Disembodied as I was, I figured that I was likely a goner, which was probably why they called for the best anesthesiologist in the hospital, Alex, to help.

However, Yves rejected the idea. "I don't like changing anesthesiologists mid-surgery."

Well, of course. Julia's surgery was more important than my life.

Slightly frustrated, I pulled a face at Yves.

The third time the door to the operating theater was pushed open, Julia's surgery was almost halfway done.

"Dr. Steward, they've been trying to resuscitate the patient for 30 minutes. They want to know if they should keep going with it."

Yves finally lost his temper and threw down his drill into the instrument tray. "Do you people have no common sense? If it's been half an hour, you should be calling their parents to see if they want to keep trying! If you ask me, I'd say don't bother!"

I nodded in agreement.

To terminate resuscitation efforts, they would need consent from the patient's next of kin. There was no use asking Yves about this anyway.

From a doctor's perspective, attempting further resuscitation was useless since I had coded half an hour ago.

Unless it was for a loved one, no one would exhaust every effort just for an unguaranteed miracle.

Julia's surgery finally ended late into the night.

For some reason, my soul wasn't tied to my lifeless body. Instead, I was tethered to Yves, unable to drift any further than two feet away from him.

He seemed to have completely forgotten about me. He waited another two hours in the observation room until Julia woke up, then brought her to her room himself.

He carried her to her bed and tucked a pillow under her head, only glancing at my bed after ensuring that the nurse had hooked up the IV bags.

"Where's Summer?" he asked.

The nurse paused, seemingly surprised by his calmness, and said cautiously, "She was taken home by her mother earlier in the night."

Yves nodded and said nothing more.

After a while, I watched him walk over to the window and pull out his phone. He pulled up a contact labeled "Wife".

He hesitated, his slender fingers hovering over the call button. Just as he was about to tap on it, Julia's voice came from behind.

Frail and pale, she twisted her fingers nervously as she said timidly, "Yves, why don't you call Summer? I'm sure she hadn't meant to hurt me so badly when she pushed me…"

Yves paused. He glanced over at Julia, anger flashing in his eyes when his gaze swept over her legs, then exited the contact screen.

He went back to the side of Julia's bed and patted her on the head fondly. "There's no need for that. You're hurt so badly. Letting her reflect on her errors for a few days would do her good."

What?

I almost burst out laughing out of sheer disbelief.

If I could touch Yves, I would kick him right now.

It was all my fault, was it?

Julia had almost been hit by a motorcycle—I had pushed her out of the way to save her life!

Did he not see the injury on my head where the motorcycle had hit me? I had sustained a brain hemorrhage!

The memory had been blurry earlier due to my head injury, but now that I was dead, I remembered everything clearly.

Then again, what would would it have been if I had remembered earlier? He wouldn't have believed me anyway.

I wilted.

Yves stayed in Julia's ward until the next morning.

When his colleagues saw him walking out of her room to end his shift, they were shocked.

After glancing at each other for a while, one of the doctors who was close to him asked cautiously, "Dr. Steward, your girlfriend… aren't you going to go back to check on her?"

Yves waved his hand impatiently like he didn't want them to talk about me. "There's no need to check on her. It's just a minor issue."

No one dared to push further.

I heard one of the female trainees mutter behind his back, "I didn't know Dr. Steward had a heart of stone."

I scoffed. Yves wasn't a heartless, emotionless person.

The doctors and nurses would see the truth when it was time for rounds.

Yves's expression softened noticeably when he got to Julia's room. "I'll handle the dressing changes for this patient myself. A young woman shouldn't have scars on her body."

I looked over at the trainee who had muttered about him earlier. Her jaw was practically on the floor.

See? Yves was different when it came to Julia.

…

Yves was peeling an apple for Julia when my mom called.

She sounded tired over the phone, which made me worried. "Yves, are you not coming to see Summer?"

Yves put down the knife. His voice became more respectful. "Mrs. Simpson, Julia broke her leg. I can't leave her just yet. Can you…"

Mom's voice suddenly turned sharp. "You can't leave her? Did you know that Summer was pregnant? She was carrying your child!"

Yves's eyes widened, his grip on the phone tightening. Before he could say anything, Mom started sobbing. "Forget it. Why am I even telling you this? She's gone now anyway. Go ahead and stay with your precious Julia, Yves. Don't contact us anymore from now on."

Mom hung up.

I was almost vibrating with anxiety, wishing that I could travel through the phone and go to her.

