Taking the Fall for a Fool

"Mia has a stomach bug, Nat. Since you're working the night shift anyway, would you mind filling in for her?"

Shocked by the sound of my brother's warm voice, my entire body trembled.

I glanced at the clock on the wall and found that it was currently 2:00 am. After staring at the busy nurses' station for a long time, I finally realized that I'd been reborn.

When Mia caught me zoning out, she shoved me with an irritated look on her face.

"If you agree to this, I'm going to gather my things and leave," she said. "My stomach is killing me. I need to head home and get some rest. After I leave, you'll need to remember to give the patient on bed six his fluids at 5:00 a.m."

In my previous life, I agreed to help Mia out as a favor to my brother.

Back then, once I got to the patient's bed, I instantly noticed that something was amiss. The young boy was practically buried beneath the blanket. I could only see his face, and he looked extremely pale under the moonlight.

I was just about to check on him when Mia called me.

"Did you finish administering the fluids?" she asked over the phone.

Slightly confused, I replied, "He's practically out cold. Something isn't adding up. Let me check on him really quickly."

Upon hearing this, Mia immediately got very worked up.

"The kid's been nothing but trouble the entire day. Now that he's finally asleep, are you seriously going to wake him up?" she questioned.

Still feeling somewhat concerned, I asked, "Where are his parents? Why doesn't he have a guardian with him?"

"Why are you so concerned? It's not like you need to reinsert the catheter or anything. You just need to give him a new vial of medicine.

"Why do you have so many questions about such a simple procedure? Do you really want to wake the patient up?" Mia complained.

I took a quick look at the label on the vial. Then, I relaxed when I realized that it was just a glucose solution.

However, that single lapse in judgment ended up turning me into a murderer.

The next day, I was just about to wrap up my shift when family members of the boy stormed into the nurses' station and gave me a beating without any explanation.

I later found out that the boy, Max Campbell, had died from an anaphylactic shock. As it turned out, I was the last person who had given him fluids.

Despite that, things weren't adding up. I only gave him glucose, which was something he had been receiving without any complications before. There was no way he would've developed an allergic reaction to it now.

After the incident broke out, Mia blamed everything on me.

"Natalie was the one who gave him the fluids. This has nothing to do with me," she declared.

Initially, I thought my brother and childhood friend would help me. They were the two people I trusted most in this world. So, I believed that they would help me figure out the truth.

To my dismay, my brother, a police officer, ended up accusing me of being the perpetrator.

"We found Natalie's fingerprints on the drug vial," my brother, David Hoffman, stated. "She's definitely the one who killed the patient."

Then came Nick Carter, my childhood friend.

Nick, who was now a forensic pathologist, flung the autopsy report at me and barked, "His time of death indicates that he died right after you gave him the fluids. What do you have to say for yourself now?"

I couldn't prove my innocence back then. In the end, the victim's family members cornered me outside the police station and beat me to death as David and Nick watched from the sidelines.

I'd always treated David and Nick with love and respect. Even when I was on the brink of death, I couldn't figure out why they would betray me like that.

I could still recall how painful it felt when I was violently beaten to death.

Now that I had been reborn, I was planning to do whatever it took to prevent history from repeating itself.