My Fake Death Was The Punchline To His Cruel Joke Chapter 03
I lost consciousness before the ambulance doors slammed shut.
When I came to, an oxygen mask was strapped to my face and an EMT was patting my shoulder.
“She’s had one dose of epi.”
“BP is still dropping. Prep a second.”
The monitor shrieked beside me.
I tried to speak, but only a broken rasp escaped my swollen throat. Every breath felt like swallowing shards of glass.
Someone pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Emergency contact is Leo Ortiz.”
I blinked, a wave of relief washing over me.
Only Leo.
Good.
The next time I woke, sunlight was filtering into the room.
A doctor was checking my pupils. He told me I’d had a severe anaphylactic reaction.
“Your airway was almost completely obstructed when you arrived. A few more minutes and resuscitation might not have been possible.”
He paused, his expression growing serious.
“Ms. Ortiz, the EMT report suggests the allergen may have been administered to you against your will. Would you like me to contact the police?”
I looked at the IV line in the back of my hand and saw Bennett’s face, his phone held high, filming me as I suffocated.
*She’s always so dramatic,* he’d said.
I shook my head slowly.
“Not yet.”
Calling the police now would only put them on guard.
The hundredth test hadn’t happened yet.
The doctor looked skeptical but didn’t push. As he turned to leave, I stopped him.
“Doctor, I want my entire chart sealed. No visitors, no updates on my condition, no transfers authorized for anyone except Leo Ortiz.”
“Does that include a spouse?”
“I don’t have a spouse.”
The words left my mouth with a strange, calm finality.
The nurse brought me the HIPAA authorization forms. I read every line.
In the emergency contact field, there was only Leo. Bennett was not an authorized contact, nor was he my legal next of kin.
The marriage license he had so carefully hidden had just become my greatest asset.
I called Leo.
He answered on the first ring.
“I got your message.” His voice was tight with worry. “Mara, where are you? Are you all right?”
“Ninety-nine is over,” I rasped, my throat raw.
“Now it’s our turn for one hundred.”
He was silent for a few seconds.
“Are you sure about this?”
“I’m sure. Get the first flight out here. You’re my sole representative, so you’ll need to arrange the transfer. Don’t tell a soul where I’m going.”
“Okay.”
Leo didn’t ask if I would regret it.
He just said, “I’m on my way.”
Less than twenty minutes after I hung up, I heard frantic footsteps in the hall.
“Where is she?”
It was Bennett.
His voice was almost unrecognizable through the frosted glass—ragged, hoarse, and shot through with panic.
He stormed the nurses’ station, his tie askew, a smudge of last night’s frosting still on the collar of his expensive shirt. He demanded to know my condition, and when the nurse refused to answer, he tried to shove past her.
Two security guards intercepted him instantly.
“Sir, you need to calm down.”
“Get out of my way! I need to see Mara!”
He stared at my door, his eyes bloodshot.
“I’m her husband!”
The nurse glanced at her monitor, her tone unwavering.
“I’m sorry, sir. Your name is not on the patient’s authorized visitor list.”
“Are you deaf? We had a wedding! Everyone knows she’s Mrs. Shaw!”
“Can you provide a marriage certificate, sir? Or written authorization from the patient?”
Bennett froze.
Of course he couldn’t.
The license that should have been on file at Newport City Hall was locked in a drawer in his study.
The nurse set down her tablet.
“Under HIPAA, I cannot confirm or deny if that patient is here, nor can I provide any medical information. You need to leave.”
“She’s allergic to walnuts! She almost died last night!”
Bennett slammed his fist on the counter.
“I need to know if she’s okay!”
“Sir, if you don’t leave now, we will be forced to call the police.”
At the word “police,” all the color drained from his face.
He had finally remembered. All those phones, flashes blazing, hadn’t just recorded my humiliation.
They had also recorded him holding my wrist. They had recorded Camille shoving the cake in my mouth. And they had recorded him saying, “As if.”
The nurse, concerned he might escalate further, patched the hallway security feed to the monitor in my room, giving me the option to press charges.
On the screen, Bennett was slumped against the wall outside my door, his hands shaking.
He wasn’t shouting anymore. He was just muttering, over and over, almost incoherently.
“Tell her I didn’t know it would be this bad.”
“I just wanted it to be over.”
“I love her. I really, really love her.”
How touching.
Last night, when I was on the floor at his feet, clawing at my throat, he hadn’t looked like this.
But now that he was locked out, cut off from information, and facing potential consequences for his “joke,” he suddenly remembered how much he cared.
For a split second, I almost wanted to walk out there.
Then I saw him pull out his phone and frantically start deleting something.
I laughed. A dry, humorless sound.
His pain wasn’t for me.
It was for himself. The game had finally spun out of his control.
This was the ninety-ninth test.
Camille had supplied the poison. Their friends had held me down. And Bennett, once again, had sided with the people holding the knife.
He had watched me suffocate last night.
What was to stop him from standing by and watching me get discarded for good in test number one hundred?