A Mystery That Defied Time
An Original Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari Mystery Story
Genre: Psychological Mystery | Medical Thriller | Supernatural Suspense
Reading time: 8–10 minutes
Setting: An abandoned hospital wing on a stormy night
Main character: Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari
Introduction: A Call at 2:17 A.M.
Every hospital has secrets. Some are buried in old medical records, others are hidden behind locked doors. But the most terrifying secrets are the ones that remember you.
At exactly 2:17 a.m., Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari received a telephone call that would change everything he believed about life, death, and his own past.
“Doctor, please come to Room 17,” a nurse whispered. “The patient is awake again.”
Dr. Mojtaba looked at the clock above his desk. Outside, rain hammered against the hospital windows, and distant thunder shook the glass.
“Which patient?” he asked.
The nurse hesitated.
“The one who keeps asking for you.”
Dr. Mojtaba frowned. He had worked at Saint Gabriel Hospital for only three months. He knew every patient on his ward, and he had never heard of anyone being treated in Room 17.
“Room 17 has been closed for years,” he replied.
“I know,” the nurse said quietly. “But someone is inside.”
Then the call disconnected.
Dr. Mojtaba stared at the telephone. For a moment, he considered calling security. Instead, he grabbed his flashlight and stepped into the corridor.
He had no idea that the patient waiting behind that door knew something impossible.
Something about the night Dr. Mojtaba died.
Chapter 1: The Corridor That Should Not Exist
The hospital was almost silent.
The emergency department hummed in the distance, but the eastern wing had been abandoned following an unexplained incident twenty years earlier. Its windows were covered in dust, its walls stained by moisture, and its doors sealed with rusted locks.
As Dr. Mojtaba approached the wing, the overhead lights flickered.
He checked his phone. No signal.
At the end of the corridor stood a door marked 17.
It was open.
He was certain the door had been locked when he passed the corridor earlier that evening.
“Hello?” he called.
No answer.
He pushed the door open.
Inside was a small hospital room illuminated by a single bedside lamp. An elderly man sat upright on the bed, wearing a faded hospital gown. His silver hair fell across his forehead, and deep lines marked his face.
A patient identification bracelet circled his wrist.
But the name printed on it had almost completely faded.
Dr. Mojtaba stepped closer.
“I'm Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari. Can you tell me your name?”
The old man looked at him with startling recognition.
“I wondered how long it would take you to come back.”
Dr. Mojtaba felt uneasy.
“Have we met before?”
The old man smiled.
“You always ask that question.”
“Always?”
“Every time you return.”
Dr. Mojtaba glanced toward the door. He had the uncomfortable feeling that the room was somehow smaller than it had appeared from the corridor.
“Who admitted you to this hospital?”
The patient's smile disappeared.
“You did.”
Chapter 2: The Medical Record
Dr. Mojtaba returned to the nurses' station and demanded the patient's file.
The night nurse searched the electronic database, then tried the hospital's older archive system.
Nothing appeared.
No admission number. No medical history. No record of a patient ever being assigned to Room 17.
“That is impossible,” Dr. Mojtaba said. “I just examined him.”
The nurse swallowed nervously.
“Doctor, there is something you should know. Room 17 was sealed after the accident in October 2006. The hospital never reopened it.”
“What accident?”
The nurse looked away.
“An emergency physician died that night. The official report said he suffered fatal injuries during a road accident. His name was Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari.”
For several seconds, Dr. Mojtaba could not speak.
“That is my name.”
“I know,” she replied.
He tried to laugh, but the sound died in his throat.
“Someone must have made a mistake.”
The nurse opened a dusty archive cabinet and removed a thick folder. Inside was a photograph of a young doctor standing outside the hospital.
The man in the photograph had Dr. Mojtaba's face.
The same eyes. The same scar above his left eyebrow. Even the same silver watch he wore every day.
The photograph was dated October 18, 2006.
Dr. Mojtaba turned to the accompanying medical report.
Patient: Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari
Condition: Severe traumatic injuries
Time of death: 2:17 a.m.
