Perfect Surgeon

My younger sister, Lila James, had a heart attack. The doctors tried their best, but she died. On the day we buried her, the men she had been involved with showed up. One was an unhinged lawyer, and another one was a powerful heir from Jovaris. Yet another one was a messed-up top celebrity. When they heard that Lila was dead, they lost it. They tried to dig her out and torture her. I blocked their way and begged them, “She’s gone! If you need someone to blame, take it out on me!” That was the moment I became Lila’s stand-in. They tortured me in every way they could think of. They beat me until my skin tore open and forced me to film humiliating videos. I somehow escaped and tried to bring them to justice. The unhinged lawyer threatened to ruin my life! The powerful heir used his influence to shut every door in my face. The messed-up top celebrity leaked the videos and claimed I had seduced him. I became the center of a national scandal, and my reputation was irreparably damaged. My parents even published a statement and cut all ties with me. I went home to confront them. When I reached outside their door, I heard Lila’s voice. She sounded immensely pleased. “Mom, Dad, your plan to fake my death saved me! I can finally get away from those lunatics. “Good thing we had Yara! Otherwise, I would’ve been the one in all these scandals.” I broke down. I rushed into the house. I was ready to drag Lila to hell with me, but my parents killed me first. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Lila had her heart attack.

After the plane crash, I rejected the captain—my brother-in-law’s—final life jacket that he had as he handed it to me. Instead, I allowed myself to plunge a hundred meters from the sky. In my previous life, I had survived after accepting his life jacket. But he died a tragic death in the crash. After his death, I was consumed with guilt. My husband proposed to take care of two households at the same time so that he could look after his sister-in-law. Out of guilt, I reluctantly agreed to his proposal. I even had to give up my only chance of getting promoted to department head of the hospital to my sister-in-law, upon my husband’s insistence. When I was seventy years old, I suddenly saw my brother-in-law, who was supposed to be dead, show up in front of me. He said to my husband, “Bro, thank goodness you came up with that fake-death plan back then. I was drunk and caused the deaths of all the passengers after the plane crash. If not for that plan of yours, as the captain, I certainly could not have escaped scot-free and would have been sentenced to prison for life! “It was too bad we had to keep her in the dark for her entire life.” After a lifetime of sacrifices, I was so furious that I nearly passed out upon hearing my brother-in-law’s words. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the plane crash.

I knew my husband, Josh Perkins, had faked his death and taken on his younger twin brother's identity—but I never said a word. Instead, I went straight to the commander of the military district and filed an official report of my husband's death, requesting his name be permanently removed from the service rolls. In my last life, my brother-in-law died in an accident. Josh gave up his rank as regimental commander, abandoned his own name, and stepped into his brother's shoes—all to spare his fragile sister-in-law from becoming a widow. Back then, I recognized him immediately. I confronted him and demanded to know why he was pretending to be a dead man. But Josh just looked through me, cold as a winter morning. "Riley, I know you're grieving Josh. But I'm not him. Don't mistake me for my brother." He shielded that delicate sister-in-law of his behind him, then shoved me into the icy river and warned me not to harbor delusions. Later, our five-year-old daughter cried, asking why her daddy didn't want her anymore. For that, she was dragged to the cowshed for "reflection"—left there, starving, for three days and nights. My mother-in-law called me a curse, a jinx who'd killed her son, and threw my daughter and me out with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Josh made sure everyone knew I'd "gone mad"—that I was lusting after my brother-in-law before my husband was even cold in the ground. The whole town turned their backs on us. That last winter, I wandered the streets with my girl, dazed and numb, until the cold finally took us both. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back to the very day Josh buried his old life and stole his brother's.

After my mom, Margaret Hale, dies of a heart attack, she starts appearing in my sister Claire Dawson's dreams. In a dream, Mom tells Claire to climb Mount Mistwood before sunrise and burn the entrance ticket for her, or the other ghosts will bully her. Claire doesn't tell me anything. She packs a bag in the middle of the night and forces herself to the summit. While she's gasping her way up that mountain, I'm asleep at home when I suddenly go into cardiac arrest. I wake up in the emergency room with doctors shouting over me. I barely survive before Mom appears in Claire's dreams again. This time, she says skydiving is her last wish. If Claire doesn't do it for her, she won't rest in peace. Claire signs up right away, ignoring everything I say. But then, her parachute refuses to open, and she plummets toward the ground. Luckily, she gets snagged in a tree and walks away without a scratch. Meanwhile, I miss a step going downstairs, tumble to the bottom, end up covered in bruises, and break five ribs. While I'm recovering in the hospital, Mom shows up in Claire's dreams again. Now, she wants Claire to go to the South Pole for her, saying she can finally move on and be reincarnated once Claire completes the trip. Claire doesn't hesitate and books a tour on the spot. While she's taking pictures with penguins, I freeze to death back home during a 104-degree heatwave. Only after I die does it finally hit me that Mom's missions for Claire always end with me on death's doorstep. What I don't understand is how Mom keeps shifting the danger meant for Claire onto me instead. The next time I open my eyes, I'm back on the morning after Mom first appeared in Claire's dream.

