Not sure about a next life ....
this one, she was calling a forfeit.
The wind bit at Lily's skin, sharp against her frail frame, but she didn't flinch. The chill had long stopped bothering her. The rooftop stretched wide and empty, bathed in the soft orange glow of the setting sun. From up here, the city looked unreal—tiny cars, doll-like people, shadows of skyscrapers cast long and ethereal. Beauty without warmth. Beauty without meaning.
She had seen this view before. Sunrise. Sunset. Nights lit up like constellations had come down to earth. She'd seen them all from this very place. And every time, it brought the same deep ache in her chest. Not longing. Not awe. Emptiness. Like the beauty of it all had nothing to do with her. Like she wasn't meant to be part of this world.
The seasons would come and go without her. The skyline would remain majestic. The city would keep humming with life. Her absence wouldn't make the slightest ripple in this sea of existence.
Lily leaned on the railing, her frail body swaying from the breeze. This rooftop had been her place of reckoning—her first, her second, and what she hoped would be her last.
* * *
She was seventeen the first time.
The hospital was too white, too clean, too quiet. The kind of silence that screamed at you. Her mother had always hated hospitals. "The air smells like endings," she used to say.
That night, the endings came for both her mother and her older brother. A drunk driver, a shattered car, and a phone call that cleaved Lily's world in two.
She had wandered through the hospital like a ghost, her father's back stiff with shock in front of her. Her eyes were dry. She hadn't cried. She couldn't. Her brain hadn't caught up yet, like the whole thing was a sick joke she'd missed the punchline to.
She had found herself on this rooftop, staring out into the night sky, and tried to make sense of it all. But there was nothing. Just stars, and a kind of stillness that mocked her pain.
That was the first time she realized how insignificant she was.
Grief didn't come all at once. It trickled in like water through a crack in the ceiling. Quiet. Invasive. Destructive.
At school, she became the girl whose family had died. She hated the pity in people's eyes more than their silence. Her father stopped being her father and became something else—a hollow version of the man she remembered, always locked in his own sorrow. They coexisted like shadows in their home. The smell of freshly baked pastries and the flowers her mom always had around the house was replaced by the unmistakable pungent smell of cigarettes and alcohol. Speaking became optional. Touch became foreign.
It wasn't until she turned twenty-two that she returned to this cursed place.
Her father had collapsed one morning. Confused. Slurring his words. She'd rushed him to the hospital, her heart in her throat, desperate for hope to outweigh the dread.
"Brain abscesses," the doctors said. "Surgery is the only option."
She'd prayed. Really prayed. To anyone who would listen.
Please, not again. Please don't take him too.
But life, or God, or whatever force ran this twisted world, wasn't in the mood for mercy.
He died before they even closed the incision.
And once again, here she was, this timeshe was not surprised though.
This place had become her mausoleum. It had taken everything she ever loved. And now, it was about to take her too.
The diagnosis came two months ago. "Stage IV," they'd said. "Aggressive." A timer was placed above her head like a guillotine. The doctor had tried to be gentle, but it didn't matter. She'd stopped believing in hope years ago.
She didn't cry then either.
Instead, she made her way back to the rooftop.
In the days since her diagnosis, she tried to find reasons to hold on. There were things she had wanted to do—see the ocean again, taste the pastries her mom used to bake, learn Italian like she'd once dreamed. But when you have no one to share it with, what's the point?
She couldn't remember the last time someone had hugged her. Really hugged her. The kind that said, "I see you. I care."
Everyone she had loved had been swallowed whole by this world. So maybe, the only fair thing left was to let it swallow her too.
"THANK YOU FOR NOTHING, WORLD!" Lily screamed into the wind.
Her voice cracked, the sound echoing off nearby buildings. For a moment, it felt good. Like something primal had clawed its way out of her chest.
Then came the dizziness. The kind that turned the skyline into a spinning carousel. She stumbled, her knees giving out.
"I can't even scream without it costing me everything," she muttered, half-laughing, half-wheezing.
She looked out at the city again. It would still be here tomorrow. Majestic. Indifferent. Beautiful.
"I hope this can take me out, honestly," she whispered, her voice a soft, exhausted tremble. "I'm done with you too, world."
Memories drifted into her mind uninvited.
Her mother laughing in the kitchen, her hair tied back, flour on her nose.
Her older brother chasing her at the park, squealing with delight.
Her father reading her a bedtime story, his voice deep and soothing, his hand brushing her hair back.
A tear slipped from her eye. She didn't wipe it away.
Maybe she wasn't ready to go just yet.
A rustle behind her broke her fall.
She turned her head slowly, not sure what to expect, a man stood there. He wore scrubs, a badge clipped to his chest. Young. Mid-thirties. Tired eyes. He didn't look surprised to see her.
"I figured I'd find you up here," he said softly.
Lily frowned. "Do I know you?"
He shook his head. "No. But I've seen you… wandering the halls these past few weeks. You looked like someone searching for something."
"I'm not," she replied flatly.
He didn't leave.
"My friend used to come up here," he continued. "Before she passed. Said the city looked kinder from a distance."
Lily swallowed. "It does. But it's still the same city."
He nodded. "Yeah. Just… easier to pretend it's not."
They stood in silence. The sun dipped lower.
"I'm not here to stop you," he said eventually. "But I thought you might want someone to listen. Just for a little while."
Lily stared at him. No one had said that to her in years.
And for reasons she couldn't explain, she nodded.
They sat. She talked. He listened.
