— Celeste Maren —
The ceiling above me was too bright.
Not the harsh white of an operating theater.
Not the low golden flicker of home.
It was sterile.
Still.
My mouth was dry. My chest ached with each shallow breath, like my ribs had been hollowed out and re-filled with lead. I turned my head slightly—and the world wobbled.
Monitors beeped softly.
I wasn't alone in the room.
"Celeste?"
A voice. Gentle. Too familiar. My sister.
I blinked slowly, trying to shape my mouth into a word.
She stood at the foot of the bed, her face pale, eyes rimmed red. Her cardigan was wrinkled, and there was a paper coffee cup clutched in her hands like a lifeline.
"You've been out for two days," she whispered.
I opened my mouth. Tried to speak. Only a rasp came out.
She leaned closer, holding a cup with a straw. "Here. Just a little."
The water was lukewarm, but it tasted like clarity.
"What… happened?" My voice cracked like a dry branch.
"You collapsed. Outside Room Four. They said it was exhaustion. Severe dehydration. You hadn't eaten in almost twenty hours. BP dropped. You coded in the elevator before they got you upstairs."
I stared at her.
"I—coded?"
She nodded.
"You've been in and out… They stabilized you. But you were—" Her voice caught. "You scared the hell out of everyone."
I looked down at my arms. IV lines. A cardiac monitor. A nasal cannula.
I was the patient.
"Where's… my pager?" I croaked.
"Jesus, Celeste," she whispered. "It's in the drawer. Along with your badge. You're not going back there right now."
I closed my eyes. Not to sleep—just to keep the tears from showing.
Because deep down, I knew it wasn't just exhaustion.
It was the crack I swore would never come.
The fall I thought I could outpace.
Two days gone.
And still, my body refused to let me forget.
Somewhere down the hall, a baby cried.
And I wasn't the one running toward it.
The door opened with a soft click.
I expected a nurse. Maybe my sister again.
Instead, it was Dr. Evelyn Wu—Chief of Obstetrics. Impeccably composed, as always. Blazer crisp. Heels sharp. The kind of woman who didn't just walk through a room—she commanded it.
But this time, her eyes looked tired.
Not angry. Not disappointed.
Just… tired.
"Dr. Maren," she said quietly, closing the door behind her.
I tried to sit up straighter. My body screamed. Evelyn motioned for me not to bother.
"I heard you regained consciousness this morning," she said. "It's good to see you awake."
"Thank you," I murmured, throat raw.
She pulled the visitor chair close and sat, legs crossed, fingers laced in her lap. Her silence stretched long enough to make me nervous.
"You collapsed mid-shift," she finally said. "Went into shock. Unresponsive for four minutes. Coded once."
I swallowed hard. "I didn't think I was—"
"You didn't think, Celeste. You just kept going."
There was no venom in her tone. Only blunt truth.
"I had to. We were short. The patients—"
"You almost died."
Her words hit harder than I expected. Not because they were dramatic, but because they weren't.
It wasn't a scolding.
It was a eulogy I'd narrowly avoided.
Evelyn leaned forward.
"You are one of the best residents I've ever seen come through this program. Smart. Fast. Unshakable. But you've built your entire identity on being the one who never drops the ball. Who never sleeps. And it almost killed you."
My throat tightened.
"There were three critical cases that day," I said. "All three babies survived. All the mothers did. I had to be there."
"No," she said gently. "You chose to be. And now I have to make a choice, too."
I flinched.
She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded slip of paper. Placed it on the tray table.
A medical leave form.
"Four weeks," she said. "Mandatory."
My fingers twitched.
"I can't take four weeks off," I whispered. "There's no one to—"
"They'll manage. You won't."
I looked down at the form. It blurred, my eyes stinging.
"You're not a machine, Celeste. You're a person. And people break if they never stop."
I didn't answer.
Because I didn't know how.
.....
The room emptied after she left. My sister returned an hour later with soup I couldn't stomach. The night came slow and thick. The city outside dimmed into a gray wash behind the windowpane.
I reached into the drawer beside my bed.
Inside—my pager, my badge, and the thing I didn't expect:
The novel.
The same battered paperback I'd been flipping through between shifts, chapters dog-eared and margins scribbled in frustration.
An Empire of Velvet and Ash.
The book I hated.
The villainess I loathed.
The Empress's sister I secretly admired.
I turned it over in my hand, frowning.
Why had I brought it to the hospital?
---
I flipped to the last chapter I'd read. The one where the villainess, cold and calculating, slipped poison into the Empress's wine. The moment everything changed.
I didn't like her. I never had.
But now, lying in this hospital bed, my heart wired and my veins taped, I saw something in her I hadn't before.
Desperation.
She hadn't wanted to fall.
She just didn't know how to stop climbing.
---
The room was silent.
The machines hummed.
And somewhere in the quiet, I whispered to the ceiling:
"What happens to a woman who's built her whole life around saving others—if the world decides she's the one who needs saving?"
The light flickered once.
Just once.
Then all was still.
I kept reading, long after the monitors lulled into rhythm and the hallway lights dimmed.
There was something hypnotic about it now. The pages blurred at the edges, but I kept going. Every scene with the Empress's sister—elegant, kind, bright—felt like light. Every page with the villainess—sharp, cruel, alone—cut like glass.
Why did I hate her so much?
Why did she feel… familiar?
I shifted to sit up, and a bolt of pain cracked behind my eyes.
I gasped. The book fell from my lap.
The heart monitor ticked faster.
Something wasn't right.
My skin prickled cold. A rush of heat flushed over my chest. My vision swam. It wasn't just fatigue. Not this time.
I tried to breathe in.
Tried.
My chest refused to rise.
The sound in my ears turned to static. My arms trembled. I looked at my hand—it was twitching uncontrollably.
No. No, no.
I knew this.
Not a panic attack.
Not exhaustion.
Something worse.
Buried deep. Forgotten for years. The thing I kept quiet, even from my mentors. From the residency files.
I reached for the call button.
Missed.
Again.
My hand wouldn't move.
"Severe cardiac arrhythmia, undiagnosed autoimmune—"
The words echoed from memory. My memory. I had buried the diagnosis, the risk, the warnings.
The years of denial.
I had been so careful.
But exhaustion had its own cruel logic.
Two days in a coma weren't enough to undo six years of burning the candle at both ends.
And now—
I was paying.
Alarms screamed.
Nurses burst into the room.
"BP's crashing!"
"She's seizing!"
I felt hands on my arms, cold gel on my chest, shouting over me.
"Code blue! Room 206! Repeat—code blue!"
The light overhead turned to white fire.
My ears filled with wind.
Then silence.
Complete.
Still.
Weightless.
---
I opened my eyes.
Gasped.
Sat up.
And froze.
The ceiling above me wasn't white.
It was painted—a mural of golden clouds and blooming roses.
Silk sheets slid against my skin. I looked down.
I wasn't in a hospital gown.
I was in lace.
The room was massive. Ornate. Too clean, too quiet, too… wrong.
A breeze pushed in through tall balcony doors, and the scent of wisteria floated in.
Far off, a bell tolled.
---
I turned my head.
On the carved vanity beside the bed sat a gilded mirror.
And in the reflection—
not my face.
End of Chapter Three.