One second before I went into shock, Daniel Vance kicked the door in.
He stabilized me himself, then rushed me to the nearest hospital.
My congenital heart disease was something even my own family refused to treat. They said I was bad luck.
But Daniel was willing to help.
When I woke, he was at my bedside, the exhaustion carved plain beneath his eyes.
“Mr. Vance……” My voice was barely there, trying to thank him.
He just held my hand, steady and sincere:
“Sybilla, stay with me. Let me take care of you.”
From that day on, he was my savior and my lover. I gave him everything I had.
I thought I'd finally found a home. A person I could lean on.
It was all a lie.
Every promise, every moment together, was a story he'd carefully constructed to keep my heart alive and healthy.
Only if I stayed alive would my heart stay viable.
Ready to be given to Hope Price at the perfect moment.
Every machine in the operating room was screaming.
Daniel alone was terrifyingly calm.
After the massive transfusions, Hope's vitals stabilized.
The tension drained visibly from his shoulders, and he let out a long breath.
The panic in his eyes eased into a flicker of relief, something almost tender.
He changed his gloves and drew the blanket gently over Hope.
Only then did he turn around to deal with my surgical site. The cleanup.
“Stop the transfusion.” His voice was flat, clinical.
But the alarms didn't stop. They got sharper. Faster.
My blood pressure kept falling. My heart rate kept slowing.
Time stretched thin, every second pulling itself into a century.
A flicker of unease finally reached Daniel.
He frowned and crossed quickly to my table.
He was bending to check my monitors when a shout cut him off:
“Dr. Vance, we have a problem! Dr. Fox's bleeding won't stop!”
The blood welling from my chest drained the color from his face.
“Transfuse her. Now!”
The room dissolved into frantic motion.
But after all of it, my breathing was still fading.
“Dr. Vance, Dr. Fox she seems to have... lost the will to fight.”
The blood they couldn't stop cracked something open in that iron certainty of his.
More air leaving than entering. My oxygen plummeted. The ventilator was useless.
“Keep transfusing! Faster!”
Daniel's breathing turned ragged, his eyes shot through with red.
He leaned down, trembling, his lips close to my ear. “Sybilla, hold on.”
“Didn't you say, after this surgery, we'd try for a baby?”
“When you wake up, we'll travel. Anywhere you want.”
I used to beg him to take me somewhere, anywhere. He always said he was too busy with work.
Yet every few weeks, there he'd be in Hope Price's vacation photos.
Even when the two of them bickered openly in the comments.
“You can't even swim. Stop pretending you love the ocean.”
“Daniel! I smeared a little sand on your face and you're still holding a grudge? Petty!”
Travel……?
Something I'd once wanted so badly, and now, between the stuttering beeps of the heart monitor, the word sounded cheap.
Every nerve in my body was shrieking, the kind of pain that makes you want to die just to make it stop. I wanted to die right there on the table.
If I died, the pain would stop.
If I died, I'd be free of this enormous lie.
But I wasn't willing.
Daniel Vance, maybe I owe you something. But I owe Hope Price nothing.
