Chapter 3

"Bed three is hemorrhaging! Get the defibrillator ready!"

"Gauze! I need gauze, now!"

I was drenched in blood. Four straight hours of surgery, and my hands had gone completely numb.

That was when the hospital's old annex — a building that had already been flagged for structural problems years ago — started to shake violently under the aftershocks from the explosion.

"Warning! The annex has sustained critical structural damage. Evacuate immediately!" The alarm blared through the speakers, shrill and deafening.

I was about to wheel a critically injured child toward the exit when I spotted Lily huddled in the corner of the nearby pharmacy, trembling like a leaf, not lifting a finger for a single patient.

"Lily! Get over here and help me push!" I yelled.

Instead of coming, she let out a scream and bolted for the door. In her panic to save her own skin, she slammed into a tall rack of oxygen tanks stacked beside the wall.

The heavy steel cylinders toppled like dominoes, crashing straight into the load-bearing column — the one thing still holding this section together.

BOOM.

The ceiling came down.

A massive slab of concrete laced with rebar dropped straight toward me and the hospital bed.

In that split second, I threw every ounce of strength I had into shoving the bed out of the way.

Then the pain hit, and it swallowed everything.

Both my legs were pinned under hundreds of pounds of concrete. Blood soaked through my white coat in an instant. I could hear my own bones shattering, clear as a gunshot.

A scream tore out of me. Cold sweat drenched my entire body.

And Lily — the one who'd knocked over the tanks — had only scraped her shin on some flying debris while running. She'd landed less than ten feet from me, safe and barely touched.

Thick smoke rolled across the floor. Flames licked up from every direction.

I lay face down, the agony in my legs drilling all the way to my skull. My vision was going dark at the edges.

That old familiar feeling from my last life — helpless, abandoned, left to die alone on that basement floor — came crashing back.

Was this really how it ended? A second chance at life, and I still couldn't escape dying like this?

"Help me... somebody help me..." Lily was crying nearby, her voice loud and strong — not exactly the sound of someone in real danger.

Then a familiar figure burst through the smoke.

Ryan.

He was wearing protective gear, scanning the wreckage, face tight with panic.

"Ryan..." I called out, barely a whisper, and reached toward him with a blood-soaked hand.

He saw me. He saw my legs — crushed and mangled beneath the slab, blood pooling around me in a widening ring.

For one second, shock flashed across his face. Just one second.

Then his eyes drifted to Lily, who was sobbing her heart out beside me.

"Ryan! It hurts so bad, I'm bleeding, I'm so scared..." Lily stretched out her leg — the one with nothing but a scrape — and cried like the world was ending.

Ryan's feet stopped.

He looked at me — pinned under a concrete slab, blood still pouring from my legs. Then he looked at Lily.

Time froze.

"Ryan... save me... my legs are broken..." Every word felt like it was being ripped out of me. The pain was beyond anything I thought a body could feel.

All he had to do was call the firefighters over. All he had to do was help pry the slab off me. I still had a chance.

But he walked past me.

He stepped right over me, bent down, and scooped Lily up into his arms.

"Ryan! What are you doing?!" My eyes went wide.

He couldn't even meet my gaze. Guilt was written all over his face, but it didn't stop him from shouting over his shoulder: "Chloe, just hold on a little longer! The firefighters are right behind me, they'll dig you out! Lily has asthma — the smoke is too much for her. And she bruises easily. If her leg scars, how is she supposed to — she can't — just hold on!"

Bruises easily. Afraid of scarring.

My bones were ground to dust. I was bleeding out on a concrete floor. And he was standing there telling me that woman bruises easily?

"So my life — and our baby's life — are worth less than a scar on her leg?"

I stared at him. Tears ran down from the corners of my eyes, mixing with the blood caked on my face.

"Stop being dramatic! You're pinned down — I can't exactly carry you and the slab out of here. I'm taking Lily first!"

And just like that, he turned and carried her out of the collapsing building without a backward glance.

Watching his back disappear into the smoke, I laughed.

The laugh tasted like blood.

Pain. God, the pain.

The agony in my legs hadn't let up for a second, and now a different kind of pain bloomed low in my abdomen. I felt warmth spreading between my thighs.

I'm a doctor. I knew exactly what that meant.

My baby was gone.

I wasn't even sure if that counted as a tragedy, or a mercy.

I'd thrown away everything for this man. Turned my back on my family. Called off the engagement they'd arranged for me. Wasted the best years of my life rotting in this dead-end town.

And in return, he left me to die — for a woman with a scraped knee.

Consciousness was slipping. The firelight around me flickered in and out, dimmer each time.

I wasn't angry anymore. I was just sick to my stomach.

"Over here! There's still someone trapped!"

A rush of footsteps, and the hospital's head nurse — a tough old woman who'd been here longer than anyone — charged in with a group of firefighters close behind.

When she saw me lying in a pool of my own blood, and then caught sight of Ryan carrying Lily away in the distance, her eyes went red. She pointed at his retreating back and let loose.

"Ryan! Are you even human?! Chloe is half dead and you carry out the girl with a scratch? You'll rot in hell for this!"

Ryan seemed to hear her. He froze mid-step, half turning as if to argue.

But before he could open his mouth, a deafening roar erupted above the hospital.

Three helicopters tore through the clouds and touched down in the plaza out front.

Right behind them, a convoy of black sedans screeched to a halt outside the wreckage.

The doors swung open, and dozens of men in black suits poured out, sprinting toward the ruins.