I spend the rest of the day in forced tranquility, doing my absolute best to quiet my racing thoughts. I breathe deeply, sink into the hospital pillows, and wait. I keep my end of the bargain, trusting the promise my mother made to me during our tearful embrace.
The night passes without incident, and the next morning arrives.
Right on schedule, as the morning visiting hours open, the heavy ward door swings inward. My mother enters, but she isn't alone this time. Walking beside her is the attending physician. I immediately notice the tight, nervous twitch in my mother's hands and the rigid, professional posture of the doctor.
Before I can even utter a single question, the doctor steps forward, looking down at me with a solemn expression.
"Sara," the doctor says, his voice flat and careful. "We cannot discuss the specific details of your condition here in the open ward. For a full consultation, it is best if you come with us to my private chamber."
My heart gives a slight, nervous thud, but I maintain my composure. "Okay," I reply, pulling back the white linens. "I can do that."
The doctor nods, and within minutes, the nurses arrive to handle the arrangements, carefully helping me out of the bed and guiding me down the quiet, sterile hallway. We walk in a tense, heavy silence until we reach the private office. Inside, my father is already waiting, his face pale under the harsh desk lamp.
The door clicks shut behind us, locking out the rest of the hospital.
The doctor walks over to his desk, sitting down in front of a large, high-resolution monitor. At the same time, my mother reaches into her bag with trembling fingers and pulls out the printed copies of my emergency scans and blood panels, placing them neatly on the desk. The doctor logs into the hospital network, clicking through file after file, studying the digital imaging alongside the paperwork.
His face grows incredibly serious, lines of deep concentration etching into his forehead. The silence stretches until it feels entirely suffocating.
Finally, the doctor looks up from the screen, folding his hands on the desk. "Listen, Sara. As you mentioned to your mother yesterday, you don't feel anything wrong with your body. You believe you are completely fine, and you want an immediate discharge from this hospital. Am I correct?"
"Yes," I say firmly, leaning forward in my chair. "It was just exhaustion. I know my body."
"I understand," the doctor replies slowly. "And to be completely transparent with you... at a first glance, we did not find anything unusual in your reports. On the surface, everything looks quite natural."
I blink, a sudden wave of anger and confusion washing over me. I slam my hand lightly on the armrest. "Then why? Why are you still refusing to discharge me? Why did you bring me all the way to this private room? What is going on here? What do you want from me? Are you just planning to artificially inflate our medical bill? Are you trying to rob us?"
"Calm down, Sara," the doctor says, his voice remaining dead calm, though his eyes darken with an inexplicable gravity. "Please, listen to me carefully. On a superficial level, yes, the numbers look normal. But look closer. The underlying problem is that your entire system is wrong."
I freeze. "What do you mean, wrong?"
"Everything is completely messed up," the doctor reveals, pointing directly at the complex data strings on his monitor. "Your resting heartbeat pattern, the specific cellular components of your blood, the hormonal balances... the actual ratios are entirely unnatural. Statistically, mathematically, your entire physiological existence right now makes no sense. The biological markers don't align with a normal human baseline. I don't know the reason for it. It is an incredibly rare, unprecedented case."
The room feels entirely freezing. My parents look away, unable to meet my eyes.
"I have already discussed your files with senior specialists across the department, and I even consulted with top international physicians abroad," the doctor continues, shaking his head in sheer bewilderment. "None of us can identify the medical cause behind these unnatural ratios. That is exactly why I am taking your case so seriously. We cannot let you leave. We need you to give us a little more time so we can run further tests and discuss this properly."
Hearing this absolute nonsense, a fierce, burning rage erupts inside my chest. I stand up from my chair, glare flashing as I look at the doctor, completely rejecting his words.
"What are you even talking about?!" I shout, my voice echoing off the private office walls. "You sit there and tell me I am not normal? What is even considered 'normal' in my life?! Are you trying to tell me that my entire body is a lie? That all of my medical reports are a mistake? If I have a disease, tell me the name of it right now! I want a straight answer! If you can't even give me a proper diagnosis, then what kind of doctor are you?!"
The bitter words pour out of me as I openly blame them, my hands shaking as the terrifying mystery of my own body completely unravels in front of me.
