I stretched. The bandage on my head felt tight, itchy. I resisted the urge to scratch it. A nurse walked past, pushing a medication cart. Without thinking, my eyes tracked her movements. The System responded instantly.
I looked away quickly, but the damage was done. Now I was staring at an elderly man across from me, his breathing labored, his lips faintly blue.
The man's daughter sat beside him, scrolling through her phone, oblivious. Every few seconds, he'd gasp, his chest heaving like he was drowning in open air. His fingers were clubbed, thickened at the tips, the nails curved downward.
I stood up and walked over to them.
"Excuse me," I said, my voice coming out rougher than intended. "How long has he been breathing like this?"
The daughter looked up, startled. "What? Who are you?"
"Medical student," I said quickly. "Has anyone checked his oxygen levels recently?"
"They said we'd be called when—"
"He needs oxygen now," I interrupted, louder than I meant to. "Look at his lips. Look at his fingers."
She looked. Her eyes widened. "I... I thought he was just tired."
I walked to the triage desk. The same nurse from earlier was there, typing something into her computer. She didn't look up.
"The man in the blue jacket," I said, pointing. "He's hypoxic. He needs to be seen now."
She glanced over, barely interested. "We're at capacity. He'll be called—"
"His SpO? is probably below 85," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline flooding my system. "If you wait, you're going to have a code blue in your waiting room."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she stood, grabbed a pulse oximeter, and walked over to the man. She clipped it to his finger. The device beeped once.
79%. Her expression changed. "Bed 7. Now."
They moved him fast. Wheelchair, oxygen mask, the works. The daughter followed, throwing a grateful glance over her shoulder. I stood there, my hands shaking slightly.
I walked back to my seat and sank into it. My mother reappeared, holding two steaming cups of terrible hospital coffee. She handed me one. "What did you do this time?" she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
"Nothing," I lied.
She didn't believe me. But she didn't press. We sat in silence, sipping burned coffee, waiting for news about Kyron.
An hour later, Dr. Aris emerged from the double doors. He spotted me immediately and walked over, his white coat wrinkled, a stethoscope hanging lopsided around his neck.
"Your cousin's stable," he said. "Ultrasound confirmed a clot in the popliteal vein. We've started anticoagulation therapy. He'll need to stay overnight for monitoring, but he should be fine."
I thanked him. Aris stared me for a moment. "You've got good instincts. Better than some of the interns I work with." He paused. "You planning to specialize?"
"I... I don't know yet. I'm only third year."
"Well, when you figure it out, come find me. The ER could use someone who actually looks at patients instead of just their charts."
He walked away before I could respond. My mother squeezed my shoulder. "You did good."
I didn't feel like I did good. I felt like I'd stumbled into something by accident. Twice. But the blue window flickered again, and this time, a new message appeared.
Pattern Recognition? I focused on the text.
I read it again. So now I'd be passively diagnosing people? Just by looking at them? That sounded like a curse than superpower.
We stayed until Kyron was moved to a regular ward. He was groggy from the painkillers, his leg elevated, an IV drip attached to his arm. He looked small in the hospital bed, far less cocky than usual.
"Thanks, Ashru," he mumbled. "I owe you one."
"Just don't ride that bike for a while," I said.
He nodded weakly. We left the hospital just as the sun was setting. My mother drove in silence. I stared out the window, watching the city blur past.
The System was quiet now. No notifications. I had no idea if that was a good thing.
At home, My mother thought I was resting. She'd bring me tea with too much sugar and remind me to take my antibiotics even though I didn't need antibiotics. I'd nod, drink the tea, and watch her walk away with a slight limp she'd never mentioned.
I looked away immediately, feeling guilty. She wasn't a case study. She was my mother. But the System didn't care about that distinction.
It never stopped. Every person who walked past our window. Every relative who came to check on "the boy who got hit by a scooter." The mailman with the tremor in his right hand. The grocer's son with the yellowish tinge to his eyes that nobody else seemed to notice. My XP kept increasing.
I started avoiding eye contact. Started staying in my room with the curtains drawn. Because every time I looked at someone, the blue window would dissect them into symptoms and probabilities. Turning human beings into walking diagnoses.
Zoya came back three days after I'd told her to remove the copper bracelet. Her shoulder moved better. She hugged me, crying about how I'd "healed" her, how she'd been to three doctors and none of them had noticed what I noticed in thirty seconds.
I felt guilty, again. I hadn't healed anyone. I'd just been wearing augmented reality glasses nobody else could see.
"You're going to be a wonderful doctor," she said, her hands on my cheeks.
I wanted to tell her I'd cheated. That I had an instruction manual floating in my vision, that I didn't deserve the credit. But I just smiled and said thank you.
Kyron was discharged after four days. He came by the house on crutches. He'd already turned the story into an epic tale where I'd "sensed the clot through medical intuition" and "saved his life with one look."
"They said if I'd ridden that bike another hour, it would've traveled to my lungs," he said to a small crowd of neighbors gathered in our living room. "Ashru here, he just knew. Didn't even need tests. Just looked at my leg and knew."
