MY EVIL TWIN

Veronica's POV

The beeping of machines filtered into my dream, slow and steady, until it pulled me out of the version of my life where Caleb's hand kept finding my face, where he walked away from me with Ava on his arm, the two of them already turning into strangers I used to know.I opened my eyes and the world arrived in pieces.

A white ceiling tile with a water stain shaped like a half moon. The smell of antiseptic, thick enough to taste. Sunlight slicing through a gap in the blinds, straight into my eyes.

A hospital, I thought, and let the thought sit there a long moment before it made any sense at all.I tried to speak. What came out instead was a thin scrape of sound, my throat raw as if I'd swallowed glass. I found the call button with fingers that didn't feel like mine and pressed it.

A nurse came in fast, her shoes squeaking against the floor.

"Mrs. Stanton, you're awake." She was already reaching for my chart.

"Don't try to talk too much. I'll get the doctor right away."

"Wait." The word cost more than it should have.

"How long."She stopped at the door, her hand still on the frame.

"You've been out for two days." Two days. I turned the number over, looking for the shape of where they'd gone, and found nothing.

"Did anyone come?" I asked.

"Did anyone visit me?"Her

hand tightened on the doorframe. She didn't look at me when she answered.

"No, ma'am."I nodded, because there was nothing else left to do with my face, and let her go.

"Mrs. Stanton." The doctor didn't bother sitting down when he came in. He flipped through my chart without looking up.

"I have to say, you're either remarkably careless with your health, or you have a death wish. Which is it?"

"I fell down the stairs." He looked up then, and something in the set of his mouth told me he'd heard that excuse from a hundred women before him and believed none of them.

"Is that so." He set the chart down. "Because that doesn't explain why your liver looks the way it looks. You've undergone multiple donor surgeries, Mrs. Stanton. Recent ones. You've developed something called progressive organ deterioration syndrome, and at the rate it's progressing, you don't have long."

Donor surgeries.I turned the words over, searching for the memory the way you search a dark room for a switch you know is there. No hospital bed. No surgeon's face. No recovery room ceiling memorized out of boredom. Just blank.

"I don't remember," I said. "Any of it."

"You don't remember donating an organ." His eyebrows lifted.

"No."He studied me a moment, a look that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite suspicion, and let it go.

"Well. However it happened, you're lucky there was no internal bleeding. That could have killed you."

Maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad thing after all.

"With the state of your injuries," he went on, "I'm obligated to report this to the police."

"No." I shook my head, and the motion sent a dull throb through my skull. "Please. Don't."

"Was it your husband?" His voice dropped, gentler now, the question wrapped in something close to care.I thought of Caleb's name on the precinct payroll, of the officers who waved his car through checkpoints without looking twice, of what he'd do to me for the inconvenience of an open file.

"Please." My hands found the edge of the blanket and twisted it. "Don't involve the police. It's over." He held my gaze a long moment, long enough that I nearly looked away first.

"If that's what you want." He didn't sound like he agreed, only like he understood it wasn't his to decide.

"You'll be discharged tomorrow."He left. The door swung wide behind him before it could shut, and Ava walked through it like she owned the room.

"Veronica, darling." She let the word hang, savoring it.

"So this is where you've been hiding."I turned my face to the window.

"We would have visited, of course, but we've been a little busy." A pause, deliberate, theatrical.

"Celebrating my pregnancy."She stroked her

belly with both hands, slow circles, waiting for me to ask.

I didn't ask.

"But I suppose you're used to being alone by now." A small tilt of her head. "Aren't you?"

My jaw locked. I stared at the IV taped to my arm instead of her face, counted the small bruises blooming purple beneath the tape, anything that wasn't her smile.

"Caleb is so excited to meet his son." She gasped, soft and theatrical, one hand flying to her mouth. "Oh, silly me. I meant his nephew."

My eyes burned. I blinked, hard, twice, and found the water stain on the ceiling tile again, the half moon, until the burning passed. She waited. When I gave her nothing, the smile thinned at the edges."Are you seriously going to ignore me right now?"

I said nothing.She crossed the room in three quick steps and grabbed my shoulder, wrenching my body to face her. The IV tore free of my skin, a bright line of pain shooting up my arm.

"Who do you think you are, ignoring me, you bitch?"I shoved her off before I'd decided to do it, my palm flat against her shoulder.She staggered back two steps and caught herself on the bed rail.

"You pushed me?" Her voice had gone very quiet. "You're going to regret that.”