Chapter 1

"What kind of sick game are you playing?" my husband, Mark, snapped through the phone.

I stared at my heavy plaster cast and said nothing.

In my previous life, distant relatives brought a bag of cash to my clinic, begging me to bump my cousin up the surgery waitlist. I refused.

By morning, the money vanished.

Security footage showed someone in my scrubs, with my exact face, stealing it.

My colleague, Sarah, and my husband accused me of taking the bribe. They destroyed my career. My cousin died waiting.

Driven mad by grief, her parents ran me down with their truck.

After being reborn, seeing the new footage made me finally understand who she was.

——

"Are you deaf? I said get out! The VIP clinic isn't a homeless shelter. You're stinking up the lobby!"

Sarah’s shrill voice violently yanked me from the darkness.

I gasped, my hands instinctively flying to my chest. The agonizing crunch of my ribs snapping beneath the truck's massive tires—it was gone. There was no blood pouring from my mouth, no crushing weight on my spine. My body was completely whole.

I stared blankly at my own trembling hands, then up at the sterile white lights of the reception desk. The digital clock on the wall read October 14th.

My breath caught in my throat. I wasn't dead. I had been dragged back to the exact day the nightmare began. I had been reborn.

Sarah stood there, pinching her nose, glaring at an older couple. They looked entirely out of place, clutching a frayed canvas duffel bag to their chests, refusing to budge.

Then, the man looked past the desk and saw me.

"Chloe!" he called out, his voice cracking with desperate hope.

I froze. Aunt Mary? Uncle John?

Sarah's head whipped toward me, a nasty smirk spreading across her face. "Oh my god. I thought they were junkies wandering in off the street. They're Dr. Hayes's relatives?"

She laughed loudly, making sure the wealthy patients in the waiting area could hear. "Chloe, sweetie, maybe have your... 'guests' wait outside? You know how our clientele can be about maintaining a certain... atmosphere."

"Watch your mouth, Sarah," I shot back, stepping forward.

Sarah raised her hands in mock innocence. "I'm just thinking of the clinic's reputation. We all have standards to uphold here. Well—" she glanced at my aunt and uncle, "—most of us."

My aunt and uncle flinched, shrinking under the stares of the room.

Staring at that heavy canvas bag, a cold dread pooled in my stomach.

In my previous life, humiliated and panicked, I rushed them into my private office. The second the door clicked shut, they unzipped that bag.

Two hundred thousand dollars. In stacks of twenties and fifties.

They had mortgaged their farm and sold organs on the black market to scrape it together. It was a bribe, begging me to move my cousin up the transplant list.

By morning, the money was gone.

When security pulled the tapes, the room went dead silent.

At 2:00 AM, a woman wearing my scrubs, with my exact face, walked right into the ward, grabbed the bag, smiled directly at the camera, and vanished.

The fallout delayed the surgery. It killed my cousin, destroyed my reputation, and ultimately got me murdered.

A violent shudder ripped through me.

Before I knew it, I had physically ushered them into my office. The door clicked shut, cutting off the clinic noise.

"Chloe, please—" Uncle John started crying, his calloused hands reaching for the metal zipper of the canvas bag.

"We know it's a lot to ask," Aunt Mary sobbed, dropping to her knees. "But she won't make it to next week."

His fingers grabbed the zipper pull.

"Wait!"

I lunged across the desk, slamming both my hands down on his wrists, pinning the bag violently against the wood.

They jerked back, staring at me in terror.

I kept my hands clamped over the bag, staring dead into Uncle John's eyes.

"Do not open that bag."