The Honeymoon Procedure

My sister was dying in childbirth, and my father, a top obstetrician, was the only one who could save her.

In my last life, I didn't hesitate. I called him.

After I begged and pleaded, he abandoned his honeymoon with my stepmother and flew back to perform the surgery.

My sister, Kerry, was saved. But the good news came with a death sentence for my stepmother.

Her depression, they said, had relapsed. She’d thrown herself into the ocean.

She left a suicide note, a ten-page manifesto detailing a decade of alleged abuse at our hands. The honeymoon, she wrote, was her last reason to live, and we had destroyed it.

My father read the note. He told us he didn't blame us, his voice a dead, hollow thing.

But on the day of my nephew's one-month celebration, he poisoned everyone's food.

"If it weren't for you two," he'd whispered, his face a mask of grief-stricken rage, "Penny would still be alive."

"How could I have raised such venomous daughters? A hundred deaths wouldn't be enough to atone for what you've done."

He held our heads in the toilet bowl until the world went black.

I opened my eyes.

I was back on the day my sister went into labor.

…

The first thing I did after being reborn was race to my sister’s house.

I was still too late.

The moment I pushed the door open, the coppery tang of blood hit me like a physical blow.

Kerry was lying on the floor in a rapidly spreading pool of it. My newborn nephew lay in the slick redness beside her, the umbilical cord still attached.

My hands shook as I dialed 911. I grabbed a blanket and wrapped the baby in it, trying to keep him warm.

The ambulance arrived with screaming sirens, whisking us away to the hospital.

Just as they wheeled Kerry and the baby into the emergency room, her husband, Mark, burst in.

"Olivia! How is she?"

His face was ashen. It was freezing outside, but he was wearing nothing but a dress shirt. He must have dropped everything and run.

Before I could answer, a doctor emerged from the trauma bay.

He told us Kerry's condition was critical. She needed immediate surgery, and there were only two surgeons in the region capable of performing it: Dr. Cole Sterling at Metropolitan General, and Dr. Ellis Vance at the State University Hospital.

Before Mark could even process the names, I jumped in. "We'll go to State University. Doctor, please, arrange the transfer—"

"Wait, why State?" Mark cut me off, his voice frantic. "Metropolitan General... Cole Sterling, that's our dad! He's been Kerry's doctor this whole time. He knows her case inside and out. We have to go there."

"Dad's on his honeymoon with Penny," I said, my voice tight. "We shouldn't bother them."

In my last life, a single phone call had brought him back. It had saved Kerry, but it had killed our stepmother. The memory of the foul, chemical-laced water flooding my throat was still fresh. I refused to die that way again.

"Are you kidding me?" Mark stared at me in disbelief. "What's more important, a honeymoon or your sister's life?"

He didn't...