Thia had been rushed into the emergency room.
Seira stayed frozen in the hallway when suddenly a nurse gently approached and told her she had to wait outside while the doctors checked on her daughter.
She nodded wordlessly, mindlessly, lips trembling, and sat on the cold steel bench just outside the doors.
Around her, the pale white walls of the hospital blurred in and out of focus.
She glanced down at herself... still in her pajamas, soaked with her sweat.
She noticed she hadn't brought anything.
Not even her phone.
She remembered placing it on the floor next to the couch before running out, carrying Thia in her arms with nothing else, just her.
Time felt slow, almost suspended.
She started to pray harder, then desperately repeated her words.
Her lips moved in a silent whisper while tears fell down her face.
She didn't care who heard or what god was listening to.
"Just let her live... Please, just let her live..."
Five minutes passed, or maybe more.
The double doors of the emergency ward opened and the male doctor stepped out, pulling his facemask down.
He looked at her, brows furrowed with what felt like hesitation.
She stood immediately.
"Ma'am," he said.
But her ears didn't catch everything.
The sounds around her...
Nurses talking, machines beeping, doors opening.....
Blurred together like noise in a dream.
Her chest felt tight, like it was hard to breathe, and her knees started to shake beneath her, unsteady and weak.
The only words that cut through the noise were...
"She had a cardiac arrest."
That was the only thing she truly heard.
Everything else...the footsteps, the voices are blurred into a distant hum, like she was trapped underwater.
A wave of weakness washed over her, and her legs gave out beneath her.
She dropped back onto the bench, gripping its cold metal arm rest as if it were the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
Her breaths came short and uneven. Her lips parted, but no words came.
She couldn't move, couldn't speak, and could barely even think.
"No... Thia..." she whispered.
She broke down....crying so hard, the kind of pain that came from deep in her chest.
Her hands slammed weakly against the bench's armrest and hit it over and over, like she didn't know what else to do.
"Thia!" she screamed, her voice giving out halfway through.
It didn't even sound like her.
She kept thinking, I should've known.
She was her mother.
She should've seen it coming.
Why didn't she notice the signs?
And now... now it's too late.
All Seira ever knew was that Thia was a quiet, timid girl.
The kind who kept to herself.
But she never imagined her daughter would be the type to hide something this serious like her illness or even her own pain and then it hit her...maybe Thia learned it from her.
Seira had always done the same thing.
Hiding when she felt sick, keeping her pain to herself and there were nights she'd quietly bandage her own cuts.
Days she'd push through the hurt and say nothing.
She never told her husband because she never wanted to be a burden and Thia saw all of it.
"It's my fault..."
"I'm sorry," she cried, over and over.
Then she stood, despite her legs being weak and even if her head was dizzy, but she forced herself toward the hospital door.
She needed to call someone.
She needed to call him... Max.
"I need my phone," she mumbled, her lips shaking. "I have to call your bastard father."
Even now, she didn't want to forgive him. But he still had the right to know despite how he treated her, despite how he left her before to raise Thia alone.
Despite everything, Seira never took away his right to be a father to Thia.
When she stepped outside, it was raining.
Hard, cold, heavy rain.
The storm had arrived just as the news reported earlier.
She remembered hearing about it on the TV in the morning, but now it just felt like the world was agreeing with her mood: dark, wet, miserable.
She didn't have an umbrella and she didn't care.
Her pajama pants stuck to her legs.
Her shirt was clinging to her chest.
She looked like she had drowned, and maybe she had.
Maybe she was already half-dead inside.
But still, she walked, her steps slow but steady.
The rain mixed with her tears.
Her lips tasted like salt and sorrow.
Her eyes stung, and her shoulders felt heavy.
"I'm useless," she whispered.
Why did everything happen so fast? Just hours ago, she was with Thia.
Now she's gone.
Seira hated sad stories.
Hated slice-of-life dramas, tragic films, stories that didn't end well.
She didn't even like to hear about them because she believed... truly believed... that life should be magical.
Like a fairytale. Like the stories she read as a girl, where the mother always saves the child, where love wins, where pain ends.
But life wasn't that kind of story.
She never taught herself how to be strong. She endured things, yes.
The pain of a loveless marriage.
The nights of silence, loneliness, but she never learned how to process it.
Never watched sad movies.
Never finished sad books.
She always turned them off before the sad part arrived.
Now she couldn't fast-forward this part. She was stuck in it.
And no one was there to help her out.
Then she saw someone.
A figure in the distance.
A man standing across the highway.
The storm made it hard to see clearly.
There were no lamp posts nearby, just the road, drenched in rain and silence.
The man didn't move, and he just stood there.
She looked ahead.
She stepped onto the road without thinking.
A sudden horn ripped through the night air.
Headlights exploded into view, white and blinding, rushing closer by the second.
A massive ten-wheeler truck barreling down the street.
She froze.
Her feet locked in place.
Her limbs went numb.
Her heart slammed against her ribs like it was trying to escape.
Her mind screamed Run!, but her body wouldn't listen.
She stood there, wide-eyed, breath caught in her throat.
Then, rapid...
She closed her eyes in panic
Her body was broken, blood spreading beneath her.
The man she had seen earlier stood nearby... but he didn't move.
He didn't help.
He just watched.
Tears escaped from her eyes.
In her final moment, she still felt helpless.
Her lips parted one last time.
"I should have listened to you... Alona."
She died there... right on the street,.
on July 19, 2025, in the cold, ruthless rain.