Reborn to Destroy the Cheaters!

On the day of the mid-autumn festival, I handed in my resignation at St. Mary's Medical Center, a place filled with drama. Later that day, as I returned to Willow Creek for a much-needed break, my phone exploded with calls.

My boyfriend's childhood friend, Lily Davis, was bombarding me with messages, demanding to know why I had stopped working on my medical paper.

Feeling the warm countryside breeze, I shut off my phone, finally allowing myself to relax. But it didn't take long before the memories came flooding back.

In my past life, the research paper I busted my tail on got flagged for plagiarism. People called me shameless, said I had no morals, and didn't deserve to be a doctor.

On top of that, the online hate was vicious. Some extremists even crossed the line, waiting outside my house and running down my elderly parents, killing them on the spot.

The aftermath was unbearable.

I completely lost touch with reality, and eventually, my boyfriend, Kevin Smith, and Lily had me committed to a mental hospital.

One night, I ended it all with a red rope.

But when I opened my eyes, I was back, one month before the paper was set to be published.

——

That's when it hit me. I had been given a second chance.

"Dr. Carter, you're incredible! Once this paper gets published, it'll be a game-changer for our hospital in the world of surgery!"

"I never imagined you could be both stunning and a top-notch surgeon in orthopedics! You're my inspiration!"

My team members looked at me like I was a superstar. Even the head of the surgery department and my mentor, Dr. Andrew Stevens, came over to cheer me on.

"Well done! Your research topic is brilliant. You're an inspiration to all of us. Once you finish, this is going to shake the medical world!"

Tears filled my eyes as I looked at the familiar faces. The guilt was suffocating. These people had been caught in the fallout of the plagiarism scandal in my past life. Some were demoted, others lost their jobs, and a few were blacklisted from the medical field for good.

The weight of that guilt was crushing, but fear gripped me even harder.

I glanced at the time on my phone.

There was less than a month left before my medical research paper was set to be published.

I'll never forget that day.

Vicious rumors and hate surrounded it. The hospital's website crashed because of the number of people attacking it, and the phone lines were flooded with complaints.

"What kind of garbage hospital lets someone like Dr. Rachel Carter, a plagiarizing liar, stay?"

"If Dr. Carter's still working as a doctor, I'm going to raise hell at that hospital!"

"Why hasn't she dropped dead yet? How is someone like her even allowed to be a doctor? She treats people's lives like a joke!"

Even the doctors and nurses at St. Mary's glared at me like I was the lowest of the low.

"I heard she's the one who plagiarized Dr. Davis' work. Absolutely disgusting!"

"That bitch has the nerve to claim she's an expert in surgery and orthopedics? Please! She probably slept her way to the top."

"Word is, she's the hospital director's sugar baby. Just another gold digger."

The insults were relentless and cruel. I woke up drenched in cold sweat, a chill running down my spine.

It all started because of Lily, who reported me for plagiarism. Lily came from a prestigious medical family and had just transferred to our hospital. Her parents were well-known professors in the field. And, of course, she was Kevin's childhood friend.

She was pretty and had flawless skin. When she showed up, every male doctor started flocking to her like she was some goddess. Kevin was no different. He bought her breakfast one day and picked her up from work the next.

One time, after a night shift, I had just finished surgery and was exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open in the car. But because of her, Kevin kicked me out and made me walk home in the dark without a second thought for my safety.

Whenever we fought about her, Kevin would accuse me of being unreasonable and jealous of Lily. One day, I overheard him joking with his colleagues about me, saying I was ugly and always causing drama, and he couldn't wait to dump me like trash.

Every time I tried to break up with him, he would return the next day with sweet words and apologies, but not anymore. I wasn't going to be Kevin's fall guy again.

With trembling hands, I opened Lily's social media.

She had just posted something new:

'After a month of hard work, I'm finally almost done with my research paper!'

She included screenshots of the abstract and structure. Although the details were limited, what I saw made my blood run cold.

Wasn't that precisely what I had drafted for my medical research paper? Could the topic similarity be a coincidence? But the identical structure and writing style? No way.

Even the section numbers, word count, specific points, and citations were quite alike.

How could two people think so alike?

I quickly opened my draft for comparison. It wasn't just similar. It was a carbon copy. I wrote that paper on my own. No one could've known my ideas.

Then, I saw the timestamp on her post. It was an hour before I finished my draft, and that's when doubt and paranoia consumed me.

All the accusations and attacks from my previous life came flooding back.

'She looks put-together, but who knew she became famous by plagiarizing. I bet all her academic papers were stolen!'

'A doctor like her is a disgrace to the profession. She's a danger to patients!'

'Plagiarists should rot in hell! I hope she gets into a car crash and takes her whole family down with her.'

Thinking about it made me shake and nearly lose my footing. Staring at the familiar words on the screen, I hesitated for a long time before biting the bullet and deleting my entire draft. If they had proven that the research paper was plagiarized, surely the orthopedic paper wouldn't have been the same, right?

With all my experience in orthopedics, I could pull a few all-nighters and finish it in a month!