Chapter 5 The Second Death

The silence inside the ward was so deep it almost felt alive.

Donald sat motionless by the hospital bed, elbows on his knees, his tired hands clasped loosely together. He didn't know how long he had been sitting there. Minutes blurred into hours; hours into something uncountable. The clock ticked somewhere behind him, steady. Each second seemed to stretch into eternity.

Nurses came and went - checking monitors, whispering updates he barely heard. Their words drifted around him like distant echoes, meaningless against the quiet dread that sat on his chest.

He wasn't waiting for words. Words were useless now.

He was waiting for movement - for a sign that life still lingered inside her.

Kimberly lay still. Too still.

Her face,hidden beneath the bandages, her chest rising only in the faintest rhythm. Donald's heart clenched every time the machine beeped.

He leaned forward slightly.

Then - it happened.

A faint flutter.

Her lashes trembled, brushing against her cheeks like the wings of a moth trapped behind glass. Donald froze, not daring to breathe. Then her lips parted, dry and cracked, and a whisper barely louder than air escaped.

"Where... where am I?"

His breath caught. Relief crashed through him so hard his chair creaked as he lurched forward. "You're in the hospital," he said quickly, voice trembling with hope and exhaustion. "You were in an accident... but you're safe now.

For a fleeting second, calm settled over her face.

Her breathing steadied - shallow but even. Her head shifted slightly against the pillow, eyes half-lidded and unfocused.

Then the calm broke.

Her lashes lifted again, revealing the confusion swimming in her gaze. Then, slowly, that confusion sharpened into something else - memory.

And memory came like a blade.

Her bridal shower party.

The text message.

Summer.

Alexander.

The betrayal.

The shattered glass.

The scream.

The crash.

Her heartbeat stumbled, her chest rose sharply as panic hit her full force. "No..." she whispered, voice trembling. "No, that can't be real..."

Donald's throat tightened. He started to speak, but stopped - she wasn't looking at him. She was somewhere else, reliving what had broken her.

Her hand moved, trembling, hesitant until her fingers brushed her face. The bandages.

Her breath caught. The texture was wrong - too tight, too rough. She traced it again, slower this time, fingertips grazing over swelling, ridges, stitches.

Her skin wasn't smooth anymore.

Her fingers froze.

Her breath hitched sharply.

"What... what happened to me?" she whispered, her voice paper-thin.

Donald hesitated. His lips parted, but no sound came out. The pity in his eyes said everything his voice couldn't.

The truth didn't need words. It sat between them, cold and unbearable.

Kimberly's mind filled the silence for him. She saw herself or rather, the version of herself that used to exist.Her reflection in her mind shattered into something unrecognizable. The girl who had always been plain but whole was now marred and disfigured.

Her reflection shattered in her mind-monstrous.

"No... no, no..." Her voice cracked as the words fell apart in her throat. "My face! What happened to my face?"

Her hands shot up again, clawing at the bandages, panic flooding every nerve. "How can I live like this?!" she cried, her voice rising with each word. "How can I face anyone?! How can I-"

"Miss" Donald's voice broke as he caught her wrists, holding her gently but firmly. "Hush-please. You're alive. That's what matters now. Scars can heal. Doctors can fix them. I'll find the best surgeon, the best care,anything you need. You'll be yourself again, you'll see."

But she wasn't listening.

The words couldn't touch her.

Her breathing turned frantic, uneven. Her chest heaved as panic swallowed reason whole.

Images of Summer's perfect smile that smug, poisonous smile flashed behind her eyelids. Then Alexander's haunted eyes, the same eyes that once looked at her like she was his world... before he destroyed it.

She felt everything at once. The betrayal. The humiliation. The crash.

And the unbearable truth that even if she lived, the world would never see her the same again.

"I can't live like this!" she screamed, voice raw and trembling. "I can't-!"

Her chest rose sharply; her breaths came in gasps, faster, shorter, desperate.

Donald's heart lurched. He tightened his grip on her shoulders. "Breathe, child! Please-listen to me!"

But she couldn't.

Her eyes rolled back. Her lips trembled. Her body convulsed once... twice... and then went limp.

The monitor screamed.

A piercing, continuous note that tore through the air.

"Code blue!" a nurse shouted as she burst into the room, followed by a rush of doctors. The quiet room erupted into chaos - voices, footsteps, metal clattering, the rhythm of crisis overtaking everything.

Donald stumbled backward, his hands lifted in helpless disbelief. "Help her! Please-don't let her go!" His voice cracked under the weight of years of buried grief.

He had been here before. Years ago. Different hospital, different bed.

His wife. His daughter. Both gone too soon.

"Not again," he whispered, almost to himself. "Not this one."

"Cardiac arrest!" a doctor barked. "Adrenaline-now! Defibrillator-charging! Clear!"

Donald pressed a shaking hand against his chest, as if trying to hold his own heart in place.

"Charging! Clear!"

Kimberly's small body jolted violently under the electric surge. The line on the monitor stayed flat.

"Again!"

Her chest lifted and dropped with another shock. The sound of static and alarms filled the room, tangled with the rising edge of panic.

"Come on, child," Donald whispered hoarsely, barely hearing himself. "You're stronger than this. You hear me? You fight."

But the doctors didn't hear him. They were caught in their own rhythm - commands, compressions, silence, repeat.

Minutes dragged. Each one longer than the last. The air thickened with despair.

Then-movement.

"She's unstable. We're moving her to the theatre now!" a doctor called out sharply.

They lifted her carefully, swift and practiced, machines and tubes following like shadows.

Donald tried to follow, stumbling forward, but a nurse stepped in front of him, blocking his path. "Sir, please, you have to wait here."

"I can't-" His voice broke, soft and small, trembling with defeat. "That's all I ever do. Wait."

The doors swung shut with a hollow thud, sealing him away from the chaos inside.

The corridor went quiet again.

Donald leaned against the wall, shoulders slumped, palms covering his face.

The faint buzz of fluorescent lights hummed above him, cold and indifferent. The world kept moving, as if nothing had happened.

And once again, Kimberly's fragile life hung in the balance.