"Stop. The bag is full."
My own raspy voice dragged me out of the dark.
"Sylvia. Open your eyes."
A sharp pinch on my shoulder forced my heavy eyelids apart. Blinding fluorescent light stabbed my retinas. I squeezed my eyes shut, groaning as a dull, throbbing ache pounded against my skull.
"Look at me," a male voice demanded.
I blinked against the harsh glare. A man in a crisp white coat leaned over the bed, a penlight in his hand. He clicked it off and slipped it into his breast pocket.
"I am Doctor Aris," he announced. "You are safe now. You are at City General Hospital."
"Hospital?" I forced the word past my cracked lips. My throat felt like sandpaper.
He held a plastic cup with a bent straw near my mouth. I drank greedily. The cold water hit my empty stomach like a rock.
"A delivery driver found you dumped near our loading dock three hours ago," Dr. Aris explained, checking the digital monitor above my bed. "You were completely unconscious. Barely a pulse."
Dumped. The word rattled around in my empty, aching head.
I tried to sit up. My arms refused to hold my weight. They felt hollow, stripped of muscle and bone. A thick layer of gauze wrapped tightly around the crook of my left elbow. The phantom sensation of a thick needle tearing into my vein flared to life.
"Do not move," Dr. Aris ordered, pressing a firm hand against my right shoulder. "You are incredibly weak."
"Someone..." I swallowed hard, chasing away the metallic taste in my mouth. "Someone tied me to a chair."
"Take your time. Your memory will be fragmented."
"It was dark." I stared at the sterile white ceiling, trying to piece the shattered glass of my memory back together. "A basement. It smelled like wet dirt and old concrete."
"Who put you there?"
"A woman." A flash of perfectly tailored fabric cut through the fog. A silver compact mirror snapping shut. Red lips curving into a cruel smile. "She had a cooler. A red medical cooler."
Dr. Aris frowned, his jaw tightening. "Did she tell you what she was doing?"
"She said I was a universal donor." Panic began to bubble in my chest. I clawed at the thin hospital blanket. "She took my blood. She kept filling these plastic bags."
"Sylvia, listen to me."
"How many bags did she take?" I demanded, my voice rising. The heart monitor beside me began to beep at a faster, frantic pace.
"Calm down," he instructed.
"Tell me!"
Dr. Aris pulled a rolling stool to the edge of the bed and sat down. He folded his hands in his lap. His expression offered no comfort.
"We ran the tests the moment you arrived," he said softly. "You lost nearly half of your body's total blood volume. It is a medical miracle your heart did not stop in that alley."
The room spun. Half.
"Give me a transfusion," I pleaded, extending my unbandaged arm toward him. "Put it back. You have blood banks here."
"We already gave you fluids and plasma to stabilize your pressure," he replied. "But we cannot give you red blood cells."
"Why not?"
"You have an extremely rare O-negative type with a unique antibody mutation," Dr. Aris explained, his tone entirely clinical. "We do not have a match in our system. Not in this entire state."
"So get it from somewhere else!"
"It takes days to source and transport that specific type. You have to rely on your own body to replenish the loss."
I let my arm drop back onto the mattress. Exhaustion threatened to pull me under again. "Then I will rest. I will eat iron. I will recover."
"No, Sylvia." Dr. Aris leaned forward. "You will not."
The absolute certainty in his voice made my stomach drop.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"The sheer volume of the draw sent your system into severe hypovolemic shock," he stated. "Your kidneys took a massive hit. More importantly, the extreme sudden drain severely damaged your bone marrow."
"I do not understand."
"Your body cannot regenerate red blood cells at a normal rate anymore. The factory is broken." He pointed a finger at my chest. "Your immune system is permanently compromised. Your baseline energy will never be the same."
I stared at him. The sterile walls of the room seemed to close in around the bed.
"You are telling me I am crippled."
"I am telling you the reality of your condition," he corrected. "You will survive this incident. But the damage is completely irreversible."
"Fix it," I whispered.
"Medicine has limits." Dr. Aris stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the linoleum tile. "I need you to hear this next part very clearly. It is a matter of life and death."
I remained silent, my nails digging into my palms.
"You must never give blood again," he warned, his eyes locking onto mine. "Not a pint. Not a vial for a charity drive. If you ever lose a significant amount of blood again, your organs will fail. You will die."
Die.
The word hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
I did not cry. I did not scream. Instead, a dry, bitter laugh ripped from my throat. It sounded like cracking glass.
Dr. Aris stepped back, clearly alarmed by my reaction. "Are you in pain?"
"Just the irony," I muttered, shaking my head. "She drained my life to save someone else."
"Who?" he pressed. "Who did this to you?"
"Julian." The name slipped out before I could stop it.
"Julian who?"
I squeezed my eyes shut. *Julian is dying. He was in a massive car wreck.* The woman's voice echoed in my mind again. *I walk in with the cooler, roll up my sleeve, slap a bandage on my arm, and play the hero.*
"Vivian," I gasped, my eyes snapping open. "Her name is Vivian Mercer."
Dr. Aris grabbed a clipboard from the end of the bed and scribbled furiously. "I am calling the police. They have detectives waiting in the lobby."
"Wait." I grabbed his sleeve as he turned to leave. "What time is it?"
"It is eight in the morning."
"Turn on the television."
He gave me a confused look. "Sylvia, you need to save your strength for the detectives."
"Turn it on!" I yelled, surprising both of us with the sheer volume.
Dr. Aris snatched the remote from the bedside table and hit the power button. A local news broadcast flooded the screen.
"Keep the volume low," he instructed, tossing the remote onto my lap. "I will be right back."
He hurried out of the room, the heavy wooden door clicking shut behind him.
I fixed my gaze on the screen. The morning anchor sat behind a sleek glass desk, shuffling a stack of papers.
"Moving on to our top story," the anchor announced. "Billionaire real estate heir Julian Thorne is in stable condition this morning following a horrific multi-car collision last night."
My fingers tightened around the plastic remote.
"Sources confirm Thorne required an emergency transfusion of a highly rare blood type to survive the surgery," the anchor continued.
The screen cut to a live press conference outside a different, far more expensive medical center across town.
A woman stood at a wooden podium, surrounded by flashing cameras. She wore a tailored white suit. Her red lipstick was flawless.
Vivian Mercer.
"I just did what anyone would do," Vivian told the crowd of reporters, gracefully dabbing a fake tear from the corner of her eye. "Julian means everything to me."
The reporters shoved microphones closer to her face.
"When I heard he needed O-negative with the antibody mutation, I did not hesitate," Vivian lied, her voice trembling with manufactured emotion. "I gave him my blood. I would give him my life."
The crowd erupted in applause.
My blood boiled. It was sluggish and thin, but it burned with a sudden, violent fury.
She stole my future. She permanently ruined my body. And now she was playing the selfless saint on national television.
The door to my hospital room swung open. Two detectives walked in, silver badges clipped to their leather belts.
"Sylvia?" the taller detective asked, pulling a notepad from his jacket. "We need to ask you some questions about your assault."
I did not look at him. I raised a trembling finger and pointed directly at the television screen.
"Arrest her," I said.
