The ICU never slept.
Even in the dead of night, it breathed — machines humming softly, monitors beeping in steady rhythms, the faint hiss of oxygen filling the spaces between thoughts. The fluorescent lights overhead burned with a sterile persistence, reflecting off polished floors and metal rails like they were designed to strip everything human from the room.
Hidayah lay motionless in the bed by the window.
A ventilator breathed for her, its rhythm mechanical and unyielding, forcing air into lungs that no longer remembered how to do the job on their own. Tubes trailed from her arms and neck, thin and unforgiving. Her body lay too still beneath the hospital gown, thin to the point of fragility — a body that had been fighting a losing battle for far too long.
The doctors believed she was unconscious.
They were wrong.
She existed in a suspended state between sleep and wakefulness, where pain no longer screamed but awareness refused to fade. Morphine dulled the sharp edges, but it did nothing to erase sound. She could hear everything — every footstep in the corridor, every rustle of fabric, every careless word spoken because people thought she was already gone.
A nurse stood at her bedside, checking the monitors with quiet efficiency.
"Vitals are holding for now," she said softly.
Michael stood on the other side of the bed.
Her husband.
The word floated through Hidayah's mind with a strange detachment. Husband. Once, it had meant security. Warmth. Partnership. Somewhere along the way, it had become a role she played more convincingly than he ever did.
"How long?" Michael asked.
"It's hard to say," the nurse replied gently. "But you should be prepared."
Prepared.
Michael nodded. "Thank you."
The nurse offered a final glance at Hidayah before turning and leaving, the curtain swaying softly behind her. Her footsteps faded down the corridor, swallowed by the constant hum of the ICU.
Silence settled.
Then Michael exhaled.
It was long and slow, a breath that sounded less like grief and more like relief.
"You don't have to pretend anymore," he said quietly.
His voice was low, conversational, as if he were speaking to someone fully awake. As if this were just another late-night confession.
"She can't hear anything now."
Hidayah's heart clenched painfully in her chest.
Can't hear anything.
"I didn't think it would end like this," Michael continued. "But I suppose it was inevitable."
He pulled the chair closer and sat down, the faint scrape of metal against tile echoing too loudly in her ears.
"You were always strong," he said. "Too strong, sometimes."
Better.
He didn't say the word out loud, but she heard it anyway.
"You never needed anyone," Michael went on. "Not really. Even when you tried to convince yourself otherwise."
Hidayah wanted to laugh.
She had needed him. Had wrapped her life around his, adjusted herself to his moods, his insecurities, his failures. She had learned when to speak and when to stay silent, when to celebrate and when to shrink.
She had needed him more than she had ever admitted.
"That was the problem," he said softly. "Being with you always felt like standing next to a mirror that showed me everything I wasn't."
He leaned back, running a hand through his hair.
"With Jasmine, it was easier."
The name cut through her like ice.
Jasmine.
Her best friend since she was thirteen. The girl who knew her childhood stories, her fears, her habits. The girl she trusted without question.
"I could breathe with her," Michael said. "She didn't make me feel like I was failing just by existing."
Hidayah's pulse spiked beneath the machines, her heart hammering painfully as tears gathered beneath her closed lids.
"Jacintha is my daughter," he said quietly.
The words landed with devastating clarity.
"Mine and Jasmine's."
Her breath hitched — not in her lungs, but somewhere deeper, more fragile.
"It wasn't a mistake," Michael continued. "That Christmas party story… it was convenient. But we'd already been together for over a year by then."
A year.
A full year of lies.
"She believed it," he said, almost fondly. "Believed Jasmine couldn't remember who she slept with. Believed the pregnancy was some random accident."
Michael chuckled softly.
"She even blamed herself. For not being able to give me a child."
The tears slipped free, silent and unstoppable, soaking into the pillow beneath her head.
She remembered the hospital visits. The tests. The unspoken shame she carried every time someone asked when they would start a family.
"She was so happy when Jasmine made her the godmother," Michael continued. "Like she'd finally been chosen for something."
Chosen.
"And when Jasmine died," he said, voice lowering, "she didn't hesitate."
Adopted.
"She signed the papers without question. Made everything legal. Permanent."
His daughter.
Her entire body trembled, trapped and unresponsive.
"She loved that child," Michael said. "More than anything. And she never suspected."
Images flashed through her mind — small hands gripping her fingers, a child's laughter, whispered bedtime promises.
All of it built on betrayal.
"Her parents warned her," Michael said eventually. "They always knew she trusted people too easily."
Her parents.
Her mother crying quietly when she announced the wedding. Her father standing rigid, asking her one last time to reconsider.
She had walked away from them.
Cut ties.
Chosen him.
"I think they were right," Michael murmured. "She was brilliant at everything else. Just not this."
The monitor's beeping slowed.
Hidayah felt the pull — heavy, irresistible. Her chest rose weakly, then faltered.
She tried to scream. To move. To open her eyes and expose him.
The machines screamed instead.
Doctors rushed in. Hands pressed down on her chest. Voices overlapped urgently.
But it was already over.
Hidayah Kamari died alone, unheard, betrayed to her final breath.
———-
She woke up choking.
Air tore violently into her lungs, burning, unfamiliar. She gasped, coughing hard as she rolled onto her side, hands clutching at the mattress beneath her.
"Dayah! Wake up! You'll be late!"
Her mother's voice rang through the room.
Hidayah froze.
Her heart pounded as she forced her eyes open. Sunlight streamed through the window, warm and real. The room smelled of detergent, morning air, and something faintly floral.
Her bedroom.
Her old bedroom.
She pushed herself upright, breath unsteady, and instinctively reached toward the bed beside her.
Her fingers closed around something familiar.
Her BlackBerry Pearl.
Her hands shook as she pressed the button, the screen lighting up.
16 April 2007.
She stared at the date until it burned itself into her mind.
Seventeen.
She was seventeen.
Hidayah dropped the phone onto the bed and covered her face with both hands, her shoulders shaking as silent laughter bubbled dangerously close to hysteria.
She had died.
She had lost everything.
And somehow —
She had been given another life.
This time, she would not choose wrong.