhya's perspective, this grueling residency was nothing. The physical exhaustion, the harsh words, the endless hours—it was all far less painful than the memory of her wedding day. The day when, right in front of three hundred people, she had been left utterly devastated at the altar. To her, this torturous residency wasn't just a job. It was a heavy penance, a form of karma she felt she was actively bearing. She truly believed this suffering was her own deed catching up to her, and she refused to run away from it.
The next morning, the air was crisp, and the sky held a hint of gray, matching the heavy atmosphere of the hospital. Dr. Sandhya prepared for her shift with meticulous care. Knowing her extreme sensitivity to the cold, she layered a thick, soft sweater over her scrubs and pulled on high-quality woolen socks. She even tucked a pair of warm hand gloves into her pocket—a silent, desperate precaution for any fleeting moments of sleep she might catch in the freezing ICU. She also packed a container of home-cooked chicken; she had been craving it, and it felt like a small, warm anchor in the chaos of her life.
When she arrived, Dr. Rohan was already there. He was standing by the central nursing station, his attention fixed on the patient files. The senior nurse—a woman who had known Rohan since his own MBBS days—was calmly finalizing the routine post-op notes. Rohan was speaking to her with a rare, relaxed posture, his tone devoid of the jagged edge he reserved for his residents.
"Sir, I have the files ready," the nurse said out of habit.
Rohan offered her an empathetic, genuine smile. "Don't call me sir. You know you’re much older than me," he said, his voice light. For the first time, he let a full, easy smile break across his face, revealing perfectly aligned teeth. The nurse gestured with a knowing, gentle look, clearly seeing the "boy" Rohan once was—enthusiastic and bright—shining through the hardened shell of the Chief.
The moment Sandhya entered the ICU, the atmosphere shifted. Rohan’s easy smile vanished, replaced instantly by his characteristic intensity. He didn’t dismiss her; instead, he grabbed her by the elbow—his grip tight but strangely grounding—and marched her straight into the doctors' duty room.
He didn't give her a choice. He pushed her onto the small, vinyl sofa and turned to the dispenser, pouring a crisp glass of water. With a clinical, unyielding movement, he popped a 650mg paracetamol tablet from its foil and held it out to her.
"Open your mouth," he commanded, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
Sandhya, too exhausted to protest, obeyed. As she swallowed the tablet, Rohan leaned in, his sharp, calculating eyes mapping the pale undertones of her fuller cheeks and the faint, concerning bluish tint of her lips. He pulled two more blister packs from his coat—Iron and Folic Acid (IFA)—and dropped them into her lap.
"Take these daily. Stay healthy," Rohan whispered, his voice harsh and tight. "You need to work from now onwards. Double and hard."
As he looked at this tiny, 4'11" girl, a suffocating twist of anxiety tightened his chest. With her thick curls and round cheeks, she looked like an exhausted little puppy that desperately needed a blanket and a long, dreamless sleep. Every fiber of his being wanted to grant her a break, but the letters on his desk were a ticking time bomb. The national inspection board was coming, and if she broke, the department would die with her. *I need her,* he told himself, his jaw hardening into granite. *This is my only chance to elevate this department. I need her to be healthy enough to bear the pain, because now, she is the only one I can trust. I cannot take risks with juniors who don't even know how to present themselves.*
He repeated the mantra to himself: *No mercy. Not right now.*
Despite the hell he made her life, Sandhya moved as if this were the only life she knew, as if it couldn't possibly get better. She wasn't crying. As the paracetamol began to fight the fever in her blood, a strange, twisted sense of relief washed over her. *Thank God I’m busy,* she thought, her fingers gripping the edge of the sofa. *If I'm working 36 hours straight, I'll finally forget Dr. Sandip. I won't have a single second to remember his face, his voice, or what we were.*
She needed the crushing workload. She needed the exhaustion to act as a chemical numbing agent, a way to stifle a broken heart that she was too terrified to nurse.
### 🏥 A Parallel Reality
Miles away, in a different hospital, Dr. Sandip—the man Sandhya could not forget—was moving through his own professional life like a ghost. He was the man responsible for her near-death spiral of grief.
Dr. Sandip was shy, smart, and profoundly silent. Yet, his professional reputation was formidable; he was the backbone of his hospital's surgery department, and he was currently tasked with presenting his wing during the upcoming national inspection. Despite his brilliance, his heart was clearly lost somewhere else.
Unknowingly, he pulled out his phone. His lock screen displayed a woman with dark, black, waist-length curly hair standing beside him. It was a relic of their MBBS sweetheart days. It hurt him so deeply to look at it that he had transformed himself into a literal working horse. Every department in his hospital was envious of his focus, and though countless residents were dying just to get a glimpse of his attention, he remained cold-hearted, never once looking their way.
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