The sting of antiseptic was real. Sunlight cut golden stripes through blinds, warm against my skin—no more fluorescent hallucinations.
"Dad!" A girl with butterfly hairclips made from surgical scissors lunged onto the bed. "You slept three whole days!"
My trembling hand touched her warm cheek. Memories emerged like tidepool rocks: adopting the sole survivor Nuan Nuan after the fire. The car crash happened yesterday, on her seventh birthday.
"Dr. Qi's awake?" A nurse entered—Lin Xiaowen, with the socialite's eyes from my delusions. "Officer Chen has been waiting."
Familiar cursing echoed outside. The tattooed cop bargged in, police badge glinting. He froze seeing me, then thrust a fruit basket at Nuan Nuan. "Snack time! Grown-ups need to talk."
As the girl's laughter faded, Chen fingered his cross-shaped scar. "All three babies survived." His phone showed a photo: a doctor, a pianist, and Nuan Nuan grinning with scissors hands.
"Electrical fire. No experiments." He leaned closer. "But the toxins made you hallucinate..."
My hand found the pen-turned-scalpel under the pillow. Chen grabbed my wrist. "You clutched these scissors in the fire, muttering about 'cutting sins'."
Footsteps interrupted. "Emergency C-section!" a nurse shouted.
My body moved first. In the OR, shadowy ram horns flickered under lights. The heart monitor's shriek mirrored fire alarms from my nightmares.
"Clamp!" The scalpel hummed. Three hundred cycles of phantom sutures guided my hand.
"BP stabilizing!" A newborn's cry pierced delusions. As I cut the umbilical cord, Nuan Nuan's hairclip fell—its butterfly wings quivering in blood, carrying nightmares toward dawn.
Chen stopped me post-op. Ram horn stubs protruded under his collar. "The mother...is the third baby from the fire."
Through the window, Nuan Nuan's laughter mingled with nurses folding paper boats. The scalpel's chill in my palm felt irrevocably real—this time, I'd severed the cycle for good.