I didn't know how my body left the hospital last night, but Mom must have been devastated.

I reached for Yves's phone, wanting to call her back, but my hand passed through the phone uselessly.

Souls could not cry.

I wanted to tell Mom that I was here. She didn't need to worry about me or cry over me; I was right here.

Yves was still staring at his phone, dazed. Unable to hold in my anger, I tried to kick and punch him.

"Are you freaking stupid, Yves? Call Mom back! Go and check on her and see how she's doing!" I screamed at him.

"What does she mean, gone?" Yves muttered to himself. Then, he bolted out of the room, storming straight to the doctor's office. He slammed his hand down on the desk of the doctor who had tried to resuscitate me last night, Elliot Lewis.

"Elliot, you were on duty last night. Were you the one who treated Summer?" he asked, his voice trembling.

Elliot looked up at him, startled, taking in his reddened eyes. "Dr. Steward… You…"

"Did she miscarry?"

Yves' raised voice startled Elliot. "Please accept my condolences, Dr. Stewart. We only realized she was pregnant at the very end…"

Yves stumbled backward, all the strength seeming to drain from his body. Abruptly, he took off his coat and turned to leave.

I followed beside him, urging him on. "Hurry up! Move faster! Go check on my mom!"

The elevator arrived. I prepared to step in with Yves, but he froze in place.

I followed his gaze and saw Julia hobbling out of her room, dragging her injured leg after her.

Dammit.

Clearly, we weren't going to get into the elevator.

Sure enough, the elevator doors closed. As the elevator descended without us, Yves carried Julia back to her bed.

She trembled in his arms, tears shining in her eyes. "Has something happened to Summer, Yves? I'm so sorry. I saw her buying abortion pills, and… it was all my fault. If I hadn't broken my leg, I would've told you earlier."

Julia continued to speak, but Yves was dazed, his face ashen.

Eyes red, he sat down stiffly beside the bed.

"She didn't want my child," he said hoarsely after a while. "It's got nothing to do with you."

He looked devastated, but all I felt was cold amusement.

I was medically trained, and he knew that. If he had just rubbed more than two brain cells together, he would know that I would've opted for a surgical procedure over abortion pills if I had wanted to terminate a pregnancy.

But whatever Julia said, he believed.

That was why I could never win against her.

I patted my flat stomach, making sure that the fetus hadn't become a ghost like me, and sighed.

This was actually my second pregnancy.

The first time, I had gotten pregnant right after Yves and I graduated. We were both still looking for jobs.

At the time, Yves was overjoyed. He immediately proposed to me, saying that he would take care of me, but I felt that I was too young for marriage, wanting instead to focus on my career. Against his pleas, I chose abortion.

Because of this, our marriage plans were put on hold indefinitely.

I knew that this had been a sore spot for him, but I did not regret it. If he couldn't understand where I was coming from, then that was his problem.

As for the second pregnancy, I never even realized the child's presence.

Maybe losing it was the best outcome.

After all, given how strained things had been between Yves and me lately, things might not have ended well even if I had survived the accident.

Yves called me again. Of course, I didn't answer, so he sent me a long voice message on WhatsApp.

"Summer, no matter what you're upset about, you shouldn't have aborted our child without telling me. Come home by eight tonight. I'll give you a last chance to explain yourself."

This man was truly baffling sometimes.

This was my last chance to explain myself?

Julia had already given him a story, even if it were fabricated. Would he have believed me if I had tried to explain myself?

Either way, I couldn't.

I felt a little sad.

After getting off work, Yves went to a bakery and bought a strawberry cake.

It was my favorite bakery, but unfortunately for him, I preferred the mango cake that was only sold in limited amounts.

He never managed to get one and always made me settle for something else.

He brought the cake back home and cooked a nutritious dinner.

He sat at the dining table for the entire afternoon.

I knew that he was waiting for me.

In the three years since Julia had appeared in our lives, I had wished countless times that we could sit down and talk calmly like this.

Ironically, it happened only when there was an unbridgeable gap between us.

No matter what, I had genuinely loved him before, so I couldn't help but feel a pang of sorrow.

I sat down across from him. "Don't bother, Yves. I'm not coming home."

Yves couldn't hear me, of course. He picked up his phone again, turning the screen on and off repeatedly, seemingly on edge.

At 7.30 pm, his phone rang. Yves brightened but sagged in disappointment when he saw that it was a call from the hospital. Still, he answered the call.

"Dr. Steward, the patient in Bed 27 is experiencing a high fever and convulsions. Could you come in?"

