Her Disabled Heir

Chapter 6: The Secret

Both Chase’s father and I jumped at the opportunity to see Chase, but when I remembered that Chase and I were not a real couple, I backed down. Surely, the man would want to see his father before seeing the woman who caused his accident.

In an attempt to drown out my dark and consuming thoughts, I pulled out my phone from the pocket of my nightgown. In the heat of the moment, I stepped out of the house in a simple nightgown. It was far from appropriate in the sense that I had no underwear underneath the clothing. It also didn’t help that my breasts moved on their own accord each time I moved. To make it even worse, the blood stains that added a new design to the gown made me look a lot less than a billionaire’s wife and more like the thief’s daughter everyone saw me as.

My appearance was the least of my worries, so I shoved it into the back of my mind and turned on my phone.

And then I saw it.

The call that caused all of this came from no one other than my mother. Unfortunately, it turned out that she did not stop there. I had ten more missed calls from her and a million text messages that I just did not have the heart to open.

Pain tore through me, leaving a long and open gash in my heart.

My breathing quickened and, as much as I told myself all the reasons why I needed to remain calm. None of them could stop me from crying. Whether I liked to admit it or not, today had been one of the most hectic moments in my life and although Chase was okay now, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of everything else that had gone wrong.

My mother felt it was better to trick me and sell me off to the highest bidder simply because she considered her stealing disease more important than her only child!

I had to marry a stranger I know nothing about whose father happens to hate the very air I breathe!

And now I didn’t know if my husband was disabled or not or if I was just running mad!

There were a million reasons to cry, and my mind kept identifying a new one by the second.

My head ached and so did my eyes. Everything hurt and from the way things were looking, I didn’t expect the hurt to lessen any time soon. Pain was like a deadly virus and I feared that it would duplicate and spread until it consumed me whole and I couldn’t differentiate it from any other emotion. The thought alone was driving me crazy.

“You can go and see him now,” I heard a man say.

I turned to see Chase’s father standing just outside my husband’s room. A part of me wondered how long he had been standing there. I also hoped that he hadn’t seen me have a mental breakdown.

Wiping my tears away, I avoided eye contact with the old man and went into Chase’s room.

The doctor was still in the room. He stood in the corner jotting some things on his notepad. I stood still for a while, hoping that he would leave soon, but with the way he stood so comfortably, I knew that I would have to throw my hopes of him leaving in the trash.

I took slow and calculated steps as I approached Chase.

Only God knew what was running through his mind. The truth remained the same. I did something that I should have never done, and I ended up seeing something that I should never have seen.

I was right beside Chase, now. He regarded me gently, his blue eyes slowly roaming all over me as if he too was trying to figure out what was going through my head. My eyes wandered off to the bandage across his head and in an instant, my guilt came back. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, breaking the silence.

Chase smiled. His smile was one I had never seen before. It reached his eyes, and it felt like his eyes were also smiling at me. This warmth came with it and I don’t know what exactly it was about it, but a fraction of the fear and guilt I had dissipated into nothingness.

His eyes drifted to the part of my gown that was covered in his blood, then back to my face. “Don’t. Apologize. My father said you were the one who rushed to save me. You saved my life. Thank you, Eleanor.”

His voice was deep, yet it had a soft tinge to it, like he had soaked his words in honey, and now he was feeding them to me. I swallowed hard.

If he was trying to make me forget everything that happened, then it wasn’t going to work. Although I had to admit, it almost did. “I saw you walk. How is that possible?” I asked directly before he had a chance to gaslight me with his honey-coated words.

He released a sigh. Chase’s eyes darkened and the warmth in them faded. “Eleanor, what you saw was me reacting when provoked. My father poked an old wound, and I was just trying to show him that I was not the same weak man that I used to be. I used up all my strength to push myself off that wheelchair. I would never lie about a disability if that is what you’re thinking.”

He was right because that was what I was thinking.

Chase’s words and eyes all gave off the same sense of vulnerability that I had once seen in the past, yet I found it hard to believe a word that came out of his mouth. Men lied all the time and I knew that for a fact.

“But I saw-“

“May I?” the doctor cut me off, raising his hand slightly above his head like he was a kid in kindergarten eager to answer a teacher’s question.

Irritation bit off the edges of my countenance, and I was this close to telling the doctor to piss off, but I put on the best calm face I could. “Sure, go ahead.”

The doctor pushed back his eyeglasses. “Well, you see, in certain moments where disabled people, in this case, people that cannot access full function to the lower part of their body, get triggered due to a memory of a traumatic experience of some sort, something rare can occur. You see, in the heat of the moment, such a person can temporarily access parts of their body that were rendered weak or inept in the past. The thing is, emotions can fuel us and help us do things we never thought we could do before.

So yes, you might have seen your husband stand, but it doesn’t mean that he isn’t still a disabled man. I ran some tests when he was rushed in here, and I can prove it.”

Silence hummed in the room, leaving each of us time to battle with our thoughts and our emotions. The scene right before the accident replayed in my head and I remembered Chase’s father’s words distinctly.

“It was Lola, wasn’t it? Her name triggered you, am I right?” I asked, tearing through the silence that once enveloped us.

Chase shut his eyes and a tear fell from one of them. “If you must know everything, then here you go. You are right about everything. Lola is my dead daughter. She died because this same disability you’re doubting prevented me from saving her. I couldn't stand. I couldn't move. I just watched Eleanor. I just watched my daughter die. It’s a difficult truth to live with and it haunts me everyday of my f*****g life.”

By the time Chase finished speaking, he was full-on crying. His eyes no longer held warmth, rather they were so cold that they could freeze anyone in sight.

For the millionth time today, my heart sank, and my eyes glistened with unshed tears.