"The Wooden Door"

Year: 1868

A thick fog lay over the sleeping streets of the city like a damp blanket. The man, a stark contrast to the filth and decay around him, was dressed in a grey cloak and a hat pulled low over his face. His eyes, weary from the weight of the city, darted around the alley. He placed his hand on the iron handle of his door. The sound of old wood dragging across the stone floor echoed through the dimly lit alley like the moan of a sick old woman. The door creaked open with a soft thud, and immediately, the sharp, foul smell of urine, feces, and piled-up garbage reached his nose.

The alley was narrow and damp; the walls on either side were covered in a film of soot. Drops from the previous night's rain still dripped from the gutters, their rhythm like a deathly metronome slicing through the silence. The man, his heart aching at the sight of their suffering, his empathy profound, slowly stepped toward a wider street.

There, more people moved about—but there was no cheer in their faces. Middle-aged women and men with puffy skin, pale cheeks, and weary eyes passed by him. The sound of dry, harsh, continuous coughing filled the air like the tolling of a funeral bell. His empathy, a thread connecting him to their pain, was all he had to offer, a shared emotion that binds us all in the face of adversity. Some men walked with canes; one dragged a wooden leg across the cobblestones with difficulty, and another limped noticeably on a twisted leg. War had marked their bodies, leaving behind scars and skeletal damage that never fully healed. But not all wounds came from the battle.

Others bore the marks of sheer neglect—children whose hip joints had dislocated at birth and were never treated, now grown into adults who lived with chronic pain and deformity.

Then, there were those struck by illness, most notably poliomyelitis. The polio epidemic had swept through communities with brutal efficiency, targeting the young and leaving many paralyzed in its wake. Some who had survived the acute infection now shuffled forward with metal leg braces and crutches, their muscles wasted from years of disuse or nerve injury. Others had learned to compensate, walking stiffly or dragging one leg behind them, their movements shaped by the damage left behind when the virus attacked the spinal cord. 

A vendor at the corner shouted, selling clothes for 'pus-filled eyes.' Trachoma—the disease of the poor—was rampant, a result of poor sanitation and overcrowding in the city. Suddenly, a piercing scream from a group of children broke the stillness. They ran in terror from a nearby alley, hiding behind their mothers. The fear of contracting diseases was a constant in their lives, a testament to the dire living conditions of the time.

The man slowly turned his head. Yes… he saw him.

A figure cloaked in a tattered robe, his twisted, wounded hands trembling as they hung loosely at his sides. His face, half-swallowed by the shadows of the night, seemed almost melted—an unrecognizable mask of suffering and decay. Leprosy… the dreaded curse that made people turn away in horror, the invisible sentence that condemned a person to exile and despair.

A veiled old woman nearby caught sight of him and let out a sharp cry, her voice trembling with fear and anguish:

— "He's back again! God help us!"

The man inhaled deeply as if something heavy had lodged itself in his throat, a weight almost too painful to bear. His heart tightened, but before he could gather himself, the scene shifted. Not far from where the leprous figure stood, four grim-faced men moved silently through the mist, their shoulders burdened with the weight of a coffin. The air grew thick with the pungent, biting scent of lime mixed with the sharp cleanliness of medical soap—a smell that always marked the passage of death. The men's faces were grim, eyes cast downward as if reluctant to meet the reality they carried.

The coffin was small—no doubt the vessel for a child taken too soon, another victim swallowed by the city's relentless diseases. Whispers floated faintly through the alley, words barely audible beneath the fog:

— "Diphtheria… poor mother still doesn't believe it."

The man's gaze lingered on the coffin for a moment longer, the finality of loss hanging heavy in the night air. Around him, the city continued its slow decay, a place where suffering and death had become as common as the fog that choked the streets.

The wind blew from the north.

Coughs, screams, the rumble of carts, the tolling of the church bell—all blended into one. The man stopped for a moment, his heart heavy with the realization that this city, these alleys, these smells, and sicknesses—they were his home. But nothing was living left in them.

Only motion.

Blind motion through darkness.

His next step was heavier, weighed down by the city's despair, his resignation to the situation palpable. The gas streetlamps were lighting up one by one, but they couldn't fight the city's darkness. His resignation, a mirror to the audience's helplessness in the face of such overwhelming despair, was a heavy burden to bear, a testament to the city's relentless grip on its inhabitants. His next step was heavier, weighed down by the city's despair. The gas streetlamps were lighting up one by one, but they couldn't fight the city's darkness.

Perhaps no light ever would in this city where darkness reigned supreme, a fact the man couldn't help but recognize. His recognition of the city's darkness, a stark reminder of the weight of the city's despair, was a burden he carried with him —a heavy shroud that enveloped the city and its inhabitants —a realization that weighs heavily on us all in the face of such overwhelming despair.

