2:
The moment the oxygen tube came free, every machine wired to Thomas started to flash and shriek.
All of them warned Thomas and me that the body on the bed was fading fast. The heart monitor most of all — the line growing more erratic by the second, on the verge of going flat.
This.
It looked so much like the day I couldn't scrape together the money for surgery and could only sit there crying, keeping watch over Grandma.
It finally sank in for Thomas.
I wasn't joking at all. I really did want him dead.
So he froze for a few seconds, then began to scream, pounding on the closed door of the room, shouting for help.
Too bad heaven had played a fatal joke on him.
Floating there in the air, he was visible only to me, and his screaming could be heard only by me.
There was nothing for it. He had to come back to me.
*Serena, don't lose your mind. Put it back in, right now, get a doctor, now!*
*Your grandmother and our child dying was just an accident. But what you're doing to me right now is wrong. This is murder.*
*Or do you want to die together with me?*
*I'm begging you, put it back. The moment I wake up, I swear I won't hold any of this against you. We'll go back to how we were.*
I smiled.
Back to how we were? A hundred dollars per like?
"No need for that anymore."
"In your heart I stopped being your wife a long time ago. But legally, I'm still your closest relative."
As I spoke, I picked up the withdrawal-of-treatment form from the corner of the table and gave it a little wave.
"Which means I can sign to withdraw treatment. And I can pull your oxygen tube myself, all perfectly reasonable, legal, and by the book, and send you off to apologize to my grandmother and my child."
"And I even played fair. I waited more than ten minutes, and only pulled the tube after I saw the like."
"I learned all of this from you. Isn't that right?"
3:
Thomas had nothing to say.
Because I hadn't gotten a single thing wrong.
Ever since his childhood sweetheart Kitty came back from abroad and latched onto him, everything between us changed.
He listened to Kitty's poison and grew colder to me by the day.
To keep Kitty happy, he froze every asset in my name and had me blacklisted across the industry so I couldn't take any work, leaving me to live with my hand held out for money.
And even that wasn't enough for them. When I asked for my allowance, they made me write down the reason and hold it up in front of me, then they'd photograph how pathetic I looked and post it on social media.
A hundred dollars per like.
It was those likes, one by one, that stripped everything away from me.
Thomas must have realized this too, realized I was truly capable of letting him die.
So he dropped to his knees in front of me.
*I really don't want to die.*
I stood, looking down at Thomas.
"You don't want to die? And my grandmother, my child, they wanted to die?"
Thomas started to apologize, weeping as he spoke.
*I know I was wrong. But please, for the sake of what we used to have, give me a chance to make it right.*
*When I wake up I'll treat you well. I'll send my mother and Kitty both away, I'll never let them bully you again.*
*And if you've given up on me completely and want a divorce, I'll agree to that too. We'll split everything down the middle, part on good terms. All right?*
I smiled.
"I did think about divorce before. But now I think being a widow beats being divorced."
"You never wrote a will anyway. Your estate, I'd get three quarters of it. Isn't that a lot better than splitting it down the middle?"
Thomas began to kowtow. Strange as it was, he couldn't touch anything, yet the kowtowing looked exactly real. The skin of his forehead reddened before my eyes, turned purple, and finally broke into blood.
But I felt no softening. I only watched the heart monitor start to flatten into a single line.
And then, at that last critical moment.
The door opened. A hand snatched the oxygen tube out of mine and shoved it straight back in.
