“Ah-” Elisa’s voice was so hoarse that it was almost inaudible. She opened her mouth, intermittently emitting terrifying sounds from her throat, piercing to the point of being unbearable.
As Elisa looked at Hamish’s face, she felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing backward. She wanted to struggle, to resist, to escape, but her body was too weak to move at all.
For Hamish, the 90 days Elisa spent in a coma felt unbearably long, but for Elisa, those terrifying experiences felt as though they had just happened yesterday.
Her eyes widened, tears streaming down her face. Despite the glaring light in the ward, she didn’t even blink. Her eyes were red from crying.
“Save… save me, don’t…” Elisa’s feeble cries echoed through the empty ward. Her strength gradually returned, and she began to pound the edge of the bed with all her might.
Elisa’s voice sent chills down Hamish’s spine, feeling no warmth, only deepening pain in his heart. He quickly pressed the call button on the wall, then reached out to firmly hold Elisa’s upper body, restraining her flailing arms.
“Elisa, you’re okay, it’s all over, don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid…” Hamish’s eyes stung with pain, and his breath became unstable.
Seeing the man holding her, Elisa became even more frightened. Her mind was a blur, memories flooding in like a series of photos stuffed into her mind.
“I don’t want this, Hamish, I was wrong, I shouldn’t have lied to you… I don’t want to trade for Lila. Just kill me, don’t send me away, I was wrong…”
The usually stubborn Elisa now seemed like a child who had done wrong, afraid of being abandoned for her mistakes.
She kept apologizing, knowing only how to express her regret without truly understanding where she had gone wrong.
Was it really her fault? Had she done something wrong? If not, why hadn’t Hamish answered her calls to rescue her?
Bound to the bed, enduring an hour of torture- from branding to whipping, a sharp tool piercing her collarbone, a thin chain fastened around her neck like a dog, and her hands, filled with steel needles, her nails splitting, flesh and blood flying, so much blood, so much pain…
In her utmost despair, Elisa teetered on the brink of collapse.
Listening to her fragmented voice, Hamish was utterly dumbfounded. Holding down the mentally disturbed Elisa, his eyes grew increasingly blurry.
He had imagined Elisa waking up, but he hadn’t expected her to apologize to him.
“Elisa, I won’t send you away. Don’t apologize to me. You’ve done nothing wrong, nothing wrong…” Hamish repeated this twice, his voice growing heavier each time, his heart nearly bleeding.
Hamish held Elisa’s upper body, and she felt as if it might break. She felt dizzy and struggled to speak, but her throat produced no sound.
Her wounds had healed, but marks still adorned her body and hands. Her fingernails, as the doctor had said, would never grow back. Her hand, now devoid of nails, looked grotesque.
Looking at the man pressing down on her, Elisa wanted to scratch him, but she found that she had no strength in her fingers.
Under this suppression, Elisa’s strength was no match for Hamish’s. Coupled with her illness and ninety days of sleep, she grew weary after a brief struggle.
A feeling of suffocation, as if a stone were pressing on her chest, overcame her once more. Perhaps it was the cancer cells in her stomach acting up. Elisa felt her vision darken, and with a “blegh,” she vomited.
She only brought up water, but the taste of blood filled her mouth. Her once rosy lips now resembled those painted with lipstick.
Pale-faced, with a hint of bruising between her eyebrows, Elisa had been in a coma for months. Hamish had sought out stomach cancer specialists from various hospitals, even bringing in a team from abroad to treat her. Despite being in a coma, her condition had been difficult to discern, but fortunately, the cancer cells had been suppressed.
Yet now, upon awakening, Elisa had vomited blood, leaving her weak.
“Mr. Burns, release her quickly. Holding her like this will only worsen her condition!” In reality, it was more than just a worsening condition. Elisa was now hanging by a thread, and it seemed that the thread was on the verge of snapping.
As the doctor finished speaking, Hamish felt the person in his arms go still. He immediately looked down, his heart tightening.
Elisa had closed her eyes.
“Quick, take her to the emergency room!”
The air was filledwith a suffocating odor. Watching Elisa being rushed back into the emergency room, Hamish felt as though all his strength had been drained from his body, as if half of his soul had been ripped away.
For over twenty years, Hamish had faced more than what he felt his age warranted. In the face of sudden situations, even if he couldn’t come up with a foolproof plan in time, he would never lose his composure.
Over the years, solving problems had become a habit for him.
At times he had been blindly self-confident, excessively arrogant, but his position and status had given him the confidence. He never believed in karma, so he had behaved recklessly.
Now, he realized that what goes around comes around, that fate is cyclical, and betraying someone truly incurs retribution. This was the price he deserved.