The Appointment

A Date With Destiny

During the journey towards the city for his hospital appointment Michael concreted on the rhythmic sounds of the cars engine which normally was a form of comfort but instead Michael's anxiety caused his heart to beat faster which in turn caused a pulse like echo in his ears and him to grip the the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
As usual the city was a sprawling beast of concrete, tarmac,and numerous sounds each completion with each other to be the one dominant to be heard.


. Horns blared in a mocking symphony of frustration, red brake lights ahead glowed like malevolent eyes, and the air, thick with the smell of diesel and despair, pressed in on him.

"Come on, come on," he hissed, his voice raw.

He knew he was not meant to have his phone on in the car as it vibrated several times during his driving

By Another call from the hospital. He’d ignored the last three. Cardiac arrest. Immediate intervention needed. Doctor Petrovsky. The words had been clipped, urgent, almost accusatory through the receiver. He was already thirty minutes late for his own life-saving heart procedure. Thirty minutes that felt like thirty years, trapped in this viscous crawl.

Sweat slicked his brow, chilling as it evaporated in the weak blast of the car’s ancient AC. Every beat of his own failing heart felt like a drum solo, erratic and loud, a desperate rhythm section to the chaotic traffic. He could feel the familiar flutter, the skipped beat, the sudden, tightening vise in his chest. It had been getting worse for weeks, culminating in yesterday’s collapse. This appointment wasn’t just critical; it was the last chance.

Finally, an inch. Then another. He swerved into a bus lane, risking the fine, desperate. The hospital loomed in the distance, a grim concrete fortress under the bruised evening sky. He imagined the sterile operating theatre, the waiting surgical team, the calm, reassuring face of Dr. Petrovsky. It was his only hope. His glorious, white-tiled salvation.

He burst through the automatic doors, the sudden chill of the air conditioning a shock after the suffocating heat of the car. The lobby was a spectral haze of fluorescent light and hushed, fearful whispers. He saw the sign: "Cardiac Unit �" Level 4." He lunged for the elevator, stabbing the button with a frantic finger. The doors opened, revealing an elderly woman with eyes as grey and flat as gravestones. She didn’t move.

"Excuse me!" Michael gasped, his voice tight.

She slowly raised a hand, pointing a skeletal finger past him, towards the far end of the corridor. "They’re not waiting. They never wait." Her voice was a dry rattle, like leaves skittering across pavement.

Ignoring her, he pushed past, his breath ragged. The elevator dinged its mocking ascent. Michael stumbled out on Level 4, the silence here heavier, more oppressive. The air hummed with a low, electrical current. He hurried towards the double doors marked "Operating Theatres �" Authorized Personnel Only."

A nurse, a stern woman with tightly pulled-back hair, blocked his path. "Sir, you’re late. Dr. Petrovsky has already begun. There was no time to wait."

Michael felt a cold dread bloom in his chest, colder than any pain. "Begun? Begun what? Without me?"

"An emergency, sir. Your condition… it deteriorated. We had to proceed." Her eyes were devoid of pity, only a chilling, professional resolve. "He is… performing the procedure."

"But… but I'm here! I'm here now!" Michael protested, the words catching in his throat. His heart seized, not with pain, but with a sudden, horrifying emptiness.

The nurse leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper that was somehow louder than any shout. "What Dr. Petrovsky does… it’s not for the faint of heart, Mr. Thorne. Not for mortal hands." A strange, almost reverent awe flickered in her eyes. "He began without you. He opened you up. And what he found…" She paused, a slow, dreadful smile spreading across her lips. "It was magnificent. A true glory, sir. A glory we couldn’t waste."

From behind the double doors, a low hum intensified into a keening whine, growing in pitch until it was a resonant thrum that vibrated through the floorboards, through Michael’s very bones. The air crackled with invisible energy. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered wildly, then died, plunging the corridor into a dim, emergency-lit glow of sickly green.

Then, the doors slowly, majestically, began to part. Not pushed by human hands, but by an unseen force.

Michael stared into the abyss of the operating theatre. It wasn't sterile white but bathed in an pulsing, amber light that seemed to emanate from the operating table itself. Dr. Petrovsky stood over him�"over Michael's other self, a body laid out on the table, chest splayed open. But Petrovsky wasn't holding surgical tools. His hands, now elongated and strangely chitinous, were plunged deep into the opened cavity, manipulating something that glowed with an unearthly luminescence.

It wasn't a heart. It was a pulsating, crystalline entity, throbbing with a terrible, vibrant life. Tendrils of scarlet light reached out from it, grasping, connecting to something unseen. And the doctor’s face… it was no longer human. His features were stretched, twisted into a mask of rapturous, almost demonic ecstasy, his eyes burning with a terrible, triumphant light.

"You were late, Michael," Dr. Petrovsky's voice echoed, no longer soft, but deep, resonant, impossibly vast. "So very late. But your gift... your vessel... it was too perfect to wait. The traffic, the delays... they were necessary. They were part of the plan."

The glowing entity in his own chest pulsed faster, brighter, and Michael felt a tearing sensation, not in his chest, but in his very soul. He saw the glory, the terrible, magnificent glory, of what Petrovsky was doing: not replacing a failing heart, but transforming it, opening it, using it as a conduit for something ancient, something that craved entry.

And as Michael watched, fully understanding, fully awake, the entity within his other self began to expand, its radiant tendrils reaching beyond the operating table, beyond the room, into the very fabric of the hospital. He felt an agonizing pull, a suction, as if his essence, his consciousness, was being drawn back towards that table, towards that horrifying, glorious light.

He wouldn't die. Oh, no. Death would be a kindness denied. He would be forever bound, forever witnessing the monstrous triumph that had consumed his body, claimed his heart, and birthed its unholy radiance into the world. The traffic had made him late, true. But he had arrived just in time to witness the birth of his own damnation, a chilling monument to horrific glory.

The doors slammed shut, plunging the corridor back into darkness, leaving Michael trapped in the horrifying echo of the hum, the acrid scent of ozone and blood, and the cold, unshakeable knowledge that he was not just dead, but eternally, terribly, alive.