Chapter 15
1001words
Outside the emergency room, the red words "Operation in Progress" stayed lit for exactly eight hours.
During these eight hours, I sat on the corridor bench like a soulless sculpture, completely motionless.
Time lost all meaning to me; every minute, every second felt like being scorched in boiling oil.
After Vincent Wells had his wounds treated, he came over too. He sat beside me, remained silent for a long while, and finally spoke with an extremely complicated tone: "Jessica Johnson, I'm sorry."
I shook my head without looking at him.
"In the fire scene," he continued on his own, with a hint of lingering fear and sighing in his voice, "we were all looking for you. At a corner, a ceiling beam suddenly fell down. I had my back turned and didn't notice it at all. It was him... he lunged forward and pushed me away."
"I always thought he was a selfish bastard who only loved himself. At that moment, I realized I was wrong." Vincent Wells gave a bitter smile. "In such a life-or-death situation, a person's instincts don't lie. He wasn't thinking about saving himself, nor was he simply saving me, his rival in love. He just wanted everyone who might find you to stay alive."
"So, Jessica," he stood up and looked at me deeply, "I lost. And I accept my defeat completely."
Later, Mrs. Foster also arrived.
This wealthy lady, who had once been so critical of me and thought I wasn't good enough for her son, now appeared incredibly haggard and aged.
When she saw me, there was no blame, no complaint, just reddened eyes as she sat down beside me. In an almost weary voice, haltingly, she told me about Francis Foster's life over the past two years.
She told me how he had endured countless sleepless nights in the business war against the Stewart Family; she told me how, like a madman, he had hired numerous private investigators to search for traces of me all over the world; she told me how, on every drunken night, he would call out my name again and again to the empty apartment.
"That child has always been stubborn, always carrying everything on his shoulders," Mrs. Foster wiped her tears with a handkerchief. "When he makes mistakes, he doesn't know how to apologize, he only knows how to make amends in his own way. This time... he truly knows he was wrong."
I listened quietly, saying nothing. But tears had already silently covered my face.
When the operating room lights finally went out and the doctor came out to tell us that Francis Foster was out of danger, my nerves, which had been tense for eight hours, finally relaxed.
I felt as if all strength had been drained from my body as I collapsed against the wall.
He survived.
Francis Foster spent three days in intensive care before being transferred to a regular ward.
When he woke up and saw me standing by his bedside, those eyes that were always as deep as the sea no longer held their usual sharpness and obsessiveness, but only a vulnerability that comes from surviving a catastrophe, and a careful, fearful panic that I might disappear the next moment.
He didn't mention "I love you" again, nor did he ask "will you come back?"
He just looked at me and said hoarsely: "I'm glad you're okay."
During his hospitalization, I silently stayed to take care of him. We spoke little, but a new, calm atmosphere began to develop quietly between us.
I wiped his body, fed him mouthful by mouthful, and massaged him to prevent muscle atrophy.
He was no longer that high and mighty controller, and I was no longer that dependent dodder who had to look up to him.
Between us, it was as if our positions had been switched, yet in a strange balance, we achieved an unprecedented equality.
Vincent Wells came to visit him once. There was no tension between the two men, just a calm conversation.
Before leaving, Vincent smiled at me and said he had accepted the company's expatriate arrangement in Singapore and would be leaving next week.
He gave his blessing to me, and to him as well.
On the day Francis Foster was discharged from the hospital, Shanghai's weather was exceptionally nice.
His leg, having been crushed by a beam, left him with sequelae, requiring him to use a cane and undergo lengthy rehabilitation.
The once vigorous king of the business world now needed external support just to walk.
But his eyes were calmer and gentler than they had ever been before.
He no longer forced his way into my life. Every day, when I got off work, he would quietly park his black Bentley across the street from the company.
He didn't disturb, didn't come close, just silently waited, watching me walk out of the company building, watching me safely get into a taxi, and only then would he start his car and quietly leave.
Today, the company's new intern girl finally couldn't contain her curiosity and sidled up to me to gossip.
"Jessica, Jessica, who exactly is that super handsome guy who drives a Bentley and waits for you downstairs every day? Is he your boyfriend?"
I looked up and gazed downstairs through the office's huge floor-to-ceiling windows.
I could clearly see Francis Foster leaning quietly against his car, supporting himself with a cane.
The glow of the sunset stretched his shadow long, edging it with a warm golden rim. He seemed to sense my gaze, lifting his head to look in my direction, his eyes carrying a subtle, nervous anticipation.
I withdrew my gaze and turned to the little girl, displaying the most relaxed and relieved smile I had shown in two years.
I said softly: "Not a boyfriend."
"He's a... old friend who is trying hard to learn how to love."
