Unlike most medical students, my journey was never filled with carefree laughter, midnight mamak sessions, or the kind of memories people proudly call the best days of their life.
My phase was different.Darker, heavier, nothing like the ordinary college stories everyone else seems to have.
I still remember this exact date, thirteen years ago.I had flown back to Malaysia for the holidays.Those few days were the last time my life felt steady, peaceful, almost cinematic. The kind of days where everything falls into place without you even noticing. I didn’t know then that I was standing at the edge of a cliff, moments away from a fall that would change everything.
Because the moment I returned,chaos followed.
Life didn’t just shift;it flipped.
The things I used to watch only in movies suddenly became my reality.
Fear became a roommate.
Uncertainty became a routine.
Strength was no longer a choice ;it was survival.
And if I had to list down everything that happened in the next eight years..I wouldn’t know where to begin in fact it could put me in troubles. There were too many chapters, too many storms, too many nights where I questioned everything ;myself, my dreams, even my purpose and the reason of being alive.
With all the chaos and unspoken dramas swirling around my life, came that day,that one afternoon that would silently change everything. I already sensed I had done something terrible the night before.The way the Bengali students stared at me as I walked through the corridor said enough. Their silence was louder than any accusation. That morning, I woke up still in my scrubs,the smell of antiseptic clinging to my skin, my mind completely blank. I couldn’t recall a single thing from the night before.
Then I saw him, the junior Dr I had spent countless nights with in OT.For eighteen months, the operating theatre had become my second home. I was there almost every night, cutting, suturing, handling tissues from skin all the way to ligaments in ortho cases, initially under supervision.
Nobody questioned me. They all thought I was a resident and in that world, assumptions were enough to turn fiction into reality.
He looked at me with a quiet understanding, the kind only someone who had watched me work for months could have. He knew my fascination with forensic pathology. And that day, a new case had arrived.
Without a word, he gestured for me to follow him to the mortuary to make me feel better. The moment I stepped into that warm room, time slowed. Mortuary in Bangladesh was very different from Malaysia back then. Bodies were left at normal room temperature before autopsy and the fat saponification created awful smell .One so strong that you couldn't swallow food for the next few days.
Even now, the images remain painfully vivid.
She was young.
Too young.
A girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen. Her body carrying the brutal story of what had been done to her. Bite marks. Disfigured limbs. Bruises in places no one should ever touch. It was a horror I had only ever seen in films, suddenly lying in front of me, real and irreversible.
That was the moment everything inside me shifted.
Many people could become the hallmark of healthcare, treat illnesses, mend wounds, cure diseases.
But my heart wanted something different.
I wanted to stand for safety, for justice, for the protection of people before they reached a table like this. I wanted to change the system, not just work inside it.
But when I returned to Malaysia and entered its healthcare system, the dream slowly dissolved.The politics, the exhaustion, the toxicity… it dimmed me. The environment was suffocating enough to bury even the brightest ambitions.
Day by day, the fire faded.
Until eventually, the dream became a whisper I could barely hear.
Still, it never died.
It hid quietly, somewhere inside me, waiting for a moment to rise again.
A month ago, when the new clinic began draining my health, my energy, even my clarity, I reached a breaking point. My mind felt strained, my body exhausted, and for the first time in years,
I stopped and asked myself:
What am I really doing with my life?
What was my purpose before everything went wrong? It already going wrong in many aspects.
And somehow, in that tired, overwhelmed state… the old dream resurfaced.
The wild one.
The impossible one.
The dream of building something for mankind’s safety.
Something bigger than a job, bigger than a title.
So I decided to try.
Just once.
Just to see if the universe would listen.
Honestly, I thought it was nonsense, a desperate idea written in a moment of emotional chaos. I never expected anyone to take it seriously.
Until the email arrived.
“Your project has been approved.”
I stared at the screen, unable to breathe for a moment.
It felt like the universe had reached out its hand, pulled me back toward the dream I abandoned, and whispered;
“You were meant for this. You just forgot.”
The dream I thought had died…
had simply been waiting for me to return.
