The Plot Calls #2 : "Doctor Denier"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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The glass walls of Saint Augustine Hospital gleamed under the night lights. Donor plaques reflected like polished silver along the entrance hall. Near the top, etched in immaculate gold lettering: Dr. Frank Voss, Founder — Cardiac Wing.

Inside, the surgical prep area was quiet, sterile, humming faintly with fluorescent buzz. Voss stood alone, his gloved hands raised before him. They trembled — only slightly — but enough.

He flexed his fingers. The shake eased, but his chest stayed tight. The hospital whispered around him — nurses trading shifts, students murmuring praise. His name floated in the hallways. His legacy filled textbooks. His techniques — groundbreaking. His precision — legend.

But legends age.

His vision blurred under the lights sometimes. His breath hitched before procedures. The fine motor control he built his career upon faltered in private, concealed behind steady words and ritual.

Voss told himself it was temporary. Fatigue. Lighting. A bad angle.

And then came the bypass.

An emergency — high-risk cardiac arrest — during his absence. His protégé, Dr. Leal, performed the procedure flawlessly. Ninety minutes. Full recovery. The media storm followed — first local, then national. Articles. Interviews. Praise.

Leal, calm and composed, thanked her mentor publicly.

It was meant as respect.

Voss felt it as erasure.

For decades, his pride had been forged, not flaunted. The pride of earned skill, sharpened control, measurable mastery. He wasn’t arrogant. He was precise. Reliable. Respected.

But time had other plans.

That night, he couldn’t face the applause. Couldn’t sit through the department’s subtle, strained praise. He left without a word, his steps echoing through the hospital’s quiet after-hours halls.

Outside, the air was crisp. Cold. He wandered past the chapel, its old brickwork shadowed by newer glass structures. Past the maintenance lot. Toward the memorial garden.

It had been forgotten. Overgrown hedges. Cracked benches. The stone markers faded by time and weather. The place felt untouched by the hospital's gleaming renovations — or its shallow reverence.

But tonight, something shifted.

The air curled tight, pressing against his skin. Moonlight bent unnaturally at the edges of his vision — faint streaks of violet along the ground.

Voss paused.

In the weeds, beyond the broken stones, a patch of soil gleamed — dark, slick, breathing faintly.

The Plot was near. Whispering.

He didn’t know what it was. Not yet.

But pride had already brought him this far.

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The hospital lights buzzed faintly overhead as Voss rinsed his hands in the scrub room. The water was warm. His hands were steady.

But only for a moment.

The tremor returned — faint, but present — in the fingertips. His pulse quickened. He forced his hands still, staring into the sterile basin.

The whispers had started days ago.

Not the hospital’s whispers — not the muffled conversations, the reverent mentions of his name. These whispers came from deeper. From the old memorial garden beyond the chapel. From a black and violet shimmer buried in the weeds.

A shimmer Voss had yet to see.

But he could feel it now.

Faint distortions rippled in glass reflections. Shadows stretched unnaturally along the corridors. His name carried down the hallways in warped echoes — elongated, hollow.

Leal’s success filled the meeting rooms. Her flawless execution. Her media features. Her composure under pressure. The board praised her. The students admired her.

Voss barely slept. When he did, he dreamed of violet light curling beneath his eyelids, of soil shifting beneath forgotten stones.

The hunger for control gnawed at him. His pride — earned, measured, forged — now fed on itself.

That night, unable to endure the whispers any longer, Voss left the hospital.

The memorial garden loomed behind the chapel. Forgotten. Overgrown.

But tonight, buried beyond the hedges, the soil pulsed.

A six-foot square of soil shimmered — black as oil, tinged faintly with violet light. The surface rippled as if breathing.

This was not part of the garden.

This was something else.

The Plot.

It called.

Frank Voss — was about to answer.

He looked down.

In the center of the plot, a porcelain hand emerged — delicate, perfect, palm open.

Beside it, the Idle Man stood.

Tall. Pale. Robed in black. Motionless.

Neither waiting nor expecting.

Voss’s chest tightened. His hand slipped inside his coat, fingers finding the familiar weight of his surgical scalpel.

The symbol of his precision. His legacy. His pride.

Without hesitation, he placed it in the porcelain palm.

The hand closed. Sank into the soil.

Relief surged through his limbs. His vision cleared. His chest loosened. The tremors disappeared.

The next morning, his colleagues marveled at his restored control. His hands never wavered. His incisions — flawless. His authority returned. Even Dr. Leal approached, her expression unreadable.

“We should collaborate,” she offered, professional, composed.

Voss smiled faintly.

The hospital whispered his name again — this time with reverence.

But beneath the surface, he felt… nothing.

The pride remained.

But the hunger behind it was gone.

Hollow.

Waiting.

The applause didn’t matter anymore.

Voss stood in the operating theater. His hands, steady. His incisions, flawless. His colleagues watched with wide eyes — reverent, almost fearful. Even Leal, polished and composed, stood nearby, her expression unreadable.

His precision had returned.

His reputation had been salvaged.

But the pride that once filled him was gone.

There was no satisfaction. No hunger. Just flawless execution — efficient, mechanical, hollow.

The hospital whispered his name again — but it rang thin, disconnected, unreal.

That’s when the other whispers began.

Not admiration. Not memory. These whispers called to him from somewhere deeper — from the soil. From the black and violet shimmer that pulsed beneath the overgrown hedges outside.

The Plot whispered.

It whispered in the snip of surgical scissors. In the silence after sutures. In the hum of the floor as he scrubbed in. The sound drifted from the garden. From the soil. From the One Beneath.

It called to him.

Voss tried to resist.

He locked his office door. Buried himself in procedure. Closed the blinds. Shut out the view of the chapel and the hedges beyond.

But the call grew louder.

The tremors returned. His reflection decayed — pale skin, hollow eyes, breath shallow, pulse faint.

The control he had bartered for was slipping.

The Plot whispered louder.

It did not beg. It did not plead.

It summoned.

His body rebelled. Sleepless, shaking, with chest tight from something more than age, Voss stood in the silent corridors one last time. His feet carried him toward the garden.

The hedges parted unnaturally, as if knowing.

The soil shimmered beneath the moonlight — black, violet, alive.

The Idle Man stood nearby. Tall. Pale. Robed in black. Motionless.

Voss stepped forward, drawn by something older than memory.

The Idle Man blinked.

The faintest trace of warmth returned to its skin. Color crept into its cheeks. It inhaled — staggered — confused, as if surfacing from deep water.

It — the Idle Man — was becoming human again.

It was a young woman.

Voss understood.

The breath left his lungs.

His own skin dulled, his blood stilled. His vision dimmed. He stood before The Plot — neither waiting nor expecting.

Idle.

The garden curved. The soil shimmered. The whispers quieted.

In a hollow, inevitable voice, Voss knelt by the plot.

He gazed into the black and violet shimmering soil and whispered:

“The Plot Thickens.”

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