Until the Checkered Flag
“Clear!”
The word hit the air like thunder.
The room snapped with light as the defibrillator pads slammed against my chest. My body jerked once—hard—then fell back against the cold hospital bed. A sharp beep spiked, then flattened again.
Somewhere beyond the white glare and noise, I heard her.
“Ethan!” Clara’s voice cut through the static, raw and terrified. The sound of it was enough to drag me halfway back to life. I tried to move, to reach for her hand, but my arm wouldn’t listen.
“Mrs. Vale, you need to leave.” The doctor’s tone was steady but firm.
“No—please, I can’t—”
Then her voice broke.
A nurse’s shoes squeaked against the floor as they pulled her away. I caught a glimpse of her through my half-closed eyes — her hair messy, her face streaked with tears, her hands reaching for me until the door swallowed her.
The air smelled like antiseptic and burnt plastic. I could hear the machines shouting numbers, the doctors muttering commands I couldn’t process.
And in the middle of it all, her last words echoed in my head.
Words she had whispered only minutes before the world went white.
“Ethan, I’m pregnant.”
Pregnant.
The syllables fell through me like stones. The kind of secret that should have been the start of everything — not the end.
My chest burned. The room blurred. Somewhere in the haze, I tried to form the words, I love you. Maybe they came out. Maybe they didn’t.
The heart monitor screamed again.
Hands pressed against my ribs. The rhythm of life — forced, mechanical, desperate.
And still, all I could think of was Clara’s face. The way she smiled when she was trying not to cry. The way she looked at me the day we stood in front of that register, signing our names into forever.
If this was the finish line, I wasn’t ready to cross it. Not yet. Not when she had just told me there was more of us out there — growing, waiting.
My breath stuttered once. The light dimmed around the edges.
And as everything began to fade, I swore I heard her voice again, just outside the door.
Soft. Breaking.
“Don’t you dare leave me, Ethan Vale.
The beeping flattened into one long, steady note.
And then — nothing.
I thought I had died.
But, then I woke up... I wasn't me anymore...?