EPILOGUE

[PART 1]

"What the actual hell?" Vivaan held the unbelievable piece of paper in his hand and waved it furiously, breaking the lull of silence between them.

Once he realised the senior psychiatrist had decided to stay mute and pretend like no questions lingered in the haunting silence between them, Vivaan got tired of waiting and decided to refer to the textbooks in their resource library when they had settled back into the patient's room. Shutting his book, he walked towards the senior now, as if ready to grab something he was holding.

Doctor Martin glared at him, breaking all forms of physical contact with his cup of tea, placing it on the bedside table next to him. He yelled at the intern, absolutely losing his well-rehearsed indifferent composure. "I don't understand these reports myself, alright? I'm trying to figure something out and it would help if you could be a little more calm, you know? So just, like maybe, shut up for a minute there and stop panicking. That's literally the first rule of med-"

Vivaan's tone softened a bit, more apologetic and explanatory now. "I wasn't talking about the reports." He cleared his throat when the old man raised his brows and clarified. "This is your fifth cup of tea in less than half an hour. For some reason, that worries me more than these reports. Are- are you alright?"

His eyes, sure, didn't miss the trickles of swear that dripped down from Doctor Martin's forehead. Something was on his mind, definitely troubling him. He wondered if it was just this case or if something else was eating him up. But his personal life was not something he wanted to or dared to pry into.

"Oh, that." Doctor Martin's gaze returned to the cup and he held it once more, talking another sip from it to hide his guilt. Though he didn't formally apologise, his softened posture told it all. He appreciated Vivaan's concern though he found it slightly invasive. "That's nothing, don't worry." He shook Vivaan's worries away with his palm and forced a smile. "The heart wants what it wants, I guess?"

He wasn't sure if it was the case that made him so touchy or the fear still running in the back of his mind. Because he was supposed to put an end to this mystery, come up with a conclusion and end this for once.

But his mind was yet to catch up with the rushed series of events that happened to him. Right since yesterday. And though the intern would look at him and think he was sitting idle in contrast to himself — as he turned pages to find answers between pages of theory and books — he didn't know Doctor Martin's mind and heart were racing. Way too fast.

"Weak heart, huh?" Vivaan mused out loud. His regret soon turned into validation when he saw the shocked look on his senior's face. Doctor Martin didn't expect a new intern to understand this pun about his medical condition but he did and asked a little hesitantly. "Bypass surgery, is it?"

"Damn. You're smart." He let his mean demeanour vanish into a wave of truth when he acknowledged the intern's keen observation. Doctor Martin looked like he had been caught red-handed, stealing someone's prized possessions and he was definitely not a man who liked being an open book to anyone.

While Vivaan nodded and furiously typed something on his laptop, crossing his fingers hoping that the search results would show up something useful to understand this patient's case, Doctor Martin emptied a liquid into the injection, flicked it with a snap of his middle finger and walked over to the patient with slow steps.

"What are you doing, Sir?" Vivaan crossed the distance between them and blocked Doctor Martin's way to the patient lying on the bed. "We're not supposed to do this. You know that, right?"

"What?" Doctor Martin furrowed his eyebrows and grimaced.

"We cannot give him the truth serum again. For God's sake, he can die!" Vivaan pleaded with the doctor, trying to knock some sense into him but he just laughed in response and Vivaan was left to question himself.

He knew for sure that Diego would be lying dead on the same bed if he was given another dose of sodium pentothal. He looked at Doctor Martin like he was a psycho killer, not a doctor. Although this had put his career at stake, he couldn't risk the life of a patient for his own, selfish needs. Their need for answers wasn't more important than the patient's life.

He crossed his arms. "Vivaan Arora. You know I know what I'm doing, right?"

"We don't need to. Trust me. We can talk and figure this out, I swear. It can't be that impossible. No need to get him killed for this. Even if the risk isn't spectacular, this isn't something I need on my medical record. Please. I have a whole life ahead of me."

"Okay, that's enough, drama queen." Doctor Martin's words stabbed right into Vivaan's fragile heart. "I'm not killing our patient. Next time, check what I'm injecting into him before overreacting like this, 'kay?" Under his breath, he muttered, "Though I hope there isn't a next time to all this."

Vivaan glanced at the reports once again and at the name of the solution written on the vial next. It was Thiopental that Doctor Martin injected into the IV hooked to the patient, a general anaesthetic that would only help Diego's current condition. He felt ashamed for assuming the worst of his senior but something about him gave Vivaan very eerie vibes. As if he was onto something and something wasn't quite right.

Though he knew most of this was just his paranoia, especially after what had happened to him. His trust issues and panic were through the roof and he wished he could talk to Angeline right now; she was the only person who could calm him down and knock some sense into him, especially now when he was so close to losing his mind.

"He won't wake up for the next two hours or so. We have that much time to clear up this whole mess. You ready?" He handed the intern a cold glass of water who emptied it down his throat in one go.

