“Aoife, please, don’t leave me. I have nothing left, only you…”
He had no family, no friends, no grandfather. He was not Snearl Burns, he was just Aoife’s.
“Aoife, I was wrong, don’t die, please don’t die…”
He dared not move Aoife, afraid that moving her body would cause more blood to flow out. Finn’s hand trembled as he reached into his pocket, his phone slipping out and falling to the ground. He picked it up and dialed the emergency number, trying to calm himself down, but no matter how calm he tried to be, his voice still trembled, his mind in chaos.
“Hurry, come quickly, come quickly… Aoife is running out of time, please come and save her…” This was the first time in many years that Finn had begged someone.
His voice was trembling, tears rolling down his face, blurring his vision.
The dim streetlights shone down, revealing Aoife’s pale face. It was hard to tell where she was injured, yet it seemed like her whole body was covered in wounds, blood continuously flowing from her dismembered body, the air thick with the smell of blood.
In a flash, Finn seemed to be back in that bathroom over twenty years ago, his mother lying in the bathtub, blood turning the water red, despair hanging like dark clouds overhead, ready to collapse at any moment.
“Aoife, what do you want me to do? What do I have to do for you to survive?”
Aoife spat out a mouthful of blood, already hallucinating, able to hear Finn’s voice but unable to see him, at this moment she was at the end of her strength, holding onto her last breath, intermittently saying, “Finn… letting you kill me, it’s my revenge on you… I punish you to live a long life…”
She wanted Finn to live well, to live longer than anyone else.
At this moment, she no longer hated Finn. At the moment of death, everything would vanish, whether it was hatred or resentment.
Aoife had nothing to hold onto in this world, no parents, no brothers. Her father was a cold bystander, her mother treated her as a money-making tool, her brother humiliated her, her lover died, her child was gone.
As for Finn, she didn’t hate him anymore, her hatred seemed insignificant in the face of death.
Rather than hating him, she resented this unfair world, why did fate place her here, why did she exist without any value, utterly worthless.
Tears of blood rolled down her cheeks: if time could turn back, I wish I had never existed, I hope there is no Aoife in the world, I hope someone else can live in place of someone named Aoife.
And in this lifetime, her life was too short, summed up by a single person, that person being – Finn.
It started with him, it ended with him.
…
When Aoife was taken to the ICU, Finn leaned against the wall outside the operating room, as the red light “surgery in progress” lit up across from him, he slid down uncontrollably.
The high and mighty Finn was now kneeling on the ground, covered in blood, both Aoife’s and his own.
There was a deep bite mark on the back of his hand, self-inflicted, biting off a chunk of flesh, the wound still bleeding.
He knelt on the ground, emanating a cold chill, with his head lowered, staring at the ground, his body motionless, frozen stiff. The black shirt he was wearing had turned dark red after being stained with blood, drying stiff as time passed, a barrier on his chest.
Until now, Finn felt like he was in an unreal nightmare, every image in his mind was of Aoife falling into a pool of blood, uttering her last words to him.
-“Finn… letting you kill me, it’s my revenge on you… I punish you to live a long life…”
Suddenly, Finn grabbed his hair tightly, trying to dispel this nightmare with sharp pain.
He knelt on the ground, clinging tightly to his fist, punching the ground with each blow, punishing himself in this self-destructive way, until a security guard came over to stop him.
“Sir, please don’t do this, this is a hospital… I know you’re worried about what’s happening inside, but being like this won’t help, it will only hurt yourself, calm down.”
“I can’t calm down…” he couldn’t forget Aoife rushing towards the car, couldn’t forget the moment she was hit, and couldn’t forget the relieved smile she gave in the end.
How did it come to this?
Why did it come to this?
Why wasn’t he given a chance to make amends? Why punish him in such a cruel manner?
The operating room door was pushed open, Finn looked up suddenly, his pupils constricting. He watched as a male doctor came out, holding a form and a pen, rushing over to Finn.
“Mr. Snearl, the patient’s condition is critical, the chances of surgery success are slim, please prepare yourself mentally. This is a critical condition form, please sign it.”
His already anxious heart plummeted at that moment, as if a floating board adrift in the waves encountered a giant wave and was instantly shattered.
Finn looked at the critical condition form handed to him, staring at the name “Aoife” on it, how did it end up here?
His heart felt like it was plunged into ice, cold, piercing to the bone, spreading through his body with sharp pains, his scalp tingling, tears hanging on his eyelashes, falling as he took a trembling breath, wetting the form.
His breathing heavy, his body on the ground, he picked up the pen and shakily wrote down the three letters “Finn.”
His name, something he wrote every day, on various documents, signing papers, multi-billion projects, he never blinked an eye signing off. But never… never had he signed his name like he did today, each stroke feeling like he was giving away half his life.
“Save her… please… save her.”
The doctor took the form after Finn signed it.
Finn remained on the ground, but he no longer resorted to pounding his fist on the ground to self-harm like before. He sat quietly like an ice sculpture, his eyes bloodshot.
Everything seemed insignificant in the face of death, Finn looked up at the window at the end of the hallway, if Aoife didn’t make it, then he would jump from there.
The surgery lasted eight hours, and Finn knelt on the ground for those eight hours, his knees worn out, the operating room door opening twenty times that night, each time feeling like a heavy blow to Finn’s heart.
No one had seen this cowardly side of Finn before, the collective impression of him was one of cruelty, malice, and arrogance. They had never seen Finn kneel on the ground like this, kneeling all night, unresponsive to anyone’s pleas.
No one knew how terrified Finn was at that moment, he was afraid that what would be wheeled out of the operating room would be a corpse.
At the thought, Finn’s deep brown eyes resembled those of an elderly person nearing their end, full of desolation and devoid of vitality.