Patient File No. 7
The scene before my eyes flowed like a waking dream — not blurred, not trembling, but clearer than any memory I had ever experienced.
The Sadeghi family stepped out of their house. The father, a man in his forties with a thin mustache, was locking the door. The mother, with the five-year-old girl in her arms. The ten-year-old boy, a few steps ahead, playing with his bicycle.
They were going to a party — a birthday, at a house a few alleys away. Their laughter scattered through the evening air.
And in the shadow of a tree, that younger figure — what would later become Mr. Monday — stood, watching.
Mr. Monday's voice, whispering close to my ear, continued his narration:
"Back then, I wasn't what I am now. I had no name, no form. I was just a feeling — a feeling that had lingered on this street for years, since before the Sadeghi family was even born."
"What feeling?" I asked, my voice barely escaping.
"Regret," he said. "This street, Doctor, before they built the bakery, before they built the park, was something else. An old hospital. A hospital where, years ago, on one very bad night, many people died — not from illness, but from a mistake. A medical error that no one ever took responsibility for."
The scene shifted. Now it was no longer the Sadeghi family, but an old hospital, with dark corridors, and the sound of screams coming from far away — screams that seemed strangely muffled and distant, like a memory someone had tried to forget.
"A doctor," the voice continued, "made a wrong decision. A medication, a wrong dosage, given to dozens of patients at once, on a Monday night. Most of them died. And that doctor, instead of taking responsibility, hid everything. Burned the files. Erased the names. Said they died of their own illnesses, not his mistake."
My breath caught in my chest.
"And that regret," Mr. Monday said, his voice now softer, almost sorrowful, "that regret that was never spoken, never confessed, remained in this ground. For decades. Until they built this street on that same land, and new people came to live, without knowing what lay beneath their feet."
The scene shifted again, this time to more recent years — the Sadeghi family, the first night something strange happened.
"I, or whatever I was, woke up that night," he said. "Because one of them — the father — said something in his sleep. A sentence that resembled that old doctor's unspoken confession. A verbal coincidence, a small similarity in words. And that was enough to wake me."
"And then what happened?"
"I thought I could fix it," he said, his voice now trembling in a way I hadn't heard before. "I thought if I could rewind one night enough times until a right choice was made — a choice that old doctor never made — maybe I could finally set that regret free. Maybe I could, just once, let something end correctly."
"But you couldn't."
"No," he said, and for the first time, in that single word, I heard something that truly resembled collapse. "Every time I rewound, something new went wrong. Something else broke. And each time, instead of learning, I grew angrier. And that anger, that despair, began to turn into something else."
"Into pleasure," I said, without thinking.
Silence.
"Yes," he said at last, his voice now barely a whisper. "Because pain, when you stare at it long enough, starts to look interesting. Starts to become entertainment, when you've given up hope of fixing it. I didn't want to become this, Doctor. But twenty-two years of solitude, twenty-two years of failure, changes a person — or whatever I am."
The scene returned to Golestan Alley as it was today — dark, empty, with me standing in the middle of the street, alone.
"Now you know," Mr. Monday said. "Now you know why I can't stop. Because if I stop, if there are no more experiments, no more repetitions... I have to face that original failure. I have to accept that I never managed to fix anything. And that..."
He paused, for a long time.
"That is more painful than any experiment."
I stood there, on that empty street, and for the first time, instead of pure terror, I felt something else — something I didn't want to feel, but couldn't deny.
Pity.
"That's no excuse for what you did to those families," I said finally, my voice unsteady but firm.
"No," he agreed. "It isn't. But at least now you know I wasn't born a monster, Doctor. I was made. From silence. From a confession that was never spoken."
The wind blew again, colder this time.
"So perhaps," he said, his voice now carrying a new tone — something hard to identify, between hope and threat, "perhaps you're the one who can finally do what that old doctor never did. Perhaps you can, at last, complete that confession."
"How?" I asked.
The streetlight beside me flickered, and in that flicker, for the first time, I saw a complete image of Mr. Monday's face — not the usual blurred smudge, but something real, human, full of exhaustion and endless pain.
"By telling the truth," he said, "to someone who will finally do something about it."
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To be continued in Chapter Fourteen...