The night of the car accident, Oliver Gilbert ordered his people to draw the last bag of blood from my body to save his first love.

The doctor dropped to his knees trying to stop him.

“Mr. Gilbert, your wife has Rh-negative blood and a congenital clotting disorder. If you take any more, she will die!”

But Oliver shoved the doctor aside, his eyes bloodshot.

“Save Nanette first. Shirley Winfield's tough. She can take it.”

Our seven-year-old daughter was draped over Nanette Harding's hospital bed. She turned back to me, tears streaming down her face.

“Mommy, please save Aunt Nanette.”

“You'll just bleed a little, you won't die. But if Aunt Nanette gets sicker, there won't be anyone to do the parent-child dance recital with me.”

I was pinned to the hospital bed, watching the syringe drain me drop by drop.

In that moment, I finally gave up on the two of them for good.

After they brought me back, Oliver showed up outside my room every single day with Phoebe Gilbert, begging me to forgive him.

Piles of supplements, jewelry, and apology letters were sent in. I accepted none of it. Even when Phoebe spiked a fever and sobbed for her mommy, I kept my eyes shut.

Until a voice I hadn't heard in a long time finally sounded in my head.

“Host vitals detected below critical threshold. Death will trigger departure from this world.”

Oliver was gripping my wrist, his eyes red-rimmed.

“Shirley, are you done with this tantrum? Are you really going to abandon your own daughter?”

I looked at him calmly, and then I smiled.

The next second, I ripped out the IV line and, without a moment's hesitation, dragged a shard of glass from the bedside table across my wrist.

——

When I opened my eyes again, Oliver was sitting at the edge of the bed. His suit was a crumpled mess. The moment he saw I was awake, something fierce lit up behind his eyes, and he reached for my face.

I stared at that hand. The same hand that, just last night, had held me down while I struggled and told the doctor,

“Draw it. Save Nanette first.”

I turned my head away and looked down at the thick layers of gauze wrapped around my wrist.

Then I yanked my hand up and tore the bandage clean off. The freshly sutured wound split open, and blood soaked through the white gauze in an instant.

Oliver's pupils contracted. He seized my wrist, his voice shaking.

“Shirley! What are you doing?!”

He pressed me back against the bed. My wrist throbbed until it went numb, but all I felt was relief.

“Oliver, stop saving me. Being alive means nothing to me anymore.”

The room went deathly silent. The flicker of panic in Oliver's eyes was quickly smothered by anger.

“How long are you going to keep this up? I know taking your blood last night was wrong. I didn't think it through.”

“But Nanette was in a car accident and Phoebe was hysterical. What was I supposed to do?”

“Besides, every other time they resuscitated you and you were fine, weren't you?”

I stared at him, and the realization settled over me like ice water. In his mind, every time I had clawed my way back from the edge of death, it was just a routine resuscitation. No big deal. She was fine.

I laughed. Oliver's expression darkened.

“What's so funny?”

A wave of exhaustion crashed through me. I wrenched my hand free, cutting him off.

“Mr. Gilbert, please leave.”

He went rigid.

“What did you just call me?”

I didn't look at him again. I used to call him by his first name, back when I stood beside him as he went from a nobody doctor to the Mr. Gilbert everyone bowed to.

Now even rolling those two syllables across my tongue made me sick.

Oliver's gaze drifted to the trash can beside the bed. Inside it sat a clear storage box.

My wedding ring, necklace, bracelet, brooch. I had taken them off one by one and dropped them all in.

On top lay a greeting card Phoebe had drawn for me when she was four. I used to treasure these things like they were sacred. Now they belonged exactly where I'd put them.

Oliver stared at that card, and the color drained from his face inch by inch.

He reached in and flipped open the box. Beneath the ring was the letter he had written to me when he proposed. Along with every piece of jewelry, I didn't want any of it anymore.

Oliver slammed the box shut. His voice came out razor-sharp, vicious.

“Shirley, you've really outdone yourself. You won't even keep what your own daughter made for you?”

I kept my eyes closed.

“No need.”

His chest heaved, as if those two words had finally cut deep enough to draw blood.

“Fine. Fine! This is how you treat our daughter!”

“Since that's how it is, don't bother showing up for Phoebe's dance rehearsal tomorrow. Nanette will be there for her.”

He stared at me, waiting for me to crumble, to lash out, to beg him with red-rimmed eyes the way I always used to, pleading with him not to give my place away.

But all I said was,

“Fine.”

The anger on Oliver's face froze solid.

Right on cue, his phone rang. Nanette's name lit up the screen. Her voice came through in broken sobs.

“Oliver, did I upset Shirley again?”

Oliver looked at me, silent for a few seconds, then turned and walked toward the door.

“No. She's just being unreasonable.”

After the door closed, the room went quiet. A nurse came in with reddened eyes and started redressing my wounds.

I looked at the freshly opened glass medicine bottle sitting on the tray and said softly：

“Could you pull the curtain? The light's too harsh.”

The moment the nurse turned around, I grabbed the bottle and smashed it against the bed rail.

Glass exploded with a sound sharp enough to split eardrums.

By the time the nurse screamed and spun back, I had already picked up the largest shard and pressed it to the side of my throat.

This time, I didn't hesitate.

Every drop of color drained from Oliver's face. He seized my hand. The glass shard dragged across my palm as he wrenched it away, and blood ran down through the gaps between his fingers.

“Shirley! Do you have to die right in front of me before you're satisfied?!”

He pinned me down so hard I couldn't move.

The nurse was shouting for help. A doctor burst in with a crash cart. The room dissolved into chaos.

I looked into Oliver's bloodshot eyes and felt nothing but the absurdity of it all.

