When I woke up, I was in the hospital.
A young nurse was changing my bandages while muttering under her breath.
“Those two really have some nerve,” she said. “Their own mother was hurt that badly, and they still insisted the doctor treat that younger woman first. And she only had a few scratches.”
Another nurse quickly nudged her, horrified that I might have heard.
But I had.
Every word.
And strangely enough, it didn’t hurt the way it once would have.
I looked at the first nurse and gave her a weak smile. “It’s okay. You’re right.”
She froze, clearly not expecting that.
So many things were clearer to outsiders than they had ever been to me.
A week later, I discharged myself alone.
As I stepped outside and tried to hail a cab, my phone rang.
Jason.
The second I answered, his furious voice exploded in my ear.
“Mom, Lily said you haven’t picked up Ryan from school all week. She has a job too, you know. The house is a mess, everyone’s overwhelmed, and you’re out there enjoying yourself? Aren’t you ashamed?”
I stood there in the wind and said nothing.
He kept going.
“I’m giving you two hours. If you’re not home by then, don’t blame me for what happens next.”
Then he hung up.
A second later, a message from Megan popped up.
Mom, how long are you planning to be lazy? My apartment is a disaster. Get back here and clean it. And make me pork rib soup.
I stared at the screen until it dimmed.
Then I scrolled to a number I hadn’t called in years.
My older brother.
The line connected almost immediately.
A man’s voice came through, older now, rougher around the edges, but carrying something else too.
Hope.
“Yanyan?” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this call for a long time.”
My throat tightened.
“Big brother,” I whispered. “I’ve decided. Come get me.”
“Send me the address.”
A few minutes later, a black sedan pulled up in front of the hospital.
The driver got out in uniform and opened the door for me personally.
Inside sat a face I knew immediately, even though time had changed it.
My brother.
His hair had gone gray at the temples. The lines at the corners of his eyes had deepened. But the moment he looked at me, I felt the same thing I had felt as a girl.
Safe.
I choked up before I could stop myself.
He patted my hand gently. “Since you’ve made up your mind, you can’t go soft again.”
I nodded. “I won’t.”
This time, I really meant it.
Twenty minutes later, the car rolled into a secured residential compound.
Uniformed guards stood watch at the entrance. Inside were neat rows of houses, old shade trees, and the kind of order that came from discipline and quiet power.
As I followed my brother in, several people in uniform greeted me respectfully.
I was so startled I almost nodded back to every single one of them until my brother gave me an amused look.
Finally, he led me into a spacious courtyard home.
“You’ll stay here from now on,” he said. “If you need anything, tell my secretary. If you get bored, I can find you something to do. Evelyn, with me here, no one will bully you again.”
I looked around the house.
The clean rooms.
The bright windows.
The small garden space already marked off in the yard.
And all at once, my eyes burned.
In my past life, when I had been abandoned in that nursing home, I had wanted to call him so many times.
But my children had taken my phone.
There was no public line.
I couldn’t walk.
I had died before help ever reached me.
My brother didn’t even learn the truth until three years after I was gone.
By then, he had arranged a proper funeral for me.
A grand one.
He never knew my ashes had already been scattered in a gutter.
Even in my last life, when David was first paralyzed, my brother had urged me to leave and come with him.
But I’d been shackled by duty, by marriage vows, by the fear of what people would say.
I had chosen the cage.
This time, I chose the door.
After my brother left, I stood alone in the courtyard for a long time.
There was a vegetable patch in one corner.
A small fish pond in another.
He knew me too well.
He knew I was the kind of person who needed my hands busy to let my heart heal.
And for the first time since waking back up in this life, I felt something I barely recognized.
Peace.