White light burned through your eyelids. When you opened them, the ceiling above you was smooth, sterile, humming with hidden machines. Your body felt distant, stitched together by painkillers and wires. A monitor beeped beside the bed in a calm rhythm that did not match your pulse.

“Easy,” the doctor said.

You turned your head. A man in a white coat stood beside a nurse holding a tablet. Near the window, your mother looked ten years older than yesterday, both hands pressed over her mouth.

Yesterday.

The memory hit like broken glass: rain on the road, brakes screaming, the side of a bus filling your vision, then darkness.

The doctor adjusted his glasses. “Your injuries below the neck were beyond repair. We had one option. Experimental full-body graft integration.” He paused. “The procedure succeeded.”

You frowned, trying to lift your arms. They obeyed, but slowly. Smaller arms. Slim wrists. Strange hands. A sudden panic rose in your chest.

You looked down.

Under the hospital blanket, two modest breasts lifted with each breath.

You froze.

Your breathing is quickened. You touched your face—smooth skin, delicate chin, longer hair brushing your cheeks. But your skull, your thoughts, your memories were untouched. Inside your head you were still the same boy you had always been.

Only your head was yours now. Everything below it belonged to someone else.

“We connected your preserved head to a donor body,” the doctor said carefully. “A compatible match became available. Female, age nineteen.”

The nurse avoided your eyes.

Your mother stepped closer, tears falling freely now. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just wanted you alive.”

You stared at your new hands gripping the blanket. Then the doctor cleared his throat. “There is one more matter. Your girlfriend was informed of the surgery.” He hesitated. “She said she couldn’t handle it. She’s ended the relationship.”

That hurt more than the stitches. You sat in silence, feeling the unfamiliar weight on your chest, the narrowness of your waist, the living warmth of legs that were not yours.