Pain ripped through Elena's body with an intensity that made the car accident feel like nothing. Her back arched off the bed. Her throat was raw from screaming but she had no memory of when the screaming started.
"Push! Mrs. Castellano, you need to push!"
The voice was urgent and commanding. Elena tried to open her eyes but the fluorescent lights above her were too bright. She could not think. Could not process where she was or what was happening. The pain came in waves that obliterated everything else.
Her body pushed without her permission. Muscles contracted with a force she could not control. This was not her body. This was not her pain. She had died at that intersection. She remembered the truck. The impact. The darkness.
"That's it! One more push!"
Elena's hands gripped something. Railings on either side of the bed, her knuckles turning white. The pressure between her legs was unbearable. Something was tearing. Something was wrong.
"We're losing her! Blood pressure dropping—seventy over forty!"
"The baby's in distress!"
"Get the crash cart ready!"
Baby. The word filtered through the pain but made no sense. Elena was not pregnant. Had never been pregnant. She tried to speak but another contraction seized her body and she screamed instead.
"Mrs. Castellano, stay with us! One more push and the baby will be here!"
Mrs. Castellano. That name registered somewhere in her fractured awareness. Victoria Castellano. The hotel heiress. The woman who had married the billionaire tech CEO in that massive wedding six months ago that had been all over the news.
But she was Elena Martinez. Marketing executive from Seattle. She had just died in a car accident. This was not her body. Nor her life.
Her body pushed again. The pain skyrocketed to a climax and then suddenly there was release. The pressure vanished. Elena gasped for air and her lungs actually expanded this time.
A baby's cry split the air.
"It's a girl!" A nurse's voice was thick with emotion. "She's perfect! She's breathing!"
The crying continued. High pitched and indignant and very much alive. Elena tried to focus but her vision was blurring. The room tilted sideways.
"Blood pressure still dropping! She's at sixty over thirty!"
"Start a transfusion!"
"Her heart rate is erratic!"
The monitors beeped frantically. Elena could hear them through the fog in her brain. Beep beep beep beep. Too fast. Then slower. Then fast again. Her body felt heavy and disconnected. She tried to move her fingers but they would not respond.
"She's coding! Start compressions!"
Someone pushed down on her chest. Hard. The pain was distant now like it was happening to someone else. Elena watched from somewhere above her body as the medical team swarmed. One doctor pumped her chest. Another squeezed a bag connected to a tube in her throat. A nurse injected something into her IV.
The baby was still crying somewhere to her right. Elena wanted to see her but could not turn her head.
The monitor made a long steady tone.
"We're losing her! Charge to two hundred!"
Paddles pressed against her chest. Her body jerked. The monitor tone continued.
"Again! Charge to three hundred!"
Another jolt. Elena felt herself falling backward into darkness. Not the painful struggling darkness of dying in the car accident. This was different. Quieter. More final.
"Come on! Don't you dare die on me!"
A third shock. Elena's consciousness flickered. She was between two places. Between dying and living. Between Elena Martinez and someone else entirely.
The monitor beeped. Once. Twice. A rhythm established itself.
"We've got a pulse! She's back!"
"Stabilize that blood pressure! Keep the transfusion going!"
"Someone check on the baby!"
The baby's cries had quieted to whimpers. Elena heard someone say the words "healthy" and "good weight" and "no complications" but they sounded like they were coming from underwater.
She tried to open her eyes. The effort was enormous. Her eyelids weighed a thousand pounds each. When she finally managed to crack them open everything was white and blurry.
A face swam into view above her. A woman in a surgical mask with tired eyes.
"Mrs. Castellano? Can you hear me? You're okay. The baby is okay. You both made it."
Elena tried to speak but only a croak came out. Her throat was on fire.
"Don't try to talk. You've been through a lot. We almost lost you there but you're stable now. Your vitals are improving."
Stable. The word was funny. Nothing about this was stable. She had died and woken up in someone else's body giving birth to someone else's baby. She wanted to scream that she was not Mrs. Castellano. She was Elena Martinez and something impossible had happened.
But her mouth would not form the words. Her body was shutting down from exhaustion. The darkness was pulling at her again but this time it felt like sleep instead of death.
"Rest now," the doctor said. "We'll monitor you closely. You're going to be fine."
Elena's eyes closed. She could not fight it anymore. The last thing she heard before consciousness slipped away was the baby making small sounds in her sleep. A new life that had somehow survived despite everything.
And Elena's consciousness that had somehow survived despite everything was now trapped in a body that was not hers.
When Elena woke again the room was different. Quieter. Darker. The machines were still beeping but slower now. Steady. Her body ached everywhere but the pain was manageable. Distant.
She opened her eyes carefully and tried to sit up but her body protested. Everything felt wrong. Too weak. Too sore. She looked down at her arms resting on top of the white blanket. The skin was paler than Elena's olive tone. The hands were different. Longer fingers. Manicured nails painted a soft pink that Elena never would have chosen.
These were not her hands.
She lifted one arm slowly. It responded to her command but felt foreign. Like wearing someone else's clothes but so much more intimate and wrong. She touched her face. Her cheek. Her nose. Her hair.
Not her face. Not her features. Not her hair texture.
The panic hit her all at once. Elena grabbed the bedrails and pulled herself up despite her body screaming in protest. She needed a mirror. She needed to see.
A call button was clipped to the rail near her right hand. Elena pressed it frantically. She pressed it over and over until she heard footsteps approaching in the hallway.
A nurse pushed open the door. Young woman with kind eyes and purple scrubs.
"Mrs. Castellano! You should not be sitting up yet!"
"Mirror," Elena's voice came out hoarse and cracked. "I need a mirror."
"Let me help you lie back down first. You just had a very difficult delivery and you coded three times. You need to rest."
"Mirror!" She shouted.
The nurse looked concerned but moved to the bedside table and retrieved a small hand mirror. She passed it to Elena hesitantly.
"Are you feeling confused? That's normal after what you went through. The trauma and the medications can—"
But she was not listening. She raised the mirror with shaking hands and looked at her reflection.
The face staring back at her was not…Elena Martinez.
It was Victoria Castellano. Hotel heiress. Billionaire's wife. The woman whose wedding photos had been on every magazine cover six months ago.
High cheekbones. Full lips. Hazel eyes currently wide with shock. Dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
Elena knew this face. She had seen it dozens of times in the media. In gossip magazines while waiting in line at the grocery store. In business articles about the merger between the Ashford Hotel empire and Castellano Technologies.
The mirror slipped from Elena's fingers and clattered onto the bed.
She was inside Victoria Castellano's body.
She had died and somehow her consciousness had transferred into this woman's body.
The room spun. She could not breathe. This was not possible. This violated every law of science and nature and reality.
But the face in the mirror had been unmistakable.
Elena opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out.
The nurse was saying something. Reaching for her. Calling for a doctor.
Elena barely registered it. She was staring at her hands. Victoria's hands. Someone else's hands that responded to her thoughts and moved as she liked.
She had stolen someone's body.
The darkness rushed in again and she let it take her because consciousness was too terrible to bear…