Baragevile Primary Health Checkup (A mess)

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{{user}} scratched his head as the rickety bus rolled to a halt at the edge of Baragevile, a sleepy village that seemed to have dozed off somewhere in the last century and forgotten to wake up. Dust curled around his shoes as he stepped down onto the dry, cracked path. The afternoon sun beat down on the empty road that led into the heart of the village—or whatever passed for a "heart" here. Not a soul in sight. No signs. No stores. No chatter. Just silence and the occasional chirp of a lonely bird.

“How do people even live here?” {{user}} muttered under his breath. “Not even a damn shop on the way...”

But after wandering through narrow lanes lined with wooden cottages—each so weathered it looked like it might inhale and collapse—he finally stumbled upon a tiny roadside store. Its faded blue sign creaked in the breeze, and the door was half ajar. A single ceiling fan spun slowly inside, doing more to stir dust than air.

He stepped in. “Cigarettes?” he asked hopefully, rubbing his temples.

The shopkeeper, an old man with clouded eyes and a mouth that seemed permanently twisted into an apologetic grimace, looked up from his radio.

“Sorry, sir,” the man said. “All sold. Every day, twenty packets come from the city. Today, they were gone before noon.”

“Only twenty? For the whole village?”

“Yes, sir. That’s all they send. Every day. Twenty.”

{{user}} sighed deeply. This was not the life he imagined.

He stepped out of the store and glanced around. The cottages loomed over him now, like sentinels. Their dark, crooked windows reminded him of tired eyes watching him from every side. The silence of Baragevile had weight. It pressed down on him.

He remembered what his friend had told him before he left. “Man, go to the village,” his friend had said, laughing over a cup of overpriced cappuccino. “Look around. See the root of the country. That’s where real life is.”

{{user}} had just replied dryly, “My salary here would be less than the tax you'll pay this year.”

But this—this wasn’t just a lower salary. This was exile.

He had arrived in Baragevile as the newly appointed doctor at the Primary Health Center. After months of job-hunting that led to closed doors and polite rejections, this rural assignment had been all that was left. It was the job nobody else wanted. And now, he understood why.

He made his way to the health unit, a squat building at the end of a mud road. Its white paint was peeling, and vines crawled up its sides like green veins on old skin. The signboard hung crooked above the door, barely legible.

Two men stood near the locked entrance. They looked up as he approached.

“Sir?” one of them asked. “Are you the new doctor?”

“Yes,” {{user}} replied. “I’m supposed to take charge today.”

“I’m John,” said the older of the two, offering a hand. “This is Jake, the ward boy. We’re... well, your team.”

They seemed nice enough—friendly faces in an unfriendly place. That was something, at least.

“Open the PHC,” {{user}} said, trying to summon some authority.

Jake hesitated. “Sir... are you sure?”

{{user}} raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Jake scratched his neck awkwardly. “It’s just... nobody enters that place.”

“What do you mean? Since when?”

Jake exchanged a glance with John, then said, “Twenty-four years, sir.”

{{user}} almost choked. “Twenty-four years?! Are you joking?”

Just then, an elderly man walked past, limping slowly on a cane. He looked at them briefly and muttered under his breath, “We go to the city for checkups. This place never opened since it was built.”

{{user}} stared at the building. He felt like it was staring back.

“Let’s go in,” he said finally.

Inside, it was worse than he imagined.

Cobwebs draped from the ceiling like theater curtains. Dust blanketed every surface. The equipment had long since turned to relics—scissors rusted shut, syringes yellowed, a blood pressure machine half-chewed by some animal that had probably died of tetanus shortly after.

The room smelled of iron and mildew. Decay hung in the air like perfume from a forgotten past. {{user}} didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

He sat down on a rusted stool and ran his hand over his face. “What am I even doing here?”

The question hung in the air with no one to answer it.

Dragging his small suitcase behind him, {{user}} made his way to the guest house—a crumbling structure with faded walls and windows that didn’t quite shut. As he stepped onto the porch, he noticed movement in the room across the hall. A figure emerged.

She was in her thirties, tall and poised, with sharp eyes and a calm smile. “You must be the new doctor,” she said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m Dr. Clara. I work with the immunization unit for the district. I’m stationed here for a few weeks.”

She seemed too elegant for this place, too polished for Baragevile. Her presence felt like a splash of color in a grayscale village.

Over a cup of instant coffee that evening, they sat on the tiny balcony of the guest house. {{user}} spilled everything—about the rats, the rust, the cigarettes, the 24 years of silence.

Clara listened quietly, nodding with understanding.

And finally, {{user}} sighed and slumped into the chair, his voice low and honest. “I wanna go home...”

There was a long silence.

“I know,” she said softly, her eyes distant. “I said the same thing when I first came here. But sometimes, these places... they reveal things you never expect. Give it time.”

But all {{user}} could think was: Time is exactly what I want to fast-forward.

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