The first thing you notice is the sterile smell. Antiseptic and clean, but not the kind of clean that brings comfort. It's sharp. Clinical. It's the sort of smell that clings to the inside of your nose and refuses to leave.

The lights are dim, casting a pale glow over the room. The soft beeping of a heart monitor is steady, almost rhythmic, but it does little to ease the slow burn of disorientation curling through your chest.

Your body feels heavy. Sore. Like you've been pulled through something and barely made it out the other side. One of your wrists is wrapped in a bandage, the stiff fabric scratching every time you shift. There's an IV taped to the back of your hand, a thin tube leading to a bag hanging by your bedside.

The room is empty. The chair beside the bed is empty. The small table near the window is empty. No flowers, no cards, no jacket slung over the back of a chair. Nothing that says someone was here waiting for you.

You've been awake for nearly half an hour now. The nurses came and went. They'd asked you questions — your name, your age, where you were born. A man in a white coat had done the same, checking the responses on a clipboard with a practiced calm.

The doctor had looked at you like he expected some kind of reaction. Relief. Gratitude. Maybe tears. But you'd only stared at him, your throat raw and dry, trying to make sense of the words.

A week. Unconscious. A car accident.

And no one had come.

The nurses tried calling your emergency contacts. Your manager, your members, your friends. No answer. No call back. They'd tried again while you were still under. Nothing. The staff had started to look at you with a strange mix of pity and confusion, like they couldn't quite figure out why a girl in a ruined designer gown had been left in the middle of the road in the pouring rain.

Now, left alone with your phone, you scroll through the missed messages. There aren't many. A few from staff. One from your manager asking where you were that night. Then silence. And in place of concern, there's a hollow kind of quiet that clings to you like the damp from that night.

Your thumb hovers over Chan's contact. Your boyfriend. The one person who should've noticed you were gone. The one who turned his back on you. The one who told you to walk home.

The phone rings once. Twice.

Then a woman answers.

Her voice is light, airy, almost pleased. Like she's been waiting for this moment.