- SAT test day.
Mon 26th, 2015, SAT test day.
r body was giving her one last gift–one final chance to feel
Arianna woke up that morning with more energy than she’d had in weeks. It was like her 1 human before everything ended.
She begged everyone–her mom. Dr. Martinez; the nurses–to let her go to the test center. Not to take the exam, obviously. Her bands thook too much to hold a pencil steady. But just to see. To feel like she belonged in something bigger than this hospital room that had become her tire world.
“Tease,” she whispered, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks. “I just want to pretend I’m normal for one last time. I need to see what Em missing “
Her mom’s face crumpled, but she couldn’t say no to her dying daughter. “Ten minutes. We stay in the hack and then come straight home.”
I promise!” Arianna’s smile was 1 adiant despite everything–er maybe lincase of everything
That morning, her moth wheeled her to the edge of the crowd outside Riverside High Yellow buses pulled up one after another, releasing waser of nervoas, chattering sends clutching their admission tickets like lifelines to their futures.
Arianna’s heart nearly stopped when she spotted him.
Jayden locked incredible–white button down shirt, dark jeans, that leather messenger bag she’d given him for his birthday sophomore year. He was laughing at something his friend said, completely at ease, like the world was his for the taking.
He was everything she’d never be healthy, whole, alive with possibility.
Watching heart.
g him stride toward the building with such confidence, Arianna felt her chest crack open with a pain that had nothing to do with her failing
“Good luck, Jayden,” she whispered, her voice lost in the morning airhope you become everything you’ve dreamed of I hope you save everyone you couldn’t save before.”
He never turned around. Never saw her there, less than Elly yards away, memorizing every detail of his face.
Never saw her collapse forward in her wheelchair as her heart seized up in her chest.
For the next five hours, while Jayden battled through critical reading passages and algebraic equations, Arianna fought her own war in the cardiac
Mexactly 3:47 PM–fifteen minutes before Jayden would bubble m his last answer–the machines around Arianna’s bed began their final devastating symphony.
The lone, flat tone that meant game pver
Outside Riverside High, Jayden walked out of the building feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. Not because of the test–that bad gone fine, better than fine–but because of the sudden, explicable agony that had torn through his chest during the last section
He’d actually doubled over at his desk, gasping like he was drowning. The proctor had asked if he needed medical attention, but what was he supposed to say? feel like someone just ripped my heart out, but I have no idea why?
“Dude, you look like death warmed over,” said Jake Morrison, his best friend since middle school. “You feeling okay?”
Jayden pressed a hand to his chest where the pain was finally fading to a dull ache. “Yeah, just tired, I guess.”
a was missing.
But as he scanned the crowd of celebrating families, that sick feeling in his stomach only got worse. Something was wrong. Something was
“Have any of you guys seen Arlanna around lately? The question slipped out before he could stop it
Jake and Tyler Williams exchanged a book “ro, she dropped out weeks ago. You know that.”
Right. Of course ut for some reason, the knot in his chest only tightened.
Chapter 6
Jayden threw himself into the rest of the
mer – working mvertime at Feterim’s Anto Shop, faking care of his măm, getting resoj lot tolmen U14
was too busy to worry about missing neighbors or phantom chest pains or why the Carter house had been dark for over a mond
When his NV acceptance letter arrived in late March, it came with an unexpected package,
The return
n address made him freeze: 1. Carter, General Delivery, Millbrook, VT
Arianna’s mom. From some tiny town he’d never heard of upstate.
Jayden stared at that package for hours, turning it over in his hands. He’d made his choice: he and his mom were starting fresh in New York. No more Vermont, në more painful memories, no more ghosts,
He showed the unopened package into his desk drawer and tried to forget it existed.
Three days later, he loaded his mom into their Homla and drine away from Vermont forever
Ten years later. August 2025, Burlington, Vermont.
Dr. Jayden Hiddleston was back in his hometown for the first time since graduation, attending a cardiac surgery conference at VM. He’d made it–everything he’d dreamed of becoming and more. Chief of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery at Mount Sinai. The youngest doctor in the hospital’s history to hold that position.
He saved kids‘ hearts for a living. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
His phone buzzed with a text from Jake Morrissey Holy shit dude, heard you’re in town! High school reunion tonight at the Marrion downtown. You HAVE to come. Everyone wants to see the big shot doctor.
Jayden almost declined, Bur something–curiosity, masochism, maybe both–made him type back One drink. That’s it.
The hotel ballroom was a time capsule of bad decisions cheesy class of 2015 banners, a playlist that hadn’t been updated since Obama was president, and forty people desperately trying to prove their lives had meaning.
Jayden found himself the center of attention, fielding questions about his practice and his Manhattan penthouse. Every time the door opened, his ayes darted toward it with barely concealed anety.
He told himself he wasn’t looking for anyone specific
After his third whiskey, the conversation inevitably turned to senior year drama.
“God, that whole last semester was insane,” said Emma Richardson, now sporting a massive diamond and what looked like recent plastic surgery. “All that stuff with the trial and everything.
I still feel sick about how we treated ber,” muttered Ryan Parker, who’d apparently found Jess sometime in the last decade. His face was red with shume and alcohol “Ariane didn’t deserve any of that bullshit we put her through
“She was the smartest person in our class,” added someone else “Probably would’ve been valedictorian if she hadn’t dropped out”
The table went quiet, everyone suddenly hyperaware of Jayden’s presence.
He kept his expression neutral, professional. The mask he’d perfected over ten years of surgery. “It was a complicated time for everyone!
Jake, oblivious as ever, laughed and said, “Speaking of Arianna–where the hell is she tonight? I tried stalking her on Facebook but couldn’t find anything. She probably got married and changed her name or whatever.”
The words hit jayden like a physical blow. That familiar tightness seized his chest–the same sensation he’d felt walking out of his SAT
“She’s not here?” His voice came out rougher than intended, desperate in a way that made him hate himself.
Every single person at the table was staring at him now with expressions of shock and something that looked dangerously close to pity.
The silence stretched until their farger class presidem, Sarah Mitchell, finally spoke. Her voice was gentle but firm
““Jayden… you don’t know, do you? Ariano died ten years ago. She died the same day we took our SATs
