"My head, it hurts so much" Joy thought to herself.
Her eyes were closed, before she could open them, she heard someone crying close to her.
"Please wake up Miss Daisy, I promise not to make you shout anymore. My poor miss has been through a lot I her life." the person wailed.
"What is she going through?" someone else asked.
"My miss husband hasn't come to see her even though she has been in a coma for two months. Even if he is mad at her, he should have come to see her" the person who Joy felt was a young girl kept wailing.
Joy wondered what kind of situation this was. Was this her afterlife?
She was supposed to be dead. She wasn't a young miss and no one missed her enough to cry this way.
She was the daughter of a physician, her whole family had been set up and betrayed.
She had learnt dutifully from her father and inherited his skills. But she had fallen in love with a man and abandoned her whole family to be with him.
He was the crown prince who would be the next king, his name was Jonathan.
The first time she had seen him, she had fallen in love with him at first sight but he had never loved her.
After the death of the old king, Jonathan had taken over the throne. He never came to see her. She thought he was busy and would come to her later.
But after the first night of their wedding, he had never come to their room.
She shuddered as she remembered their first night, he had been rough and uncaring of her feelings.
She had wanted to talk to him that night about their future but he hadn't listened. Instead, he pounced on her like an animal in heat.
Joy had thought this was normal, as she was a virgin, unaware of what happened between a man and a woman. Her mother had died while she was still a child and her brothers would have rather died than tell her anything.
After a few weeks of marriage, where she hadn't seen him at all, he went to war. She had to stay alone.
She was a new bride without a husband, she was lonely in the palace, worse she had to endure mocking remarks from those in the palace.
She hardened her heart, she was the queen of Reval kingdom, she couldn't be weak. Her husband was the king, it would be selfish to keep him to herself.
She loved him a lot, she even allowed herself to be humiliated several times by her mother in law who hated her because she wasn't from royalty.
When Jonathan returned from the war, he brought back another woman, Annie, who was a princess.
When she tearfully confronted him, he had told her it was only to strengthen his position and the kingdom.
Her mother in law treated the princess well as she was royalty.
Joy who was queen because the old king loved her and had personally engaged her to his son suffered insults and taunts from the old queen.
Jonathan wasn't even in the palace, he was busy reinforcing his power as a lot of rebellion groups were against him.
A lot of powerful people also had their eyes on his throne.
Joy couldn't trouble him with her complaints about what was happening to her in the palace.
She has no choice but to keep it to herself because she loved Jonathan so much.
She kept hoping and waiting for years to see the love in his eyes but all she saw was indifference.
One night she was taking a stroll when she felt herself being pushed down the cliff where the palace was built into the sea.
She had tried to swim but she had been powerless against the pressure of the waves.
She couldn't breathe and then everything became dark.
Her life flashed before her eyes, all the humiliation and pain she had gone through because of Jonathan.
She kept wondering what she had done to deserve all she had gone through. All she wanted was his love.
Maybe her life would have been different if she hadn't fallen in love with him.
Joy was dying....
That was the last thing she remembered from her past life. But she didn't even know who pushed her.
Who hated her that much that they wanted her dead.
As she regained consciousness and remembered all this, she felt pity for herself for loving a man that much even to forget her dignity, her family and at the end, all she got was a painful death.
She never even knew who hated her that much to want her dead.
When Joy opened her eyes and saw an unfamiliar surrounding, she was confused.
It was her afterlife, she should be in heaven or hell but instead she was in a cold white room.
She attempted to move her head and saw a girl sitting beside her who had fallen asleep while crying.
She tried to sit up but felt a piercing pain in her hands which were tied with a funny looking wire.
"Ah" she was in pain when the needle pierced her as she tried to get up.
Nina who was crying earlier and had fallen asleep woke up from her sleep when she saw that Joy who had been in a coma for two months had woken up.
"Miss Joy, you finally woke up" she said while crying.
She looked at Joy and said, "Miss, I am so glad that you woke up, you scared all of us. How can you try to take your life? Why did you jump in a pool when you don't know how to swim?" she said while crying.
Joy who was trying to understand the situation looked at her confused.
"When did I try to take my life and what is a pool? Is it another name for the sea?" she tried to understand what the girl was saying.