Dr. Samantha Tulla had spent the last twelve years building a life defined by precision and control. As an internal medicine consultant at a busy tertiary hospital in the city, she managed complex cases—diabetic ketoacidosis at 3 a.m., puzzling fevers of unknown origin, end-stage heart failure patients who still cracked jokes. Her long, thick black hair was always pulled into a neat low bun or ponytail, tucked under a surgical cap when needed, never a strand out of place. Colleagues joked that her hair was the only thing more disciplined than her differential diagnoses.
It started subtly, almost insultingly ordinary. A small coin-sized patch above her right temple appeared one monsoon season. She dismissed it as stress—residency flashbacks, endless paperwork, the quiet grief of losing two patients in one week. She prescribed herself minoxidil from the hospital pharmacy sample drawer and moved on.
Six months later there were three patches. Then five. The dermatologist colleague she trusted ran the biopsy herself.
“Alopecia areata, progressing to totalis. The follicles are still there… for now. But it’s aggressive.”
Samantha listened with the same calm face she used when delivering bad news to families. Inside, something cracked. She was thirty-eight, unmarried by choice, child-free by choice, and suddenly the one thing she had never questioned—her appearance—was being rewritten without her consent.
She didn’t tell many people. Not her parents in Hyderabad, who still sent photos of “suitable boys.” Not the junior residents who idolized her sharp mind and unflappable demeanor. Only her older sister Priya knew, and even then Samantha downplayed it. “It’s just hair. I’ll manage.”
But managing became exhausting. Concealers smudged under N95 masks. Wigs felt like wearing someone else’s scalp during twelve-hour rounds. Headscarves slipped when she bent over to auscultate lungs. One morning she caught her reflection in the stainless-steel elevator door—patchy, uneven, defeated—and decided she was done hiding.
She chose a Saturday evening, her one predictable off-day. No dramatic buildup. She texted Priya:
“Come over. Bring the clippers you used on your boys last summer.”
Priya arrived with a small black travel case, eyes already red. Samantha was in her usual home uniform: faded blue kurti, leggings, no makeup. The living room smelled faintly of coffee and the jasmine plant she never remembered to water.
She sat on a dining chair dragged to the centre of the room, an old bedsheet draped around her shoulders like a cape. Priya plugged in the clippers—cheap, buzzing things meant for children’s summer cuts.
“You don’t have to do this,” Priya said quietly.
“I know. That’s why I’m doing it.”
The first pass was at guard #2. A soft black curtain fell across Samantha’s lap. She watched it without blinking. Priya worked in careful sections—back first, then sides, crown last. The vibration traveled straight through Samantha’s skull, intimate and strange.
When the guard came off completely and Priya switched to the bare foil shaver, the sound sharpened. Skin met metal. Cool air rushed in where warmth had always been. Samantha closed her eyes and catalogued the sensations the way she catalogued symptoms: novel, mildly alarming, not dangerous.
Priya finished with a warm towel and a dab of aftershave balm she’d bought on the way—“for the sting,” she explained. Then she stepped back.
Samantha stood and walked to the full-length mirror in the hallway.
The woman looking back had larger eyes than she remembered, sharper cheekbones, a small crescent scar on her forehead from a childhood fall she’d forgotten about. Her scalp was smooth, even, the color of light sandalwood under the tube light. No patches. No pretense. Just her.
She ran her palm over the crown—slow, deliberate. It felt vulnerable and powerful at once.
Priya started crying then, soft hiccupping sobs. “You look… fierce.”
Samantha gave a small laugh—the first real one in weeks. “I look like someone who just won an argument with her own body.”
On Monday she walked into the hospital without a scarf, without apology. White coat, stethoscope, ID badge clipped neatly. The first junior resident froze mid-sentence. A nurse did a double-take. By afternoon, whispers had turned into quiet questions in the tea room.
One of the oncology fellows finally asked outright during lunch: “Ma’am… is everything okay?”
Samantha set her coffee down. “Alopecia totalis. Autoimmune. Not cancer, not contagious, not going anywhere soon. Any other differentials you want to rule out?”
A beat of silence. Then the table erupted in gentle laughter—the kind reserved for someone who still owned the room.
Over the next weeks, something shifted. A patient with newly diagnosed lupus asked shyly if Samantha ever felt “less” without hair. Samantha answered honestly: “Some days. But then I remember I’m still the one writing your discharge summary.”
A young woman with chemotherapy-induced alopecia stopped avoiding eye contact during rounds.
“You look strong,” she told Samantha once.
“So do you,” Samantha replied.
She never grew it back long. Every few weeks Priya came over with the clippers, and they turned it into a ritual—coffee, old Bollywood songs, no tears anymore. Samantha bought better clippers, learned to do the nape herself. She started wearing small silver hoop earrings again, the ones she hadn’t touched since residency.
One day, filling out a routine health form, she paused at the question: “Any chronic conditions?”
She wrote in neat block letters:
Alopecia totalis. Managed. No functional limitation.
And underneath, in smaller script only she would see:
Hair does not diagnose. I do.
(End)