I’m dying. My mother, Eleanor, is a world-renowned oncologist specializing in stomach cancer. Yet, I developed the disease right under her nose. Every time I told her I wasn’t feeling well, she just scoffed and told me to stop acting because my performance was pathetic. My oldest brother, Pierce, is a detective. He has protected countless citizens in this city, but he never protected me. He stood by and watched as kidnappers dragged me away. My second brother, Nikolai, is a medical examiner. I once texted him: “When I die, will you perform my autopsy to prove I wasn’t lying?” He replied with a single word: “Dirty.” So, after I died, my lawyer father, Richard, found the severance papers I left behind. There was only one blank line left—the one for his signature. He frowned and ripped the documents to shreds. Even in death, he refused to let me go. I walked out of the hospital, utterly hollowed out, staring down at the medical report in my hands. Late-stage stomach cancer. The cancer cells were already metastasizing. When it rains, it pours. I learned that the hard way. Lost in my thoughts, I accidentally bumped into a teenage boy. I quickly closed my report, apologized, and turned to leave. He caught a glimpse of the hospital paperwork in my hand and looked at me with pure sympathy. “It’s okay.” I walked home in a daze. As night fell, my family’s house glowed with warm, cozy lights in the distance. Too bad none of those lights were meant for me. I stood outside the door, listening to the laughter and cheer inside. The moment I pushed the door open, the house fell into a dead silence. Eleanor turned around, her eyes flashing with anger. “You knew today was Elysia’s birthday, yet you came home this late. Are you intentionally trying to ruin our family gathering?” The living room was filled with balloons and streamers. A massive, seven-tier cake sat on the dining table. Richard, Eleanor, Pierce, and Nikolai were all staring at me with deep annoyance. My sister, Elysia, sat in the middle of them like a princess surrounded by her court. She flashed me a sweet, gentle smile. “Eleanor, it’s fine. Maybe Chloe had something really important to do that held her up?” Her sweet, understanding act immediately won silent nods of approval from the rest of the family. Nikolai sneered, “What important thing could she possibly have?” My family has hated me since the day I was born. Eleanor was pregnant with twins. But my sister, Angel, was born weak. They believed I had stolen all the nutrients in the womb, which caused Angel to pass away less than twenty-four hours after birth. My parents dumped me with my grandparents. But before I even turned a month old, my grandparents died in a horrific car crash. From then on, everyone called me a curse. In my memory, Eleanor always looked at me with disgust, weeping over the baby clothes she had prepared for Angel. When I was five, Richard brought a girl home from the orphanage. She shared the exact same birthday as me. That was Elysia. They showered her with all the love they would have given Angel, ten times over. My mother is a top oncologist specializing in stomach cancer, yet I got terminal stomach cancer right under her nose. How ironic. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out at first. Finally, I forced out the same plea I had made a thousand times before: “Eleanor, my stomach really hurts.” Eleanor rolled her eyes, her face written with sheer disgust. “Here we go again. Stop acting. It’s pathetic.” The hospital report in my hand was so obvious, yet not a single one of them looked at it. Pierce threw me a cold glance. “Do you really have to fake an illness on Elysia’s birthday just to steal the spotlight?” Nikolai clicked his tongue in disgust. “If Elysia hadn’t insisted on waiting for you to cut the cake, we would have started hours ago!” Elysia played along, smiling warmly at me. “It’s okay, Chloe. I know you’re not feeling well. Take care of yourself.” Richard frowned and ordered, “How long are you going to keep up this tantrum? Get over here!” I walked over and saw the elegant writing on the cake: Happy Birthday, Elysia! But today was my birthday, too… Elysia picked up the knife, cut a slice with her name on it, and handed it to me with a smug smile. “Happy birthday, Chloe.” Her eyes were triumphant. My family was throwing her a massive party, completely forgetting it was my birthday as well. Or maybe they didn’t forget. They just didn’t care. Seeing me hesitate, Eleanor’s voice grew sharp. “Is your hand broken? How long are you going to make Elysia hold that plate?” The others glared at me as if I were actively torturing their precious darling.