The man stepped onto a broader street in the silence of the midnight hour. Here, the light of the gas lanterns—though flickering and yellow—was still better than the absolute darkness of the back alleys. From across the street came the hoarse laughter of a woman, a sound clearly mixed with a hollow ring and a chronic weariness. She was one of the district's aging prostitutes. Her face, hidden beneath layers of paint and the grey dust of the city, betrayed signs to any observant passerby: the persistent redness in her eyes, the subtle tremble in her hands.

The man turned his gaze away. He overheard a passerby mutter:

"She's got the clap… like most of them."

Gonorrhea, with its yellow discharge and agonizing burning was a disease of poverty and neglect here. Women burned with pain when they urinated, men remained silent out of shame, and the children… some were born with eyes already full of pus.

Congenital gonorrhea:

a gift no mother ever wanted to give.

The man continued on. He passed by a crypt-like space where several figures were smoking opium. One of them, with a manic grin, murmured something under his breath. His eyes were sunken, his skin blotched with grey patches. On his neck and lower legs, visible sores were visible.

The man paused.

— Syphilis.

Those lesions, that vacant stare, that absent soul… all too familiar.

The man knew well how syphilis began: just a simple ulcer on the genitals. But left untreated, that minor wound carved paths through the body—to the skin, to the bones, to the brain. Night fevers, silver-colored rashes on the palms, deep bone pain in the dark hours… and eventually, paralysis, dementia, and the slow death of the mind. He had seen how young men—poets and musicians—gradually lost their sanity. One of them, just last year, had hanged himself with a rope. His family claimed he was "depressed," but everyone knew:

neurosyphilis was as merciless as it was silent.

A new sound caught his attention—a wheezing, breathless moan. Further ahead, an old man sat on a bench, his chest heaving with each cough. A dry, relentless cough, thick with struggle and the residue of sticky mucus. He is suffering and he was not alone; it was a reflection of the community's fight against diseases that were a constant threat. 

A young woman passing by sighed and said:

— "Whooping cough again… God help him."

Whooping cough, once the terror of children, now also plagues the elderly. The man recalled the image of a child who had died in his mother's arms just days ago, his lips blue. Each cough stole the breath from his lungs. A broken whistle of a sound, then choking. The children of the district were dying, one by one. Phlegm, suffocation, fever. Their fathers weren't to blame. There was no medicine. No vaccine.

Only prayers and cloths soaked in vinegar—if the mothers, burdened by grief and toil, even remembered the cloths.

The man leaned against a wall. The air hung heavy with the smell of dampness, foul liquor, blood rot, and cold sweat. The city was collapsing. Not with the sound of explosions or the blaze of fire but with the quiet, unceasing rhythm of coughs, whispers, and footsteps headed toward graves.

Who is really the man at the center of this story?

"The Healer Without a Cure"

He was maybe a doctor or maybe a healer. Or at least, he used to be. Now, he was something between an examiner of the living dead and a silent witness to the city's slow demise. His name could still be read on the weathered bronze plaque above the stairs:

"Dr. S. Carvel – Physician of Internal Diseases."

But for years, no one had called him by that title with respect. If a patient still had the strength to walk, they went to another doctor. And if they didn't… they came to Dr. Carvel. Dr. Carvel lived in the city's poorest district, near the abandoned bakery and the alley of the "Infected." That night, when he opened his door and stepped into the foul-smelling alley, the familiar scent of death slipped into his lungs.

Not a smell that made him hold his nose — no.

A smell so familiar that it no longer triggered a reaction. A few hours earlier, a seven-year-old girl had collapsed in his office with a high fever and a howl-like cough. Whooping cough. Her mother had only two coins and a plea that no longer stirred anything in his heart.

The girl had asked: — "Doctor, do I sound like a sparrow?"

And he had simply looked at her. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

A few days earlier, a young man had come in, trembling from the burning pain of urination — yet still in denial. He didn't talk about the disease, only of "a curse passed on by a nameless woman." A simple case of gonorrhea which, if left untreated, would lead to epididymitis and infertility. But penicillin hadn't been discovered yet.

The treatment?

Only silver nitrate and a hopeful prayer. That very morning, a woman had come into the office with a swollen face and cracked skin from pain. A sore in her mouth and red spots on her palms. Second-stage syphilis.

She had asked: — "How long will this damn thing last?"

And the doctor had simply replied: — "If you're lucky… only until death."

Now he walked through the alley, hearing the moans from behind the windows — the voices of women covering their feverish children with damp clothes, the shouts of mothers yelling at drunken fathers, the dragging sound of canes scraping across the wet cobblestones.

In the distance, the church bell rang.

Someone else had died. Maybe another child. Maybe the same little girl who had asked if she sounded like a sparrow. He stopped. Not to pray. Not to reflect. Just because he could no longer walk.

At that moment, something sparked in his mind.

"If a doctor only witnesses death, is he still a doctor? Or merely a chronicler of the dying?"

He had his journals. Hundreds of pages describe symptoms, the course of illnesses, and the stories of mothers and fathers.

But there were no cures left.

No hope either.

