Chapter 2: I died

Fidelia's body lay still, blood pooling beneath her cracked skull.

For a moment, no one moved.

Alice's gasp was performative. Bridget's hand flew to her mouth—but her eyes were cold. Silas stared at the blood spreading across the white tiles, his jaw tight.

Still, no one moved to help her..

Fidelia felt extreme pain. Her head hurt, her entire body hurt, and she felt life slipping away from her body.

She could hear the sound of an ambulance siren. She could feel her body being moved. Her eyes opened a bit, and she saw herself being rushed into the hospital.

“Ma’am, can you tell us your name?”

“Stay with me!” The nurse kept on shaking Fidelia as they entered the hospital.

Fidelia was fighting for her life right now. At one point, she regretted ever coming into the house again.

It was like she was glitching between life and death, hanging on both sides.

Every now and then she felt awake, and after a while, she was unconscious again.

When she finally woke up, she heard a voice—one she was quite familiar with—enter her ears.

“Doctor, please… what’s her condition?” her stepmother asked in a low, worried tone. But it was all an act, and she was faking it quite well.

The doctor placed his hands in his white coat and said in a low voice, looking at Fidelia on the bed, “I really don’t know. She is in critical condition. The chances of her surviving are very slim.”

He looked at Fidelia and continued, “Even if she survives, her recovery might take weeks… even months.”

Hearing her stepmother’s voice like that felt strange.

"Please save her at all costs," Alice said, her voice trembling just right. She even dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Oscar-worthy. "I don't want to lose her."

“Ma’am, we are doing everything we can,” the doctor replied, “but the head injury is severe and we need her to be stable before taking any chances and doing an operation on her.”

“I don’t care what you need to do,” she snapped suddenly, the concern fading back into her usual tone. “Just make sure she doesn’t die. Do you hear me?!”

There was a brief silence before the doctor said, “Understood. We’ll try our best.”

Fidelia wanted to open her eyes. She wanted to scream. To tell her she heard everything. But her body wouldn’t listen to her.

Another voice entered.

“Is she going to wake up?” It was Silas.

Her blood boiled just hearing him.

“We can’t say for sure,” the doctor replied.

“She needs to wake up,” Silas said sharply. “The wedding—”

“Silas!” Alice cut him off harshly. “Now is not the time to talk about that!”

“But—”

“I said not now!” she yelled.

Silas kept quiet and paced around as he squeezed his hands. He hated being shut out, but he understood immediately. The cops were watching.

"Big sis," Bridget's voice was soft, sweet, sickening. "Please don't die on me. I promise I'll be good. I'll listen. Just… wake up."

Fidelia wanted to vomit. Bridget had never called her that. Not once.

Fidelia heard this and almost threw up.

‘What’s all this act about? Me… big sis, to you? You never call me that.’

“She’s stronger than she looks,” Alice said, hiding her cold smile. “She’ll live.”

After a while of silence, Alice confirmed that everyone at the door side was gone, then they spoke.

“Do you think she heard us?” Bridget asked.

“I don’t care if she did,” Silas muttered.

Fidelia wanted to wake up.

She wanted to grab Silas by the throat and stab them. All of them.

She wanted to tear Bridget apart, but she couldn’t move an inch from where she laid down.

“Keep me updated every hour,” Alice told the doctor.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come on,” she said to the others. “Let’s go.”

“Are we just leaving her like this?” Bridget asked.

“She’s in our hands. Now move.”

Fidelia listened to their footsteps fading away, and then there was silence again.

The only sound she heard was the beeping of the heart rate monitor and the drip from the IV into her hand.

They were putting on an act because the police were listening behind the door.

What they had told the cops was that she came home angry in her wedding dress, and it was from the designer shop she was coming from.

When they heard the sound of something crashing, they came out and immediately called the ambulance, rushing her to the hospital.

“We suspected she wasn’t happy with the wedding dress and wanted to change, and she got tripped by the long material.”

That was the story they told.

But when they felt the police were out of earshot, the act ended.

They started whispering, discussing whether they should even let her live if she woke up.

"What if she wakes up?" Bridget's voice was low, urgent.

