Once His Shadow, Now His SentenceChapter 1
A week before my wedding, Maximo Alvarez's deceased wife's sister, who suffered from torrential rain syndrome, forced my car to a stop at the bridge railing.
I crashed into her eighteen times at high speed.
When Maximo arrived with the ambulance, I was being dragged out of a pile of scrap metal.
He, however, pulled aside a modified Hummer with only the bumper missing.
He held the trembling Matilda Philips in his arms.
"Mr. Alvarez, your fiancée's condition is not good; she needs to be taken to the hospital immediately."
Maximo stopped my stretcher, quickly scanning my body.
"There's not a drop of blood on her, just superficial injuries. Matilda suffers from torrential rain syndrome and the rain is getting heavier; her condition will worsen. Take her to the hospital first."
As I was left behind, I curled up and struggled to grab Maximo.
He frowned and grasped my hand. "Matilda didn't hit you on purpose; she was just having an episode. You're a doctor too; you should be considerate of your patients."
After saying that, he pulled out a letter of understanding from his pocket, held my limp hand and signed it.
"The next ambulance will be here soon, just hang in there."
——
I didn't make it to the next ambulance.
When I opened my eyes again, I found myself floating in mid-air.
Cold rain poured down on my neglected body. I tried to reach out and hug myself.
But my arm passed right through it.
I smiled bitterly.
So, I was dead.
Maximo was right. I was a doctor, so I knew exactly what that meant.
At 50 km/h, eighteen consecutive backward movements followed by a violent impact.
Matilda never intended for me to live.
But as the head of internal medicine in Harold City, he could easily determine that I only had superficial injuries with just a glance.
I shouldn't have had any illusions.
When it came to Matilda, everything else became unimportant.
Including my life.
In the distance, the ambulance siren grew closer.
The doctor and nurses jumped out of the ambulance and rushed towards me in the pouring rain. I watched my limp, noodle-like body being lifted into the ambulance.
Amidst the doctor's screams, the constant injections of adrenaline and the fluctuating defibrillator, nothing could prevent the electrocardiogram from flattening out.