Ekalavya arrived at RIMS at 7:30 AM with two hours of sleep and a lie he'd repeated all night. It was a coincidence. It had to be. But every time he closed his eyes, he saw the same line again— The recipient, now 11, lost both parents in a tragic car accident two years ago.
Coincidence. It had to be coincidence.
His phone buzzed.
Neil—ER. Now. Code situation developing.
He was moving before he'd finished reading.
The emergency room was three floors down. He took the stairs, white coat billowing behind him, stethoscope already around his neck. His mind shifted. Clinical. Focused.
The ER erupted around him. Nurses between beds. Residents calling out vitals. Monitors beeping. A woman crying. A child trying not to.
Neil looked up the moment he entered.
"Lav. Good timing. Bay 3. Fifty-two-year-old male. Chest pain, breathlessness, history of hypertension."
"Current status?"
Neil's fingers flew over the keypad, eyes on the monitor. "Vitals dropping. BP 90/60. Heart rate 110."
They moved.
The patient lay sweating, clutching his chest. His wife stood beside him, panic barely contained.
Ekalavya stepped in.
"Sir, where is the pain?"
The man gestured weakly. "Here... heavy... can't breathe..."
"When did it start?"
"An hour... thought it was acidity..."
Pulse. Rapid. Thready. Irregular.
"ECG. Now. Call cardiology."
The machine arrived. Leads placed. Monitor flickered.
And there it was.
ST elevation.
Anterior leads.
A significant MI.
"Neil."
Neil had already seen it. He kept his voice low. "Cardiology?"
"Called. But we can't wait."
Then the alarm screamed.
The patient's body went rigid, then slack.
"He's arresting!"
"Code Blue, ER Bay 3!" Neil hit the button.
The announcement echoed overhead.
Everything snapped into motion.
Crash cart. Nurses. Movement.
The wife was pulled back, her scream cutting through the noise.
Ekalavya was already in position.
"Starting compressions."
Hands locked. Rhythm steady. Precise.
"Airway. 100% oxygen."
Neil tracked the monitor, the rhythm, everything.
"Charge to 200 joules."
The machine whined.
"Clear!"
ZAP.
The body jerked.
The monitor, chaotic.
"Resume CPR. Epinephrine, one milligram."
Seconds blurred into motion.
Another charge.
"Clear!"
ZAP.
A pause.
A flicker.
Then rhythm.
"We have a pulse!"
Ekalavya checked. Weak, but there.
"BP?"
"70 over 40... climbing."
"Oxygen?"
"82... 85... 88..."
Numbers rising.
Breathing returning.
Life pulling back.
Ekalavya stepped back.
"Good work. Stabilize him. Continuous monitoring. Get cardiology. He needs the cath lab now."
The team moved fast. Controlled. Efficient. Alive.
The door burst open and Dr. Sharma from cardiology rushed in, slightly out of breath.
"What do we have?"
Ekalavya stepped back slightly, giving him space but staying close. "Fifty-two-year-old male, acute anterior MI, arrested approximately six minutes ago. Got him back. One round of epi, two shocks. Stable but critical."
Dr. Sharma moved to the monitor, reviewing the ECG. "Good call. Cath lab is ready. Let's move."
As the team prepared to transfer the patient, Ekalavya stepped back fully and let them take over.
His hands were steady. His breathing was controlled.
But there was a slight tremor in his fingers.
Neil noticed.
He waited until the patient was being wheeled out, until the controlled chaos had shifted back to efficiency, until most of the crowd had dispersed.
Then he moved to stand beside Ekalavya. "Coffee?"
It wasn't really about coffee.
"Yeah."
They walked to the small staff lounge adjacent to the ER. It was empty. Neil poured two cups of terrible hospital coffee and handed one over.
They stood in silence for a moment.
Neil turned his cup slowly between his palms. "That was good work. Really good. You ran that code like you've been here for years, not two days."
Ekalavya took a sip. It tasted like burnt cardboard. "Training."
"No." Neil set his cup on the counter. "That was leadership. The residents listened to you immediately. No hesitation. That's not just training. That's command."
Ekalavya didn't respond. He was staring at his hands.
Neil watched him carefully. "You okay?"
Ekalavya didn't look up from the dark, swirling liquid in his cup. "Yeah."
"Lav."
He finally met Neil's gaze, the clinical mask slipping just enough to show the exhaustion beneath. "I'm fine, Neil."
Neil studied him for another moment, then nodded slowly.
They drank their terrible coffee in silence.
"You know what the scary thing is?" Ekalavya said suddenly, still not looking up.
Neil waited.
"For those six minutes, I wasn't thinking about anything except the next step. Compressions, rhythm check, shock, medication. Pure protocol."
"That's not scary. That's what makes you good at this."
"But when it was over..." Ekalavya set his cup down. "I looked at his wife. Saw her face. And I thought about what would have happened if we'd lost him. Two kids without a father. An entire life, gone."
Neil set down his coffee cup.
"That's called empathy, Lav. It's not a weakness."
Ekalavya's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Feels like one sometimes."
"It's not. It's what keeps us human. What keeps us from becoming machines who just go through the motions."
Ekalavya was quiet for a moment, thumb tracing the rim of his cup.
"In London, I could compartmentalize better. Everything was cleaner. More distant. Here it feels different. More personal."
"Because it is." Neil's voice dropped slightly. "This is home. These are your people. It hits different when you're treating someone who could be your neighbor, your uncle, someone's father."
"Yeah."
The silence stretched between them. The kind that only exists between people who've known each other long enough that words aren't always necessary.
Neil tilted his head, something shifting at the corner of his mouth. "You know, for someone who claims to be emotionally detached, you're doing a terrible job of it."
Ekalavya's lips twitched. "Shut up."
