Chapter 5 The Moving Blood Bank
842 Words
The sterile stench of bleach invaded her nostrils. Stella was jolted awake by a sharp, burning pain.
As the stinging sensation flared from the soles of her feet, she let out a sharp hiss.
"Oh, you're finally awake." A nurse was meticulously applying ointment to her shredded feet. Seeing her open her eyes, the nurse quickly advised, "Miss Tanner, your blood sugar tanked, which caused you to faint, and you're suffering from mild heatstroke. The soles of your feet are completely raw. You absolutely must stay in bed and rest for the next two days. Try not to put any weight on them."
Stella subconsciously touched the thick gauze wrapped around her forehead. "Where is the person who brought me here?"
"You mean that handsome guy named Spencer Byrd? He just went down to pay your medical bills," the nurse replied while securing the bandages on her feet.
Stella froze.
Spencer Byrd?
So, the blurry figure sprinting toward her wasn't Jace at all.
Which made perfect sense. Jace was probably still busy having s*x with Chloe in the backseat. He couldn't care less if Stella lived or died.
Stella reached out to grab her phone. The moment her fingertip brushed the screen, a new status notification popped up.
Chloe: It turns out, when a man sees the girl he truly loves in a wedding dress for the first time, he really does cry.
The first photo was of Chloe standing in the boutique's wedding gown. The second was Jace kneeling on one knee, pressing a devout kiss to her hand. The third photo captured Jace covering his face, visibly crying.
Before Stella could even process the emotional gut-punch, Jace's name flashed across her screen with an incoming call.
"Are you at Charity Hospital?"
She paused, but just as she opened her mouth to speak, his voice cut through the line again.
"Get your ass to the ER immediately."
His voice was terrifyingly cold, a freezing tone she had never heard directed at her before.
Thinking about the photos she had just seen, Stella had zero intention of going.
Instead, she logged onto an online luxury consignment platform and ruthlessly sold off every single designer bag and piece of custom jewelry Jace had ever gifted her for dirt-cheap prices.
However, Jace somehow tracked her down. He barged straight into her private hospital room.
"Come with me."
He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her forward without a single extra word of explanation.
He dragged her all the way to the emergency wing. The fresh gauze that had just been carefully wrapped around her shredded feet quickly soaked through with bright red blood.
"You're type O, right?"
Stella nodded, completely bewildered. In the next second, a nurse ruthlessly jammed a thick needle right into her vein.
The sharp sting in her arm violently snapped her fully awake.
Watching her dark red blood pump through the tubing, Stella finally realized she was donating blood.
But Jace was perfectly fine standing right there. Who the hell was the blood for?
Before she could even ask, the nurse muttered sympathetically, "You guys are totally crazy. You're injured this badly, but you still insisted on coming to donate blood. And that gorgeous guy outside is losing his damn mind too. His girlfriend went too hard in bed and ruptured an ovarian cyst, causing massive internal bleeding. He was so terrified that he literally paid a fortune to open our hospital's emergency trauma lane. When the hospital's blood bank ran low, he panicked, made a million calls, and finally dragged you in here. You can tell he loves that girl to death."
Stella's heart violently seized.
So Jace dragging her here without a single word was just to use her as a walking blood bag for Chloe?
Leaving aside how deeply humiliating it was to be forced to donate blood for injuries Chloe sustained from having violently rough s*x with him, Jace knew perfectly well that Stella suffered from severe Thalassemia.
In the past, because her anemia made her prone to fainting from low blood sugar, Jace's pockets were always stuffed with every flavor of fruit candy imaginable.
Their friends used to joke, "Jace is literally Stella's personal magical candy dispenser."
But now, just to save Chloe, he had completely abandoned every shred of concern for Stella.
It made sense. Stella was just the pathetic stepping stone in his epic, torturous romance with Chloe. Why the hell would he care about her?
Once the blood draw was complete, the nurse pulled the needle out.
Stella sat frozen in the chair for a very long time, her mind utterly numb. It took everything she had just to push herself up.
Using the cold wall for support, she gritted her teeth against the agonizing pain in her feet and limped out into the hallway.
The second she stepped out, a massive hand slapped her viciously across the face.
Jace glared at her, his icy eyes piercing through her.
"Stella, did you call the f*****g cops and report Chloe for solicitation?"
- Writer