Vivaan nodded, ready with a notepad to sum up his observations while Doctor Martin asked to borrow his laptop. He quickly closed the tab displaying a photo of him with a girl he loved — still loves — and handed it over to the doctor who carefully typed in some words.

They sat on the table by the patient's bed and Vivaan gulped once more before opening the reports and reading the line from the summary that stood out most.

Blood Contents:

Traces of Marijuana found. Rare type. Not taken orally.

Both of them had already checked Diego's arms for any signs of marijuana being injected into his body, but it was all clean. And the cherry on the cake was the marijuana type mentioned in the blood report was not the one usually sold as "baggies" in Blackmount, as the latest news kept reporting. This was a different type of drug. Doctor Martin had a constant hitting in his head that he had seen this name before — it was way too familiar — but his mind was spinning and he couldn't point a finger at it.

Vivaan picked up a pen and started listing down all the weird observations — rather questions — in pointers, only for him to understand.

1. The patient is in a weird state of hibernation or as Doctor Martin says: "deep slumber of imagination". Most medicines and injections seem to have no effect on him.

2. He mentions about his best friend's / crush's death — a suicide which happened just a day ago. He's terribly devastated by it since it triggers a traumatic past about his mom's death — also a suicide possibly.

3. He goes back in time to save her, but ends up only finding an explanation for himself. He also mentions bringing back Lyra's notebook.

4. He claims time pausing when the clutters of his mind were solved by the voice of an unknown source. His clothes clearly smell of sand, which means he could be sitting on the beach for a long time.

5.His blood reports show the presence of a rare type of marijuana but he is underage and has, surely, not taken drugs.

When Doctor Martin peeked at the list, a subtle smile spread on his face and he picked up the pen on his side to make some additions.

6. There are a lot of inconsistencies in his narration so his reliability might be questionable.

7. The patient reported hearing a deadline sound.

8. All of this was confessed during a Narco test and Narco tests do not give 100% guarantee, which means the victim could have easily said untrue things.

Doctor Martin showed Vivaan his side of the research by turning the laptop towards him.

Matthew Foster, Diego's father, was recently promoted to be the Commissioner of Westersnow after having served in a high rank as a police officer in Blackmount. His wife was reported to be dead of natural causes, not of a suicide unlike what Diego had said.

Ever since his mother died in Westersnow when they were on a trip there, Diego and his father had relocated to Blackmount to stay away from the traumatic memories but now that he was transferred back to that place, Diego had seemingly no option but to accompany his father. "It's a bit weird that Diego never mentioned this or even thought about this in those 3 months though this was the number one factor that would have pulled him away from Lyra even before death did."

"What other inconsistencies?" Vivaan was hardly able to speak, shock gripping every cell of his body now.

"He said it was gross how Lyra bites nails." Doctor Martin picked up Diego's wallet — from where they had tried to find his contact details earlier — and showed him the photo in his wallet. Of his and Lyra's, with her hand on his shoulder. "Look at her nails."

Her long nails in the picture were painted black, exactly matching her dress. One peek at the photo and Vivaan gulped uncomfortably, struggling for breath. He knew phones were not allowed with a patient in this room as per the hospital policies but he needed one right now. It was evident that she never bit her nails, though he remembered Diego mentioning that she did and this was one habit of hers he often found annoying.

"Now look at his." Doctor Martin whispered, giving Vivaan goosebumps. The patient's nails were terribly bitten to the point where he could see dried blood or peeled skin around the corners. Diego was a nail-biter and Lyra wasn't. "Inconsistencies like these can't happen in a Narco test usually because his imagination is practically put on a pause. So that literally implies his brain is mixing up facts. For a very solid reason, also forming new core memories in the process and altering existing ones. And it all adds up, you know?"

This was the peak of confusion.

Vivaan ran to the counter and brought back Diego's school bag, wanting to disprove a theory. He hastily started skimming through Diego's textbooks when he found something that made his eyes widen in shock. His hand trembled as he held out what he'd found. "The notebook!" His voice cracked.

"Wair, what?" Doctor Martin pulled out the book from his hand and started reading its contents. It was the same as Diego had said.

Both the doctors were taken aback and Vivaan felt like the world had come crashing on him. Did this boy really go back in time? Was all of this real?

With every passing moment, Vivaan cursed himself for joining a foreign hospital in Blackmount, in Sanguis Rosa — far away from his home in India — for his internship, especially when he had left too much behind for this opportunity. If only he could tell his family why he really needed to be here and what all he had risked just to be able to stay closer to her.

"What the heck? It's- Damn wait, I remember now! Oh shit!" Doctor Martin shrieked, making Vivaan jump in his seat. He laughed later and shook his head at himself. After a few furious minutes on Vivaan's laptop, he pulled up a research paper on the browser and looked with a victorious smile at the intern. "Did Diego ever mention being close to his mom?"

"Yes, he did. He was so affected by her death. Whether or not it was a suicide." Finally this is going somewhere, Vivaan thought.

"Which means when he was an infant, chances are high that his mother could have breastfed him?" The psychiatrist chirped and the medical student looked at the doctor with pity rather than confusion.