The doctor holds up his hands defensively, his expression tightening. "Calm down, Sara. Please, you need to lower your voice."
Beside me, my mother and father instantly rush forward. My mother grabs my shaking shoulders, her touch frantic, while my father stands close, his face etched with pure desperation.
"Listen to us, Sara. Please, just listen to the doctor," my mother begs, her voice cracking as she forces me back into the chair. "We couldn't believe it either at first. We thought it was a mistake! But after seeing the results with our own eyes and looking at the data, we had to believe him. Just calm down for a bit. Let's give him some time to explain everything."
The doctor clears his throat, clicking on a new set of data strings, and begins to speak. He uses heavy medical jargon, talking about blood cell structures, neural electrical patterns, and anomalous biological ratios.
But as his lips move, the sound completely dies out.
It is as if a thick, heavy wall of glass has dropped around me. The doctor's voice fades into a distant, underwater murmur. The sterile office, the blinking computer monitors, the panicked expressions of my parents—everything around me completely stops. I tune it all out, completely lost in my own thoughts as a sudden, blinding realization hits me like a lightning bolt.
Elanore's world... My mind races back to the daggers, the cold palace walls, and the terrifying Duke. It wasn't just a dream. I was really living Elanore's life. But my parents and this doctor don't know anything about portals or fantasy timelines. That is exactly why they think my body is unnatural! They think I am abnormal and that my vitals are broken, but it's only because my physical system was literally anchoring a soul that spent seven days navigating an entirely different magical dimension!
A wave of relief washes over me. Yes! That has to be the case! If I just explain the truth to them, they will finally understand my situation. They will realize that this 'abnormal' data is actually perfectly normal for someone who just jumped across worlds. Once they realize I'm not sick, the doctor will have to discharge me. I can stop these massive financial expenses right now, save my family from a mountain of hospital bills, and finally go back to living my normal life like before. I just need to do my absolute best to convince them.
I take a deep breath, breaking out of my trance, and look directly at them.
"Okay," I say, my voice completely calm now. "I understand everything you are saying. But... can you please hear something from me?"
My mother and father exchange a surprised, bewildered look. My mother leans in, a flicker of hope in her swollen eyes. "Yes, dear. Tell me. What do you want to share? Do you remember something about your condition? Did you feel any symptoms before this happened? Tell us."
The doctor leans forward, clicking his pen. "Yes, please tell us. It will help me understand your condition better. It will help us out immensely."
I take one more steadying breath, gripping the armrests. "Okay. Let me explain everything. But you have to promise to believe me, okay? I am telling you the absolute truth."
I lay it all out for them. I explain how, from the exact moment I fell into that deep sleep some days ago, my consciousness traveled straight into another world. I tell them how I became a woman named Elanore. I skip the terrifying, gory details—I don't mention the poison or the hostile behavior of her family —but I give them a clear summary. I tell them about the magical empire, the people I met, and the parallel life I was forced to live while my body lay asleep in this ward.
"So you see?" I conclude, a confident smile breaking across my face. "Maybe because I was in Elanore's world, my vitals are just adjusting. That's why the ratios are not normal. It's not because I am sick or because there is some mysterious disease inside me. That is the only reason!"
I finish speaking, fully expecting them to sigh in relief, laugh at the wild story, and start printing my discharge papers.
Instead, the atmosphere in the private chamber completely freezes.
An absolute, suffocating peak silence drops over the room. No one speaks. No one moves. The doctor completely stops clicking his pen, staring at me with a look of profound, heavy concern. My mother's face drains of all color, and my father lowers his head into his hands, looking entirely defeated. They don't look relieved at all. In fact, they look infinitely more serious, deeply troubled, and lost in a completely different kind of nightmare than before.
Sara has shared her ultimate secret, fully believing that the truth about Elanore's world would prove her sanity and save her family from financial ruin. But her logical explanation has just triggered a completely different psychological alarm for the people in the room.
Why are her parents and the doctor looking at her with such profound, tragic seriousness after hearing about the fantasy realm? Will the medical team mistake her true interdimensional journey for a severe psychological breakdown caused by her condition?
Let's see how the doctor responds to her story in the next chapter. Stay with us to find out!