Page 112 of Crossing Lines

I blink, and paramedics are swarming the room. Blink again, and I’m in the back of the ambulance, knees pulled to my chest, my arms numb.

Her face floats in and out of view—pale, lifeless, tubes shoved down her throat.

Blink.

We’re at the hospital. The lights are too bright. Everything is too loud and too fast and not real.

Blink.

Evren is suddenly there—warm arms wrapping around me, grounding me with his body as I collapse into his chest.

He doesn’t say a word.

Just holds me, fiercely, like he’s afraid I’ll shatter.

And maybe I already have.

Because I don’t understand.

I don’t understand how someone could look me in the eye, say everything I’d ever hoped to hear, and then try to die minutes later. And the worst part is that the rot in my chest whispers that it’s all my fault. That my anger, my demands, my very existence turned her love into a weapon—and she aimed it at herself.

I did this.

And I don’t know how to undo it. I don’t even know if she’s still alive to undo it.

I gag and bend over, the taste of acid burning my throat as everything in me empties out. My hands tremble, as Evren holds my hair back without a word. One of his hands rubs slow, steady circles on my back, anchoring me to something real.

The waiting room reeks of antiseptic and stolen last words. And God, the heartbreak. It hangs as thick as smoke, clogging my throat worse than tears. I want to claw it out of me, this weight that isn’t mine but lives in my chest now, borrowed and rotting.

A nurse makes her way to us and says, “Ms. Martin is stable and has just been transferred to a room. You can see her if you want.”

She gives me directions and I tell Evren to wait here, that I need to talk to her alone. Her room is at the end of the hall, and I stop just before the door.

Mom laughs and I freeze.

“I needed revenge,” Mom says, her voice light, amused—like she’s discussing the weather, not her suicide attempt. “How could my daughter give me up like that? Turn her back on me after everything I’ve done for her? Stupid, stupid girl.”

My stomach flips.

“She really thought I was going to get clean,” she adds, louder now. “It was the perfect punishment. Let her live with that guilt for a while.”

The nurse doesn’t respond, but there’s the sound of ablood pressure cuff unfastening. A drawer being opened. The rustle of paperwork. But I barely register it because all I can hear is her voice, and those words.

The perfect punishment?

A hot, vibrating silence roars in my ears.

She did it on purpose?

Not to change. Not to end her pain, but she did it to hurt me.

I step back, dizzy. My spine hits the wall and I let it hold me up. My hands shake, and vomit rises in my throat once again. Every cell in my body screams at me to lash out, to make her feel the razor-sharp edges of this pain she’s carved into me.

When my body moves, it’s forward. My newfound anger propelling me through the door and toward her.

The nurse is still there, writing something down on a paper, and Mom’s eyes widen in surprise when she spots me. Just for a second. Then they slide into that smug, syrupy mask I know too well.

“Niiina, baby,” she says, all sugar. “You’re here?—”

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