Chapter 6

The air in the manor seemed to freeze solid after that night. The departure of the guests was like a silent retreat, leaving the empty main building to me. The blizzard raged on, sealing the town off entirely. I sat in the shadows of the study, watching the pine branches bowed low by the snow, that suffocating sensation never fading. I didn’t cry, nor did I feel anger; I only felt that the core structure supporting me had been stripped away along with Emma’s departure.

When the landline on the desk rang, it emitted that sharp, heart-wrenching frequency.

"Dr. Noah, this is Mike from the ER," the voice on the other end was nearly swallowed by the chaos in the background—sirens, shouts, the hasty footsteps of medical staff. "There’s been a massive multi-car pileup on the highway. We have multiple critical patients already in the ER. One driver has a guardrail impaling his chest; he’s already developing hemopericardium."

My hand on the receiver was as steady as rock. "Prep the OR. I’ll be there in ten minutes."

"But Noah, the butler said you…" Mike’s voice hesitated. He knew what had happened at the manor. "Don’t you need to rest? Your own health…"

"Precisely because I just went through that," I cut him off, my voice chillingly calm, "I need to confirm if I am still the Noah Collins who can snatch lives back from the reaper."

I didn’t change out of the dark sweater I was wearing; I threw on my field jacket and rushed into the blizzard.

The OR lights were always brighter than daylight. The moment I donned the sterile gown, that long-lost sense of controlling fate returned to my fingertips. The patient lay before me, heart monitor rhythmically pulsing. I was the conductor of this machine; as long as I held the knife, Death had to stand at bay.

But mid-suture, a familiar sharp pain erupted suddenly from my left chest.

It didn't feel like a needle prick; it felt like a jagged, rusty steel knife being driven deep into my ventricle. I frowned slightly, and a brief, white double-vision blurred my field of view.

"Dr. Noah?" The nurse beside me noticed my pause. She habitually glanced at the monitor—it was emitting a low-frequency, rapid alarm.

I felt that acidic, oxygen-deprived heat rapidly crawling up my spine. I stared at the wound and commanded in a steady voice: "The patient is feeling nervous from the alarm. Turn the monitor volume to its lowest."

"But, your heart rate..."

"I said, turn it to its lowest," I repeated, leaving no room for argument.

The surgery was finally a success. I watched the patient take their first breath after coming to, a surge of accomplishment that felt utterly absurd in that moment—I had saved him, but I had failed to save the Noah Collins who was supposed to spend the rest of his life by her side.

I walked out of the operating room. The wide hospital corridor looked desolate and bleak. I walked, recording the review of the surgery in my notebook—the depth of the final stitch, the time the tourniquet was removed.

When I reached the middle of the hall, just as the motion-sensor light was about to kill itself, that intense pain returned. It was no longer a stab; it was a tsunami that engulfed me.

This is definitely ventricular arrhythmia. My brain clinical diagnosis provided the answer with terrifying clarity.

My vision began to collapse in large swathes. The bright white walls were covered in a layer of gray mist. My legs felt like lead; my knees buckled, and I crashed hard onto the marble floor. The notebook slipped from my hands, sliding forward and leaving a trail on the white floor where my half-written words now looked horribly blurred.

I struggled to reach for the defibrillator on the crash cart. As long as I could hit that button, as long as I could shock my heart, it would regain its rhythm, and I would live.

However, my hands stopped just a few centimeters from that critical button.

I lay on the cold hospital floor, the overhead sensor light killing itself completely because of my lack of movement, plunging everything into dead silence.

In this world, there is no greater irony than a heart surgeon lying in a hospital corridor, watching his own vital signs slide toward death, unable to perform even a single self-defibrillation.

I could feel the last rhythm of my heart—like the second hand of an old clock—thumping once, twice, followed by a sequence of chaotic, frantic tremors.

"What a pity," I thought in my final moment, "that this time, I’m lying here all alone."

No Emma, no wedding, no legal framework I needed to tidy up.

My consciousness sank into the cold, and the ECG line finally stretched into a straight, eternal, inanimate horizontal line in the darkness.