Standing over the dead body, Rahul cursed the day he had decided to become a Doctor. A Doctor, his father had told him one day, saved lives and on that day itself Rahul had known what his calling in life was.

He had worked hard, and eventually he had managed to fulfil his dream of becoming a doctor. But he hardly knew what was in store for him. Initially he was working in smaller hospitals – hospitals that did not have a lot of facilities. Working in such hospitals was a challenge and Rahul loved challenges.

His reputation had soon spread, and he was in demand at the bigger hospitals – hospitals that had all the facilities, but were short on staff.  Working at such hospitals was a challenge of a different kind, and Rahul was more than ready for the job at hand. 

It was in one such big hospital that Rahul was standing now, next to a dead body. Rahul had just come off a 12-hour shift and was almost ready to go to sleep. As he had cleaned up his shift, he had got a call from the staff nurse telling him that there was a post mortem that needed to be done and all the doctors on shift were busy on emergency duty. 

“Why me?” Rahul had thought as he had put on his gown again. As it is, post mortems were not something he enjoyed. He saw it as a waste of his time. A man was dead, and there was nothing he could do to bring him back to life. 

Suddenly, his mind was filled with the thought.

Why could he not bring a dead man to life? After all, all the parts of the body were lying there; everything that was needed for a man to live his life was right there on the table. So, why should he not try and make the man live again, instead of merely trying to find out how the man had died. 

With this one thought in mind, Rahul removed the cloth that had been placed over the dead body. Their did not seem to be any injury on the body. A perfect specimen, Rahul thought as he looked at the life-less body, trying to think of where to begin the process of giving life to  it. Somewhere deep down within him, he knew that he was trying the impossible, but he was determined to do it.

Rahul started with the usual pumping of the heart. The body felt warm under his hands. After fifteen minutes of heart-pumping, Rahul’s own heart began to beat very fast, and had he not stopped to relax, there was a very good chance that he might have had a heart attack himself.

As he pulled back, he almost jumped with surprise. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing what he was seeing. Was he dreaming, was he tired, or was the chest, that he had pumping not too long ago, actually moving. He looked carefully, and he was sure that it was moving. The movement was very small, very erratic, but it was there.

Rahul started pumping the chest with renewed vigour. In addition, he applied the drip that was lying there to the body. Rahul had begun to hope that he would now achieve the impossible, that he had not wasted his time today, that he had managed to bring back a man from the dead.

Though doctors were called life-givers, how many of them actually gave life to a dead man. At least he did not know anyone who had done that. He would be the first among his peers to bring a dead man back to life.

The more he thought about it, the harder he pumped. There were other things that he could have tried, but the body seemed to respond to his efforts, and don't they say that when one thing is working, there is no need to try another thing.

But, by now, Rahul was getting really tired. He was not sure how long he could go on like this. He stopped and stepped back. The chest still seemed to move, even if it was doing so slowly and erratically. The slow movement seemed to taunt Rahul, challenge him, and Rahul was not one to back off challenges.

He doubled his efforts. It did not matter to Rahul anymore if his breath was coming in fits and starts now. The stinging, pulsating, pain in his arm could not stop his efforts. His brain seemed to have taken over the body, and all it wanted was for the dead man on the table to be brought back to life.

The post mortem was eventually carried out next morning. It was diagnosed that Dr. Rahul had died of a heart attack. What had caused it was not known, but the dead body that Rahul was supposed to have carried out the post mortem on, was found missing.