Chapter 3: Athena’s Awakening

A low, steady beeping pierced the silence.

Athena stirred, eyelids fluttering open to a haze of sterile white and soft shadows. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar—pale, cold, lit by the blue-tinted glow of hospital lights. Her throat felt raw, her limbs heavy, and her head pounded with a dull ache that throbbed behind her eyes.

She blinked slowly.

The scent of antiseptic, faint and sharp, confirmed what her mind couldn’t yet process. Machines clicked softly nearby. An IV line trailed from her arm. A heart monitor beeped steadily to her right. A faint pulse of pain moved through her ribs as she shifted, and a nurse’s voice echoed from somewhere down the hall.

Athena Albrecht, the woman who built empires and stared down billion-dollar boardrooms, was lying in a hospital bed, broken and barely breathing.

A doctor appeared at her side, his face calm but serious. “Miss Albrecht. You’re awake. That’s good.”

She tried to speak, but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. Only a rasp escaped.

“Don’t try to talk yet,” the doctor said gently, checking the monitor. “You’ve been unconscious for about sixteen hours. You sustained a concussion and some bruised ribs, but there’s no internal bleeding. No fractures. Frankly… it’s a miracle.”

Athena swallowed, her lips cracking as she finally croaked out, “Sana?”

The doctor paused.

She noticed it. That half-second of hesitation. The brief flicker in his eyes.

“Athena…” His tone shifted, softened. “I’m so sorry.”

The words hit harder than the crash ever did.

She didn’t hear the rest. Not the doctor’s condolences, not the nurse who quietly entered and adjusted the drip, not the sound of footsteps retreating as they left her alone.

Her lungs felt too small for the air in the room. Her chest rose and fell with shallow, uneven breaths. Sana’s name echoed in her skull like a scream underwater. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping—praying—that this was still part of a nightmare, that she’d wake again, that she’d find Sana laughing at her bedside, making jokes about hospital food.

But there was nothing.

Just a memory. Just a void.

Images came flooding back, blurry and distorted. Rain. The road. Sana’s voice, rising in fear. The spin. The impact. The sound of glass—so much glass. Then silence.

She was the one behind the wheel. She was the one who insisted on driving. She was the one who didn’t slow down.

And now Sana was gone.

Athena turned her head away from the door, eyes fixed on the blank ceiling. The light above her buzzed faintly. The guilt didn’t creep in—it crashed, drowning her in a wave of cold, crushing weight.

She wanted to cry, to scream, to beg someone to turn back time.

But no tears came.

Only the hollow stare of a woman who had lost the only person that ever made her feel human.

Her fingers curled slowly into the scratchy hospital sheets, her breath shaky. Her mind spun in loops—searching, replaying, dissecting the moments leading up to the crash, as if the answer to why could bring Sana back.

But the answer never came.

And so, she lay there. Silent. Still. Shattered.

Alone.

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