The Patient With No Heartbeat
A Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari Medical Thriller
He had no pulse. No heartbeat. No explanation. Yet he knew who would die next.
Genre: Medical Thriller · Psychological Suspense · Mystery
Estimated reading time: 8–10 minutes
Introduction: The Man Who Walked Into the Emergency Room
At 11:43 p.m., a man walked into the emergency department of Saint Gabriel Hospital.
He wore a dark grey coat, carried no identification, and had a thin line of dried blood beneath his left ear. He appeared calm, almost bored, despite the storm raging outside.
The receptionist looked up.
“Sir, are you feeling unwell?”
The man glanced at the clock.
“Not me,” he replied. “I'm here for the people who are about to die.”
Before she could respond, he collapsed beside the reception desk.
Within seconds, nurses rushed him into the emergency treatment room. Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari arrived moments later, pulling on a pair of gloves.
“Get the cardiac monitor ready,” he ordered.
A nurse attached the electrodes.
The monitor displayed a flat line.
No detectable heartbeat.
No measurable pulse.
Yet the man's eyes opened.
“Good evening, Doctor Akhtari,” he said calmly.
Dr. Mojtaba stared at him.
“How do you know my name?”
The stranger smiled.
“Because I've been waiting for you.”
Then he turned toward the emergency department doors.
“The first patient will die in seven minutes.”
Chapter 1: Seven Minutes
Dr. Mojtaba had seen many unusual medical emergencies, but this was unlike anything he had encountered.
The patient's skin was cold. His breathing was shallow, and the cardiac monitor continued to display no detectable electrical activity.
The medical team checked the equipment, replaced the electrodes, and repeated the assessment.
The result remained the same.
Yet the man was conscious, speaking clearly, and answering questions.
“What's your name?” Dr. Mojtaba asked.
“Names aren't important.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“Saint Gabriel Hospital.”
“Do you know what's happening to you?”
The stranger looked directly into the doctor's eyes.
“I'm waiting for the first death.”
Dr. Mojtaba ordered further emergency assessment while the team checked for equipment failure and possible medical explanations. He refused to accept the stranger's predictions without evidence.
At that moment, an alarm sounded from the next treatment bay.
A middle-aged man admitted after a serious road accident suddenly deteriorated.
The emergency team rushed to stabilize him.
Despite their efforts, the patient's condition became critical.
Dr. Mojtaba moved between the two beds, trying to understand what was happening.
The stranger watched silently.
Then he spoke.
“Seven minutes.”
The wall clock reached 11:50 p.m.
The patient from the road accident died despite the team's resuscitation efforts.
Dr. Mojtaba stood motionless for a moment.
The stranger had predicted the death to the minute.
But how?
Chapter 2: The Second Prediction
Dr. Mojtaba returned to the stranger's bedside.
“You knew that patient would die.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I heard him calling.”
“He was unconscious.”
“Not everyone who is silent has nothing to say, Doctor.”
The stranger turned toward the glass doors separating the emergency department from the waiting area.
A young woman sat beside an elderly man. She held his hand while speaking softly to him.
The stranger lifted one finger.
“Her father will be next.”
Dr. Mojtaba felt anger rise in his chest.
“Stop this. These are real people. You don't get to frighten their families with guesses.”
“Then save him.”
The doctor immediately called the emergency team to assess the elderly man.
The man had arrived with what initially appeared to be a relatively minor complaint, but his condition now required urgent investigation. His blood pressure was dropping, and he was becoming increasingly confused.
The team moved him into a monitored treatment bay.
Dr. Mojtaba supervised the assessment and treatment while a nurse stayed with the patient's daughter.
For several tense minutes, the man's condition worsened.
Then the team identified a serious underlying emergency and began appropriate treatment.
Slowly, the patient's condition stabilized.
The daughter began to cry with relief.
Dr. Mojtaba turned toward the stranger.
“You were wrong.”
For the first time, the man's expression changed.
“No,” he whispered. “I was early.”
The monitor beside the elderly patient began sounding an alarm.
Dr. Mojtaba spun around.
The patient's condition had suddenly deteriorated again.
Chapter 3: The Name on the Chart
The medical team worked urgently to stabilize the elderly man.
Dr. Mojtaba ordered further tests and reviewed the patient's records, searching for any sign that might explain the sudden deterioration.
Meanwhile, the stranger began whispering numbers.
“Fourteen. Twenty-two. Thirty-one.”
A nurse approached the doctor.
“Sir, he's doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Reading the patient charts.”
Dr. Mojtaba turned.
The stranger was staring at the stack of medical files on the counter.
