After three weeks of silence, Elisa was now bombarded with various notification sounds as she connected to the internet, with the majority being text messages and phone calls.
Elisa’s heart beat slowly, her eyelashes trembling as she tried to gather the courage to open the messages. After hesitating for a long time, she set down her phone, sighing at the overcast sky outside.
After a while, she managed to compose herself and opened the messages. There were over five hundred messages, some long, some short. They were from the company, from her mother Brittany, but most of all, they were from Louis. He asked her every day where she was.
Her throat tightened, her breath becoming unclear and her eyes teary. Thousands of words, all filled with longing. Louis was waiting for her. He hadn’t signed the divorce agreement; he was waiting for her to come back.
He had fallen ill. The usually healthy Louis was hospitalized for acute gastroenteritis. Disregarding medical advice, he insisted on leaving the hospital to find her, even coughing up blood.
Elisa couldn’t hold back her tears as she read halfway through the messages. Her eyes were red and moist, her chest heavy, feeling as if her heart were being dragged down by a stone.
Elisa held onto her phone tightly. During the more than ten days she had been away from Louis, she had remained calm, suppressing her emotions. But now, seeing Louis’s illness, she couldn’t bear the pain welling up inside her, and she cried with the phone against her chest.
Bankshire, Vaquita Bay.
Louis was confined to the bedroom, his limbs restrained to the bed, an IV line attached to his arm. He struggled constantly on the bed, his skin rubbed raw, his feet sore from the struggle. He tried to sit up, but each time, he was pulled back by the restraints.
His struggles only resulted in him being injected with a sedative, leaving him powerless, tears rolling down his empty eyes.
“Mom, let me out, I need to find her…” His voice choked, his eyes, already red, now filled with weepy bloodshot lines.
“You can’t even take care of your own body. How can you find her? Even if you find her, what then? She left on her own accord, and she will only return of her own will.” Mrs. White looked at him with compassion.
“Lou, listen to mom. Your priority now is to regain your health. Believe me, Elisa will come back. She will come back safely. Hamish won’t harm her…”
“Believe?” Louis roared, “How can I believe Hamish?”
Just a moment ago, Louis was shouting angrily, but the next second, his tone softened as if it had flowed out of his mouth.
“Mom, I have to find her. What if she’s out there in the cold? What if Hamish mistreats her? She’s so afraid of Hamish, how will she survive? She’s so afraid of suffering. If tears get in her mouth, if no one gives her a tissue, if no one gives her candy, what will she do?”
“We’re already married, just the wedding ceremony is left. Why did she leave?”
“Mom, I want to find her, I’m begging you.”
This was the first time Louis had asked someone for something. Strapped to the bed and injected with a sedative, he was weak, and even speaking was difficult for him.
Mrs. White looked at him, wiping the tears from her face, no matter how much she said, Louis didn’t believe her, or rather, he didn’t believe that Hamish would really bring Elisa back.
“How can you go find her in this condition? How many times have you passed out, how much blood have you coughed up, how many times have the doctors advised you? Don’t you understand? Your body is in serious danger. Do you want to die?”
“Without her, my life is not worth living.”
For Louis, Elisa was like a cup of wine, once intoxicated, suffering from love was the most difficult thing in the world.
“Life is not worth living.” These four words, spoken in such a battered state, made it difficult for Mrs. White to breathe. She looked at Louis, opened her mouth, but couldn’t utter a single word.
“Elisa left for your safety, as well as for the White family. Can you believe me? Our family will not abandon her. Even if you don’t go to find her, I will keep looking for her. As long as you take good care of yourself these days, on the 24th, I will definitely let you go to find her, and you will definitely see her.”
With ten days left until December 24th, it seemed short, but for Louis, it felt like an eternity.
From the text messages, Elisa learned about Louis’s hospitalization and that the White Group had taken a positive turn, with stock prices rising, and everything was moving in a good direction.
During her time with Hamish, Elisa had considered killing him. Every time she took out a knife, she hesitated. She had once stabbed Hamish’s palm and had even held an IV needle to his neck. She truly hated him and wasn’t afraid to use the knife. But she also knew that Hamish was terminally ill, with little time left. If she killed him out of spite in a moment of anger, she might end up in prison for a long time, which wasn’t worth it.
Having experienced cancer, Elisa knew that when a person is close to death and filled with hatred, they are capable of doing anything.