He looked at the doctor's white hair and the five empty cups on the table, feeling a pressing need to console him. Doctor Martin was easily someone who liked solving mysteries, having the last say. But not knowing things is not a sin, he wanted to tell him. The suspense was really driving him crazy, Vivaan concluded. "Yes, doctor." He nodded, empathetically.

"Well, that explains the marijuana." Doctor Martin shrugged.

"What?" Vivaan nearly spat. He never thought the doctor implied something by saying that. He bent over to read the title of the research paper on the laptop and was taken aback when he found Doctor Martin's name as the author of this research paper — dated way too recently.

"Did Diego mention hearing a deadline sound?"

"Yes." Vivaan clenched his fist. "Just say it already!"

Doctor Martin stood up and started pacing around the room with his hands locked behind his back. "A while ago, I was doing some research with a friend on breastfeeding and the way it provides all the nutrients an infant requires. We were terribly shocked when we found that breast milk contains marijuana."

"Wait-"

He ignored Vivaan and continued. "And marijuana has two types of effects. One's a drug, sometimes used for recreation, while the one that is intaken through a mother's milk is very essential for the baby's body. If not for the THC, the baby would never crave food and could die of malnourishment."

"Oh- okay- I guess I've already studied this though." Vivaan tried to be polite.

"But we weren't researching this. This is a well known fact." He drank a few sips of water and continued. "What we were trying to find out was – What if the child is breastfed for significantly longer than 6 months or the marijuana intake turns out to be too high because of frequent meals of an infant?" Vivaan saw him grin before he continued, "And it is today that I find all my answers."

"I am not able to follow you quite well. How is that related to this case?"

"Look, Diego was very, very close to his mom and her death left a terrible impact on him, correct? When he went to the beach and thought about his love, it all came crashing down. Plus, he also mentioned having a strange déjà vu feeling, which could mean he went through the same trauma which he did while his mother died. Unable to take all of this, he heard a deadline sound which meant his brain was unable to repair itself."

He took out his phone and showed the intern a chart.

"This is a General Adaptation Syndrome model, as you may have studied already. It has 3 stages – alarm, resistance and exhaustion. Take them like the three chances a body has to cope though stress before they give up and resort to suicide psychologically or die of something like a heart attack naturally. Looking at Diego's state, we clearly know he had become suicidal which means he had failed the resistance stage, too."

"Yes." Vivaan could remember the amount of times Diego wished to be reunited with his mother and Lyra, wondering why he was left alive.

"Whenever this happens, the brain gives out a deadline sound. This is meant to let the person know that his brain is failing to repair itself; more like the brain is giving the person a warning. To calm down and chill the fuck out. But Diego overlooked it and still kept thinking about Lyra, making silly and superstitious wishes to confess his love to her while she had already left him."

An "oh" was all Vivaan could muster as he found himself lost in Doctor Martin's explanation. He felt like the doctor was narrating a fairytale and he couldn't help but lose himself in the story.

"Now, what I say next is just a theory. A mere possibility. There is no proof of the same but I believe it is true."

"Go ahead."

"Since Diego took no action and his memories triggered him, pushed him more and more towards suicide to end the pain, in order to heal itself and counter the flight instinct, his brain released the marijuana already present in his body with an enzyme-"

"Why marijuana?" Vivaan cut in between.

"Marijuana, precisely THC, alters how information is processed in the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation. That's why the brain chose marijuana to be released and in no time it got mixed with his blood and travelled to all parts of his body. And while he fell asleep on the beach, he hallucinated and- let me dumb it down, he imagined going three months back to relive some precious moments with the girl he loved. That's the entire logic of Diego going back in time."

He couldn't help but swear. Vivaan was clearly taken aback by what was put in front of him. But he wasn't entirely convinced yet. How could all of this be mere imagination when they had the notebook right in front of them? In that case, were they hallucinating too?

"Sir?" There was a knock on the door. A man from the technical department came and handed Vivaan Diego's phone. He pressed the button only to see they had unlocked it and removed all passwords. Vivaan had a terrible feeling that something was fishy.

Diego was a normal patient with an abnormal condition, yet instead of bringing him back to consciousness, he was made to go through a Narco test — without the court's permission. His phone's password was cracked, too. He knew something was being hidden from him. But he wasn't going to let this go until all of his questions were answered.

He spoke way too fast now, furious at the questions that plagued him. "What about this notebook? Did it appear from heaven? Or are we drugged, too? Because I can clearly see it in your hand. And even if we are imagining it somehow, how can all three of us see the same things written in it? And if it's all unreal, if Diego simply pictured going back in time, how did this book even come into existence?" Vivaan started ranting but stopped when he saw the doctor unfazed by his question. His eyes asked for answers and the senior obliged.

Doctor Martin smirked, wickedly. "Because Diego wrote it himself."

_________

TO BE CONTINUED

[in Part 2 ahead]

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Random Question - How do you explain colours to a blind man?

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Author's Note - Hey, there's more to come. What do you think of this story till now? Did I disappoint you?

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