Reborn Rich: The Marvelous William Hudson.

Chapter 3

“Were you planning something, William?” she said softly. “After everything? Still planning?”

She shook her head slowly, almost admiringly.

“Still fighting,” she said. “Even now.”

Benjamin reached down, grabbed William by both ankles, and dragged him away from the suitcase across the floor. Then he grabbed him by the collar, hauled him upright against the wall, and looked at him for one final moment.

Then he threw him.

William hit the top of the staircase at the edge of the room and went over.

He fell hard, each step a separate explosion of impact and pain, his shoulder, his hip, his head, his back, until he reached the bottom landing and hit the floor of the hallway below with a final devastating crack, the back of his skull connecting with the hardwood with a sound that echoed through the empty house.

He lay completely still.

Blood began spreading from beneath his head. Dark and slow, moving outward across the floor in every direction.

Footsteps on the stairs, unhurried.

Both of them appeared at the bottom, standing over him, looking down at where he had come to rest.

Lydia crouched beside him one last time.

“Two minutes,” she said softly, almost kindly.

“The drug is already working. You can feel it, can't you. That tightening in your chest.” She looked into his eyes.

“There is nothing you can do. Nothing you can take. Nobody you can call." She paused. "In two minutes your heart will stop, and that will be the end of you.”

She smiled and waved at him on the floor.

“Goodbye, William, and say hello to that useless family of yours when you see them.”

Benjamin looked down at him and laughed also.

It came out loud and genuine and completely unbothered.

Then Lydia laughed too.

Then Benjamin put his arm around her shoulders, and together they walked away down the hallway without looking back. The front door opened. Then it closed.

William lay completely alone on the cold floor of his own hallway, surrounded by his own blood, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to call out to anyone because there was no one to call and no voice left to call with.

But his eyes were open.

The tightening in his chest was real and it was getting worse with every shallow breath he pulled in, the drug moving through him quietly and efficiently and doing exactly what Lydia had designed it to do.

“I was so foolish,” he thought.

“I thought I could trust them. I thought being good to people meant they would be good in return.”

He had pulled Benjamin out of poverty with his own hands.

He had loved Lydia with everything he had.

And he was lying on the floor of his own home bleeding to death while both of them laughed on their way out the door.

His heart, already stuttering from the drug, lurched.

"Could this be it?" his mind whispered. "Could this be death finally arriving in a form he could not survive?"

At that moment the drugs kicked in and, immediately pain exploded through William's entire body in one enormous white wave.

And then nothing, Images came instead of pain.

Fast and bright and completely out of his control. Meeting Lydia for the first time in the lobby of his own building, her laughing at something he said.

Their first dinner. Her hand in his at the altar on their wedding morning. Benjamin shaking his hand on his first day of work, thin and sunburned and wearing a shirt that had been ironed until the crease lines hurt to look at. The mountain road on the wedding night. The headlights. The guardrail. The drop.

Twenty years in the wheelchair.

Everything flashed by in the space of a single blink.

“If only I could be given another chance, if only I could set back time and correct my wrong, so this is how it ends”

At that moment everything went flashed by in a blink, then white. Everything turned bright white. So bright it hurt to look at.

William thought he was in the hospital again. Those same white lights that burned his eyes when he first woke up after the accident.

Immediately he started frowning right away. His heart sank.

“No, no, no,” he thought.

“Please don't let me survive this too.”

But then his eyes opened, he was alive. Still breathing. Still thinking.

William couldn't believe it. How could anyone survive such big strong chandelier falling on them? Especially someone in his terrible condition?

“Does death hate me this much?”

The words screamed inside his head. He felt so angry, so frustrated.

Without thinking, he threw his legs out like he was trying to kick something. His hands moved too, swinging through the air.

Then he realized what just happened, his legs moved. His hands moved.

Immediately William stepped backward fast, but lost his balance and fell hard on his butt. The impact shook through him, but he barely felt it.

He couldn't believe he was moving. After twenty years, his body was working again.

“What the hell is going on?”

William's voice came out strong and clear. Not the weak whisper he'd been using for years.

He finally started looking around, trying to figure out where he was.

The room looked familiar. Really familiar. But his brain felt fuzzy, like he was trying to remember a dream.

Then William looked straight ahead and saw himself in a big mirror on the wall.

Immediately his mouth fell open.

The man looking back at him was young. His hair was dark and thick. His face had no lines. His body looked strong and healthy.

He was wearing a white suit with a beautiful green flower pinned to the chest pocket.

At that moment William stood up slow, his eyes never leaving the mirror.

This was the suit he wore on his wedding day. This was exactly how he looked twenty years ago.