"There he is." Neil grinned. "Cold, emotionless, completely robotic."
"I said shut up."
"Make me."
Ekalavya actually laughed. Short. Surprised. But genuine.
Neil's grin widened.
"Better. You looked like you were about to spiral into some philosophical crisis about the nature of mortality."
"I was not."
"That brooding, intense look you get when you're overthinking."
Ekalavya straightened slightly. "I don't brood."
"Lav, you're the king of brooding. You've been brooding since second year. Remember when you got 96% instead of 98% on the anatomy exam and you were dark for three days?"
"That was different. I'd made a stupid mistake on a question I knew."
"You brooded."
"I reflected."
"You brooded."
Ekalavya shook his head, but he was almost smiling.
This was what Neil did. What he'd always done. Pulled Ekalavya back from whatever edge his mind wanted to find, reminded him that life existed outside of medicine and perfection and control.
"Thanks." Ekalavya said it quietly, to the middle distance somewhere between them.
Neil understood immediately. Not for the coffee. Not for the banter. "Always."
They finished their terrible coffee. The moment stretched between them easy, familiar, the acknowledgment of a friendship that had survived years and distance without needing to say so.
Neil pushed off the counter. "Ready to get back out there? Still four hours of shift left."
Ekalavya straightened, the professional mask sliding back into place. "Let's go."
They walked back toward the ER together.
"By the way," Neil fell into step beside him, voice casual, "everyone's talking about how you handled that code. Dr. Sharma from surgery was watching through the window. Told Dr. Khanna that Aarav Raivansh's son is the real deal."
Ekalavya's eyes stayed forward. "Great. More pressure."
"Or more respect. You earned that today, Lav. Not because of your name. Because of what you did in there."
Ekalavya considered that as they re-entered the organized chaos of the ER.
The rest of the shift passed in a blur.
A child with a fever. An elderly woman with chest pain that turned out to be anxiety. A motorcycle accident victim. A diabetic crisis. The hours moved the way hospital hours do, simultaneously too fast and unending.
During a brief lull in the mid-afternoon, Ekalavya stood at the central station updating a patient chart.
He was aware, in the peripheral way he was always aware of his surroundings, of a young woman talking to one of the nurses a few feet away.
Her voice cut through the noise without trying to.
White coat. Simple kurta. Medical student ID clipped to her lapel.
"Nurse Rumi, the patient in Bed 7. The IV site looks inflamed. Might need changing."
The nurse glanced over. "I'll check. Thank you for catching that."
He didn't look up from the chart.
But he heard her move. And without meaning to, he glanced up just as she turned to leave.
A second. Maybe less.
Dark eyes.
Stillness.
And for one strange second, something in his chest tightened, like recognition without memory.
Then she was past him, walking toward the corridor, already gone.
He shouldn't have looked twice.
But he did.
He returned to the chart.
But the image stayed.
Dark eyes.
That particular stillness.
He pushed it aside.
Medical student.
Nothing relevant.
5:00 PM — Ekalavya's Cabin
Neil appeared in his doorway, leaning against the frame. "Surviving your first real day?"
Ekalavya leaned back in his chair. "Barely."
Neil grinned, dropping into the chair across from the desk. "It gets easier. Well, no it doesn't. But you get better at pretending."
He stretched his arms overhead. "Listen, next Saturday. Your mom's gala. The whole senior staff is going. You can't escape it."
"I know. She told me."
"There's supposed to be some kind of performance. Cultural program. People are talking about it." Neil shrugged. "Free food, forced mingling, awkward speeches. The usual."
"Sounds terrible."
"It is. But your mom throws a good event. And Dr. Mehta in a tux is apparently legendary."
Ekalavya almost smiled. "I'll take your word for it."
Neil stood, stretching. "Don't work too late. Pace yourself. First week is brutal."
After he left, Ekalavya sat in the quiet.
He tried to return to his files.
Couldn't quite.
The gala. The scholarship program.
The recipient, now 11, lost both parents in a tragic car accident two years ago.
He pressed the thought flat and opened the next file.
That night 10:00 PM — Raivansh Mansion
Meera was in the kitchen when he got home, keeping his dinner warm.
"Beta. You're late."
"Long day."
She served him quietly. They ate together in the particular comfortable silence of a mother and son who had been apart long enough that presence itself was enough.
Halfway through dinner she looked into her food with something fond in it, almost to herself. "The gala's coming together nicely. I'm happy with how this year's program looks."
"Good."
"There's a performance. One of our students." That small smile stayed. "You'll see."
He didn't ask anything further.
She didn't offer anything further.
Just that small smile, and then she was back to talking about the guest list, the caterers, whether his father's speech was too long.
Ekalavya ate. Listened. Responded where required.
But the word stayed with him.
Students.
He set his fork down carefully. "How many scholarship students does the foundation have currently?"
Meera looked up, mildly surprised. "Active? About forty. Why?"
"Just curious."
The more he dismissed it, the less it felt like coincidence. More like something from his past had come looking for him.
She accepted that easily. Started telling him about a few of them, their fields, their backgrounds, the ones who had gone on to do remarkable things.
He listened.
Filed everything away.
Said nothing more about it.
11:30 PM — His Room
He lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling.
Forty students. Any one of them could be performing at the gala. Any one of them could be second year at RIMS. Any one of them could have lost someone, at some point, in any number of ways.
Grief wasn't rare. Loss wasn't rare.
He was connecting things that had no business being connected.
He knew that.
He closed his eyes.
Dark eyes stared back.
And for the first time, coincidence didn't feel harmless.
He opened them again.
Stared at the ceiling for a long time.
He didn't let himself think beyond that. But sleep wasn't merciful enough to listen.
Coincidence didn't feel harmless anymore.
It felt like a warning.
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