"She won't," Alice said, but her hands were shaking. "The doctor said—"

"The doctor said she might," Silas cut in. "We can't take that risk."

Silence filled the air as none of them said a thing for a while

"What are you suggesting?" Alice's voice was barely a whisper.

"You know what I'm suggesting." Silas leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "If she's gone, this all goes away.".”

Fidelia listened carefully to everything they said, and she wanted to scream. To fight. To let them know she was still here.

But no matter how hard she tried moving her body, it just wouldn’t move.

Her family and her ex-fiancé were all planning to kill her. She got that they hated her, but killing her… she didn’t quite expect it.

The worst part was that she could not do anything about it or call anyone to help her. She could only silently wait for her death, which was terrifying to her.

Alice said she wasn’t sure she could do it. Her hands were shaking.

“I don’t know if I can… this is too risky,” she muttered, avoiding Silas’s eyes. Then after, she stepped outside, leaving the room in silence.

Silas turned to Bridget, his face pale and full of tension. “You need to convince her,” he said in a low but sharp voice. “If Fidelia wakes up… we’re all ruined.”

Bridget didn’t say a word, only nodded.

---

Later that night, the door creaked open and Silas stepped inside sneakily.

He looked around the hospital room, making sure no one was there. Thinking she was deep in a coma, he walked closer to her bed.

He sat on the chair beside her and ran his hand over his face, sighing.

Silas leaned back in the chair, a faint smirk on his lips. "You just had to walk in at the wrong time," he muttered. "I was this close to finishing inside her and i wanted to go T

the third round, too."

He shook his head like it was all some annoying inconvenience.

"Bridget's been mine for two years, you know. Even before you said yes to my proposal. Hell, even before I asked."

Fidelia felt her heart ache the more she listened to him.

‘What kind of heartbreak confession is this?’

She wanted to cry and scream loudly, but she couldn’t even if she wanted to.

“She wanted this too. We planned everything together… me, Bridget, and your stepmother. The marriage… the engagement… all of it.”

He paused as if waiting for a reaction. But Fidelia didn’t flinch.

“I wanted your shares. Your property. As your husband, everything would have been mine eventually.”

His voice trembled slightly. “But you… you had to ruin it by walking in.”

Fidelia felt like the room was spinning. Every word stabbed her like a knife.

Silas paused and leaned back in the chair, muttering, “If only you had stayed in your place… none of this would’ve happened.”

He sat there in silence for a while, then stood up and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Fidelia’s tears slid silently down her face. She was well aware that they all wanted her dead.

Both Silas, Alice, and Bridget wouldn’t let her live.

Silas looked down at her and then decided what to do. Without saying a word, he walked slowly toward the machine.

Silas glanced at the door and leaned closer to check if he could hear footsteps or voices.

He exhaled slowly, steadying himself after he was assured no one was coming.

Then he reached for the oxygen mask.

He moved his hand toward the monitor and turned it off. The beeping sound that showed her heart rate was gone.

He reached for the oxygen mask on her face and pulled it off slowly.

Fidelia’s body reacted almost immediately. Her chest tightened, her breaths came out short and rough. She started to tremble, gasping for air, fighting for life with everything she had.

But Silas just stood there, watching her.

The indicator that was meant to alert the nurses—the one that would’ve signaled her distress—was off. No one would come. No one would hear her struggle.

Fidelia grabbed the bedsheets, struggling in her battle to live, as her sight grew blurry and unclear. Tears flowed down her face.

Silas just kept watching with a cold expression. He had made up his hard mind, and he was going to let nothing stop him. He couldn’t let her ruin everything for him.

Time was so slow to her, and it intensified the pain. Fidelia’s gasps grew quieter, weaker.

When he was finally sure she was dead—or at least close enough—he placed the oxygen mask back gently on her face.

He switched the monitor back on, the beeping resuming as if nothing had happened.

With a deep exhale, Fidelia woke up from the terrible nightmare which felt so real. She was terrified, and she felt her chest locked up tight.

She took her phone and checked the time, and then she froze.

November 2024.

No. That wasn’t possible. She was in 2025. She knew she was in 2025.

A chill slid down her spine as the truth hit her. Whatever had just happened… it wasn’t just a nightmare.