The sound of the rain hitting the hospital windows was steady, like the ticking of a distant clock counting down the seconds of someone's life. Inside Room 407 of Noor General Hospital, the fluorescent lights flickered faintly overhead. The air was thick with antiseptic and tension. It was nearly midnight.
Dr. Arif Ali stood over the operating table, his brows furrowed with concentration. The patient, a teenage boy who had been in a brutal car crash, was losing blood fast. Arif had been in surgery for five straight hours, but fatigue had no place in his world. His mind functioned with the precision of a machine, and his hands—those famous hands—were always steady.
"Clamp," he said quietly.
The nurse passed it. He didn't even look up.
"Forceps."
He moved quickly. The bleeding was slowing. Just a few more sutures and the boy would make it.
Then it happened.
A blinding flash of light.
A sound like the sky itself had cracked open.
A deafening crash.
The room shook violently.
The lights went out.
For one long second, there was only darkness. And then, silence.
When Arif opened his eyes again, the lights were back. Everything seemed normal.
Except… it wasn't.
He looked around. The nurses were rushing. Panic on their faces. Alarms were going off. He turned back to the table—only to find it empty.
And then, behind him, on the cold hospital floor… lay a body.
His body.
Blood trickled from his forehead. His coat was soaked. A metal beam from the ceiling had fallen during the lightning strike—and hit him squarely on the back of the head.
"No," he whispered.
He stepped back. His heart raced, but not in his chest. It was a phantom beat now, an echo. He looked down at his hands. They were pale. Slightly transparent.
He reached for the nearby chair.
His hand passed through it.
A chill ran through him.
He turned toward the mirror on the far wall.
No reflection.
"Am I… dead?"
The room spun. He stumbled out the door, across the hallway, calling out to the people rushing past.
"Dr. Saeed! Nurse Farah! It's me! I'm here!"
No one answered.
They couldn't see him. Couldn't hear him.
He was trapped… between life and death.
Somewhere else in the hospital, Zahra Ahmed, a young trainee nurse, stood at the nurses' station, organizing the medication log. Her shift was almost over, and she was exhausted. The storm outside was louder now, thunder rolling like distant drums.
Suddenly, she felt it.
A strange coldness swept through the corridor. The air turned heavy. And then she heard it—a whisper.
"Zahra…"
She froze. Her heart skipped.
"Who's there?"
Silence.
Then footsteps.
But no one was around.
She turned toward the hallway leading to the ICU. At the far end, under the flickering lights, she saw him.
A man in a white coat.
Soaked. Pale. Hollow-eyed.
Looking… directly at her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"Dr. Arif?"
She blinked. He was gone.
She ran toward the hallway—but there was nothing.
Just an unnatural stillness.
Dr. Arif was losing his sense of time. Hours passed, or maybe minutes. He wandered the hospital, trying to speak to people, trying to touch, to feel, to understand.
But it was hopeless.
Until Zahra saw him again.
In the stairwell this time. She had just come from the ER, her shift extended due to the storm. As she turned the corner, there he was—leaning against the railing.
This time, she didn't run.
She stepped forward. "You're… You're not real."
He looked at her, eyes pleading. "Zahra. You can hear me?"
She gasped. "You… spoke."
"Yes!" His voice cracked with relief. "You can hear me. You can see me!"
"But you—you're in a coma! I saw them take your body to the ICU. You're not—" she shook her head. "This isn't possible."
"I know," he said, slowly. "But I'm here. My body is there, but I'm still… here. I don't know why."
Zahra stared at him, her hands trembling. "What are you?"
"I don't know."
That night, Zahra couldn't sleep.
She kept seeing his face.
His eyes—sad, searching, lost.
Was it a dream?
Was she going mad?
Or was she somehow connected to the world beyond?
She opened the Quran on her nightstand. Her eyes fell on a verse from Surah Al-Baqarah:
"And they ask you concerning the soul. Say, The soul is from the command of my Lord, and you have not been given knowledge of it except a little."
A shiver went down her spine.
What if this was real?
What if the soul could linger?
What if Dr. Arif was caught between this world and the next… for a reason?
Days passed.
Zahra visited his room daily. She sat beside his unconscious body, watching his heart monitor beep in a slow, steady rhythm.
And sometimes—he would appear beside her.
As a spirit.
As a ghost.
They talked. About the patients. About life. About regrets.
She learned that Dr. Arif had been a brilliant but distant man. He had no family left. Medicine was his only love. He had no belief in the unseen—until now.
"I thought science could explain everything," he once said. "But being here, like this… I realize how blind I was."
Zahra listened. And slowly, she began to care.
One evening, as they passed through the pediatric ward, Arif stopped.
"Do you hear that?"
Zahra frowned. "What?"
He pointed toward a little girl's room. Her name was Mahnoor. She had leukemia. Barely five years old.
"She's… praying."
Zahra leaned in. Mahnoor was whispering softly.
"Please, Allah… Let me see Mama again. I miss her."
Dr. Arif stepped inside.
And something strange happened.
The lights flickered.
Mahnoor sat up—her eyes wide.
"Uncle," she said.
Zahra gasped. "She… she sees you?"
Arif kneeled by the bed. "You can see me?"
The child nodded. "Are you an angel?"
He smiled faintly. "Something like that."
From that day, Mahnoor started improving.
Her doctors were stunned.
Her blood reports stabilized.
Zahra was the only one who knew the truth.
Arif had touched her soul. Not her body, not her blood—but her soul.
He was healing… without hands.
But with every light… there is shadow.
Strange things began happening in the hospital.
Patients who were improving suddenly worsened.
Voices were heard in the morgue.
And then, the dreams began.
Zahra saw a woman in a blood-stained white coat—walking through fire, her face half-burnt, whispering curses in a language Zahra didn't understand.
When she told Arif, his face darkened.
"I think I've seen her," he said.
"She's not like me."
"She's… something else."
"A ghost?"
"No," he whispered. "A wraith."
"A what?"
"A lost soul twisted by hatred. They don't guide. They destroy."
Zahra's hands trembled. "What does she want?"
Arif looked toward the ICU.
"She wants to pull the dying… into her world."
"And I'm the only one who can stop her."