And he thought to himself:

"Perhaps the only thing I can do is document this hell. Maybe someday, a century from now, someone will read it… and understand how we died."

He walked back to his clinic. Picked up the inkwell and paper. The sounds of coughing, screaming, and the scratching of a door from the next room filled the air.

But he wrote:

"Tonight, in the year 1868, another little girl died of whooping cough. And I am still alive. Worse yet, I am still a doctor."

Who is really the man at the center of this story?

Main Character: Samuel Carvel Approximate

Age: 50 to 55 Real

Occupation: Former janitor at a public hospital from 1956 to 1974, dismissed after a mysterious incident.

Mental State: Suffers from chronic psychosis with delusions of identity and time displacement.

Past Life: A man lost among memories of illness, the smell of formalin, coughing sounds, and death

The Name He Gave Himself: "Dr. S. Carvel"

Samuel Carvel, a quiet man with a dignified appearance, polishes his shoes every morning, places his leather notebook in his pocket, and leaves his half-ruined home wearing an old felt hat — a home he believes to be the same clinic from his youth. But the truth is darker and more painful.

Samuel was never a doctor.

Years ago, he worked in a public hospital — a soft-spoken janitor tasked with cleaning the infectious disease ward, the rooms of patients with contagious diseases, and sometimes the morgue. He listened — to doctors' conversations, patients' cries, the clacking of typewriters in the administration — and his mind, without him realizing it, recorded everything.

Then something happened.

A little girl died mysteriously in the pediatric ward. Samuel, who had witnessed something, instinctively entered the room, comforted the girl's mother, pretended to be a doctor, and said:

"She doesn't feel any pain anymore…"

The hospital director called it "a dangerous interference by a low-level employee."

He was fired.

But that moment — that straightforward lie — held just enough power to fracture a fragile man from the inside out. From then on, Samuel gradually began to "become" a doctor. He found an old white coat.

A leather bag.

Outdated notes filled with disease symptoms. 

He had remembered everything.

And every night before sleep, he wrote his name next to the title he now believed in:

Dr. S. Carvel.

In his mind, he built another life. Another century.

An imagined era is full of familiar diseases: 

tuberculosis, trachoma, gonorrhea, diphtheria, whooping cough, and syphilis.

Each illness became a metaphor for his own suffering.

Gonorrhea: A sin that can't be cleansed.

Syphilis: The gradual decay of identity.

Whooping cough: A voice that never stops.

Each time he saw a coughing street child, he remembered that little girl. Each time he saw a man shivering with fever, he reminded himself:

"I am a doctor. I must write. I must not let this be forgotten."

But the streets, the people, the city — all moved on, unaware of his delusion.

And Samuel, each night, wrote in his notebook.

And no one ever knew:

He was never a doctor,

Never alive in 1868,

Never someone who truly healed anything.

He was simply a human being, who merged the pain of others with his own, and in a world he imagined, became the doctor he never was, but perhaps, the only one who truly listened.

Who was really the man at the center of this story?

"The Man from the Future"

When the body of S. Carvel was found beside a damp, forgotten alley, a leather notebook lay in his hand. On its cover, in a shaky handwriting, was written:

"Report of the Resistance Epidemic"

Estimated year: 1868?

Or perhaps… 2068?

But something stranger than the man himself lay in the final pages of the notebook — notes about drug-resistant bacteria: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus, cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea, rifampicin-resistant tuberculosis — diseases that, it seemed, no longer responded to treatment, just like in the 19th century.

On one faded page, it read:

"What I see are cities in the future — your time — dying like in the past. Children with whooping cough that should have been prevented by a forgotten vaccine. Men with gonorrhea are untouchable by any antibiotic. Women with tuberculosis that should have ended centuries ago. As if time has broken, and we're spinning in a new circle of death."

The pages that followed resembled a medical report more than the ramblings of a psychotic patient:

precise terminology, sketches of mutated bacteria, and warnings:

"Antibiotics are no longer magic. What was once a medical revolution is now dragging us backward — to a century darker than 1868. Because this time, we think we've been saved… but we haven't."

When the notebook was examined by forensic doctors, it was at first dismissed as a product of delusion. However, an elderly infectious disease specialist invited to the court review fell silent after reading the entries.

He simply said:

"These… these are more accurate than half our current case reports."

Weeks later, an independent medical journal published an article:

"The Notes of a Man Who Wasn't a Doctor — But Saw the Future."

It read:

"Perhaps Samuel Carvel was insane. But what he imagined as a 19th-century hallucination is rapidly becoming our modern reality. In the 21st century, we are beginning to lose battles against bacteria that we once thought we had defeated. Because we overused it. We prescribed without cause. We handed out antibiotics like candy."

And now, what remains is the world Samuel Carvel dreamed of: 

Coughing. Fever. Pain. And death — without cure.

The article concluded:

"Perhaps it's time we listened to the delusions. Because today's delusions may become tomorrow's medical reports."

Written by AmirHossein Mahdavian MD