The last thing Dr. Elena Santos remembered was the blinding glare of the surgical lamp and the relentless beeping of the monitor in Operating Room 4. After a thirty-six-hour shift, her only wish was the cold embrace of her bed.
But what greeted her wasn't the scent of her lavender humidifier. Instead, it was the pungent odor of alcohol, old wood, and horses.
"¡Dios mío! ¡Se ha despertado! ¡Llamad al médico ahora mismo!"
Elena bolted upright. Or more accurately, she tried to. Every fiber of her muscle felt as if boiling acid had been poured over it. But it wasn't the pain that stole her breath, it was the voice she heard.
Spanish.
As a pure Filipina raised in Quezon City, the only Spanish she knew were numbers and a few curse words. But at that moment, every word coming out of the mouth of the woman wearing an old-fashioned black veil was as clear to her ears as Tagalog.
"¿Dónde... dónde estoy?"
Elena froze. The voice that emerged from her throat wasn't the high-pitched, weary voice of a female surgeon. It was deep, baritone, and carried a trace of authority—a man's voice.
She hurriedly looked at her hands. The fingers skilled at wielding a scalpel were gone. In their place, she saw broad palms, fair-skinned, with a few scratches that seemed to have come from a fall.
"¡Príncipe Julian! Por favor, no intente moverse," the woman pleaded again while weeping. "Your fall from the horse was no joke. We thought heaven had finally taken you."
Príncipe Julian? Horse?
Despite her weakness, Elena forced herself to stand and approach a large mirror with a gold frame in the corner of the room. Every step felt like a journey into another dimension. When she faced the mirror, she nearly lost consciousness again.
The reflection staring back at her was a Spanish young man no older than twenty-five. He had a sharp nose, deep-set green eyes, and an aristocratic bearing that only those with blue blood possess.
"This can't be right," she whispered to herself, but what came out of her mouth was: "Esto no puede ser."
She didn't just understand the language, her brain was automatically thinking in Spanish. She looked at the calendar resting on the mahogany table.
October 12, 1885.
She was in the body of Julian Alfonso de Alcazar, a close relative of the King, in an era where the Philippines was far from being free, and medicine was still in a primitive stage.
Elena—or Julian —clutched her forehead. As a surgeon, she knew this was impossible. But as she felt the heartbeat in a chest that wasn't hers, only one thing was clear: The Dr. Elena Santos of 2026 had passed away from exhaustion, and the new life of Mateo de Borbón was just beginning in the middle of an empire about to crumble.
Elena's entire body went stiff as she stared at the reflection in the mirror. Hands that were once used to latex gloves and sterile environments were now rough, large, and bore traces of aristocracy. She touched her neck, feeling the Adam's apple move with every swallow.
A sharp throb exploded in her temples. Along with it came a flood of foreign memories that weren't hers: banquets in Madrid, the smell of gunpowder, and the final memory of a fast black horse suddenly rearing in the middle of the road.
"¡Señorito Julian! ¡Por favor, siéntese! ¡Está pálido como un muerto!"
The old servant's voice was like thunder echoing inside her skull. Elena tried to respond, but the only thing that came out of her mouth was a raspy groan. The world began to tilt. The luxurious furnishings in the room—the armoire made of narra, the chandeliers that looked like they were weeping fire, and the faces of the worried servants—began to blur and spin.
"This isn't real... This is just a dream... I'm just overworked..." her mind whispered in Tagalog, but every word she heard around her continued to batter her ears in Spanish.
"¡Rápido! ¡Traed las sales! ¡Se va a desmayar!"
The last thing Elena saw before her eyes rolled back was the ceiling carved with angels, seemingly laughing at her fate. The cries of "¡Socorro!" and "¡Llamad al médico!" became a faint hum until everything was swallowed by total darkness.
In her final moment of consciousness, a bitter thought registered: as a doctor, she knew her syncope or fainting was caused by extreme shock... but no medical textbook could explain how a female surgeon from the future became a Spanish man.