During a white-water rafting trip, my husband lied about my father’s condition to get the rescue team to save my best friend first. My father drowned. When I confronted him, he turned on me. “What did you want? For them to waste time and let them both die?” It wasn’t until I walked in on my husband and my best friend locked in a passionate kiss in a swimming pool that I understood. He had let my father die to save his mistress. When they realized I knew, they had me committed to a psychiatric hospital. They tortured me to death with an electric baton and took over my family’s company. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the exact moment my father fell into the water. 1 “There’s no hope for Anna’s dad! Save Lily first!” I never thought the cruelest joke of my life would play out right before my eyes. The words were a bullet, piercing my newly revived heart. I scrambled to my feet, grabbing the hem of Patrick’s shirt. He shoved me so hard I fell. “You were unconscious for five minutes, Anna. Do you know what that means?” “Your dad was swept further downstream, but Lily is still right there, struggling!” “If you want to blame someone, blame your father! The boat wouldn’t have capsized if he hadn’t insisted on coming!” Patrick stood there, his posture rigid, his expression so earnest and certain it made me want to vomit. In my last life, I had trusted him completely. And what did it get me? My father’s tragic death. While I lay in a hospital bed fighting for my life after nearly drowning myself, he was out all night buying flowers for my best friend, Lily. Not this time. I would not let it happen again. I swore it. “Please, save my father!” I screamed. “The other person in the water is my best friend. She’s a strong swimmer!” Patrick’s face tightened. He slapped me, hard. The force sent me sprawling. “Anna, this is not the time for your tantrums! Don’t question my judgment!” “Are you going to make them waste precious time and let both of them drown? Who’s going to take responsibility for that? Go! Go save Lily! Save her first!” My ears were ringing. I cut through his tirade, shouting with every ounce of strength I had. “If you don’t go after my father right now, I will kill myself right here in front of all of you!” Finally, two of the rescue divers swam towards Lily, but the rest turned to search for my father. Patrick shot me a look of pure ice before hurrying toward Lily’s position. Watching his retreating back, the last flicker of hope in my heart burned to ash. By the time I saw my father again, he was unconscious from the water he’d inhaled. Just like last time, he was deathly pale on the stretcher while the rescue captain performed CPR. My heart hammered against my ribs. I frantically dialed for an ambulance over and over until I heard a voice crackle over the captain’s walkie-talkie. “Is the ambulance here yet?” “Only one. The second one is stuck in traffic, it’s going to be delayed…” Before I could ask anything, Patrick’s voice, a mixture of shock and fury, cut through the air. “Lily, you’re hurt!” He knelt, gently blowing on a scrape on her ankle, his eyes filled with a tenderness I had never seen him show me. They gazed at each other with an intimacy so thick you could cut it with a knife. How had I been so blind before? This time, I didn’t miss the triumphant smirk Lily shot me from behind his back. A chilling realization washed over me. In my last life, Patrick had let my father die over a few scrapes and bruises. The piercing wail of a siren grew closer. The ambulance was here. As a paramedic and I started to lift my father’s stretcher, Patrick blocked our path. “Anna, let Dad wait. The second ambulance will be here soon.” “Lily’s leg is hurt badly. She needs to get to a hospital right away.” He stood firmly in front of the ambulance, trying to hide what was happening. “It’s fine! Your dad has always been strong. He’s just unconscious!” “But Lily is so fragile, and look! Her ankle is bleeding!” “Get. Out. Of. The. Way!” My voice was a low growl, a stark contrast to my usual calm demeanor. In the moment Patrick hesitated, Lily limped over. “Anna, we’ve been friends for so long. How could you do this to me?” “It’s not like we’re not going to save your dad. It’s just a short wait. Why is that so hard for you?” Tears streamed down her face, her voice choked with manufactured grief. Patrick instinctively raised a hand to comfort her, but then remembered I was there and froze. My childhood best friend and the man I’d loved since we were teenagers, performing a heart-wrenching drama of forbidden love right in front of me. The double betrayal was a physical ache in my chest. “Lily? What are you doing here?” A round-faced nurse hurried over from the ambulance, her eyes lighting up in recognition. My heart leaped into my throat. It was one of Lily’s colleagues from the hospital. “Jenna, my leg is injured. You need to get me into the ambulance first,” Lily said urgently. “I can’t do that. Hospital policy is to prioritize critical patients,” the nurse replied firmly. I breathed a sigh of relief as we loaded my father into the ambulance. Just before the doors closed, I saw Patrick talking to the nurse, trying to take off his watch. The nurse pushed his hand away. My focus was on my father. I didn’t think much of it and urged the driver to go. The next second, the doors were flung open again. Against the blinding sunlight, I heard the nurse’s voice, sharp with contempt. “If you don’t have money, why did you call an ambulance? The fee for a long-distance mountain call is expensive! Get him out!” My father’s stretcher was being pulled from the vehicle. “I have money! Let my dad stay, I can pay!” I screamed. “Then prove you can pay,” the nurse said, her brow furrowed. My phone was at the bottom of the river. I had no cash on me. Without thinking, I slipped the Patek Philippe watch from my wrist and held it out to her. “Take this as collateral. It’s more than enough to cover the fee. Please, let my dad stay!” The nurse scoffed. “Another Patek? Your husband just tried to pass off a fake one. Now you’re trying the same trick?” A cold dread washed over me. Now I understood what Patrick had been doing. Lily’s voice dripped with mock pity. “So pretentious, acting rich when you have nothing.” Patrick grabbed my hand, playing along. “We