Everyone in the city knew Dr. Nathaniel. His name carried weight in hospital corridors and family prayers alike. When a surgery was too delicate, too risky, or already failed elsewhere, it was Dr. Nathaniel who was called. He specialized in spinal and neurological procedures, the kind that required silence, patience, and hands that never trembled.
People said he was gifted. What they didn’t know was that he never stopped studying his patients after they survived. The changes were subtle at first. A woman who had undergone spinal surgery returned home unable to feel joy. Her husband described her as present but distant. A young man who survived brain trauma stopped dreaming entirely. A retired teacher lost the ability to feel guilt, even when she should have. Doctors blamed recovery stress. Medication side effects. Trauma. Dr. Nathaniel signed every report.
During surgery, when the operating room fell into its focused stillness, he performed his real work. While assistants managed instruments and monitors, he inserted a catheter so fine it was almost invisible, slipping it into the subarachnoid space with practiced ease. He extracted only a few milliliters. Cerebrospinal fluid. Clear. Clean. Undetectable in its absence. No organs were missing. No scans raised alarms. The patients lived. But something essential left them.
Dr. Nathaniel stored the samples in sealed vials hidden behind a locked cabinet in his private office. Each vial was labeled with a number, a date, and a single word written in neat, deliberate handwriting.
Fear.
Faith.
Affection.
Restraint.
He had reached a conclusion years earlier: personality was not fixed in tissue alone. It flowed. It could be diluted, transferred, even replaced.
At night, when the hospital was quiet, Dr. Owusu injected himself. The effects were remarkable. His memory sharpened. His thinking accelerated. He became calm in situations that once would have unsettled him. Fear no longer slowed his decisions. Sympathy became optional. His reputation grew. Patients spoke in hushed tones of not feeling right after surgery. Some claimed parts of their memories were gone. Others said they felt hollow, like something had been quietly drained away.
Administration dismissed the complaints. Dr. Nathaniel reviewed the cases personally and found no physical abnormalities. He refined his extraction process. Smaller doses. Better timing. Then came the errors. He began experiencing emotions without cause. Sudden grief in the middle of routine tasks. Waves of affection for strangers. Once, he found himself crying in his office, hands shaking, unable to explain why. He checked the vials. Some were mislabeled. Worse, he had mixed samples.
Dr. Nathaniel no longer knew which emotions belonged to him. His reflection seemed unfamiliar, his voice occasionally sounding borrowed. He missed people he had never met. He felt shame without understanding its origin. The woman in Ward C unsettled him most. Her surgery had been routine. Recovery uneventful. When Dr. Owusu came to check on her, she looked directly into his eyes and said, calmly,
“You took something.”
He forced a smile.
“You’re healing well. That’s what matters.”
“My knowing,”
She replied.
“You took my knowing. But you left the rest.”
Her gaze followed him until he left the room. That night, Dr. Owusu dreamed for the first time in months. Patients stood around him, each connected by clear tubes leading into his spine. They were alive. Silent. Watching. He woke drenched in sweat. The next day, he scheduled a procedure no one else knew about. His own.
Late at night, alone in the operating theater, he prepared carefully. The mirror was positioned so he could see his hands. His breathing was steady. He had done this hundreds of times. The catheter slid in smoothly. As the fluid drained, something shifted. Fear returned first. Raw and overwhelming. Then regret. Then confusion. He tried to stop, but his hands no longer responded the way they once had. He didn’t know what he was removing. Morning staff found Dr. Nathaniel seated upright on the operating table, eyes open, breathing steadily. Alive. Responsive to instructions. Able to speak. But empty.
He answered questions without emotion. He followed commands without hesitation. He showed no recognition of his own name. Scans showed nothing wrong. The hospital released a brief statement:
“Dr. Nathaniel Owusu has taken an indefinite medical leave.”
Sometimes, patients claim that at night a man in a white coat walks the wards, pausing beside beds, studying faces carefully, as if deciding what can be spared.