She told him everything. Her family. The losses. The diagnoses. The anger. The numbness.
He didn't offer solutions. Didn't try to fix her. Just sat with her in the stillness of it all.
By the time night fell, she realized her chest felt lighter. Not healed. But less hollow.
She didn't jump that night.
Or the next.
Instead, she started coming to the rooftop every day. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with him—his name was Lance, she learned. Dr. Lance, he was well sort after despite being quite young. He could bring most people with a heart condition from the brink. Many people called him the hand of God. From the moment he started his study you could tell his hands were made to save lives. Too bad he could not help her with her diagnosis. He tried, he really did, but her diagnosis just fell short of his expertise.
They talked about everything and nothing. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she laughed. Slowly, painfully, a sliver of colour returned to her gray world.
When her final weeks arrived, she asked to be moved to a room with a window facing west.
She wanted to see the sunset one last time.
On her final day, Lance brought her a small cake and a worn paperback. Her father's favourite novel.
She smiled weakly. "Thank you," she whispered. "For staying."
He squeezed her hand. "Thank you for letting me."
As the sun dipped below the skyline, Lily closed her eyes.
Maybe there was a next life.
Maybe not.
But for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel quite so alone.
And that, perhaps, was enough.
* * *
She looked so beautiful, like a fairy. This world didn't deserve her.
Her long, pitch-black curls tumbled down her back in wild waves, a striking contrast to the soft white cardigan she wore and the flowy skirt that danced around her legs. She looked so small, so fragile, leaning against the rooftop rail, swaying slightly in the occasional breeze like a petal caught in the wind.
"THANK YOU FOR NOTHING, WORLD!" Her voice tore through the air—unexpectedly loud, raw, almost desperate coming from such a small frame.
Lance was already moving. He saw the instant her balance faltered, saw her begin to tip backward. He took off in a sprint, heart in his throat, just barely catching her before the wind could.
"I hope this can take me out, honestly," she whispered. "I'm done with you too, world."
He closed his eyes tightly, willing the tears not to fall. The pain of hearing those words from her again—it split him open.
This wasn't the first time he had watched her fade from the world.
Every time, he was helpless. Every time, the universe brought her to him—too late, too broken, too far gone to save. And every time, it shattered him all over again.
One life, she arrived with a congenital heart condition. He was just a student then—green, nervous, still deciding what kind of doctor he wanted to become. She came in and out of the hospital for three years. And in those three years, he fell in love with her again.
Not because it seemed as if his life was centred around her since he could remember, not because she was beautiful—though she was. But because she glowed with kindness. Because she smiled through the pain. Because she always had a word of encouragement for the nurses, a gentle laugh for the other patients, and a quiet strength that pulled people in.
She died quietly on a Sunday morning. He hadn't even told her he loved her. That she had taken his world the moment she left.
He had vowed, then, to devote his life to saving others like her. Every hour of study, every night spent buried in textbooks, every procedure—he did it for her. As a tribute. A promise. A penance.
* * *
The visions always began when he was eighteen.
At first, they were just flashes. A rooftop. A hospital. A girl with black curls and a white cardigan. But there was always grief. And always the same unbearable sense of loss.
By nineteen, the flashes became dreams. Dreams so vivid, he would wake up with tears staining his pillow and the sound of machines beeping in his ears. He remembered a name. Lily. Her name.
He didn't question it after a while. He just acted.
By twenty-five, he was well on his way to becoming a promising cardiovascular surgeon. He chose his residency at Brookehurst Hospital—the same place he saw in his dreams. It didn't matter if anyone thought he was crazy. He knew she would come.
And she did.
She showed up three years into his residency. Car accident. Too broken to repair. She didn't last the day.
She was Lily. His Lily.
She never even looked at him like she remembered.
That night, after calling her time of death, he sat in the on-call room for hours, just staring at his hands. Hands that had held so many lives together. Hands that couldn't hold onto her.
The world was cruel. He had realized then that no amount of preparation changed the outcome. She was never meant to stay. Not in that life.
In some lives, he tried the opposite. He avoided medicine. Stayed away from Brookehurst. Tried to silence the visions with distance and distraction. But the outcome never changed. Somehow, some way, Lily found her way back to him. And she always died.
Once, she was a singer with lung cancer. Another life, she was a traveller with a rare autoimmune disease. In every life, her spirit burned bright—but it burned out too quickly.
He prayed. He begged. He tried religion. He tried science. He studied metaphysics. Researched reincarnation. Consulted monks. Slept in temples. Went on spiritual retreats. But nothing changed the cycle.
Each time she returned, she carried a little less light. And each time she left, she took a little more of him with her.
So, he stopped fighting it. And he started preparing.
He mastered the human body. Learned every branch of medicine he could. Specialized in the things she always seemed to suffer from. He kept working, even when the hope started to fade.
Because it was always her. And he didn't know how not to love her.
Now here she was again.
Same black curls. Same soft voice. Same sadness in her eyes.
And once again, she was slipping through his fingers.
He squeezed her hand tightly as she leaned into him, unconscious or maybe just lost to the pain. He whispered, voice trembling, "Thank you for letting me..."
Thank you for letting me hold you.
Thank you for finding me.
Thank you for being here, even if only for a moment.
Next time, he vowed, he would not let her fade without a fight.
He didn't know if she'd have cancer again. He didn't know if she'd remember him in the next life. But if there was a next time, he would be ready.
He would prepare again.
He would be her doctor, her protector, her anchor.
He would find her.
And maybe, just maybe, one day... she would stay.