Everyone stared at me like I was some kind of medical prophet. I excused myself and went to my room.
"Shut up," I whispered to the empty room.
It didn't respond. But I could feel it there. My own personal parasite made of light and data.
I tried to study, opened my pathology textbook. But the moment I started reading about myocardial infarction, the diagrams came alive again. The heart on the page began beating. It was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. +3 XP increased.
I should have been happy. This is what every medical student dreamed of—perfect recall, enhanced understanding, the ability to see patterns others missed. But it felt wrong, like I was cheating on an exam where everyone else was playing fair.
I thought about Murin. How he'd spent hours perfecting his notes, color-coding every system, every drug interaction. How Akki would stay up until three in the morning drilling himself on anatomy until he could name every foramen in the skull backward. They'd earned their knowledge. I was just... wearing it, like borrowed clothes.
My father called on the sixth day. He was working in another city, some engineering project that kept him away for months at a time. His voice crackled through the phone, "Your mother says you've been diagnosing the whole neighborhood."
"It's not like that, Dad."
"She's proud, you know. Telling everyone her son is going to be the best doctor in the family."
"Nobody else in the family is a doctor."
"Exactly. So don't mess it up."
The call ended. I sat there holding the phone, feeling the weight of expectations settle on my shoulders.
Murin video-called me on the eighth day. He looked tired but happy, sprawled on his bed at home, his room neat as always.
"How's the vacation treating you?" he asked.
"Weird," I admitted. "Yours?"
"Boring. My parents keep introducing me to eligible girls. Apparently, I'm at 'marriage age' now."
"You're twenty-two."
"Tell that to my mother." He sighed. "Akki says his hand is healing well. Keeps sending pictures of the scar. I think he's proud of it."
"Of course he is."
"You okay?"
I almost told him. Almost explained about the System, about seeing things I shouldn't be able to see, about feeling like a fraud. But how do you explain that you've been infected by a medical AI that nobody else can perceive?
"Just tired," I said. "The concussion's still messing with me."
Another lie. It never went away. It was always there and waiting for me to look at someone long enough to trigger another diagnosis.
"Well, don't push yourself. We go back soon enough. Then it's back to hell."
"Can't wait," I said flatly.
We talked for a few more minutes about nothing important, then said goodbye. After he hung up, I sat in the dark, watching the System notification blink in the corner of my vision. It gave me another +XP for "Social Interaction Complete".
"Stop rewarding me for lying," I said to the empty room.
On the tenth day, I went to the market with my mother. She needed vegetables, and I needed to leave the house before I lost my mind entirely.
Vendors shouting prices, women haggling over tomatoes, children running between stalls. I tried to keep my eyes down. Tried not to look at anyone directly. But the System had other plans. Pattern Recognition: Active
Suddenly, everyone around me lit up like Christmas trees with symptoms.
The woman buying onions—Enlarged thyroid. Possible goiter.
The man selling fish—Nicotine-stained fingers. Chronic cough noted. Likely COPD.
The teenager slouched against a wall—Track marks on forearm. Recent. Substance abuse.
I grabbed my mother's arm. "We need to leave."
"What? We just got here."
"Please. I don't feel well."
She looked at me, concerned. We left the market, her carrying a half-empty bag of vegetables, me trying not to vomit.
In the car, I closed my eyes and pressed my palms against them until I saw stars.
"Why didn't you warn me before?" I hissed.
My mother reached over and squeezed my hand. "We'll go home. You can rest." I nodded.
The rest of the time, I stayed inside mostly. Read textbooks. Let the System feed me information while I wrestled with the ethics of using it.
Because that was the real question, wasn't it? If I went back to medical school with this thing in my head, with this ability to see what others couldn't—was I still earning my degree? Or was I just a student with a really sophisticated cheat code?
And what about the patients? If I could diagnose someone faster, more accurately than my classmates—didn't I have an obligation to use that ability? Even if it meant admitting I had an unfair advantage?
But if I told anyone about the System, they'd either think I was insane or they'd try to study me like a lab rat. I was trapped. Trapped between wanting to be honest and wanting to survive.
On the final night before I had to return to medical school, I couldn't sleep. I sat on the roof of our house, staring at the city lights, listening to distant traffic.
The System was quiet. For once, it wasn't throwing notifications at me or making sarcastic comments.
"What am I supposed to do with you?" I asked the empty air.
The blue window responded slowly, like it was thinking.
"That's not helpful."
I sat with that for a long time. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe the ethics didn't matter as much as the outcome. If I could save lives, prevent suffering, catch diseases before they became terminal—didn't that justify the method? Or was I just rationalizing? Trying to make peace with something I couldn't change anyway? I didn't know.
I laid back on the roof, staring at the stars, and let the questions circle in my head until exhaustion finally dragged me under.
Tomorrow, I'd go back to medical school. And I'd figure out what kind of doctor I was going to become.
Sci-fi ? Telepathy ? Psychics
The technocracy will fall. And my powers started it all. Oops.
- Straight & queer romances. (No harem.)
- Seven-book interconnected series.
- Comedy Space Operas: .
- WLW Psychological Thrillers: .