I woke up with the pain still intact.
Not the kind of pain that slowly fades with sleep, but a sharp ache in my chest, a tightness that cut off my breath, and the sound of the hospital monitor ticking like a clock counting down.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
I turned my head.
The room was white. The curtains were pale. Morning light slipped through the gap in the window, far too gentle for a place that had just destroyed someone's life.
Adrian was asleep in the chair beside the hospital bed, his head bowed. His suit was rumpled. His hair was a mess. He looked like a husband in mourning.
I had once trusted that face.
My hand slowly moved beneath the blanket.
My stomach was flat.
There was nothing there.
No Ethan.
The memories came faster than the tears.
His small, cold body. The blue blanket over the hospital bed. The doctor's voice apologizing over and over. My hand clutching Vivian's because, at the time, I needed someone to keep me from falling.
Vivian.
The woman who cried the loudest at Ethan's funeral.
The woman who hugged me and said everything would be all right.
The woman who would later become the reason Adrian left me.
I stared at my husband.
In my first life, I woke up in this room after passing out at the funeral. I begged Adrian not to leave. I begged him not to choose Vivian after everything we'd been through.
He left anyway.
Not that day. Not officially.
Adrian was too afraid of looking cruel to a woman who had just lost her child. He waited for me to break first. Waited until I no longer had the strength to fight for our marriage.
Then he said, “I don't love you anymore.”
Now, I heard the same voice before he even said it.
“Evelyn?”
Adrian woke up. His eyes were red, but I knew it wasn't from crying. He never slept well when he had to look like he was grieving.
“Are you awake?”
I stared at him long enough to make him uneasy.
“Where am I?”
“The hospital.” He stood up at once. “You passed out at the funeral.”
The funeral.
I lowered my gaze, as though the word was too heavy for me to accept.
“Ethan…”
Adrian stopped.
Only for a fraction of a second. But I saw it.
Not grief.
Relief.
As though our son's death had erased a decision he'd put off for far too long.
I closed my eyes.
Outside, someone pushed a cart past the door. Its small wheels creaked across the floor. The sound was exactly the same as in my memory.
Everything was the same.
The same hospital. The same morning. The same Adrian.
But this time, I also remembered something I hadn't been able to piece together before.
Vivian had come to our house twenty minutes before Ethan was found unconscious.
She knew where the medicine was in the kitchen cabinet.
She knew which doctor to call.
And when I asked how she knew Ethan was in the back room, she said she'd only guessed.
I believed her then.
Now I knew that not one of those things had been a guess.
“Evelyn.” Adrian's voice softened. “You need to rest.”
I opened my eyes and looked at him.
“How many years?”
He furrowed his brow.
“What?”
“What year is it?”
Adrian told me the year.
I recognized the date. I'd written it on a calendar years ago. The date my life was supposed to end alongside Ethan's.
Yet I was still breathing.
I still had time.
Adrian took my hand. His touch was warm, familiar, and disgusting because I knew that hand had touched Vivian the same way while I still believed in our marriage.
“We'll get through this together,” he said.
I looked at him.
That sentence had once been a promise.
Now, it sounded like an unfinished lie.
I slowly pulled my hand away, then let it fall onto the blanket.
“I want to sleep.”
Adrian looked as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it. He picked up his suit jacket and left after looking at me one more time.
The door closed.
Only after I was alone did I touch my stomach.
There was nothing there.
Ethan didn't exist yet.
But this time, I would make sure he was born.
And this time—
Ethan would live.