“Next dressing,” the nurse called without looking up.

The man who entered was unusually tall. Dust clung to his feet. His clothes were clean but strangely out of time—a coarse cotton wrap, a faded shawl over one shoulder, nothing that belonged to the city outside. He looked no older than twenty-five, yet his face carried a fatigue that seemed centuries old.

He sat on the metal stool.

The doctor gently unwound the stained bandage from his forehead. Fresh blood had seeped through the cloth.

“This is deep,” the doctor murmured. “How long has it been there?”

The man did not answer immediately.

“Are you taking any medicines? Antibiotics? Painkillers?”

A slight shake of the head.

“You seem new here. From a village?”

A nod.

The doctor sighed and reached for the dressing tray. Outside, the casualty ward buzzed with voices, stretcher wheels, and hurried footsteps.

“Sorry you had to wait so long,” he said while cleaning the wound. “A clash broke out nearby. Too many injured people came in together.”

The man raised his eyes.

“Caste issue,” the doctor added quietly. “A woman drew water from the wrong well. She didn’t even know it belonged to another community. By evening the whole village was fighting.”

For a moment the doctor stopped speaking. The antiseptic stung sharply, but the man did not flinch.

A ward assistant rushed in. “Sir, casualty case!”

A pregnant woman was being wheeled past the door, one hand pressed against her abdomen. Her brother walked beside her, breathless.

“She was under too much stress at her husband’s house,” he said to the nurse. “Dowry problems… they keep troubling her. She started having severe pain.”

The doctor folded the fresh bandage across the man’s forehead and hurried out.

The man remained seated for a few seconds, the prescription slip trembling lightly between his fingers. He listened to the fading footsteps, the crying child in the corridor, the angry voices from the casualty desk.

Then he stood up and walked slowly toward the hospital entrance.

Outside, evening had begun to gather over the government hospital. He looked at the darkening sky and touched the bandage on his forehead.

“Nothing changes,” he whispered. “Only the yugas learn new names.”

He lowered his hand. The bandage was warm again.

For a long moment he stood there, as if listening for a distant battlefield that refused to fall silent.

Then he walked into the crowd, carrying a wound that still remembered Kurukshetra.