It was a Thursday when Dr. Aanya Rao didn't show up.
In a hospital that pulsed with alarms, footsteps, and the occasional scream, her absence rang the loudest.
Ira Mehta had arrived early that morning, same as always. Her stethoscope was cold around her neck, the weight of the day already tugging at her spine. The orthopedic wing smelled of disinfectant and last night's silence — sterile, as though grief had been wiped off the floors before she arrived.
She checked her phone. No messages. No change in the shift rota. Dr. Aanya Rao was still listed as the surgical registrar on duty.
Odd.
By 7:45 AM, the team had gathered. The residents looked mildly confused but unbothered. A substitute consultant walked in, smoothed his coat, and barked out pre-round instructions without so much as a mention of her.
Ira felt the first sting of unease when she opened Aanya's cubicle door after rounds. Her desk was untouched. Not messy — untouched. The mug of cold chai was still there, undrunk. The scarf she always threw over the chair was missing, but her ID badge hung from the hook behind the door like an afterthought.
Ira checked the whiteboard behind her desk. Aanya had written something there two days ago in blue ink:
"Follow up on Bed 12's CT — something doesn't match."
Bed 12 was empty now.
Gone. No discharge papers. No death certificate. Just vanished from the system like a bad edit.
That's when Ira's pulse changed.
Dr. Aanya Rao wasn't like other doctors in this place. She didn't rush. She didn't yell. She remembered names, not just case numbers. She brought homemade ladoos on Sundays and once stayed past her shift just to explain a post-op complication to Ira in plain Hindi, not buried under Latin and ego.
She wasn't supposed to vanish.
Ira found herself walking down to the Records Department during lunch, her lab coat still on, her hands gripping her ID like a talisman. She smiled politely at the sleepy clerk and asked for Aanya's last recorded case file. "Routine review," she lied.
The file was missing. So were three more cases Aanya had handled in the last week.
She walked out with her throat dry, heartbeat stuttering. Her fingers hovered over her phone. She thought about calling someone — but who? Her parents wouldn't understand. Her batchmates would roll their eyes and tell her to relax.
She opened the hospital messaging app and typed a message to Aanya.
Ma'am, just checking in. Hope everything is okay? You didn't come in today — let me know if you need anything.
No response. The app showed the message delivered. But not seen.
She deleted it.
That night, Ira stayed back late, pretending to study in the on-call room. At 11:07 PM, the corridor went quiet. She walked past the closed admin block and stopped outside the Surgery Department archives.
The door was ajar.
Inside, under the flickering tube light, a shadow moved — someone tall, rummaging through files. Before she could speak, the person turned and vanished through the far exit.
Heart pounding, Ira stepped in. The cabinet labeled "Consultants – Leave & Resignations" was open. A file marked "Dr. Aanya Rao" was half-pulled out, but empty. A blank form with her name and employee code lay crumpled on the floor.
No resignation. No leave application. Nothing official.
Just a name now floating in silence.
Ira didn't sleep that night. She kept hearing Aanya's voice in her head — calm, sharp, gently sarcastic. "You don't need to prove yourself to anyone, Ira. Just keep your eyes open. Always."
She had. And now she couldn't unsee what she'd stumbled into.
By morning, the whispers had started.
Someone said Aanya had accepted a fellowship abroad. Another swore she eloped. One junior said she was under investigation for mishandling a donor case.
No one agreed. But no one questioned it either.
Except Ira.
Because she remembered that cold chai, the missing scarf, and the unfinished note on the whiteboard. She remembered the patient from Bed 12 — young, jaundiced, quiet — who'd stopped smiling after Aanya left. And now he was gone too.
Something was wrong here. Something beneath the floors, behind the sealed doors, under the mask of surgical precision.
And whatever it was… it had started with a disappearance no one was willing to talk about.
To be continued...