The first thing I do after coming back to life is swap out every single pair of my husband, Augustin Reed's boxers for those in black. In my past life, my sister-in-law, Sephine Fidel, cheats right under our roof on my brother, Jonah Merrick. And when I catch her and tell Jonah the truth, she turns it all on me. Then, two pairs of men's black boxers, not Augustin's, appear in my bedroom. I try to explain, but Augustin slaps me across the face and calls me a whore, while Jonah looks at me like I'm filth. "I know you hate Sephine. You've never shown her any warmth since she married me, but I didn't think you'd sink this low to cheat in your own house and frame her for it…" He disowns me while Augustin files for divorce. I remember stumbling onto the streets in a daze, only to get run over dead by a speeding truck. When my eyes snap open, I wake up to the day Sephine brings her lover into our home.

After receiving the report for an STD test, I went back to the barbeque restaurant, and there I ran into a young woman who was about three months pregnant. She asked me to let her cut in line, and, feeling sorry for her, I agreed to help her out. I quickly made arrangements for her and made sure she had a seat. But to my shock, after she finished her meal, she had a miscarriage. The girl posted about the incident online, and before I knew it, I was trending on social media, facing a wave of cyberbullying. The internet users went even further, digging up my health records and finding that everything came back positive. [She's positive for everything—she's clearly a woman with a messy private life!] [No wonder she caused the woman's miscarriage just by being near her—she's a biological hazard!] The cyberbullying got so bad that it pushed me into depression. Even my fiancé turned against me, accusing me of being filthy and breaking up with me. The emotional weight became too much, and in my pain, I drove straight into a reservoir. Meanwhile, the girl gained millions of followers online and skyrocketed to fame as a popular influencer. It was only after I died that I learned the shocking truth—this girl was my fiancé's first love. To boost her own popularity, she and my fiancé had come up with this entire scheme together. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day when she asked me to let her cut in line.

To celebrate my first New Year after reconnecting with my biological family, everyone dragged me into signing up for a Tranvego tour. The moment we got off the plane, my parents completely changed. They just stood there while my brother tore up my passport. Then they shoved me into a bus headed for Draconville. The whole way, I begged them to take me back. Because I realized the place that the bus was going was the very same home I had spent ten years trying to escape. And the so-called big bosses they kept talking about? One was my foster father, the director of the compound. One was my foster mother, the head of the transplant center. One was my foster brother, the chief of the landfill district. They were famous for protecting their own. But under the excuse of "loving" me, they locked me up and tried to force me to become one of them. I had fought so hard to get away from them. I never thought I'd be sent back again!

When my husband told me to go bungee jumping, I did not scream. I did not cause a scene. I just nodded and said, "Okay." Keep in mind, I was eight months pregnant. I only agreed because I had already lived through this nightmare once before. In my past life, his precious childhood best friend, Lily Lane, had been feeling down. My husband, desperate to be her hero, told her he would make her one wish come true. Her wish? She wanted a partner to go bungee jumping with. My husband was terrified of heights, so he could not do it himself. Instead, he volunteered me. I refused on the spot, obviously. I told them I was not going to strap a harness over a baby bump and jump off a bridge. Lily got upset because I would not go. She went to a bar to drown her sorrows, and things went terribly wrong. Someone spiked her drink, and she was assaulted. She could not handle the trauma. She left a suicide note for my husband that read: "If I hadn't gone to the bar that night, would everything be different?" When my husband read that note, he snapped. He wrapped his hands around my throat. "Why didn't you just go with her?" he screamed, squeezing tighter. "Would it have killed you to just say yes?" He strangled me until everything went black. My unborn baby died with me. However, then, my eyes snapped open. I was back. I was standing right there in the moment my husband was asking me to jump.

From the time I was little, something in me was always a little off—I never listened to the whole story, only half of it. My grandmother called me a good-for-nothing who was financially burdening the family. She bought a little boy to be my younger brother and told me to take good care of him. I understood the part about buying a child, so I immediately called the police and reported her for illegal human trafficking. My father pointed at my face and cursed me for being unfilial, accusing me of cutting off his family line. I obeyed him, crept into his room while he slept that night, and used a knife to "cut off his lineage." My father screamed in agony. In the chaos, he accidentally killed me. When I opened my eyes again, I had transmigrated into the female lead of a melodramatic abuse novel. After ten years of marriage to the cruel male lead, his childhood sweetheart had just returned from abroad and was undergoing kidney surgery. He dragged me to the hospital and cruelly ordered me to donate a kidney to his precious first love. I nodded obediently, went out and bought a pig, and on the spot dug out the pig's kidney and handed it to him.

The daughter of my father's first love suffered from heatstroke because she was left in the car, so he tied me up in a fit of anger and locked me in the car boot. He looked at me with utter disgust and said, "I don't have a vicious daughter like you. Stay here and reflect on yourself." I begged him, apologized to him, and pleaded for him to let me out, but all I got in return was his ruthless order. "Unless she dies, no one is allowed to let her out." The car was parked in the garage. No one could hear me no matter how much I screamed for help. Seven days later, he finally remembered me and decided to let me out. However, he had no idea that I had already died in that trunk and could never wake up again.