Chapter 4

The nurse froze, too stunned for speech.

She looked back and forth between the officers and the mob at the door, opening her mouth to speak, but Julian’s mom’s shrill voice completely drowned her out.

I, on the other hand, was unperturbed.

I leaned back against the headboard, a pillow propped up behind my back.

My broken ribs throbbed painfully with every breath I took.

Yet my mind was crystal clear—so remarkably lucid that it surprised even myself.

They had the nerve to involve the police.

What on earth were they thinking?

I raised my uninjured hand—the one without the IV needle—and slightly extended it toward Laura, my tone laced with genuine confusion.

“When exactly did you say I committed this shameful act?”

Laura’s face was still wet with tears, but she was quick to reply.

“Yesterday afternoon! The bridal shop’s surveillance recorded you walking in at four o’clock. You stayed in the fitting room for nearly forty minutes. Julian waited outside for so long, only for you to pull a shameless stunt like that inside!”

Julian stepped up beside her, chiming in coldly:

“The footage shows you entering the fitting room at four sharp and didn’t step out until four-thirty. The timestamp on the video matches perfectly. What else do you have to say?”

Four o’clock sharp.

Four-thirty.

Hearing the timestamps, a strange wave of relief washed over me.

No pain, just a sense of liberation, like surfacing for air after being held underwater for far too long.

So the car crash really was going to prove my innocence.

I raised my head, locking eyes with them, my expression serene.

“So the timestamp on the video covers 4:00 to 4:30 in the afternoon, right?”

Laura nodded.

I let out a clear, audible laugh.

Julian’s mom exploded instantly.

She grabbed the officer’s sleeve and yanked him toward my bed.

“Look at her! You see that? She’s still laughing! Caught red-handed committing such a disgusting act, and she has the nerve to sit there laughing!

“Is that not enough reason to take her in for questioning at once?”

“That’s impossible.”

The attending physician stood in the doorway, his white coat neatly buttoned, a folder in his hands.

He looked to be in his early nineties, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, with greying temples and a stern, unreadable expression.

Seeing him, the nurse immediately stepped aside.

Laura took a swift step forward to block the doctor, tears still flooding her face.

“Hazel, I just don’t get it—why would you do something like this?

“Julian and I were waiting outside for you. How could you do this to us?

“Who was that man? You’re getting married next week. How could you—”

I turned my head to look at her.

She was conjuring a phantom lover I had never known and fabricating an act I had never committed, all to nail me to a cross.

“That wasn’t me.”

I cut her off abruptly.

“The person in the video isn’t me.”

Julian took a sharp step forward, his face thunderous.

“You’re still refusing to own up to it? You were the one who walked into that fitting room yourself—”

“It wasn’t just that one time in the fitting room, was it?”

Laura’s voice suddenly shifted pitch, as if slipping up by accident, before she quickly clapped her hand over her mouth.

“The videos online aren’t just from the bridal shop... There are others taken at home, too.

“Hazel, just how many times have you done this behind Julian’s back?”

Dead silence fell over the hospital ward.

More and more onlookers gathered in the hallway.

Some pulled out their phones to film, others muttered under their breath about my moral bankruptcy, and a few spat out curses.

Catching the gossip, Julian’s mom lunged forward, swinging her arm high to strike my face, only for an officer to stop her in time.

She thrashed against the officer’s arm, trying to reach me.

“You heard that? It wasn’t just once! She was doing it at home too! Arrest this filthy slut right now! She’s completely destroyed my son’s reputation! She’s nothing but a cheap whore—”

My chest contracted sharply.

A wave of agony spread from my ribs, shooting along my spine and straight to the back of my skull.

My vision flickered dark, and a loud ringing filled my ears.

I grabbed the bedrail tight, grinding my teeth, forcing out my explanation word by word.

“That is not me. Someone manipulated my image without my consent.”

They were still shouting.

Julian’s mom screamed, Laura wept, while Julian himself kept repeating how shameless I was to claim such an excuse.

Voices overlapped, stinging my eardrums like a nest of wasps.

Then, a sudden bang.

The sound of the medical chart slapping onto the bedside table put a stop to the noises.

The entire ward fell silent.

The attending physician stood beside my bed, his face grim.

“The timeframe you mentioned—yesterday afternoon between 4:00 and 4:30—is that it?”

Laura nodded reflexively.

The doctor flipped open the chart, pulled out an X-ray film, and held it up in front of the police officers.

“The patient was involved in a multi-car pileup on West Ring Road at 3:50 yesterday afternoon.

“She was loaded onto an ambulance at four o’clock sharp, arrived at our ER at 4:10, and had a chest X-ray taken in radiology at 4:20—this exact film in my hand.

“By 4:30, she was already lying in our emergency observation ward.”

He turned the chart over, pointing at the timestamp on the admission log for the officers to see.

“4:20 PM—Chest X-Ray.”

He recited every digit clearly.

“You’re telling me she was having an affair in a fitting room at this exact time? The patient’s whereabouts are locked in by emergency call logs, ambulance GPS tracking, emergency intake records, and radiology queue timestamps.

“The bridal shop you mentioned is located in the south district. Arriving there from West Ring Road, even without traffic at four o’clock, requires at least a fifteen-minute drive.”

Silence swallowed the ward.

Julian’s mom’s mouth hung open, her foul curses choked back in her throat.

Julian stared at the X-ray film, his composure visibly cracking.

Laura froze where she stood, her face drained of color.

One officer took the chart and reviewed it from start to finish.

Then, he raised his head to stare at Laura.

I leaned against the headboard, the excruciating pain in my chest still throbbing, and looked straight at the officer.

“I’d like to file a report. Someone is using deepfake technology to forge my facial features, generate illegal footages of me and distribute them across the internet.

“I’m pressing charges for defamation, false accusation, and the dissemination of obscene material.”