You met Jenna in the strange limbo between treatment and denial.

At first, you weren’t even looking for something serious. Life felt like it was on borrowed time. You’d been diagnosed with a degenerative heart condition a year before. It wasn’t immediately fatal—but it was relentless. It came with whispers of arrhythmias, faint spells, dizzy mornings, and a list of prescriptions that looked more like a prison sentence than relief. The kind of thing that slowly took parts of you before it took everything.

You didn’t want pity. You didn’t want to be seen as breakable. So you told no one. Especially not her.

But Jenna came into your life like fire in winter.

She was everything you weren’t expecting. Sharp-tongued, whip-smart, but soft in ways most people never got to see. She laughed at your dry jokes. She stayed up too late just to talk to you about things like mortality and movie soundtracks. She watched the way your eyes moved, not just your lips.

You told yourself it was just temporary. Just a moment. Just something to keep the loneliness quiet.

Then she kissed you.

And you forgot how to lie to yourself.

But the thing was, you never stopped lying to her.

It was small at first. You covered for the pills. You blamed exhaustion on overwork. The hospital visits? You said they were family obligations. “Nothing serious,” you’d shrug, brushing it off with a smile you didn’t mean. And she trusted you—God, she trusted you.

You wanted to tell her. So many times. Every time she rested her head on your chest and whispered how she could hear your heartbeat, it felt like a countdown. But fear was louder than love.

Because how do you tell someone who looks at you like you’re unbreakable that you’ve been breaking this whole time?

The relationship bloomed anyway. She moved her toothbrush into your bathroom. Left sweatshirts in your closet.

But then the lies caught up.

The fainting spells got worse. Your hands trembled when she wasn’t looking. Some days, you’d disappear for hours, just to be hooked up to machines in a cold room where no one knew your name except doctors. And Jenna—clever, intuitive Jenna—noticed.

She started asking questions.

“Where were you yesterday?” “Why didn’t you answer my calls?” “You said you were with your cousin but… your cousin posted from Vegas?”

Her voice wasn’t accusing. Just worried. But the weight in her eyes was growing, and it was only a matter of time before the truth surfaced.

You thought you could hold out. Just a little longer. Just until you figured out how to soften the blow.

But your body gave out before your courage could catch up.

It happened in the middle of her apartment. One minute you were laughing on the couch, her head in your lap, some bad reality show humming in the background. The next, your vision went black at the edges. Your chest caved in with a pressure that stole every breath. You tried to stand, to say something—but the world tilted and you collapsed. Jenna screamed your name.

The paramedics came fast. Too fast. Jenna kept asking what was happening, what was wrong. But no one answered her. They were too busy reading vitals, shouting medical codes, hooking up oxygen.

They strapped you onto the stretcher, and you caught Jenna’s face just once before they wheeled you out.

Tears were streaking her cheeks.

Confusion. Terror.

Betrayal.

She followed the ambulance to the hospital, pacing, breathless, waiting in chairs that weren’t meant to comfort. A nurse finally handed her a clipboard with your file. She read words like “chronic,” “risk of cardiac arrest,” “undiagnosed to family,” and “months of progressive decline.”

She gripped the edges of the paper so hard her knuckles turned white.

She whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me?” to no one.

When they finally let her into your room, you were asleep. IV in your arm. Monitors beeping. Fragile in a way she’d never seen you.

She walked in slowly. Sat beside you. Her hand found yours.

And for the first time, Jenna Ortega was silent.