He had not touched them.
Yet he began naming patients, describing their symptoms, and identifying details that were not visible from his bed.
One by one, the nurses checked his statements.
Some details were accurate.
Others were impossible to verify.
Then the stranger spoke a name that made Dr. Mojtaba freeze.
“Elias Rahman.”
The doctor slowly lowered the chart in his hands.
Elias Rahman was a patient whose unexplained case had haunted the hospital's records for years. The man had supposedly died during an emergency incident, but contradictory documents had prevented the case from ever being fully resolved.
“How do you know that name?” Dr. Mojtaba asked.
The stranger looked at him.
“Because he was the first person I failed to save.”
Dr. Mojtaba felt a familiar chill.
He had heard that sentence before.
In a dream.
A dream that always ended with a telephone ringing at 2:17 a.m.
Chapter 4: The Patient Who Couldn't Exist
Dr. Mojtaba requested a complete identification check.
The stranger had no wallet, no phone, and no fingerprints matching any accessible hospital record.
The admission system returned an error every time the staff attempted to register him.
It was as if the hospital had no way to acknowledge his existence.
A nurse tried another approach.
“Doctor, perhaps he has a rare condition affecting his circulation. We should continue evaluating him rather than assume the monitor tells us everything.”
Dr. Mojtaba agreed.
A flat line on a monitor alone was not enough to establish what was happening. The team repeated clinical assessments, checked the equipment, and sought senior emergency support.
But the contradiction remained.
The stranger spoke normally. He responded to questions. Yet the available measurements did not provide a coherent explanation for his condition.
Then he asked Dr. Mojtaba a question.
“Do you remember the night of October 18, 2006?”
The doctor's face went pale.
“What does that date have to do with anything?”
“Everything.”
The stranger leaned forward.
“That was the night the hospital lost its first doctor.”
Dr. Mojtaba took a step back.
For a moment, the noise of the emergency department seemed to disappear.
He remembered a dark road.
Rain on a windshield.
A sudden flash of headlights.
Then a voice calling his name.
The memory vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
“What are you?” he whispered.
The stranger closed his eyes.
“I'm the part of the story nobody wrote down.”
Chapter 5: The Third Death
At 12:16 a.m., another alarm sounded.
A patient in the intensive care unit had suffered a sudden, unexpected deterioration.
The emergency team moved immediately.
Dr. Mojtaba followed, leaving two nurses to monitor the mysterious stranger.
The patient was a young man who had been admitted earlier that evening. His condition had appeared stable, but he was now critically ill.
The team worked to identify the cause and provide urgent treatment.
For several minutes, there was no clear answer.
Then Dr. Mojtaba noticed a discrepancy between the patient's latest results and an earlier entry in the medical record.
A medication had been recorded incorrectly.
He alerted the team, and the discrepancy was urgently investigated and corrected as part of the patient's treatment.
The patient's condition began to improve.
Dr. Mojtaba exhaled.
For a moment, he believed the pattern had finally broken.
Then a nurse approached him.
“Doctor, the man from the emergency room wants to see you.”
“Tell him I'm busy.”
“He says you need to know who the next patient is.”
Dr. Mojtaba hesitated.
“Who?”
The nurse looked down at the note she had written.
“Dr. Mojtaba Akhtari.”
Chapter 6: The Doctor's Name
Dr. Mojtaba returned to the emergency department.
The stranger was sitting upright, staring at the monitor.
For the first time, he looked frightened.
“Why did you say my name?” the doctor demanded.
“Because the pattern ends with you.”
“What pattern?”
The stranger pointed at the clock.
12:17 a.m.
Then he pointed at the monitor.
The display had changed.
For one brief instant, it showed a series of numbers that resembled the doctor's date of birth.
Then the screen returned to its ordinary display.
Dr. Mojtaba checked the equipment.
Nothing unusual appeared in the stored readings.
“You are trying to manipulate me,” he said.
The stranger shook his head.
“You keep thinking this is about predicting death. It isn't.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Memory.”
The stranger explained that every patient he had predicted was connected to a medical case Dr. Mojtaba remembered incompletely. The road accident. The elderly man. The young patient. Each event was linked to a decision the doctor had made, or a decision he believed he had made.
But the stranger did not claim to know the future.
He claimed to remember the past.
“Your mind has buried something,” he said. “And every time you get close to remembering, someone disappears from the story.”
Dr. Mojtaba gripped the bed rail.
“What happened to me in 2006?”
The stranger looked toward the door.
“Ask the person who brought you here.”
Chapter 7: The Missing Nurse
Dr. Mojtaba called for the nurse who had first received the stranger.
