Chapter Text
He was invincible.
At least, that was what the world believed—what he believed. Every lap he took felt like art: the way he braked, the way he accelerated—almost perfect. Four championships glimmered in his past. He dominated Formula One so effortlessly it was as if the sport itself bent around him. Every rookie wanted to be him; every driver measured themselves against him.
And then it all ended in a blink.
A literal blink.
He didn’t know how. Didn’t know why. Everything had felt right—heart pounding, adrenaline rushing, lungs burning from the race. That was normal. That was home. But he blinked, and suddenly the world went black.
Just black.
No noise. No warning. No sensation of spinning or crashing. Just darkness swallowing everything he was.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn’t on the track. Not in the car. Not anywhere he recognized. He was lying on a bed, stiff and aching. The air was cold. The overhead lights cut into his eyes. He blinked again, slower, and then he heard them—machines. Beeping steadily, relentlessly.
The realization hit him hard.
Hospital.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
Faces swam into view—his father, his siblings—hovering above him with the kind of fear that didn’t need words. Nurses whispered. Doctors moved quickly. And before he could speak, before he could even breathe properly, his eyelids sank, and he fell asleep again.
While he slept, the doctors ran tests—so many tests. And when they found the truth, it shattered everything. He had inherited his late mother’s heart disease: arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. The crash, the one that should have killed him, had been caused by a sudden ventricular arrhythmia.
And worse—the disease had been silently developing inside him for years without a single symptom. The crash had triggered it, and now it could progress rapidly. A cruel, unseen enemy finally showing its face.
When he woke again, the room was quiet. Only one person beside him—Victoria.
Her eyes were swollen from crying, her posture rigid as though she were holding herself together by a thread.
“Maxie… how have you been?” she asked softly.
His gaze stayed on the wall. Blank. Unmoving. “How long has it been?”
Victoria hesitated. A long silence stretched between them. “…It has been four days since the crash happened. Thank God you weren’t in a coma.”
“Why?” His voice sounded distant, empty, like he wasn’t speaking from his body at all.
“Max…” She inhaled shakily, looked down at her hands, then back at him.
“I deserve to know,” he said, sharper this time, though even that sharpness felt tired and fragile. “Tell me, Vic. Please”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “You have inherited Mom’s heart disease,” she whispered.
“And I’m afraid you cannot race anymore.”
The world stopped.
The room froze.
His breath faltered.
“What?” he finally managed, barely audible.
“You heard me right, Max,” Victoria murmured.
Four days since the crash.
Three days in the ICU, unconscious, barely clinging on.
He had survived a brutal 67-G-force impact—one of the most terrifying crashes in Formula One. Survived what few ever could.
He should feel relieved.
He should feel grateful.
He should feel lucky.
But he didn’t feel anything except a hollow, suffocating grief that crushed his chest harder than any seatbelt ever had. His heart hurt—not from injury, not from the disease, but from the realization of what he had just lost. The life he had lived for. The identity he had built. The future he had already seen for himself.
The machines kept beeping, steady and cold, ignoring his agony. Victoria wiped at her eyes, but he couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t look at anything. The room felt too bright, too silent, too merciless.
He had survived.
He was alive.
But deep inside, beneath the shock and the pain and the unbearable truth, one thought echoed like a wound he couldn’t close—
He wished he hadn’t survived at all.