He had already chosen Nanette. What was the point of playing the devoted husband now?

When I woke again, it was already the next afternoon.

Oliver wasn't in the room. Only Phoebe stood beside the bed.

She wore a pink dance dress, her hair done up in two little buns, a registration form clutched in her hand.

The moment she saw my eyes open, she rushed over, her small face scrunched up, her voice a petulant whine.

“Mom, can you please stop staying in the hospital?”

I blinked, caught off guard. She pulled the form closer to her chest, her voice turning even more aggrieved：

“The rehearsal for the parent-child dance is tomorrow. The teacher said a mom has to be there.”

“But you keep lying around in the hospital, and Dad won't come home, and Aunt Nanette cried all night.”

“Everyone's unhappy because of you. You're going to ruin my dance too.”

I looked at this little girl who carried the same blood in her veins as mine, and still, pathetically, tried to tell myself that maybe she was just scared.

After all, she had watched the doctors draw blood from me that night with her own eyes.

My voice was so hoarse it barely came out.

“Phoebe, that night when they took Mommy's blood, were you scared?”

Phoebe's eyes reddened slightly.

“Yes.”

Something stirred faintly in my chest.

Then, a second later, she lowered her head and fidgeted with the hem of her skirt.

“All the nurses were running around, and Daddy was really scary.”

“Aunt Nanette kept holding Daddy's hand. She was hurting so bad she couldn't even cry.”

“Mommy, you're a grownup. Can't you just let her have it?”

I stared at her, frozen. Tears hit the back of my hand before I even realized I was crying.

So in my daughter's heart, no amount of suffering I endured could compare to a single whimper from Nanette.

Phoebe held the registration form out to me.

“Aunt Nanette said she could take your place and dance with me. She said you're not well enough, and you'd only hold me back if you came.”

I looked down.

In the column labeled "Mother," Nanette Harding's name was written in bold, unmistakable letters.

My fingers went rigid against the blanket. Phoebe seemed to sense my reaction and added in a small, guilty voice,

“Aunt Nanette is a really good dancer. She said she'd help me win first place.”

I remembered, suddenly, the first time Phoebe learned to dance at four years old. She'd fallen and bruised both knees, then threw herself into my arms crying, saying she only ever wanted Mommy to be with her.

I'd held her for a long time that day, rocking her until the tears stopped.

But now she was the one who'd crossed my name out with her own hands. I pushed the registration form back toward her.

“Then let her be the one to go with you from now on.”

Phoebe froze.

“Mom, don't be like this again. Aunt Nanette says you're always saying things just to make people feel bad.”

Footsteps sounded at the door. Oliver walked in, catching the tail end of that sentence.

He took one look at Phoebe's reddened eyes and his brow furrowed immediately.

“Shirley, she's seven years old. Do you really have to pick fights with a child?”

I said nothing. Phoebe ducked behind him and whispered,

“Daddy, does Mommy not want me anymore?”

Oliver's expression turned ice-cold.

“Shirley, are you done? If you hadn't blown everything out of proportion, Phoebe never would've asked Nanette to do the parent-child dance recital! You have no one to blame but yourself!”

Father and daughter stood together, one in front of the other. One thought I was being unreasonable. The other thought I was holding her back.

In that single moment, the last scrap of warmth left inside me vanished completely. I closed my eyes, too exhausted to fight, and let their voices crash around me without answering a single word.

I waited until deep into the night, when the nurse on duty thought I was asleep. Then I pulled the IV needle from my arm and followed the emergency stairwell up to the roof.

The hospital rooftop housed a plasma cold-storage unit. The temperature around it was brutal. I'd just lost blood, and my clotting disorder meant that if I stayed long enough, no one would be able to save me.

Cold air seeped through the gap beneath the door. I sat outside the storage room, slowly unwinding the gauze from my wrist. Blood welled up almost immediately, and the freezing wind turned the sting into something raw and biting.

The system alert chimed again.

“Life signs continuing to decline.”

I closed my eyes. For the first time, I felt at peace.

But after some unknowable stretch of time, frantic footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.

Oliver came rushing toward me. He scooped me up in his arms, his whole body shaking, yet even then the first words out of his mouth were blame.

“Shirley! Do you have to pull something like this right before Phoebe's rehearsal?”

He carried me back to the room. The doctor was already waiting at the door.

A space heater was wheeled to the bedside. A nurse cut away the gauze that had frozen stiff with blood, and their faces grew grimmer with every layer.

“Her core temperature is dangerously low. Possible hypothermic tissue damage.”

“Blood pressure is still dropping. Push the reversal meds now!”

“Mr. Gilbert, any later and your wife might have——”

Oliver whipped around so fast the doctor swallowed the rest of the sentence.

His fingers were clenched around my chart, knuckles white.

“Save her. Shirley can't leave me. She's pulled through every crisis before on her own, and this time is no different!”

No one in the room dared respond.

I lay on the bed, listening to the monitors beep one pulse at a time, while images from years ago drifted up before my eyes.

Back then, no one called Oliver "Mr. Gilbert."

He was just the least-regarded youngest son of the Gilbert family, wearing a lab coat washed so many times it had gone gray, clutching a stack of rejected project proposals, smoking by the hospital's back entrance.

I asked him if he truly wanted to keep chasing his dream of being a doctor. With his family background, all he had to do was give up medicine and go home to take over the business. He didn't have to suffer like this.

He looked up at me, eyes full of exhaustion.

“I do. But no one believes in me.”

I respected him. I admired him. I stayed up with him revising proposals page by page, ran around with him chasing investors, stood with him in the rain for three hours just to get a meeting with one potential backer.