I took the plate and mumbled, “Thanks.” Only then did they look away, returning to their laughter and leaving me in the cold. I stared at the cake with her name on it. I knew that if I didn’t eat it, I would have to endure another endless lecture. Like a robot, I took a bite. Instantly, my stomach violently churned. I covered my mouth and rushed to the bathroom, throwing up into the toilet. Eleanor exploded. “Chloe! Do you hate Elysia that much? You can’t even swallow a single bite of cake she offered you without throwing a tantrum?” Pierce leaned back, his eyes narrowing. “Are you going to complain about your stomach again? Stop trying to get attention.” Nikolai stabbed his fork into the cake, his voice dripping with malice. “If you’re in so much pain, why aren’t you dead yet? Keep playing your little games.” Richard picked up my slice of cake and threw it directly into the trash. “If you don’t want to eat, don’t. Ungrateful brat.” I knelt by the toilet, vomiting violently, unable to reply. The physical reaction forced tears down my face. Their shouting echoed through the bathroom door, deafening and relentless. The double torture of my mind and body was driving me to the brink of insanity. I dragged myself up to my bedroom on the second floor, locking the door to shut out the noise. The moment I left, the living room downstairs resumed its warm, happy atmosphere. The medical report lay open on my desk, staring back at me. A sudden wave of panic hit me. The doctor’s words from this morning echoed in my head. “The tumor is metastasizing. It might put pressure on your optic nerve and cause blindness. You need to prepare for the worst.” The next day, I went to school like normal. I had begged my parents countless times for sick leave in the past, only to be met with screaming matches. Nikolai had mocked me once, “Your grades are already garbage. Now you want to skip school too?” Richard had agreed. “Look at Elysia. She actually makes us proud. Not like you, an absolute embarrassment.” But they forgot that I used to have perfect grades. Back then, they had a completely different excuse to hate me. When the school posted the exam rankings, Elysia had looked down in tears. Eleanor had rushed to the school, slapped me across the face in front of teachers and students, and screamed: “You have to steal everything from Elysia, don’t you? Even the top rank! Why couldn’t you have been the one who died back then?” Eleanor was thinking of Angel. I had stood there under the judgmental stares of everyone, wishing the ground would swallow me whole. But Eleanor had grabbed my arm, launching into a screaming tirade, digging her sharp nails into my skin until I bled. In the end, my homeroom teacher had to physically pull her off me. After that, I stopped trying. I became the “disappointment” they always wanted me to be. SLAP! I was knocked to the ground. “Chloe, I’m talking to you! How dare you ignore me?” A popular girl, Kate, stood over me, flanked by a dozen classmates. Elysia stood right next to her, pretending to play the peacemaker. “Come on, Kate. Chloe didn’t mean to. She just… really likes Scott…” Elysia turned to me, looking incredibly forgiving. “Chloe, if you liked him, you should have just told me. I wouldn’t have started dating him.” Kate scoffed, looking at Elysia with pity. “Elysia, you are way too sweet! Why do you tolerate this homewrecker?” Here we go again. My cheek burned from the force of the slap. I stood up and calmly brushed the dust off my clothes. “I don’t like him.” Scott stepped forward, pulling out a crumpled love letter. He ripped it to shreds and threw the pieces in my face. “You make me sick. I guess my last warning wasn’t enough.” Scott looked at the crowd. “This time, don’t hold back.”
They dragged me into the PE equipment room. And Elysia, just like every other time, stood outside with tears in her eyes, looking like the victim everyone needed to comfort. My old bruises hadn’t even healed, and now new purple marks were blooming all over my body. This was the girl my family raised like a princess. She had been orchestrating my bullying for over a decade. I closed my eyes, biting my lip, refusing to make a sound even when the taste of copper filled my mouth. BANG. The heavy metal door slammed shut, plunging me into absolute darkness. I fixed my torn clothes, dragged myself up through the agonizing pain, and left a trail of blood on the floor. I pulled open the dusty curtains. The schoolyard was completely empty. I spat out the blood in my mouth, walked calmly to the corner of the room, and picked up a heavy metal wrench. I smashed the rusted lock on the window, shattering the glass. A jagged piece sliced open my wrist, and blood began to drip onto the sill. Ignoring the pain, I hauled myself out of the window. “Stop right there!” I turned. It was the newly hired Vice Principal. She pushed up her glasses in disbelief, letting out a sharp gasp. She dragged me straight to her office. After flipping through my file, she immediately called my father. She glared at me, her face tense. “Why aren’t you home? Getting into trouble at your age is one thing, but destroying school property? This is unacceptable!” I looked down at my filthy clothes. Scott and his friends were smart—they never hit my face. They only targeted places hidden by my clothes. To the Vice Principal, I was just a delinquent. Yet, despite her harsh words, she poured me a cup of warm water and set it in front of me. “I am going to have a serious talk with your parents when they get here!” A few minutes later, sirens wailed outside. Pierce walked in with a couple of officers. The moment his eyes landed on me, his face twisted into deep annoyance. “We received a call from the school about vandalism. I should have known it was you.” I kept my head down, silent. The Vice Principal didn’t know he was my brother. Afraid a criminal record would ruin my future, she quickly tried to smooth things over. “Officer, she only broke the window to get out. Let’s not file an official report. We can resolve this privately once her parents arrive.” Pierce said coldly, “I am her guardian.” He turned to me, looking down his nose. “Do you have any idea how much police resources you are wasting? I have every right to put you in a holding cell.” I looked up at him, my voice flat. “I know.” I picked up the cup of water and drank it all. Did I want to fight back against the bullies? Of course I did. But every single attempt had failed. Pierce was a detective. He saved so many people, but never me. The very first time I was beaten up, I ran to him. I pulled up my sleeves to show him the bruises. He didn’t even look up from his desk. “Don’t bother me with your petty high school drama,” he had said. I thought he was just busy, so I went to the police station to file a report. But as I was taking off my jacket to take photos of my injuries for evidence, he walked in. “Who are you trying to seduce?” he had sneered. My cries for help were treated as disgusting attention-seeking. In the end, to teach me a lesson about “wasting police resources,” my righteous brother personally locked me in a holding cell for fifteen days. “Oh my god! Chloe, your hand is bleeding!” The Vice Principal gasped, staring at the cup in my hand. She quickly grabbed a first-aid kit and started wrapping my wrist in gauze. I looked up at Pierce, a tiny, subconscious glimmer of hope rising in my chest. For the first time, my wounds were laid bare right in front of him. Would he believe me this time? Pierce smirked, his eyes full of disdain. “Don’t waste your gauze on her. This self-harm act is getting old.” “If you want to die that badly, don’t bother getting treated.” He violently ripped the gauze off my wrist and dragged me out of the school.
