I Was the Unwanted Fifth in Their Life and Death Pact Chapter 01

The five of us had promised to be family for life, listing one another as emergency contacts.

We’d made a rule: the second the emergency alert went off, no matter how busy the other four were, they had to drop everything and get there immediately.

The first time, my best friend Lily accidentally triggered the alert. My childhood friend Cole raced over that night, running red lights.

He gasped for breath and said, “Better a wasted trip than losing you.”

The second time, Lily twisted her ankle on an evening jog and hit the emergency button.

My older brother Ryan and my fiancé Evan Brooks walked away from a multi-billion-dollar contract to stay by her side.

But two nights ago, I was in a horrific car crash, trapped inside a crumpled car, bleeding out.

I used every last bit of strength to press the emergency button—only for every call to be rejected.

I spent two days in the ICU before I woke up, with no one beside me.

The nurse looked at me with pity. “Your family said we were harassing calls and told us not to keep calling.”

I froze for a second, then opened my social media.

There they were, the three of them huddled around Lily, holding a limited-edition cake.

The caption read: [Even if the whole world loses power, my people will light candles for my twentieth birthday.]

I called my own brother Ryan. He snapped at me, annoyed, telling me to stop using the emergency alert to throw petty jealousy fits.

My fiancé Evan was even colder, demanding I give him a heads-up before hitting the emergency button next time.

Through the phone, I heard the room erupt in laughter, and Cole’s voice, warm and easy, cutting Lily a slice of cake.

Listening to the steady drip of the IV line, I stared at my right leg encased in plaster. Calmly, I cleared every single emergency contact from my list.

If there was no room for me in their life-or-death emergency circle, I owed it to myself to step away.

……

The busy tone buzzing from the receiver choked me more than every injury on my body.

That limited-edition crown on Lily’s head—I had someone overseas get it a month early.

The rooftop restaurant for their party? I checked three spots and weighed every detail to book it.

I swallowed hard against the tightness in my throat. It all felt absurd.

Lily was my best friend, Evan’s adopted little sister—the sweetheart of our little group.

I’d always told myself they were just looking out for her since she’d lost both parents.

But I understood now: in their eyes, I was the one who didn’t belong.

I picked up my cracked phone and stared for a long time at the app called Lifeline.

Evan had pulled an all-nighter to build it for the five of us the year we graduated college.

He’d sworn to me that the second I hit that emergency button, no matter what happened, they would rush to my side.

Two nights ago, the driver who hit me fled the scene.

I lay trapped in the wreckage for nearly an hour in the cold rain, bleeding heavily.

I pressed the emergency button four times with whatever strength I had left.

Every notification was the same, blunt and final: Call Rejected.

As they cut cake, did none of them spare a single thought that I might be fighting for my life?

I didn’t confront them in our group chat.

A sharp, searing pain flared from my wounds.

The ward door swung open, and my attending doctor walked in, flipping open the chart clipped to the foot of the bed.

“Do you have any family we can reach?”

“We can’t put off your second surgery. We need to adjust the steel plate in your tibia. We’re trying to confirm if there’s an emergency contact who can make medical decisions for you if you’re temporarily unable to.”

“I have no family. No emergency contacts.” My voice stayed steady.

He glanced up, a flicker of sympathy crossing his face.

“You’ve been out of the ICU two days. You nearly died. No one’s come to visit you at all?”

I didn’t answer.

He sighed and held out the consent form. “You’re mentally competent, so you can sign it yourself.”

I took the pen. My hand still shook, but I wrote my name slowly and clearly.

The doctor took the form and headed for the door, then paused in the doorway.

“If your phone’s broken, the nurses’ station has a phone. Don’t try to handle this all alone.”

“Thank you. I won’t need it.”

A stranger’s kindness felt a hundred times warmer than anything from my so-called family and the man I was supposed to marry.

Once he left, I dialed Mr. Laurent in the company’s global HR department.

“Mr. Laurent, is the Pallavia overseas posting still open for applications?”