CHAPTER 4: THE SOUND OF MACHINES

Beeping.

That was the first thing I heard. A steady, rhythmic beeping that pulled me out of darkness.

I tried to open my eyes. My eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Everything hurt, a distant, fuzzy hurt, like my body was wrapped in cotton but someone was pressing bruises underneath.

The beeping continued. A heart monitor, my brain supplied through the fog. I was hearing a heart monitor.

Which meant I was alive.

But Alice had poisoned me. Lucas had sat in that chair and told me I would die. I remembered the cold, remembered my heart failing, remembered the darkness swallowing me whole.

So why was there a heart monitor?

I forced my eyes open.

White ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The astringent smell of hospital disinfectant. I was in a hospital room, but not the same one. This room was smaller, more clinical. No windows. Just machines and monitors and...

Someone gasped.

I turned my head, the movement agonizingly slow. A nurse stood in the doorway, young, with wide eyes and an expression of pure shock.

"You're awake," the nurse breathed. "Oh my God, you're awake. Doctor! Doctor Shen, she's awake!"

Footsteps thundered in the hallway. More people crowded into the room. A doctor, two more nurses, all staring at me like I was a ghost.

"Ms. Craslow," the doctor said, rushing to my bedside. "Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

Ms. Craslow? I tried to speak, but my throat was too dry. I coughed, the sound painful and rasping.

The nurse held a cup of water to my lips. I drank greedily, the cool liquid like heaven.

"Where..." I croaked. "Where am I?"

"Metro General Hospital. You've been in a coma for six days." The doctor, his name tag read Dr. Shen, shone a light in my eyes, checking my pupils. "You overdosed on sleeping pills and alcohol. Your manager found you in your apartment. Do you remember any of this?"

Overdosed? Sleeping pills? My mind spun. I'd been poisoned by Alice in St. Catherine's Hospital after giving birth to Ethan. I'd died. I remembered dying.

"I don't..." I stopped. My voice sounded wrong. Higher. Smoother. Not my voice.

I looked down at my hands. They were wrong too. Slender and elegant, with long fingers and perfect nails painted a deep burgundy. Not my hands. I had short nails because I bit them when I was nervous. I had a small scar on my right thumb from a childhood accident. These hands had no scars.

"I need a mirror," I said, my strange voice shaking.

"Ms. Craslow, you need to rest..."

"A mirror. Now."

The nurses exchanged glances. One of them pulled out her phone and flipped it to camera mode, holding it up like a mirror.

I stared at the face on the screen.

I was beautiful. Devastatingly beautiful. High cheekbones. Full lips. Doe eyes framed by thick lashes. Long dark hair spread across the hospital pillow. I looked like I belonged on magazine covers, in perfume ads, on billboards in Times Square.

I looked nothing like Rachel Hart.

"What..." I touched my face, this stranger's face, with these stranger's hands. The woman in the phone screen mimicked my movements. "What is this? What's happening?"

"You're disoriented," Dr. Shen said gently. "That's normal after a coma. You're Raven Craslow. You're a model. Do you remember?"

Raven Craslow. The name stirred something in my memory. I'd seen that name before, in tabloids at grocery store checkouts. Raven Craslow, the model who'd been caught in some scandal. Something about drugs, maybe? Or stealing designs? I couldn't remember the details.

But I remembered enough to know that Raven Craslow was a real person. A famous person. A living person.

And somehow, I was inside her body.

"This isn't possible," I whispered. "This isn't real. I'm hallucinating. The poison..."

"What poison?" Dr. Shen frowned. "Ms. Craslow, you took sleeping pills. There was no poison. Your blood work showed..."

"No!" I tried to sit up, but my body wouldn't cooperate. "No, you don't understand. My name is Rachel Hart. I gave birth six days ago. My husband and his mistress poisoned me. I need to see my baby. I need to know if Ethan is okay..."

The nurses exchanged worried looks. Dr. Shen put a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Ms. Craslow, you don't have a baby. You've never been pregnant. The psychological evaluation noted you've been under extreme stress from the scandal, but..."

"I'm not Raven Craslow!" My voice broke. "My name is Rachel Hart. I'm twenty-eight years old. I'm married to Lucas Hart. We just had a son. And then his mistress Alice poisoned me, and Lucas watched me die, and..."

I stopped. The room was spinning. None of this made sense. I'd died. I remembered dying. I remembered the cold and the darkness and the prayer I'd sent into the void.

Let me come back. Let me have another chance.

"Oh my God," I breathed. "Oh my God, it worked."

"What worked?" Dr. Shen asked, his voice taking on a careful, placating tone. "Ms. Craslow, I think we need to call the psychiatrist..."

"I'm not crazy." My mind was racing now, pieces clicking into place. "I died. I died in that hospital room. And somehow I'm... I'm here. In this body. In Raven Craslow's body."

It was impossible. Insane. The kind of thing that only happened in movies or fantasy novels. But I was staring at a stranger's beautiful face in a phone screen, feeling a stranger's heart beating in my chest, and I knew. I knew that somehow I'd been given a second chance.

I'd prayed for it. And something had answered.

"I need to know what day it is," I said urgently. "What's the date?"

"November 18th, 2024," the nurse answered.

November. Ethan had been born on November 12th. Six days ago.

Which meant my baby was alive. Which meant Lucas and Alice thought they'd gotten away with murder. Which meant I had time to stop them.

But I was in the wrong body. I was Raven Craslow, whoever that was. How was I supposed to protect my son when I looked like a completely different person?

"Ms. Craslow, I really think..."

"Where are my things?" I interrupted. "My phone. My wallet. Where is everything?"

"Locked in the patient belongings room. Ms. Craslow, you need to rest..."

"I need my phone."

The nurse sighed and left, returning a few minutes later with a designer handbag. I grabbed it with shaking hands and pulled out the phone inside. An iPhone in a leopard print case.

I pressed the home button. The screen lit up with a photo of Raven Craslow pouting at the camera, surrounded by friends at some nightclub. No password.

My fingers flew across the screen, searching for news about Rachel Hart. It didn't take long to find.

LOCAL WOMAN DIES HOURS AFTER GIVING BIRTH

Rachel Hart, 28, Dies from Postpartum Complications

Lucas Hart Mourns Loss of Wife: "She Was Everything To Me"

I stared at the headlines, at the photo of Lucas looking appropriately devastated in his black suit. At my own face, my real face, plain and ordinary next to his handsome features.

They'd done it. They'd killed me and gotten away with it.

But they'd made one critical mistake.

They'd let me come back.

A cold, hard fury settled over me, eclipsing the physical pain of Raven’s body. "She was everything to me," Lucas had said. The liar. The murderer. He was probably celebrating with Alice right now, toasting to their newfound freedom and my son's inheritance. They thought they were safe. They thought I was gone, just a sad, tragic story in the local news.

Dr. Shen was still talking, his voice a droning buzz. "...need to get you into therapy as soon as you're stable. This stress, this... disassociation... it's a lot to handle, Ms. Craslow."

I looked up from the phone, letting Raven’s perfect features settle into a mask of weary confusion. The tears of panic were gone, replaced by something else. Something cold. Something that made the doctor pause.

"You're right, doctor," I said, my new, silky voice steady. "It is a lot. I... I think I was just confused. The coma. The drugs. It's all coming back to me now. My name is Raven Craslow."

This was the only way. I had to play the part. If they thought I was crazy, they'd lock me up in a psychiatric ward. And I couldn't protect Ethan from there.

"I'm just... tired," I whispered.

Lucas. Alice. You took my life. You took my son.

I will take everything from you.