Reaper Nurse Novels & Stories

My heartbeat is so steady that sometimes, I don't resemble a human being at all. The fluctuations in my heart rate are very small even though I might be sleeping, suffering from a fever, or losing too much blood. When I'm 18 years old, the Ziegler family admits me into a rehabilitation center. My new home is now a temperature-controlled intensive unit located on the top floor. Oh, Aiden Ziegler doesn't love me at all. It's merely because the one and only artificial heart present in this world—and also in his chest—needs to be fine-tuned with my own heartbeat as its primary frequency. If my heartbeat is steady, he gets to live. If not, he dies. Three months ago, a nurse accidentally took off one of the monitoring pads on my chest. Five minutes later, Aiden, who was ten thousand miles away, went through a temporary crash where his heart stopped. The next day, the third-party medical company filed for bankruptcy. Everyone who was involved in this incident got banned by the medical world. Because of that incident, all of the sounds get eradicated from the top floor. Even the elevator's chimes get muted when it reaches the top floor of the rehab center. Everything changes when Aiden flies to Iropa. That's when his fiancee, Mandy Sutherland, takes over the rehab center. As she flips through my medical bill of nine figures, she sneers at me. "So, the Zieglers are basically sustaining a loser who does nothing but gasps for breath while lying in bed, huh?" After that, Mandy tears off the monitoring pads and unplugs the sync line. Then, she forces me to get on a treadmill. "That'll be a six-mile run for you. You can forget about returning to the top floor if you can't finish the run." As I grip the handrails tightly, I can feel my heart rate turning erratic for the first time ever. It feels as though my heart is about to burst out of my chest. As soon as the alarm goes off, Mandy turns it off immediately. What she doesn't know is that Aiden's artificial heart has already gone crazy, just like mine, while he's stuck in a place that's 12 time zones away.

Since my daughter, Lucy Shepherd, is an only child, my husband, Felix Shepherd, and I have decided to find her a live-in son-in-law. I ask on an online forum, "If my future son-in-law has a master's degree from a top university and earns over 10,000 dollars a month, what kind of wedding gift would seem appropriate to welcome him into the family?" Someone jokingly replies, "You'd probably have to be loaded to get a son-in-law like that. Why not give him ten million dollars as a wedding gift?" Without any hesitation, I take the person's advice and give Paul Cranston, my future son-in-law, and his family ten million dollars, along with a riverfront apartment. However, to guard against the possibility of Paul and his family seizing Lucy's inheritance for themselves once we're gone, I make Paul sign a prenuptial agreement. It clearly states that all their children must take the Shepherd family name and that the family's assets will not go to anyone with a different last name. Paul agrees to it and even thanks me profusely for everything. Yet, when Lucy gives birth to her second child, he immediately grabs the baby and changes his tune. "Even though I married into the Shepherd family, that doesn't mean I'm no longer my own person! My son must take my family name! This affects my dignity as a man!" I scoff in anger, but before I can say anything, Lucy, who is completely blinded by love, tearfully takes Paul's side. "Just go along with it, Mom. We're all a family anyway. Why must you harp on whose last name is used?" I hold my ground and refuse to back down. But the very next day, Lucy flies abroad with Paul, bringing along her two children. They have no qualms about moving into the property that Felix and I had bought abroad, as if it were their own. Despite being 58 years old, I am so enraged by her foolishness that I drag Felix to a fertility clinic. We start the IVF process. After turning 59 years old, I give birth to a son. Just as the nurse brings him to me, the door to the hospital room flies open. The family of four, who have just rushed back in a hurry, freeze in place.

On the night of New Year's Eve, I wake up in a hospital ward with an IV drip connected to the back of my hand. A nurse passes me the hospital bill. "It's 300 dollars in total, including the emergency treatment fee and the cost for a bottle of glucose drips." When I turn on my phone, I feel my heart sinking. I only have 29.01 dollars left in my bank account. The wallpaper of my phone is a countdown of my family contract's app. Today is the date when I have to renew my family contract for the year. In order to accumulate enough money to go home, I've been working as a staff member in concert venues. Earlier, I had collapsed backstage, so I was quickly sent to the hospital. The dial tone keeps beeping for a long time. Finally, my mom answers my call in what seems to be a noisy background. "Mom, I'm at the hospital right now. I need 300 dollars to pay the hospital bill." "You're at the hospital?" Mom's voice turns shrill immediately. "Why did you visit the hospital during the holidays? You really are a jinx!" "I fainted earlier. I was working at a concert venue—" "What? So, you refused to do chores at home during the holidays! Instead, you decide to work at a concert venue?" Mom interrupts immediately. "I don't have 300 dollars on me! You'd better come up with a way to pay that bill of yours!" "Mom…" My hand tightens around my phone. "Today is the last day of my family contract's renewal period. I'll renew the contract once I pay the bill." "Renew the contract, huh?" Mom just sneers at me. "That's a part of your duties! How dare you use it against me! Helena Lambert, if you don't renew the contract today, you can forget about calling me 'Mom'!" After that, she ends the call. I can only grip my phone to the point that my fingers turn white. After that, I tap on a social media app in hopes that I can borrow money from my friends, only to see the latest post on the social media feed. My younger sister, Hannah Lambert, has posted a photo collage there. "I'm here with my parents to watch my favorite singer's concert! Snagging tickets to the first-row seats is definitely worth it!" The background of those photos is the same concert venue where I work part-time at. It's the most expensive venue in town. Apparently, tickets cost 2,900 dollars each.