The Comatose Heir Won’t Let Me Divorce

I woke with a needle in a stranger's IV and my thumb resting on the plunger. For one stupid second, I thought I had fallen asleep at my desk again. Then the machine beside me gave a soft, patient beep, and I realized desks did not usually come with unconscious men, silk dresses, or wedding rings worth more than my old apartment. My hand was shaking, making the needle tremble inside the rubber port. Clear liquid filled half the syringe. If my thumb moved—if I startled, sneezed, breathed too hard—whatever was in it would go straight into the man's vein. I stopped breathing anyway. His face looked wrong before it looked familiar: too pale, cheeks hollowed by months in bed, dark hair combed neatly as if good grooming could make six months of unconsciousness less frightening. Then I saw the thin scar near his left eyebrow. Adrian Voss. The name arrived with the memory of a book cover on my tablet and the cold noodles I had eaten at one in the morning while hate-reading The Heir's True Bride. Adrian was the comatose billionaire heir. His wife, Vivienne, was the beautiful villain everyone despised. She poisoned him, framed the heroine, lost everything, and died in prison before the final chapter. I had complained that her death was lazy writing. Apparently the universe had taken that personally. I looked down at the hand holding the syringe. The nails were painted a soft, expensive pink. Mine had been short, unpolished, and usually marked with ink. A gold band circled the ring finger, and Adrian wore its match. "Oh, no," I whispered, and even my voice belonged to someone else. Panic surged so quickly that my fingers tightened. The plunger shifted beneath my thumb. I yanked the needle free. The IV line swung, and one bright drop of liquid struck the back of my hand. I nearly threw the syringe across the room. Instead, I tried to fit the plastic cap over the needle. I missed once, then again. "Come on. Come on." My third attempt sent the cap skittering beneath the bed. Fine. The floor could have it. I set the syringe on a metal tray and stepped back, pressing both hands against my stomach. The dress was tight at the waist and smooth under my palms. Vivienne had apparently dressed for attempted murder as if cocktails might be served afterward. I wanted my old body. My ugly gray cardigan. My desk with the coffee stain shaped like Florida. I wanted the spreadsheet that had seemed like the worst part of my night. Another beep came from the monitor. Adrian was still alive, and that thought cut through the panic. I knew what happened next in the book. Vivienne was found alone with him. The drug disappeared. Dr. Marcus Bell testified that she had interfered with Adrian's treatment. By the time anyone found the toxicology results, the original samples were gone and Vivienne had become a convenient monster. I didn't know whether the woman whose body I wore had put the needle in the line. I didn't know whether she had wanted to. But I knew I was not going to finish it. A phone lay beside a glass of water. I grabbed it. The black screen caught my reflection before it woke: a white face, dark red hair, eyes made huge by someone else's fear. Face ID unlocked. Of course it did. Nothing said welcome to your new life like your stolen face opening another woman's phone. I photographed the syringe, the IV port, and the medication bag. The first picture blurred because my hand would not behave. I took it again, this time catching the clock in the frame: 11:48 p.m. The IV pump continued to feed the line. My stomach dropped. The syringe might not be the only thing that had been changed. I clamped the tubing and hit the call button. An alarm began chirping at once. It was sharp and relentless, which felt appropriate. "Mr. Voss's IV may have been tampered with," I said when someone answered. My unfamiliar voice came out breathless. "Please send a doctor. And security. Now." "Mrs. Voss?" Hearing the name made my skin crawl. "Yes. I—" I looked at Adrian. Husband seemed far too intimate a word for a man I knew from a death scene in a novel. "I'm in his room. Please hurry." Footsteps sounded outside almost immediately—much too fast for anyone responding to my call. The door opened, and Dr. Marcus Bell walked in alone. I recognized the silver at his temples and the pleasant face that had looked so trustworthy during Vivienne's trial. In person, his smile was less convincing. It appeared only after his eyes found the syringe on the tray; he had not looked at Adrian first. "Vivienne," he said. "What happened?" There was something awful about the way he used her name—softly, with familiarity, as though this was not the first secret they had shared. My body knew it too. A cold ache tightened beneath my ribs before I understood why. "I found that attached to his IV." Bell crossed the room. "Let me see it." I moved in front of the tray, although my knees were weak and the back of my dress had begun to stick to my skin. If he took the syringe, it would vanish exactly as it had in the book. "Security is coming," I said. "You can see it when they get here." His pleasant expression thinned. "This is a hospital, Vivienne. You can't dictate how we handle medication." "I'm not trying to dictate anything. I'm trying very hard not to be left alone with a suspicious needle and a dying husband." The last two words caught in my throat. Bell glanced at the phone