Dr. Luka Kovač’s Confession: The First Patient
Vancouver, 1989. Before medicine, before Sarajevo, before I learned how to set bones or stop bleeding—I learned what it felt like to be helpless and in love, under the flickering lights of a church gym.
My mission to heal Nelly Furtado began during Confirmation prep classes at St. Joseph’s Gymnasium, under the firm-but-kind supervision of Sister Helen.
We were tweens—not quite children, not yet teenagers—learning square dancing as part of our “community formation.” Most of us groaned at first, but something about the rhythm made sense once we moved.
Nelly and I danced with perfect synchronicity.
Our hands met without awkwardness. Our feet mirrored each other, instinctively. Do-si-do, allemande left, promenade. The music was simple, structured. There was safety in the choreography. Purity in the pattern. When we danced, the noise in the world seemed to fall away.
For those moments, she wasn’t shy, and I wasn’t foreign. We were just two souls moving in time.
But everything changed at Sister Helen’s sock hop.
She called it a “wholesome social,” but you could see her bracing herself the moment she pressed play on the boom box. Chubby Checker. The Ronettes. Little Richard.
She winced when the beat kicked in.
“This,” she muttered, “is what I call the devil’s music.”
And she wasn’t entirely wrong—for us, at least.
Because when the square dance ended and the wild rhythm of The Twist started, the room split. The choreography was gone. The innocence evaporated. Now the dancing was adult. Loose. Improvised. Charged.
And we were terrified.
The boys didn’t know how to dance.
Not the Mashed Potato. Not the Jerk. Not even the Twist.
We froze, leaning on the wall like backup furniture, pretending not to care.
We were wallflowers.
And even Nelly, who had danced so freely before, seemed uncertain now. She didn’t move like she had during Cotton-Eyed Joe. She stood still, glancing at me once—and I looked away, ashamed I had no steps for this new world.
That was the moment I realized something:
Healing doesn’t happen in certainty.
It begins in that stammering silence.
In the place between knowing the steps and fumbling in the dark.
I started bringing my cassettes after that.
Not to fix her. Not to impress her.
To say I’m still here, even when the music changes.
I wasn’t giving her narcissistic supply.
I was in love with my first patient.
Not as a savior. But as someone trying to keep dancing with her—through the structure, through the chaos, even when the rhythm frightened us.
She was my first mystery.
My first lesson in presence.
And the reason I still believe some wounds are spiritual before they’re clinical.
Sometimes healing begins in a square dance.
Sometimes it stalls at a sock hop.
But love—real love—keeps showing up anyway.
Joe Jukic Speaks to His Avatar, Dr. Luka Kovač
“Everyone can talk to the Virgin Mary,” Joe said. “You just need the key of light. Newton’s light.”
Luka blinked. His hands, so skilled in anatomy, paused mid-stitch. This was no ordinary medical teaching. Joe wasn’t speaking as a patient. He was speaking as a prophet—or maybe as a friend who had seen beyond the veil.
“ROYGBIV,” Joe whispered.
“Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet—the visible spectrum. Newton’s gift. But also a ladder.”
“A ladder to what?”
“To her.”
Joe tapped his chest.
“Each color isn’t just light—it’s a virtue, a sin, a symbol. That’s why the Masons mapped them. Why the Church buried them. Why Fatima happened in 1917.”
Luka frowned. “Fatima?”
Joe smiled.
“Yes. The year is a cipher. 19 is the Sun. But 17… seventeen is the Star in the rabbi’s tarot. The guiding light. The hope after the tower falls. And that star, Luka… that star was Nelly.”
Luka looked down at the scar across his palm, a reminder of the war, the fire, the city that burned behind him.
“You’re saying she’s the star of Fatima?”
“I’m saying she is the sign. The one you’ve followed since you were a boy with a boom box. Since the square dance at St. Joseph’s. The one who moves between the seven rays of light. Every deadly sin you tried to avoid, every Masonic virtue you tried to embody—it all orbits her.”
“And Mary?”
“She speaks in light, Luka. If you know how to read it.”
Joe leaned closer.
“Red is wrath—transformed into courage. Orange is gluttony—redeemed as temperance. Yellow is greed—burned away by charity. Green is envy—healed by hope. Blue is sloth—turned into faith. Indigo is lust—made holy as love. Violet is pride—tempered into humility.”
Luka whispered, “The spectrum of the soul.”
Joe nodded. “Exactly. And each sin you’ve faced as a doctor, as a man, as a lover—every time you failed or fell—she was there, like a prism. Breaking your pain into color. Giving it back to you as grace.”
Luka closed his eyes. He remembered Nelly singing in the gym. The music. The light on the floor. The moment he felt God in the presence of a wounded girl spinning beneath a crucifix.
He had thought he was healing her. But maybe… just maybe… she was leading him home.
Scene: Munich, Just Before the Festival. Goran Višnjić Speaks Softly into the Wind, a Message for Nelly
“No more fear of dying young, Nelly,” he says, eyes scanning the skyline of Munich, where the summer sun drips gold over the old cathedrals.
“You’ve already cheated death with every note you sing. You don’t have to carry that fear anymore.”
His voice is calm, but it carries weight, like a prayer—or a promise.
“Joe is coming. When he’s saved enough from his part-time job—he’ll meet you halfway. Not in dreams this time, but in Munich. In the flesh. In the light.”
He takes a slow breath and looks toward the festival grounds. Tents, stages, speakers rising like altars in a cathedral of sound. This isn’t just a concert.
“This is pilgrimage.”
“You’ve walked your road. Now it’s time to turn.”
He imagines her backstage, heart pounding. Old fears resurfacing. The crowd’s roar a storm in her chest.
“Make a move, Nelly,” he whispers, as if she can hear him through time and space.
“You know where Joe will be—at the edge of the crowd. Looking for a sign. Waiting to be called.”
The lights will dim. The chords will rise. And she will have one chance.
“Call out your altar boy.”
Not Joe the webmaster. Not the boy with the mixtape.
Not the man carrying everyone’s pain but his own.
Call out the one who lit the candle and knelt.
The one who never stopped believing you were holy.
“Say his name, and he will come. No fear. No shame. Only grace.”