Chapter 3
1085 Words
Eliana clutched the warmth in her hand like a life line, she held onto the voice that whispered her name. And then light broke through the dark.
It came soft at first, a fragile glimpse of light that broke through the black. Then it spread, filling her vision until her eyelids fluttered against it. She tried to retreat, but the voice pulled her forward, coaxing her back.
“Eliana…”
Her lashes trembled open. The ceiling was white, staring back at her tired eyes. The air smelled of antiseptic mixed with clean soap and faint cologne. She sluggishly turned her head, it was heavy as stone, and the world blurred in swirls of color before sharpening into shapes.
The chair beside her bed was empty. Whoever had been there, holding her hand, was gone. But their warmth lingered against her skin.
A sob rose in her throat, she didn’t know who it was. A stranger? An angel? All she knew was that someone had wanted her to live.
Her lips cracked as she whispered into the still room, voice barely audible.
“Thank you.”
The days that followed were slow, joined together by the steady hum of machines and the shuffle of nurses’ shoes on polished floors. Her body ached, her bones hummed with pain, but she was alive. And every time she woke, the memory of Nath’s voice at her bedside returned, “cut the oxygen”.
Once upon a time that voice had been her whole world now, it made her stomach turn.
She stared at her reflection in the small mirror by the bed. Her pale, bruised, hair matted against her forehead. Her eyes, though, were alive in a way she hadn’t seen in years.
“Am I really awake?”she whispered, almost like she was trying to convince herself. Eliana pinched her cheek, the pain confirmed her reality. “Thank goodness” a small smile thugged on her lips.
“This has to be it, my second chance … I can’t mess it up again.”
When she was discharged, Nath was nowhere to be found. No flowers, no calls, not even his shadow in the hallway. The nurse handed her the release papers with a sympathetic glance, the kind of look you give people who’ve been abandoned.
Eliana’s fingers trembled around the clipboard. She swallowed hard before asking, her voice small but steady.
“Can I um… can I ask who covered the bills? Or if anyone came to see me?”
The nurse’s eyes softened. She hesitated for a breath, as though weighing what to say, then leaned in just slightly.
“Yes. Someone did.”
Eliana’s heart stuttered. “Who?”
“They insisted on remaining anonymous,” the nurse said gently. “Said it wasn’t about being thanked. Just that you should get better.”
For a moment, Eliana’s chest tightened with something sharp and unnamable. Not Nath the man who was supposed to love her. A stranger, someone she didn’t even know she had.
She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the sting in her eyes, and gave a quick nod. “Right. Thank you.”
The nurse touched her arm briefly then slipped away. And Eliana was left standing in the sterile brightness of the corridor, a bag of prescriptions in one hand, release papers in the other, and a yearn for answers in her chest. Someone wanted her alive. Someone who wasn’t Nathaniel.
As Eliana walked slowly through the hospital lobby, she barely noticed the man leaning against the far wall. His eyes followed her for a moment, intense and unreadable, like he was memorizing the details of her face.
To her, he was just another stranger in a crowded space with broad shoulders, gone the moment she glanced away. But to him, she wasn’t a stranger at all.
Her apartment smelled stale when she returned. The pink dresses Nath had chosen still hung in the closet, lined up like obedient soldiers. She stood there for a long moment, fingers grazing the fabrics, before she yanked one down and dropped it on the floor, then another, then another.
The day after she was discharged. Eliana walked into a boutique she would never dared enter before. The mannequins in the window wore sharp black suits and dresses that sliced through a room without trying.
Eliana pulled her plain black face cap over her eyes, a small shield against the world. Her baggy trousers hung loosely around her hips with a cropped top that bared a strip of her belly.
The outfit she'd once laughed in with her friends but tucked it away after Nathaniel called it “cheap”. Now every step she took in it felt like rebellion. Eliana moved through the racks like a woman possessed, fingers grazing leather jackets, dresses the colour of midnight, boots with metal zippers that clinked softly when touched.
A sales attendant, a young woman with a neat bun and glossy lipstick, approached with a polite smile. “Looking for something particular?”
Eliana adjusted the brim of her cap voice soft but firm. “No just…”
The attendant’s eyes flicked to her outfit, then back to Eliana's face. “You'd look good in black,” she said simply. Not in the flattering way sales people did but with a kind of recognition, as if she saw something Eliana was only beginning to see herself.
Eliana finally settled for a cropped leather jacket, a pair of black trousers that made her legs look longer, blazers with shoulders that made her stand taller, plus a bunch of dresses that said nothing about being a trophy.
Eliana left the store with bags swinging at her side. It wasn't the clothes that mattered, but the quiet thrill of walking through the streets of London not as someone's ornament or puppet, but Eliana hidden under a cap, carrying pieces of her rebirth.
Back home she slipped into the jacket and stood in front of the mirror, the stranger was gone. It was Eliana again.
The bruises on her face hadn't faded but the reflection staring back was that of someone she could live with. Not the one who had begged for shackles disguised as ring.
The pile of pink dresses had been a funeral. This was her resurrection.
Her thumb hovered before finally tapping the call icon. Tania, her best friend.
The li
ne rang once, twice, then a familiar voice, cautious, picked up.
“Eliana?”
- Writer