His fingers began to tremble.
He had no memory of an accident in 2006. As far as he knew, his life had followed an ordinary path into medicine.
Yet the evidence in front of him suggested that he had died twenty years before.
Then he noticed a second document tucked inside the folder.
It was a handwritten note.
The message contained only one sentence:
If he returns, never let him remember.
Chapter 3: The Man Who Remembered Everything
Dr. Mojtaba rushed back to Room 17.
The elderly patient was standing beside the window, looking out at the storm.
“You found the file,” the man said without turning around.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Elias Rahman.”
“What happened here in 2006?”
Elias slowly turned.
“You were trying to save my life.”
The old man explained that he had been brought to the hospital after a terrible accident. Dr. Mojtaba, then a young emergency physician, had worked for hours to stabilize him.
But Elias had not been an ordinary patient.
He suffered from a rare neurological condition that caused him to experience vivid, detailed memories of events that had never happened. His doctors had struggled to understand the condition, and his family had eventually stopped believing his accounts of the future and past.
That night, Elias had repeatedly told Dr. Mojtaba that a terrible accident was about to happen.
He begged the doctor not to leave the hospital.
But Dr. Mojtaba had received an urgent call from another medical facility and driven into the storm.
His car had crashed on a deserted road.
The official report recorded his death at 2:17 a.m.
Elias paused.
“But that is not the whole story.”
Dr. Mojtaba stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
“The man in that accident was you. The doctor who came to save me was also you. And the person standing here now…”
Elias stepped closer.
“…is the one I have been waiting for.”
Dr. Mojtaba backed away.
“That makes no sense.”
“Does it?” Elias asked. “Then tell me why you remember a childhood that no one else can verify. Tell me why your medical degree has no university registration number. Tell me why every photograph of you before three months ago is missing.”
Dr. Mojtaba opened his mouth, but no words came.
He had never checked those details.
He had simply assumed they were ordinary gaps in his memory.
Chapter 4: The Missing Twenty Years
Desperate for answers, Dr. Mojtaba returned to the hospital archive and searched for his employment documents.
His personnel file contained a recent photograph, his professional credentials, and a contract signed three months earlier.
But the documents lacked the verification codes required by the hospital's human resources department.
The signature on the employment contract looked exactly like his own.
He checked the hospital's visitor logs. His name appeared nowhere before his first day at work.
He searched public records for his university graduation. No results.
Then he discovered something even stranger.
The employee who had supposedly interviewed him did not exist.
At 3:05 a.m., Dr. Mojtaba returned to Room 17 carrying the documents.
Elias was sitting quietly on the bed.
“You have been searching for proof that you are alive,” the old man said.
“I am alive.”
“Then why are you afraid to look at the truth?”
Dr. Mojtaba slammed the documents onto the bedside table.
“Tell me what happened!”
Elias reached beneath his pillow and produced a small silver watch.
It was identical to the one Dr. Mojtaba wore.
Only this watch had stopped at 2:17.
On its back was an inscription:
To Mojtaba, who saved my life. October 18, 2006.
Dr. Mojtaba recognized the handwriting.
It was his own.
Chapter 5: The Experiment
Elias finally revealed the secret behind Room 17.
Before the accident, the hospital had conducted experimental research into memory, consciousness, and the brain's response to extreme trauma. The research team had hoped to understand why some patients reported vivid experiences during periods when they appeared clinically unresponsive.
Dr. Mojtaba had volunteered to help investigate a patient who repeatedly described events before they occurred.
That patient was Elias.
On the night of October 18, the experiment ended in disaster.
Dr. Mojtaba suffered a fatal accident after leaving the hospital. Elias, meanwhile, survived but was placed under observation because of his unusual memories and the confusion surrounding the case.
The hospital later closed the research unit.
But Elias insisted that something else had happened.
He claimed that he remembered Dr. Mojtaba returning to the hospital after the accident, walking into Room 17, and asking the same questions he was asking now.
Every detail had repeated itself.
The same storm. The same telephone call. The same time on the clock.