No one knew where she was.
Her station was empty.
Her name had disappeared from the shift roster, and her access card had no recent activity recorded.
When he asked the other staff members about her, they exchanged confused looks.
They insisted that no nurse by that name had been working that night.
Dr. Mojtaba searched the corridors until he found a security officer reviewing the footage.
“Show me the emergency entrance at 11:43 p.m.,” he demanded.
The officer opened the recording.
A man in a dark grey coat entered the hospital.
He walked to reception, spoke to someone outside the camera's field of view, and collapsed.
The medical team rushed him inside.
Dr. Mojtaba leaned closer to the screen.
There was no receptionist visible.
No nurse.
No one had spoken to the stranger before he collapsed.
Then the recording reached the moment when Dr. Mojtaba entered the treatment room.
The doctor watched himself approach the bed.
The stranger turned toward him.
And the doctor stopped walking.
Because the man on the bed had Dr. Mojtaba's face.
Chapter 8: The Final Diagnosis
Dr. Mojtaba ran back to the emergency room.
The stranger was waiting.
“You saw it,” he said.
“Who are you?”
“Look at me.”
The doctor did.
The stranger had the same eyes, the same scar above his left eyebrow, and the same silver wristwatch.
But his face appeared older, as though he had lived through years that Dr. Mojtaba could not remember.
“I am you,” the stranger said.
“No.”
“I am the doctor you became after that night. The doctor who remembered every patient he failed to save. The doctor who turned every mistake into a prediction because he could not accept that some things cannot be controlled.”
Dr. Mojtaba shook his head.
“That's not possible.”
“Then tell me why you cannot remember the years before you arrived at this hospital.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Memories flooded back.
A young doctor driving through heavy rain.
A crash on a deserted road.
The emergency department.
The relentless effort to save a patient.
The moment the monitor fell silent.
And a voice saying:
“Doctor, please wake up.”
Dr. Mojtaba looked at the monitor beside the stranger.
It was no longer displaying a flat line.
It was switched off.
The electrodes had never been connected.
The entire time, the monitor had been showing an empty screen.
Chapter 9: The Truth Behind the Predictions
The stranger finally revealed the truth.
He was not an ordinary patient, and the predictions were not proof of supernatural powers.
He represented the memories Dr. Mojtaba had buried after a traumatic event. The people he had seen in the emergency department were connected to unresolved cases, grief, and guilt.
His mind had turned those memories into a story in which every death could be predicted and every tragedy could be prevented—if only he knew enough.
But the mystery was not solved simply by calling it a hallucination.
The date, the missing nurse, and the strange hospital records remained unexplained within the story.
Dr. Mojtaba looked toward the treatment bays.
The patients were still there.
The medical team was still working.
The hospital was real.
Yet the stranger's identity remained impossible to verify.
“Will someone else die?” Dr. Mojtaba asked.
The stranger stood.
“Everyone eventually dies, Doctor. The question is what you do with the time you have.”
He walked toward the door.
Dr. Mojtaba followed him into the corridor.
But the stranger had disappeared.
Only the faint sound of footsteps remained.
Conclusion: The Patient Who Left No Pulse
At sunrise, Dr. Mojtaba reviewed the emergency department records.
The road accident patient had died despite the team's efforts.
The elderly patient had survived after receiving urgent treatment.
The young patient was recovering.
The missing nurse had never appeared on the official roster.
And the mysterious man had no registered admission record.
The security footage showed Dr. Mojtaba entering the emergency room alone and speaking to an empty bed for nearly an hour.
No second person appeared in the recording.
At 8:00 a.m., he finally left the hospital.
As he crossed the entrance, a paramedic rushed inside with a new patient.
“Doctor! We need help!”
Dr. Mojtaba turned.
The patient was a young man wearing a dark grey coat.
His eyes opened.
He looked directly at Dr. Mojtaba and smiled.
“Good morning, Doctor Akhtari.”
The doctor froze.
The paramedic glanced at the patient.
“Do you know him?”
Before Dr. Mojtaba could answer, the patient whispered:
“Seven minutes.”
Then the cardiac monitor began to beep.
The End.
Or perhaps, the next emergency has only just begun.
Reader Discussion
Was the mysterious patient a supernatural visitor, a reflection of Dr. Mojtaba's guilt, or someone connected to the unexplained events of October 18, 2006?
Share your theory in the comments. Would you trust a patient who could predict death but could not explain how he was alive?
Author's note: This is a fictional medical thriller. The characters, hospital, and events are invented for entertainment. The medical emergencies are fictional and are not intended as medical advice.
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