“You can stop all this treatment,” Vanessa said, smoothing the blanket with fake tenderness. “Let nature finish what exhaustion started.”
She leaned toward Marcus and whispered, loud enough for Alina to hear, “So… when do we schedule the burial?”
Inside her motionless body, Alina screamed: I’m here. I can hear you.
But her lips didn’t move.
No one noticed.
Marcus’s mother arrived later, satisfaction written across her face.
“I warned her,” she said coolly. “A woman who forgets her place ends up like this.”
She looked at Alina’s still form. “At least my son is free.”
Free.
The word echoed in Alina’s mind.
A doctor stood nearby, uneasy. “She isn’t dead,” he said carefully. “She’s in a coma. There’s still a small chance she could wake up.”
Marcus waved him off. “Let’s be realistic. She’s already gone.”
Alina heard that clearly.
Something inside her shifted—not sadness, but anger. Sharp and steady.
Days passed. Machines beeped. Light and shadows changed. Her body rested, but her mind stayed awake.
Marcus visited often. He never held her hand.
“She had no ambition,” he said one afternoon, scrolling through his phone. “Just a useless housewife.”