The pain in my wrist grew sharper, eclipsing the dull ache in the rest of my body. My blood dripped onto the pavement all the way to the car. My chest felt incredibly tight. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision began to blur. When we got home, Elysia was sitting on the couch with my orange prescription bottle in her hand. She was eating the pills like candy and laughing, offering them to Eleanor and Nikolai. When she saw us walk in, she smiled sweetly and offered a pill to Pierce and me. “Why are you taking my medication?” I asked, my voice trembling. Elysia gasped in mock surprise. “This is your medication? But they’re just Skittles!” She poured a few more into her hand. “They’re so good. No wonder you love them, Chloe. Honestly, as long as you don’t get cavities, Eleanor and Richard won’t care how much candy you eat.” My heart froze. I didn’t dare look at anyone else’s expression. I slowly put one of the “candies” into my mouth. It was the exact same tablet I had been taking for the past two months. But I had lost my sense of taste weeks ago. Why were my cancer meds replaced with candy? Richard, Eleanor, Pierce, and Nikolai looked at me with smug satisfaction. Elysia just stood there, smiling triumphantly. Nikolai tossed a pill to Pierce. “See? I told you she was faking.” He popped one into his mouth and crunched it loudly. Eleanor sneered, “You eat this much candy every day, yet you haven’t developed diabetes? Honestly, that would be far more believable than your stomach cancer lie.” Richard’s face was dark, his voice dangerously low. “I don’t care if you want to play-act a terminal illness.” “But if you ever interfere with Pierce’s work again, I will personally have you committed to a psychiatric ward so you can experience what real patients go through.” I looked at Pierce. He didn’t say a word, but his cold expression showed he fully agreed with Richard. The cruel, ugly faces of my family began to warp and blur. I pushed past them, stumbling up the stairs in the dark, desperate to lock myself in my room. Elysia followed me up, holding the pill bottle out to me. “Chloe, what’s wrong? Are you dizzy? Can you not see the stairs?” Nikolai pulled her back from behind. “Why do you even bother with her, Elysia? Her little stomach cancer lie got exposed, so now she’s playing the dizzy card. It’s exhausting.” My hands shook violently as I finally slammed the door shut and locked it. As the days passed, my vision decayed further. People became nothing but blurry shadows. Headaches, vomiting, and chest pain became my daily reality. I had fought so hard to survive for eighteen years, hoping to legally cut ties with them once I became an adult. I was only a few months away. And then, I got cancer. I returned to the hospital for a check-up, only to run into Eleanor. “Unbelievable. Are you so desperate that you’re bringing your little drama to my hospital now?” I had forgotten that she was rotated to this branch this month. “I’m not doing anything.” She stepped closer, her face contorted with rage. “There is a limit to your lies. No doctor in this hospital would write you a fake report.” Before I could answer, her sharp eyes scanned me up and down, making me feel naked and dirty. “Why are you standing in front of the OB/GYN clinic? Don’t tell me you caught some nasty STD from sleeping around at your age?” Eleanor’s screeching voice echoed down the corridor, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. Only then did I realize I was standing near the women’s clinic. Under the judgmental stares of the crowd, Eleanor continued her tirade. “I don’t have a slut for a daughter. You are absolutely nothing compared to Elysia.” “You act like you’re half-dead every day. Why don’t you actually go die?” Her venomous words sliced into me. I held out my medical report to her and said softly, “But Eleanor… I really am dying.”
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