
Catty stared at the doctor’s chart, her heart sinking as the words repeated in her mind.
A brain tumor. Stage four. Three months left.
The world outside the hospital was quiet, but inside her chest everything screamed.
“Why can’t my life be normal?” she whispered. “Why can’t I go to college? Have a job? A boyfriend? Why me?”
Midnight wind brushed her face as she stepped into the empty street. She wanted silence, peace—anything to drown the fear.
“Fine!” she shouted into the darkness. “I’d rather die now than wait three months!”
Her vision spun. Her knees gave out. The ground rushed up and her head struck it hard—
Blackness.
Then voices.
“Are you alright, Katty?”
Her eyes snapped open. A man and woman hovered over her, relief flooding their faces.
“Call the doctor,” the man said excitedly. The woman hurried out.
Katty tried to push herself up, but a strange reflection caught her attention. A mirror on the wall.
She froze.
That wasn’t her face.
The girl staring back was younger—eighteen, maybe. Smooth skin. Different hair. A different body.
But Catty was twenty-nine. Parentless. Alone.
So who were these people calling her their daughter?
The doctor entered with a warm smile. “Katty, can you hear me?” He checked her heartbeat and turned to the couple.
“She’s out of the coma. She might have lost some memory.”
They hugged him, crying with joy.
Catty just stared, cold shock washing through her.
Everything was wrong—her name, her face, her life.
And then the memory hit her like lightning.
The last words she wrote before the world went dark:
I wanna be born again.