“Perhaps you are remembering a dream,” Dr. Mojtaba whispered.
“Perhaps,” Elias answered.
“Or perhaps you have been manipulating me.”
Elias looked suddenly exhausted.
“Doctor, I cannot tell you which explanation is true. I can only tell you what I remember.”
For the first time, Dr. Mojtaba considered another possibility.
Perhaps the hospital had not hidden a supernatural event.
Perhaps a combination of trauma, suggestion, sleep deprivation, and a medical condition had created a shared mystery that neither man could fully understand.
But one question remained unanswered.
If Elias's memories were unreliable, how had he known the exact details of Dr. Mojtaba's accident?
And why did the hospital records bear the same date and time?
Chapter 6: The Final Revelation
At 3:17 a.m., the bedside lamp began to flicker.
Dr. Mojtaba turned toward the door.
The corridor beyond it was no longer dark. Instead, it was filled with the bright white light of a modern hospital ward.
He heard nurses calling for emergency equipment.
A monitor began to beep rapidly.
Then he heard a voice.
“Doctor! We need you in the emergency department!”
He stepped into the corridor.
A young man lay on a stretcher. His face was bruised, and blood stained his shirt. A silver watch rested against his wrist.
Dr. Mojtaba moved closer.
The patient opened his eyes.
They were his own eyes.
The young man was Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari as he appeared in the 2006 photograph.
“Please,” the young doctor whispered. “Don't let me die.”
Dr. Mojtaba reached for the patient's hand.
Suddenly, the corridor vanished.
He was back in Room 17.
The old man was gone.
The bedside lamp was extinguished.
On the pillow lay a single sheet of paper.
Dr. Mojtaba unfolded it.
The handwriting was unmistakable.
You have asked who you are. You have searched for the night you died. But the question you should ask is this: Who remembers you when you are gone?
Below the message was a final line:
Look at the clock.
Dr. Mojtaba raised his head.
The clock above the door read 2:17 a.m.
He looked at his phone.
2:17 a.m.
He checked his watch.
2:17 a.m.
Every clock in the room had stopped at the same moment.
Then the telephone rang.
He answered.
A nurse's frightened voice came through the receiver.
“Doctor, please come to Room 17. The patient is awake again.”
Dr. Mojtaba slowly lowered the phone.
He knew those words.
He had heard them before.
But this time, he noticed something he had missed earlier.
The voice on the telephone was his own.
Conclusion: The Patient Nobody Remembered
At sunrise, the hospital staff discovered Room 17 empty.
There was no patient, no medical file, and no evidence that anyone had entered the abandoned wing.
The nurse denied making a telephone call.
The security cameras showed an empty corridor throughout the night.
And the hospital's employment database contained no record of a doctor named Mojtaba Akhtari.
Yet on the bedside table, investigators found a silver watch stopped at exactly 2:17 a.m.
Beside it lay a photograph of an elderly man standing outside Saint Gabriel Hospital.
Written on the back were five words:
“The patient remembers everything.”
No one could explain who had taken the photograph.
No one could identify the elderly man.
And no one could explain why the image showed a hospital that had been demolished years before.
Some mysteries can be solved with evidence. Others force us to question the evidence itself.
Was Dr. Mojtaba trapped in a repeating memory? Was Elias suffering from a condition that distorted his perception of time? Or had the doctor somehow encountered a version of himself that should no longer exist?
The truth remains hidden behind the locked door of Room 17.
And somewhere, at exactly 2:17 a.m., a telephone is ringing.
The End — Or Perhaps, The Beginning.
Reader Discussion
What do you think really happened to Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari?
He was trapped in a psychological time loop.
Elias's unusual memories revealed a hidden truth.
The doctor was experiencing a hallucination after a traumatic event.
Something supernatural was happening inside Room 17.
Leave your theory in the comments. The most interesting mysteries are the ones that leave us questioning what we believe.
Author's note: This is a work of fictional mystery. Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari, Elias Rahman, Saint Gabriel Hospital, and the events described are fictional elements created for storytelling.
0 Comments