Chapter 1. Be Grateful

The beeping is what I notice first. Steady. Mechanical. Each tone marks another second I'm still breathing—though I'm not sure why I'm bothering.

My hospital room smells like disinfectant and dying flowers. The bouquet on the windowsill is from Damien, delivered by his assistant three days ago. He hasn't visited. The flowers are wilting, brown edges curling inward like they're trying to escape their own decay. I know the feeling.

"The doctor said it could be any time now," Mother's voice cuts through the haze. She's speaking to someone in the hallway, just outside my door. Her tone is the same one she uses when discussing grocery lists. Practical. Detached.

I try to turn my head toward the sound, but my body feels like it belongs to someone else. The morphine makes everything soft and distant, like I'm watching my life through frosted glass.

"Did he say how long?" That's Father. Always concerned with timelines. Schedules. When things will be finished so he can move on to what's next.

"Hours, maybe less." A pause. "We should call Elena."

Of course. Can't let my sister miss the show.

The irony is so sharp it cuts through the drug-induced fog. My entire life, I've been the supporting character in their story. It seems fitting that even my death is scheduled around Elena's convenience.

Footsteps approach. Multiple sets. They're coming back in.

I force my eyes open—just slits, but enough to see them arrange themselves around my bed like pallbearers who've arrived early. Mother stands to my right, her handbag clutched against her chest like a shield. Father is at the foot of the bed, hands in his pockets, checking his watch. And Elena—beautiful, perfect Elena—leans against the wall by the window, scrolling through her phone.

No one is looking at me.

"Is she awake?" Elena asks without glancing up from her screen.

Mother leans closer, peering at my face. I can smell her perfume—the expensive one I bought her last Christmas with money I didn't have. "I don't think so."

I am, I want to say. I'm right here. But my tongue is too heavy, my throat too dry. The words die before they reach my lips.

"Good," Elena says, thumbs still flying across her phone. "This is already depressing enough."

Something in my chest cracks. Not my heart—that broke years ago. This is something else. The last fragile thread of hope I didn't know I was still holding.

"Don't be cruel," Mother says, but there's no force behind it. There never is when it comes to Elena.

"I'm not being cruel, I'm being honest." Elena finally looks up, her eyes landing on me with the same expression she'd give a piece of furniture she's considering throwing away. "She knows we're only here because it would look bad if we weren't."

The heart monitor beeps faster. My body's betrayal—even now, their words can still hurt me.

Father clears his throat. "Elena, that's enough."

"Why? She can't hear me." Elena crosses her arms. "And even if she could, what's she going to do? Die harder?"

Mother makes a soft sound—not quite a gasp, not quite a laugh. She covers it quickly with a cough. "Your sister is dying. Show some respect."

"Respect?" Elena's laugh is sharp. "She's been dying for months. Honestly, I thought it would be faster."

The words should destroy me. Maybe they would have, once. But I've heard worse from them. What breaks me is realizing that this is it. This is my ending. Twenty-eight years of sacrificing, bending, breaking myself into shapes they might love—and this is what I get.

A hospital room. Wilted flowers. A family counting the minutes until I'm gone.

"I have a fitting at four," Elena continues, checking her phone again. "For the wedding dress. Can we... speed this along?"

Mother sighs. "Elena, we can't control—"

"I'm just saying. She's been unconscious for days. What's the point of us sitting here if she doesn't even know we're here?"

"The point is decency," Father says, but his voice lacks conviction. He checks his watch again. "Though I do have a meeting with the bank at five. About the café expansion."

My café. The one I worked at for twelve years, serving coffee while my dreams evaporated. The one Father will inherit when I die, along with the small life insurance policy I took out when I still thought I had something to live for.

"The lawyer said the paperwork is all in order," Mother says quietly. "Everything transfers cleanly. No complications."

They've already divided my corpse and I'm not even dead yet.

The heart monitor's beeping slows. My vision blurs at the edges, darkness creeping in like water. This is it. This is how I go—listening to my family discuss my funeral arrangements like they're planning a garage sale.

"Finally," Elena mutters.

I want to scream. Want to rage. Want to rise from this bed and demand why. Why was I never enough? Why did they take everything and give nothing? Why did I waste my entire life believing that if I just loved them a little more, sacrificed a little harder, they would finally see me as family?

But I don't have the strength for anger anymore. Just a terrible, crushing clarity.

They never loved me. They never would have. And I died trying to earn something they were never capable of giving.

"Should we say something?" Mother asks. "Before she—"

"Like what?" Elena sounds genuinely curious.

Mother is quiet for a moment. Then, in the same tone she might use to remind someone to turn off the lights: "Goodbye, I suppose. And... you should be grateful we stayed until the end."

You should be grateful.

Those words. Those fucking words that have haunted me since I was sixteen years old. When Father made me drop out of school to work in his café—"You should be grateful for the opportunity." When Damien refused my divorce request—"You should be grateful I don't leave you with nothing." When Elena took my savings, my apartment deposit, my grandmother's necklace—"You should be grateful I even asked instead of just taking it."

Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.

For what? For being used? For being invisible? For spending my entire life as their emotional punching bag and financial safety net?

The darkness is closing in faster now. The beeping slows to a crawl. Somewhere far away, I hear the machine make a different sound—a long, sustained note that I know means the end.

"Is that it?" Elena asks.

"I think so," Father says.

Mother sniffles, but when I force my eyes open one last time, I see her face. She's not crying. None of them are. They look... relieved.

The final sound I hear is Elena's voice, bright with something that might be happiness: "Finally. I need to call the caterer—we can move the funeral to Tuesday if we do it early. That way it won't interfere with my dress fitting."

My last thought, as the darkness swallows me whole:

I wasted my entire life on people who never loved me.

The machine flatlines.

And I die the same way I lived.

Unloved. Unvalued. Alone.

---

But death, it turns out, is not the end.

It's just the beginning of understanding exactly how much was stolen from me.

And this time—this time—I'm taking it all back.