TESSA
Two days.
That was how long I’d been lying in that same hospital bed, staring at the same ceiling, listening to the same machines beep beside me like they were mocking the way my heart kept misbehaving inside my chest.
Two days of pretending to sleep whenever my mother cried quietly beside me.
Two days of doctors talking over my head like I wasn’t even real.
By the time the doctor came in for the final check-up, I felt… empty. Not healed. Just drained in a way I didn’t know a person could feel.
He pressed the cold stethoscope over my chest and murmured something to a nurse. I didn’t even bother listening. My eyes were fixed on the ceiling tiles again. They had tiny cracks I kept tracing with my eyes. It was easier than dealing with my thoughts.
When the nurse injected somethin
