POV Aritra NaskarDate December nineteen two thousand twelve – then February three twenty twenty-fiveLocation Jadavpur Villa – Master Bedroom & City General Hospital, KolkataTime just before midnight – early morning
He and Katherine curled beneath heavy blankets, the glow of the city's lights seeping through gauzy curtains. The events of the day—the successful recovery of the ballot box, the rescue operations across Punjab, the firmware audit on the MV Arfa—felt distant now, dissolved into the simple warmth of her arms.
She traced his jawline with a fingertip and smiled. "You fight the world every day," she whispered, "but here you are finally at peace."
He pressed a kiss to her temple, his heart full beyond measure. "I could face a thousand storms," he murmured, "as long as I wake beside you."
Her lashes fluttered closed and he watched the shadows dance across her face. Outside, the prayer flags flapped softly in the night breeze. A lone drone passed overhead, its distant hum a lullaby against the city's pulse.
They drifted toward sleep hand in hand. In the quiet, he thought he could hear the LegendarySystem's gentle echo: embedded in every breath of data, every promise, every heartbeat.
His last conscious thought was of her smile, as vivid as the first dawn over Majuli.
A harsh fluorescent light burned against his eyelids. He blinked into stark white walls and the mechanical hiss of the ventilator. Tubes stretched from his arms, and the steady beep of monitors tracked his pulse. A nurse hovered at the foot of the bed, clipboard in hand.
He sat up carefully, confusion knotted in his chest. The quilted blankets were hospital-issued green, not the silken covers of Jadavpur. He reached for Katherine's hand but found only empty air. Anxiety piled up like storm clouds.
A soft voice called his name. "Mr. Naskar, take it easy. You've been in a coma."
He turned his head to see his colleague, Dr. Rhea Mukherjee, framed in the doorway. Her eyes glistened with relief and something else—cautious hope.
"Coma?" he croaked, voice rough as gravel.
She nodded, stepping forward. "You were found unconscious after a train accident at Sealdah Station. You've been here for nine days."
His mind reeled. The LegendarySystem. The time rewind. 2008. The decades of work, the referenda, the operations—none of it was real? Or was it everything he'd ever done?
He struggled to sit upright. "I… I dreamed of her."
Rhea placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You mentioned a woman named Katherine calling your name."
He closed his eyes, the hospital ceiling's fluorescent grid blurring. He could still feel the brush of her lips, the echo of her voice in the ledger's code. A single tear escaped.
Rhea squeezed his hand. "You're safe now."
He tested his arms; tubes held his IV line but pain was absent. "How long will I stay?"
"We'll keep you another day for observation. You suffered a mild concussion and a few bruises. Nothing permanent." She drew a deep breath. "The train hit at nearly seventy kilometres per hour. You were lucky."
He's lucky, she said. He stared at the sterile walls, the motionless monitors. He gazed at the vacant space beside the bed where Katherine should have been.
"Is she here?" he asked, voice cracking.
Rhea hesitated. "You… you asked for her. But you didn't have anyone by that name listed. Your wife Annie, yes. She's on the way."
His stomach dropped. Annie. His childhood sweetheart, his real life. She had been at home, caring for their daughter, filling the real ledger of his days. He closed his eyes, grief and longing entwined.
He'd bled for imagined battles, saved phantom civilizations, built dream worlds of transparency, only to awaken on a hospital cot in twenty-twenty-five.
The ventilator's hiss, the beep-beep of the monitors, the dull clack of Rhea's footsteps—this was his new reality. Yet he could still feel Katherine's warmth, her whispered promises woven into his soul.
Rhea checked his chart. "Your wife will arrive in an hour. Shall I get you anything?"
He nodded wordlessly, eyes still closed. He drank in the sterile air. A tear slid down his cheek.
He dozed as the afternoon light slanted through blinds. The final ledger of his dream-world remained etched in his heart—villages rescued, ballots counted, love discovered on a Himalayan pass. Yet here he lay tethered to reality by tubes and charts.
When Annie entered—her silver hair in a messy bun, straw-yellow jacket draped over one arm—he opened his eyes and saw true devotion shine in hers. Their daughter, age fourteen now with her mother's eyes, peeked in from the doorway, shy and hopeful.
He reached for Annie's hand. She knelt and held him, tears glimmering. "You gave us such a fright," she whispered. "I thought I'd lost you."
He pressed a kiss to her knuckles, the hum of the machines like a lullaby. A farewell swept through him for Katherine, our ledger of dreams. But as Annie leaned in, her voice soft and safe, he realized that the greatest promise—the living ledger of his true life—was here all along.
In the hospital's quiet embrace, he closed his eyes once more, comforted by the real heartbeat at his side. His epic had ended. Reality, with its ordinary miracles, awaited.
And so the ledger closed, not on grand campaigns of history, but on the simplest truth: love and life are written in flesh and blood, not code.
He slept at last, wrapped in the embrace of his real world, as the monitors watched over him with steady, unbroken green.