in my hand. The camera was still open. "You need to give me the syringe." "Why?" "Because it may be dangerous." "Then you shouldn't mind waiting for a witness." He stopped an arm's length away. Close enough that I could smell peppermint on his breath. For one horrible moment, I wondered if he would take it from me anyway. I wondered whether the nurses outside already believed Vivienne was unstable, whether shouting would help or simply make the scene fit the story better. Then two nurses rushed in with a woman in navy scrubs and a security officer whose radio was bouncing against his chest. The older nurse took in the clamped line and swore under her breath. It was the most comforting thing anyone had done since I woke up. "I'm Dr. Shah," the woman in navy said, already moving toward Adrian. "Tell me what he received." "I don't know." The admission burst out of me. "I woke—I came in and found the syringe in the port. I pulled it out and stopped the infusion. I took pictures, but I touched everything. I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do." Bell cut in. "She has been alone with the patient for at least twelve minutes." Twelve minutes. I remembered that number from the book. A gap in the hallway footage. Long enough for Vivienne to enter, poison her husband, and become the only suspect anyone needed. The room felt too warm. "The camera," I said. The security officer looked at me. "Please preserve the hallway footage. All of it. If there's a gap, record when it starts and who reported it." I heard myself rushing and forced the next words out more slowly. "Please. Before someone overwrites it." Bell's attention snapped toward the dark dome above the door. The security officer noticed, and so did I. Dr. Shah examined the IV bag while one nurse checked Adrian and the other opened a specimen kit. They spoke over one another—blood pressure, pupils, lab draw, pharmacy—and for several seconds I stood in the middle of the room holding a phone that knew my new face, trying not to cry in front of people who thought they knew me. The older nurse held out a clear container. "Ma'am, we'll seal the syringe now. You can watch me do it." Her voice was careful, but not unkind. "Thank you." She put on fresh gloves, lifted the syringe from the tray, and sealed it inside. The security officer photographed the label and asked us both to sign. The pen nearly slipped out of my fingers. When I wrote Vivienne Hale-Voss, the signature flowed across the line in elegant loops I had never learned. My hand remembered being hers even if I didn't. A flash of dark wood and cream paper crossed my mind. A man's hand pushing a document toward me. A compass-shaped watermark. Fear so sharp it tasted metallic. Then the hospital room returned. "Mrs. Voss?" the nurse asked. I had pressed the pen so hard it tore the label. "Sorry." I let go of it. "Bad night." The nurse gave me a look that said this qualified as more than a bad night, but she did not argue. Behind her, the monitor changed rhythm. Dr. Shah leaned over Adrian. "Mr. Voss? Can you hear me?" His eyelids moved. Bell stepped forward. "It's reflexive. His sedation schedule—" "Hold the sedative," Dr. Shah said. "That isn't necessary." "I said hold it." Bell's confidence faltered. His fingers tightened around the edge of the chart. Everyone gathered around the bed. I should have stayed where I was, but Adrian's hand had shifted on the sheet. Barely. His fingers dragged against the fabric as though each one weighed more than the rest of him. I moved closer before I could talk myself out of it. The novel had described him as powerful even in sleep. It had called his face perfect, cold, princely—words written by someone who had apparently never stood beside a person after six months of feeding tubes and muscle loss. There was nothing princely about the raw patch left by tape near his mouth. Or the dry skin across his knuckles. Or the faint tremor in his fingers when he tried to move them again. Looking at him now, I couldn't see the male lead who had been waiting for his chapter to begin. I saw a sick man in a room full of people, and at least one of them wanted him to stay silent. Shame burned behind my eyes. Minutes earlier, I had been thinking about Vivienne's prison sentence—my prison sentence. I had looked at him and seen the quickest route to my own survival. Maybe that was understandable, but it still felt ugly. I leaned closer. "Adrian?" His eyelids opened a fraction. Gray eyes found me through the narrow space. They were unfocused at first, swimming with pain and medication. Then they settled on my face, and the force of his attention made the rest of the crowded room recede for one disorienting second. What looked back at me was the exhausted, human fear of someone who had woken among people he could no longer trust. "I'm sorry," I whispered. I wasn't sure whether I meant for the needle, for Vivienne, or for treating his life like a problem I could solve before midnight. "I don't know what happened before I got here. But I won't let them give you anything until we know what it is." His fingers moved again and caught the loose silk at my wrist. The grip was weak enough that I could have pulled away without trying. I didn't. Beneath the silk, his knuckles rested against my pulse; even half-conscious, he was warm. Adrian held on as though letting go would leave him alone with people he could no longer trust.