The heart monitor beeping ike a ticking clock, steady, unforgiving, yet a fragile sign that life still clung to Isabelle’s broken body. The room was wrapped in stillness, white walls standing like silent sentinels, cold and uncaring. The dim over headlights giving a faint golden haze that did nothing to soften the sharp edges of the grief hanging in the air.
On the thin hospital bed, the thin white sheet rising and falling gently over Isabelle's chest. Each breath she took, shallow yet showing how she moved between two worlds—one foot in this life, the other already stepping into the unknown. Her skin was unnervingly pale, drained of all color, like wax. Against that ghostlike canvas, the dark bruises blotching her ribs looked even more violent, more grotesque. The blood from the bullet