didn’t mean to deceive you. Please, have a heart. Take my father-in-law to the hospital.” I wrenched my hand away. “He’s lying! My watch is real! Give me your phone, I can log into my bank account and show you!” The nurse’s face hardened. “You have money for a hospital but not to take care of your own father?” “Just take him home. Don’t waste our time.” They continued to unload the stretcher. In the end, I was left standing there, watching the ambulance drive away with Lily inside. I grabbed Patrick’s sleeve. “Why did you lie? I don’t care that you’re cheating on me with Lily! But my father needs a doctor!” “If anything happens to him, I will make you pay!” The rescue team was still there, watching the drama unfold. Patrick’s face flushed with anger. “Stop being unreasonable! There’s nothing between me and Lily, so stop spreading lies!” “Her leg injury couldn’t wait! There’s another ambulance coming, what’s the big deal with your dad waiting a little longer?” Disappointment settled in my chest like a thick sludge, making it hard to breathe. “We’ve been married for seven years. Have you ever once thought of my father as your own?” It was a question that had haunted me for years. Patrick’s lips tightened, his face a mask of discomfort. … Patrick and I were each other’s first love. I gave up everything to marry him. In the early years, when we had nothing, I ate expired food with him, slept in a storage unit, and got covered in ant bites. He once walked for four hours in a downpour just to get me medicine. As he applied the ointment, he swore with tears in his eyes. “I swear before God, I, Patrick Croft, will make Anna happy for the rest of her life. If I break this vow, may I suffer a terrible death!” Later, when his business started to take off, my family finally relented. We walked hand in hand in the snow, believing we would grow old together. First love is sweet. So sweet, I thought it would last a lifetime. That illusion shattered after we got married, when the media dug up the fact that my father had been an early investor in his company. Suddenly, headlines were screaming that the proud young CEO was nothing but a kept man who had married into money. He never said anything, and was as considerate as ever, but something between us had changed. He smoked more, his silence filled with a simmering rage. One night, drunk and unguarded, he confessed. “You know what I hate more than anything? Charity.” “Anna,” he’d slurred, “I wish I had never met you.” My thoughts snapped back to the present. I looked at Patrick’s tense face. “That’s not important,” he said dismissively. The whole time, his feet were pointed in the direction Lily had gone. The irony was bitter. A perfect picture of a divided heart. By the time the second ambulance arrived, my father’s pulse was faint and weak. Once we were inside, I ignored Patrick completely, my eyes glued to the heart monitor. Not long after we started moving, my father’s heart rate began to drop, at one point slowing to just over 30 beats per minute. “Dad, please, wake up…” I sobbed. Patrick finished a phone call and stood up. “Can you drive any faster? And don’t take the long way to the city, go to the nearest town hospital!” A few minutes later, my father’s heart rate miraculously stabilized. I was so relieved I could have cried. For a moment, even Patrick’s presence felt less suffocating. The driver made the ninety-minute journey in less than thirty minutes. We rushed him through the emergency entrance. The CT scan results were bad. A significant thalamic hemorrhage. The doctor informed me that the local hospital wasn't equipped to handle it. He needed to be transferred to a more specialized facility. “Patrick, thank you for getting the ambulance to bring him here,” Lily said, pouting as she tugged on his arm. “I thought they would have the right equipment. I didn’t realize Uncle was so seriously injured…” The world tilted on its axis. I stared at Patrick in disbelief. He pushed Lily away and took a step towards me, his eyes full of feigned apology. “Anna, let me explain…” I turned my back on him and followed the orderlies as they loaded my father back into the ambulance. On the long drive, a part of my heart crumbled to dust. I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that we could never go back. At the next hospital, the accompanying nurse quickly briefed the on-call doctor. After a call to the surgical department, the doctor looked at me with pity in his eyes. “Our only neurosurgeon is on leave today…” A roaring filled my ears. I was enveloped in a suffocating wave of despair. The nearest city hospital was at least six hours away. Without a surgeon, who would save my father? The rain was relentless, splashing against the pavement and soaking the cuffs of my pants. A figure appeared in front of me, a hand extended. “Anna, let’s take him home. Let’s be with him for his final moments.” It was Patrick. I recoiled in disgust, my mind racing, desperately trying to find a solution. Suddenly, I saw Lily arguing with a strange man in the hospital courtyard. “What is she doing here?” A strange feeling washed over me. I started walking towards them. Patrick caught up to me. “That’s Lily’s ex-boyfriend. He’s from a poor family. He’s been harassing her for money since they broke up.” He added, annoyed, “Lily has a boyfriend, Anna. You need to stop being so suspicious…” The man arguing with Lily was shabbily dressed, with holes in his worn-out slippers. He fit Patrick’s description perfectly. I stopped, turning back. My father was dying. I couldn’t waste time on idle curiosity. As I passed Patrick, a raindrop hit my forehead, and suddenly, everything became crystal clear. Wait. Those weren’t just any old slippers. They were surgical clogs. Ignoring Patrick’s shocked expression, I ran out into the rain. “Doctor, my name is Anna! My father has a brain hemorrhage, he needs surgery…” I grabbed the stranger’s arm. “Are you with them?” the man, Dr. Liang, asked, his brow furrowed. “This woman just told me she has decided not to sign the consent for surgery.” Patrick stormed over. “Anna, what are you doing, clinging to another man like this?” He grabbed my arm, trying to pull me away. CRACK. I slapped him across the face without a moment's hesitation.
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