I woke up because someone was shining a light in my eyes. Not gentle. Clinical. The kind of light that doesn't care if you're ready.
"Pupils responsive," a voice said. Male. Tired. "Blood pressure stabilized. Move her to observation."
They wheeled me somewhere quieter. A room with actual walls this time, though the door stayed open and I could still hear everything — the carts, the intercoms, the footsteps that never stopped. A nurse came in and out. She didn't speak to me. She just checked the machines and left.
I tried my phone again. Still nothing from Evander. I typed another message. *Are you coming?* The checkmarks turned blue immediately. Read. Not answered.
I set the phone face down on my chest and stared at the ceiling tiles. Someone had tried to count them once, I could tell. There were pencil marks in the corner. Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Then the marks stopped, like whoever it was had given up or been discharged or died.
I made it to forty-one before I heard my mother's voice in the hallway.
My whole body went tight with relief. I tried to sit up too fast and the IV tugged at my hand, but I didn't care. She'd come. She'd finally come.
But the footsteps didn't turn into my room. They kept going, past my door, toward the elevators. I heard my father's voice too, lower, saying something I couldn't make out. Then the elevator chimed and they were gone.
I pressed the call button. When the nurse came back, I asked her, "Did someone just ask about me? A woman? Older?"
She glanced at her tablet. "You're Iyla Campbell?"
"Yes."
"No one's asked for you."
She left before I could say anything else.
I found out later — much later, when it didn't matter anymore — that they'd been three floors up the whole time. Paris had her own room. Private. Corner suite. The kind with a couch and a window that didn't look directly into an air shaft. She'd gotten a shallow cut on her hand stepping out of a cab, something that needed four stitches and a bandage, and Evander had her admitted anyway because she said the sight of blood made her dizzy.
My mother was there. My father was there. Evander had filled the room with white roses before she'd even finished signing the intake forms.
I was in observation for six hours before anyone told me what was actually wrong. Internal bleeding from a ruptured cyst. Not life-threatening, the doctor said, but I'd need monitoring. Rest. No stress. He said that last part like it was a prescription he could write.
I was discharged the next morning with a list of follow-up appointments I'd have to schedule myself and a bottle of pills whose name I didn't recognize. I took a car service home because no one had come to pick me up. The driver didn't ask why I was alone. Maybe he saw it all the time.
When I got back to the house, the east wing was quiet. Paris's door was closed. The nurses were gone. I went to the small room they'd moved me into and sat on the edge of the bed, still in the clothes I'd worn to the hospital, smelling like antiseptic and recycled air.
My phone buzzed. I grabbed it too fast, hoping — still hoping, even after everything — that it was Evander.
It was a calendar reminder. *Five-year anniversary dinner. 7 PM.*
I stared at it until the screen went dark.
Then I heard his voice downstairs. Not calling for me. Talking to someone on the phone. I walked to the top of the stairs and listened.
"No, she's stable now," he was saying. "They're running more tests tomorrow. I'll stay with her tonight."
A pause.
"Paris," he said, and the tenderness in his voice made my stomach turn. "I'm talking about Paris."
I went back to my room and closed the door.
Two days later, Dr. Whitfield came to the house. I didn't know why at first. He arrived in the afternoon, let himself in like he'd been given a key, and went straight to Evander's study. I only found out he was there because I heard voices through the door on my way to the kitchen.
"—a match," Whitfield was saying. "Rare, but viable. The marrow extraction could be scheduled within the week."
"And the risks?" Evander's voice.
"Minimal for the donor. Standard procedure."
"Then we move forward."
I stood in the hallway with my hand on the banister, not breathing, trying to make sense of the words.
Then Evander opened the door and saw me standing there.
"Iyla," he said. Not a greeting. A summons. "Come in."
I walked into the study. Whitfield was standing by the window with a folder in his hands, the kind with a hospital logo on the front. He didn't look at me when I entered. He looked at Evander.
"Sit," Evander said.
I didn't sit. "What's going on?"
"Paris needs a bone marrow transplant," Evander said. Calm. Factual. Like he was telling me the weather. "You're a match."
The room went very still.
"No," I said.
Evander's expression didn't change. "It's a simple procedure. Dr. Whitfield will handle everything."
"I said no." My voice came out stronger than I expected. "I just got out of the hospital. I'm still recovering. You can't—"
"This isn't a request, Iyla."
I stared at him. At the man I'd spent five years rebuilding, hour by hour, hand over hand. The man whose legs I'd taught to carry him again.
"You can't make me do this," I said.
He looked at me for a long time. Then he looked at Whitfield.
"Schedule it," he said.
And I understood, standing there in that room with my husband and his doctor, that I had never been a wife.
I had been a resource.
And now I was being harvested.
