Chapter One: A Miracle
Brisa
The surgery went well.
The anesthesia is starting to fade. My head hurts, the room spins, the hospital smell makes me nauseous, and I don’t think there is a single part of my body that isn’t burning or pulsing with pain.
I focus on the steady beep of the machine, but it starts to slow. Is that normal?
An alarm sound. I hear hurried footsteps around my bed. Someone grabs my wrist to check my pulse. I try to open my eyes, but my eyelids weigh a ton.
What is happening?
“She’s going into cardiac arrest. Get the defibrillator!” a tense female voice says. I manage to open my eyes, though the voices begin to drift away, like I am hearing them from the bottom of a tunnel.
I see Dr. Winston, the one who did the operation, looking at me with a pale face. Her mouth moves, but her voice is an incomprehensible echo, as if she were shouting at me from very far away.
And then I see it. A black silhouette. Tall. Almost reaching the ceiling. It is not a body, not a human figure. It is smoke, a shadow made of dark trails that float and slide in the air.
“They will not make it in time.” The voice booms inside my head. It is deep, funereal, ghostly, and strangely calming.
“Who are you?” I think. I do not know if my lips move.
“It is not relevant,” it answers. “You must answer four questions.” If I could, I would laugh. This is exactly how my grandmother told it. Word for word.
The Reaper’s questions. I have heard them so many times I know them by heart.
When the voice starts to ask them, I answer without hesitation. As if I already knew the script of my fate.
…
I open my eyes.
The hospital room is silent and I am alone.
My body feels exhausted, but nothing hurts anymore.
And for the first time, I wonder if I am really still alive, or if it was all just a hallucination.
