Mira woke up feeling like she’d been run over by a truck. Again.
Her head was pounding, her mouth was dry, and her arms felt heavy. She tried to move and realized with panic that they were loosely tied to the bed rails with soft restraints.
’What the hell?’
She heard hushed voices near the door and noticed that it was two nurses whispering, not even bothering to keep it down.
"...she completely lost it. Screaming about how this wasn’t her body or some shit. We had to sedate her for her own safety."
"Again? The mind surely does strange things after trauma. You don’t think she’s been affected mentally, do you?"
Mira zoned them out as she focused on the words: sedated, again, and affected mentally.
Because what did they mean she was sedated again? It was just yesterday! And she was definitely not running mad either.
A doctor walked in just then. "Good morning, Miss Sanders. You’re awake again. You gave us quite the scare yesterday, but I understand how waking up from a weeks-long coma could be disorienting for anyone."
Weeks?
The word exploded in Mira’s skull. No, no, no. She had just died. She’d heard the dirt on her coffin just the day before yesterday at most!
"No," she croaked, her voice rough. "That’s... that’s not right. I’m... my name is Mira Carter."
The doctor just nodded patiently, almost like he was humoring a child. He picked up the chart hooked to the end of her bed and turned it so she could see herself.
Lorena Sanders was what it read in bold, unmistakable letters.
She gave up. She was still her. She was still in the wrong body.
Once they’d untied her and left her alone, Mira dragged herself out of bed. Her legs were shaky, but she needed to see it again.
She stumbled into the private bathroom and flipped on the light, and there she was. Again.
Lorena Sanders’ famous face was still staring back from the mirror, pale and wide-eyed with shock.
This time, she decided to really take her time and look. She stared at the flawless skin with not even a pore out of place. No stress pimples, no dark circles from sleepless nights either.
The long silky black hair probably cost more to maintain than Mira’s old salon.
She could not help but reach out and slap her own cheeks, and it stung. She yanked a strand of the perfect hair. It hurt as well.
She then pulled up the hospital gown and stared at the curves underneath that definitely did not belong to Mira Carter.
"So I’m not Mira, and I’m not Lorena either?" she said as a hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. But she pushed it down, knowing that she risked looking crazy and getting sent to a mental hospital should she let it out.
"So what am I? A ghost stuck in someone else’s body?"
"So God really said," she muttered to her reflection, "let’s put Mira’s miserable, broke soul in someone hot and famous?"
The joke sounded crazy even to her own ears, and she suddenly felt like she was in a terrifying prison of a dream.
She decided that she needed to get out of the room and breathe in something that didn’t smell like roses and medicine.
She took a few steps as she slipped out of the room and into the hospital hallway. The corridor was elegant and quiet, almost like a fancy hotel.
And then she noticed the stares, and a few people holding their phones up.
A nurse pushing a cart did a double take, her eyes widening. Two visitors whispering by a water cooler stopped talking and just... looked.
A doctor walking past gave her a long, unreadable glance before moving on.
She heard the whispers very clearly too.
"Is that...?"
"Was she really hiding here?"
"Look at her walking around peacefully, after everything..."
"No wonder the press won’t stop loitering around here."
Mira knew what it was like to be stared at. For being poor, for looking shabby and pitiful.
This was so different. This was... recognition, and the intensity was suffocating.
A child suddenly pointed and spoke loudly, "Mom, that lady is on the TV!"
Mira’s knees nearly buckled as she forced herself toward it, and then she saw it. A mounted TV was playing a clip of a glamorous movie scene, and there, crying beautifully on screen, was her face.
Lorena Sanders.
Mira herself got carried away by it until a loud voice shattered the moment.
"Turn that trash off!" a woman yelled. "Why are you playing the shows that have that bitch’s face in it here?"
Mira froze as the screen was immediately changed to another channel.
That bitch. Mira realized that the woman was talking about her. She meant this face.
She suddenly felt cold. "Why was everyone so mad at her? At me?"
Needing to escape the eyes on her, Mira pushed through a set of doors that led to a small, quiet garden. The fresh air was a relief for her.
But only for a few seconds, as her peaceful silence was suddenly shattered and a swarm of people rushed toward her like vultures.
Men and women with huge cameras with their flashes going off like gunfire, almost blinding her, while so many voices overlapped one another.
"Lorena! Lorena, over here!"
"Is it true that you faked your suicide to get sympathy?"
"Did you really drive Alie to kill herself?"
"Are you really hiding in here just to avoid trials and lawsuits?"
The questions continued to hit her like physical blows while she remained standing there, confused.
Faked suicide? Alie? Trials and lawsuits?
Then came another set of people, this time not with cameras, but boards, and their faces were twisted with anger.
"Murderer!" a teenager screamed.
"You ruined her life! So why are you still alive?"
"Attention whore! Stop pretending to be pitiful, it won’t work!"
"Kill yourself too!"
"You need to die!"
Mira looked around, trying to escape somehow, but she was surrounded and trapped.
She saw movement in the crowd as someone drew their arm back and hurled something. An egg then started to fly straight at her face, and Mira could only stare, paralyzed by the unbelievable violence about to hit her.
But before the egg could smash into her, a huge body moved in front of her, blocking her view completely causing the egg to hit the man’s suit clad back instead of her.
As the foul smell instantly filled the air, Mira raised her head to see who had shielded her and the face she saw almost caused her to choke.