Rhythm of Stethoscope

𝕯𝖗. 𝕯𝖍𝖗𝖚𝖛 𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖚𝖗 :

The surgery runs four hours and seventeen minutes.

I step out of the OT at 6:42, tugging my cap off and rolling my neck until something finally clicks back into place.

Rohit, my assistant is waiting just outside.

He always is—like his body doesn’t know how to be anywhere else when I come out of surgery.

“Sutures were clean today,” I tell him before he can open his mouth. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

“Thank you, sir.” He falls into step beside me. “Mr. Verma ka post-op—”

“Vitals every thirty minutes. Pressure drops below ninety, you call me directly. Echo at seven tomorrow before ounds.”

“Done, sir

We walk.

A comfortable silence lasts roughly forty seconds, which—by Rohit standards—is historic.

“Sir,” he says carefully, “suna hai kal Banaras ja rahe ho?”

I glance at him. “Kisne bataya?”

He has the sense to look guilty. “Harshit sir. Break room mein. Accidentally.”

Harshit, my colleague.

I store that away for later.

“Haan,” I say.

“Shaadi ka kuch hai na?” He tries for casual. He fails. “Sir, honestly—love is such a beautiful thing na? Like… finding someone who’s just—yours?”

I stop walking.

Rohit stops half a second later.

I look at him the way I look at a scan that needs careful consideration.

“Rohit,” I say pleasantly, “love is voluntary cardiac arrest.”

He stares at me.

“The heart,” I continue, “voluntarily shuts down every defence it has ever built.” I start walking again. “In medicine, we call that dangerous.”

“Think about it.”

Behind me, I can practically feel him standing there, mouth slightly open.

I change out of my scrubs.

My cabin is quiet. I sit at my desk and do nothing for a moment, which is unusual enough to feel like a symptom.

I’m not someone who sits and does nothing, my mind always has the next thing lined up, already started in some corner.

But tonight, I just sit.

My phone rings.

Dada ji.

I pick up immediately.

“Dadaji, namaste,” I say, as soon as I answer.

“Dhruv beta.” His voice settles something in me the way it always has—warm, unhurried, like time has never once succeeded in pushing him. “Kaisa hai?”

"Theek hoon, Dada ji. Aap?”

“Bilkul theek. Bas tumhara intezaar hai.” A pause. “Kal ki flight confirm hai na?”

“Haan. Dus baje ki hai.”

“Achha, achha.” I can hear him smiling.

“Seedha ghar aana. Koi hotel-watel nahi. Dadi ne kaha hai.”

“Dada ji, main kabse hotel mein ruknega?”

“Bas bol raha hoon,” he says, completely unbothered.

"Tum doctors log busy rehte ho, pata nahi kya khayal aa jaye.”

I almost smile. “Seedha ghar aaunga.”

“Aur Dhruv—” His voice shifts. Still warm. But there’s something deliberate underneath it now.

"Lucknow bhi jaana hai. Bhatnagar sahab se milna hai. Poori family ke saath.”

The almost-smile fades.

“Haan,” I say. “Pata hai, Dada ji.”

“Tayaar ho na, beta? Koi problem toh nahi?”

I look at the window.

Mumbai is dissolving into gold and pink, doing that thing it does at this hour that still catches me sometimes, even after thirteen years. This city—everything it gave me, everything I built here from nothing.

“Nahi, Dada ji,” I say. “Koi problem nahi.”

A beat.

“Achha beta. Apna khayal rakhna. Kal milte hain.” Another pause, softer now—“Khush rehna.”

The call ends.

I sit with the phone in my hand a moment longer than necessary.

Lucknow.

The Bhatnagars.

Her.

—𓆩♡𓆪—

I know almost nothing about her.

That’s what I keep returning to—quietly, at odd moments between surgeries, inside elevators, and now, at 7:30 p.m., in my own cabin, staring at nothing.

Three weeks ago, Shreeja had delivered her report with the energy of someone presenting classified intelligence.

She’d called me specifically—sat down, I imagine, taken a breath.

“Dhruv bhaiya, suno—wavy hair hai unke. Long, wavy hair. And her eyes—yaar, I can’t even explain, it’s this amber-brown colour, you’ll just have to see. Around 5’4 hai. Wheatish skin. Bhaiya, she’s really beautiful, honestly.”

And then, after a pause: “Aap theek ho na? Kuch poochna hai kya?”

I’d said no.

Wavy hair.

Amber-brown eyes.

5’4.

That’s all I have.

And I said yes on the basis of that… and Dada ji’s voice… and something I can’t name. Some quiet part of me that didn’t argue back when I expected it to.

Why did she say yes?

That’s the question. Not my yes—I can almost understand my own, even if I can’t fully explain it.

But hers.

She’s a final-year MBBS student. Her whole life is still becoming whatever it’s going to become.

And yet.

—𓆩♡𓆪—

I start driving.

I don’t play music in the car.

Mumbai at this hour is loud enough on its own—horns, construction, the city’s absolute refusal to wind down.

Usually I just drive through it and let it be.

Freedom. Future. Dreams.

That’s what this city has always been to me. Not just a place—a feeling.

The feeling of choosing something for myself for the first time at eighteen and watching that choice become real.

Tonight, my head is louder than the city.

What is she like?

Not the description—I’ve memorised that, whether I meant to or not. I mean actually like.

The way she talks. The way she thinks. Whether she laughs easily or holds it in for a second before letting it out. What she’s like at 7:30 in the evening after a long day.

Whether she’s also somewhere in Mumbai right now, asking the same questions about me.

I don’t know why that thought sits the way it does.

—𓆩♡𓆪—

I park. Go upstairs.

The apartment is quiet in the way I like it.

Beige walls. Clean lines. Everything where it should be.

I change, cook—dal, rice, nothing complicated—and eat standing at the kitchen counter because I’ve never found a solution to the dining table feeling too large for one person that doesn’t feel worse than just standing.

No television. No music.

I’ve lived alone for thirteen years. The quiet has never bothered me.

Tonight, I notice it.

I wash my plate. Go to bed.

Sleep doesn’t come immediately.

I lie in the dark and the questions do what they’ve been doing for three weeks now—circling, unhurried, refusing to be filed away neatly.

Wavy hair.

Amber-brown eyes.

Why did she say yes?

What has she been told about me?

I set that last one aside quickly. Nothing useful happens with that one at this hour.

Eventually, sleep comes. My body is practical even when my head isn’t.

—𓆩♡𓆪—

Eyes open.

Four AM. Exactly.

Gym. One hour. Weights, treadmill, then thirty laps in water cold enough to demand my full attention.

I shower, make black coffee—one cup, no sugar—and stand at the window.

Mumbai at five in the morning.

Still going. Always still going.

I finish my coffee.

Check my bag—packed last night, nothing missing.

The rest of the morning is routine: familiar, steady, uncomplicated.

By 8:45 I’m in the car.

By 9:30 I’m at the airport.

Check in. Gate. Sit down.

I have eighteen minutes before boarding.

I lean back, close my eyes, and for the first time since yesterday, something settles.

The city behind me. Banaras ahead. The in-between, which belongs to no one.

My phone buzzes.

Shreeja.

I open.

“Dhruv bhaiya dekho dekho dekho—mil gayi unki photo. Dadi ke paas thi. DEKHO NA.”

Below the message is a photo.

I look at it for a long time.

The gate announcement crackles overhead, final boarding call, flight to Varanasi.

I don’t move immediately.

I just—

look.

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