The patient in Bed 27 was Julia.

Of course he would go to her.

As ever, without hesitation, Yves pulled on his jacket and rushed to the hospital.

Julia did look pitiful. Her face was flushed red from the fever.

Pursing his lips, Yves checked her medications and adjusted her treatment plan. He did everything himself, from fetching water to monitoring the IV drip.

This reminded me of when I had to get an appendectomy last year. I wanted him to stay with me and take care of me, but he told me that the hospital had designated caregivers and that I shouldn't act so spoiled.

So, was Julia allowed to be spoiled because she was his little darling?

When Julia woke up, she began crying again. "I'm sorry, Yves. I know you meant to have a talk with Summer. I'm too weak."

Yves twitched. He seemed to have just remembered the time. Grabbing his phone hastily, he saw that the agreed time had long passed.

He opened up our chat hesitantly and frowned when he saw no messages from me. "I left you some food in the kitchen. There's soup in the pot as well, and cake in the fridge. Don't eat too much and rest well. I'll be back tomorrow morning," he texted.

After a while, he added another text, "I can't leave Julia alone. Please, Summer, don't act out anymore, I'm begging you."

I rolled my eyes.

I had never acted out before. If he wanted to know who was better at acting out, all he needed to do was ask the nurses.

In fact, the nurses outside were gossiping at that very moment. "Finally, peace from bed 27. She was hysterical before Dr. Steward arrived, but now she's all quiet. Such a good actress, isn't she?"

See, even the outsiders could tell, yet Yves remained oblivious.

…

Three days passed.

Even the director of the hospital was making arrangements for flowers to be sent to my funeral.

When was Yves going to realize that I was dead?

I watched him as he took a nap in the on-call room after a shift and sighed.

It seemed like we had drifted apart ever since starting work.

I was in neurosurgery, and he was in orthopedics; we worked in the same building but on different floors, separated by a vast distance.

Even though we worked in the same hospital, we rarely saw each other.

With alternating day and night shifts, we didn't even see each other much during our off days; at most, we saw each other two to three times a week.

Maybe that was why we grew further apart.

Julia might be the catalyst, but the cracks in our relationship had appeared long before her.

That day, the hospital director told Yves to stop by his office to discuss my body donation.

We had made this decision back when we first graduated and got our medical licenses.

To celebrate, Yves and I had donated blood and bone marrow and also consented to donate our bodies to science after death.

If either of us died, we agreed to donate our bodies to the other's department; his brain would come to me in neurosurgery, and my skeleton would go to him in the orthopedic department.

To our freshly graduated selves, this had been the height of romance, a declaration of love and loyalty to each other.

I strolled around Yves' office and found the perfect spot to display my skeleton—right behind his desk.

There, I would be facing away from direct sunlight and would be able to see everything that went on in the hospital. It was a great spot.

Yves woke up and checked his phone again. He was finally starting to realize that something was wrong after three days without contact from me.

He called Elliot to him again. Hesitating, he finally asked the question that he should've asked three days ago, "How was Summer that day? Was she in a lot of pain?"

Elliot looked pained. After all, I had died under his care; even if it wasn't his fault, it was only natural that he felt bad. "I don't think so. It happened quickly; there wasn't much we could do."

I was exasperated. Yves should know whether I was in pain or not; he had seen the wounds on my head, yet he never bothered to ask me then.

Yves wasn't satisfied. "What kind of absorbable suture did you use? Do you have photos of the stitched skin?"

Elliot was confused. "I didn't use absorbable sutures. As for photos… didn't you see her in person?"

Yves' expression turned stiff.

Then, finally sensing something was wrong, he stood up abruptly. "How could you use normal sutures on the wounds on her face? What if she was disfigured? Go, get me a kit right now!"

Hastily, he took out his phone and pulled up my contact again. Before he could call me, Elliot said in consternation, "But it's not like there's any need to use cosmetic sutures on a dead body."

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Yves looked up. "What did you say? Dead body?"

Pursing his dry lips, he tried to make sense of those words. "You must be mistaken. I'm talking about Summer Simpson, my girlfriend. You know her. She came in at the same time as the patient in Bed 27 and was discharged the same night."

Elliot was perplexed, but he knew instinctively that something wasn't right. Swallowing, he said cautiously, "We were talking about Summer Simpson, Dr. Steward. Your girlfriend, one of the women who came in three days ago. She passed away while you were operating on the patient in Bed 27."