I could feel the physical exertion when my eyes fluttered open like an injured bird flapping its wings. I alarmingly tossed my head sideways when my eyes had met with an apple and a knife laying on the nightstand beside my bed. The bed wasn't mine, it belonged to a plain, whitewashed room which reeked of medicines. Transparent tubes dripping with liquid were attached to different parts of my unmoving body.

I raised my fingers higher, feebly tapping on what felt like dry skin. A familiar face hovered over me in alert concern. Sam's tired eyes were red-rimmed, but from what appeared to be lack of sleep. He squeezed my hand a bit too forcefully as if reassuring not me, but himself.

"What happened?" I questioned in a weak voice which sounded louder in the quietness of the room.

Suddenly, he pulled the monoblock chair closer to me and said gravely, "They're calling the police for investigation." He was about to repeat once more as if uncertain that I didn't articulate his words correctly. I nodded affirmatively in response, but he repeated anyway, "They're calling the police, Mariana."

"Isn't that good? I never had the courage to go to them before," I replied wearily and Sam passed me a  glass of water which I refused, liking the absence of sensation in my numb mouth. It seemed to make the uttered words emerge from somewhere else, somewhere foreign. I wanted those words to not belong to me. "Abel needs to be punished."

His hand squeezed mine again, this time harder, in unbridled frustration.

"I should tell you this before they come," he said almost to himself. "Mariana, things . . . Things didn't happen the way you think they did . . ." His eyes abashedly lowered to the floor and he let out a noisy breath. "You have been telling this story all night . . . A story which isn't true at all."

"What?" I decided that I needed to properly sit up to look directly into his eyes so he would talk faster and as I struggled, I bizarrely discovered no wound on my stomach. No hint that I was almost fatally stabbed. No hint of the intense pain that had shot from there and spread everywhere. "What? I don't understand." I frantically reached for my stomach and felt smooth, unhurt skin like dough. "Did he hurt me somewhere else?"

Sam let go of my hand, vigorously rubbed his face and sighed audibly. "Abel never hurt you for you to come here . . . " He was still obstinately staring at the white tiled floor. "Please be calm, okay? I wouldn't be telling you this, but I should because I want you to make sense in front of the police." He dramatically threw his head back, covering his face with his slender hands. "He was a great man, Mariana. I'm sure that he didn't mean to hurt you."

"Who? Abel? What are you talking about?"

"Jesus Christ! Your father, Mariana. Your father was a good man, the best," he blurted out, uncovering his face. Tears were surfacing and mingling with the redness in his eyes, exacerbating his agonizing countenance. "Fuck. I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

"What is happening here?" The feminine voice of a nurse intervened, voicing my own befuddled thoughts. She had one gloved hand on her hip as she looked disapprovingly at Sam. "I told you to not speak to her about it."

"Speak what?" I was conveniently ignored by both of them and I felt like an idiot floating in shallow waters, blissfully unaware of the darkness lurking few feet away from me. The nurse stoically checked my temperature and various other puzzling things while I insisted on her to search for a stab wound somewhere. She sighed exactly in the same tolerant way as Sam had done.

"Okay, you're doing perfectly well. Give it a few hours and you'll be moving around normally," she said, smiling forlornly at me.

Sam rigidly followed her outside without sparing me a glance and his words echoed in my ears . . . You have been telling a story all night . . . A story which isn't true at all . . .

After dwelling in torturous mystery for a while, an intelligent-looking man in a white coat entered solemnly with Sam and the nurse trailing after him. They dauntingly towered over me and the nurse placed her hand on my shoulder from which I flinched. I desperately implored Sam by my eyes, to tell me what the hell was going on. Somehow, I felt insolent to demand answers from the polite looking doctor and the nurse.

"Mariana, I'm sorry . . . But there is bad news," the doctor spoke in a low voice, gauging my reaction. But I gave him none. "Your father, Mr Alejandro Martin, died yesterday." I sucked in a breath, swallowing nervous, inappropriate giggles and he continued to say that my father had committed suicide.

The erratic giggles escaped my lips and the nurse's hand pressed my shoulder a bit more firmly, making the giggles vanish.

"Is this real, Sam?" I addressed my friend who remorsefully nodded, still unable to look at me. "But this is impossible . . . It's not-It can't be . . . How? When?"

The doctor further informed me about the dangerous substances found in my body and the after-effects being extreme disorientation and detachment from reality. The last fragments of my memory of dining with my father, the tomato pasta and the eerie, sinister silence all seemed suspicious now. The incidents following after the dinner, confronting Abel with Sam, all vaporized into lies and fabrication of my mind.

The doctor and the nurse went away, next came a police officer and a woman in a smart, beige suit. They subtly indicated a case of attempted homicide by my dead father, but never explicitly stated it as if protecting my already annihilated mind. They enthusiastically jotted down details of his mental health and the insuperable financial loss that drove him to do what he shouldn't have. I narrated everything in a clear voice which faltered when the woman in the smart suit encouragingly praised me for being brave.

Sam sat patiently beside me, nodding his head whenever I confirmed the desolate tale that they fed me with.

Once, they were satisfied with the conclusions drawn and made me sign papers, I was asked to rest peacefully. I shrieked with laughter then, surprising all of them. I had said, "Rest? Rest?" then laughed more at the hilarity of their expectations.

The next morning, I checked the local news on my phone to find a small, amusing article,

Father (41) high on debt kills self, drugs daughter.

* * *

A/N

Part two is over! Which part is most likely to be true, part 1 or part 2?

(Side note : In case you didn't pay close attention to the paragraphs and didn't understand the plot, Mariana's dad drugged her food then went on to commit suicide. Whatever happened after that dinner scene, NEVER happened. It was all a story created in her head due to effects of drugs and as a way to protect herself from a heartbreak that her father could actually do that. If you re-read the last few chapters, I have dropped many subtle hints.)

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