Blood Ties

Chapter10-Alive

Third Person POV

They don't use her name at first.

She's "the victim." "The patient." "The woman from the beach."

It keeps things clean. Professional. Easier to talk around what happened without acknowledging who it happened to.

The room smells like antiseptic and salt, like the ocean followed her in and refused to leave. The air is cool enough to raise goosebumps along exposed skin. Machines hum softly around the bed, each sound measured and controlled, at odds with the violence that put her there.

A police officer stands just inside the doorway, notebook tucked under his arm. He doesn't cross the threshold. Not yet.

He watches instead — the rise and fall of her chest, the careful placement of her body, the way her right hand curls slightly inward like it's bracing for something even in sleep.

"She was alone?" he asks.

The nurse hesitates. It's brief, but it's there.

"She was found alone."

Not the same thing.

The officer nods like he understands the distinction. He writes it down anyway.

They go over what they know. The time she was admitted. The stretch of coastline where she was discovered. The angle of the wound. The fact that the blade had been left embedded, not pulled free — deliberate, controlled.

The surgical notes describing its removal, the care taken to prevent further damage.

No defensive wounds.

That detail lingers.

Not a robbery.

Not a fight.

Not a moment of blind rage.

Someone wanted her still.

No one says it out loud, but it settles into the room all the same. The kind of conclusion people arrive at quietly, because saying it makes it real.

Targeted.

The officer's gaze drifts to the window, where the sky hangs heavy and grey beyond the glass. Somewhere past the buildings and the roads is the beach — a place people go to clear their heads, to be alone without being questioned.

She nearly disappeared there.

Outside the room, voices lower. Shoes scuff against the floor. Decisions are made without her knowledge or consent. A guard is assigned to the corridor. Requests for CCTV footage are filed — nearby streets, coastal access points, anywhere a shadow might've lingered too long.

Her belongings are logged and sealed in plastic bags. Clothes stiff with dried blood. Sand trapped in seams and cuffs. Personal items laid out carefully, stripped of context.

Evidence of a life interrupted.

"She doesn't have family listed," someone says, flipping through a thin file. Too thin for a woman who nearly died.

The pause that follows stretches.

"No next of kin?"

"None that we can reach."

The officer exhales slowly. Isolation complicates things. It makes victims harder to protect — and easier to target again.

He looks back at the bed.

"Someone cared enough to find her," he says. "That matters."

It does.

Because it means someone else cared enough to make sure she didn't walk away.

The machines continue their steady rhythm. A monitor ticks out proof of life, one beat at a time. The room remains controlled. Clinical. Safe — on the surface.

But safety is fragile.

Beyond the walls, beyond the paperwork and procedures, a truth is already moving into place. Someone out there will hear what happened. Will realise the mistake that was made.

She's still alive.

And whoever put that knife in her back is going to want to finish what they started