Writers 
THE GIRL WHO DIED TWICE
The girl lying inside the coffin was me.
I knew it the moment I saw my face behind the glass.
My mother was kneeling beside the coffin, crying so hard that two women had to hold her. My best friend, Clara, was sitting on the floor, covering her face.
But the person who caught my attention was Daniel.
My fiancé.
He stood at the front of the room in a black suit.
He wasn't crying.
He was smiling.
I moved closer to the coffin, desperate to understand what I was seeing.
Then Daniel bent down and whispered,
"I'm sorry, my love. You were never supposed to find out."
My heart dropped.
Find out what?
I tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
Then everything went black.
I woke up gasping.
A nurse stood beside my hospital bed, staring at me as if she'd seen a ghost.
"Miss, you're awake."
"Where am I?"
"St. Mary's Hospital."
I looked around. "What happened to me?"
The nurse hesitated.
"Do you remember your name?"
"Amelia Rose."
She dropped the file in her hands.
I picked it up.
My name was written across the top.
AMELIA ROSE — DECEASED.
My hands began to shake.
"This is a mistake."
The nurse said nothing.
Then I noticed something else.
The date beside my name was three days earlier.
"How can I be dead?"
The nurse whispered, "That's what we'd like to know."
A doctor entered the room shortly afterward. His expression changed the moment he saw me.
"You remember nothing?"
"Nothing."
He closed the door.
"Three days ago, you were brought here unconscious. You had been poisoned."
"Poisoned?"
"Yes. Your heart stopped twice. We managed to revive you, but before we could inform your family, someone entered the records room and changed your status to deceased."
"Who?"
He handed me a copy of the original medical report.
At the bottom was a signature.
Daniel Carter.
My fiancé.
I stared at it.
Daniel had been the one to tell everyone I was dead.
But why?
Then my phone rang.
Daniel's name appeared on the screen.
I answered.
"Amelia?"
His voice trembled.
"You know."
I couldn't speak.
"I didn't poison you," he said. "But I knew who did."
"Who?"
Silence.
Then he whispered,
"Your mother."
My entire body went cold.
Before I could respond, the hospital door opened.
My mother walked in.
She was holding flowers.
The same woman I'd seen crying beside my coffin.
She smiled when she saw me.
"You're awake."
I stared at her.
"Why did you try to kill me?"
Her smile disappeared.
Daniel suddenly entered behind her.
"Tell her the truth."
My mother looked at him with hatred.
"You betrayed me."
"No," Daniel said. "I saved her."
My mother finally broke down.
Years earlier, my father had died after discovering that she had been secretly stealing money from his company. He had planned to expose her.
She had stopped him.
And she had spent years hiding the truth.
Three weeks before my wedding, I accidentally found the documents proving what she had done.
She panicked.
She poisoned me.
When the doctors revived me, Daniel discovered the truth. He knew my mother would try again, so he helped create the appearance of my death while secretly protecting me in the hospital.
The funeral had been staged.
The woman in the coffin wasn't me.
It was a body that had been deliberately misidentified to make my mother believe her plan had worked.
"But why let me see the funeral?" I asked.
Daniel looked at me.
"Because you were unconscious. Your mind was trying to make sense of what happened."
I remembered his words.
"You were never supposed to find out."
I looked at him.
"What did you mean?"
He lowered his head.
"I was talking about your mother's secret. I never wanted you to discover it this way."
My mother was taken away that evening.
For the first time in years, the truth was no longer buried.
A week later, I stood outside the hospital in the morning sunlight.
I had almost died once.
But somehow, I had been given another chance.
Clara hugged me tightly.
"You know what they call you now?"
I laughed.
"What?"
"The girl who died twice."
I smiled.
"No."
I looked back at the hospital.
"The girl who survived twice."
And this time, I walked away without looking back.