The Last Theory

The roads were more congested than usual, and I found it hard to concentrate on my driving. More and more question kept on shooting through my mind. The Candes hospital was barely twenty minutes drive from my home, but half an hour had already passed and i was not even half way there.  I took wrong turns thrice and wasted precious minutes retracing my route.
After an hour on the road I saw a large vinyl board in the distance which read ‘Candes Medical Center’. I eased my car off onto the slip road which fed the hospital car park situated on the west side. As I passed many rows of neatly parked cars slowing down to a craw, found a vacant spot close to the main entrance. After parking and securing my vehicle I proceeded to main entrance and headed towards the reception.
From the reception I learned that Larry was in the eighth floor, in the Critical Care Unit, and the mortuary where my double, Dr. Hector Otellini was kept was in the Sixth floor. At first I had an urge to visit the sixth floor and find exactly who was this poor guy whom they thought was me, but Larry came to my mind, and I thought it was more important to see him.
The hospital looked like a beehive with nurses swarming all over the place. I was afraid if anyone of them would identify me, and run around shouting “dead man walking!” I tried my best not to draw attention of the people around. Apart from nurses another thing found in abundance in Candes was sign boards, and it took me little time to figure out where the lift was.
I got into a lift and pressed eight and as the door was just closing I saw a lady rushing towards it with a handful of medicines, and she was signaling that she too wanted to get into the lift. As the lift was almost about to take off, I pressed the Stop button, and she somehow managed to get in.
“Thank you mister, could you please press eight…” she said as she tried to balance the medicine packets in her hands, probably she had not noticed that eight was already pressed.
She was standing in an awkward position with her face down, to keep the packets balancing, and I could not see her face which was hidden by curly locks of pitch black hair. She was wearing blue black jeans with a chocolate colored top, and she was about five and half feet tall with an attractive build.
“Yes, madam. Even I am going to the eighth floor.” As I replied, she raised her face. And what followed was completely unimaginable. Just as she raised her face and saw me, she was visibly horrified. She screamed and all the bags she had fell down. She leaned herself on the farthest wall,looking so petrified, as if she saw a ghost.
But when I saw her face, I recognized her in a moment. It was Katherine, Larry’s fiancée. Because I was myself shaken because of the events that happened that day, I had not recognized her earlier. Though we had met each other only quite a few times, we shared a very good friendship. She was one of the editors of the newspaper, The Daily Scoop, and a very charming and social person, in contrast to Larry, who was a nerd.
She was still unmoved from her position, her emerald eyes almost popping out of the sockets and her trimmed eyebrows rose to the forehead. Her face had already turned pale with the tip of her round nose and cheeks as red as a cherry. She looked like a lamb trapped in a lion’s cage.
“Katherine, please. Don’t panic. I have to talk to you.I am Otellini. And I am not dead as you people think. Larry must’ve been driving with someone else.”
“But…I myself saw your corpse. I was the one who identified your body in front of the officials, it can’t be…” there was no de-escalation of shock in her face, as I spoke.
“No, dear, probably you got it wrong. I am Otellini. Trust me. This might make you believe.”,
and showed her my driver’s license. For a second she stood still, but after a thought she extended her hand forward and checked the card. Now her face seemed to calm down, the panting seemed to slow down, and her face was regaining its color.
“But doctor, how could that be?”
“Katherine, you should help me out of this. I don’t know what is happening here, but from today morning, whatever is happening, it is happening rather strange. Even I was in the same state as you are now, when I heard my own death news over phone.”
I went on as I helped her pick the medicines that spilled on the floor, back in the paper bags.
“How is Larry now?”
“Doctors have told that he is out of danger now. But, still he is in coma. Some of the medicines needed were not available in the hospital’s medical store, I was just getting them.”
As I explained Katherine the things that happened since I woke up that morning, we reached the eighth floor.
“But, Hector. Then who is the guy in the mortuary? Though his face was only half recognizable after the accident, he very much looked like you. Even your office ID card was found with him. How could it be…?”
“I am as confused as you are. But, we need to find out what is going on. Only Larry can give the answers to the questions that are in our mind. But you can trust me. Dr. Otellini is very much alive and he is standing in front of you.”
The reply was a half smile.
When we reached the CCU, Kathy got busy giving the medicines to the nurse who stood in front of the CCU door. We were not allowed to go inside, but I could see Larry lying on a bed, through the glass wall. He was accompanied by a series of monitors and apparatus which closely monitored his health. It looked so ironic, a man who spent most of his life with electronic gadgets, machines, and devices, a person who understood binary better than English, one who would not mind sitting in the lab for days and nights to fix a broken down laptop or a monitor, was now living at the mercy of the very same gadgets.
When I turned I saw Kathy was also standing beside me, watching Larry. A tear drop ran down her cheeks. She always used to complain gadgets were Larry’s first love, Kathy only came next. It was true even now, she was standing outside the glass separation, while the machines, stood so close to him, providing him comfort.

[edited with feedbacks from Obear.]
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