CHAPTER THREE
749 Words
Painfully but slowly, three days went by, and it was finally time for Anita to be discharged.
After what felt like three eternities, the final round of tests was concluded. The nurses handed her medications along with a paper bag containing her dry-cleaned clothes.
She walked into the changing room, took off the hospital gown, and put on her own clothes.
When she stepped out, she felt like a different person.
Not because she had healed.
No.
Some wounds did not close with stitches.
Some wounds stayed buried deep within the heart.
She rummaged through her belongings until she found her phone.
For a long moment, she simply stared at the black screen.
Should she turn it on?
Should she return to the world that had abandoned her?
After a few seconds of hesitation, she pressed the power button.
The moment the screen lit up, countless notifications flooded in.
Missed calls.
Messages.
Voicemails.
For one foolish second, a tiny piece of her heart still hoped.
Maybe Stefan finally cared enough to look her way.
Maybe he realized how cruel he had been.
Maybe he regretted everything.
Maybe—
Her fingers froze over the screen.
Her face turned pale.
She had received more than a hundred messages.
Yet none of them were what she wanted to see.
“Where are you?”
“Cece’s condition is getting worse.”
“Contact me immediately, or the wedding is off.”
The wedding?
Anita laughed bitterly.
In the past, those words would have sent her running back to him like a desperate fool, terrified of losing the title of Mrs. Stefan Neil.
But not anymore.
She had disappointed herself enough.
She had disappointed her parents enough.
Never again.
She searched through her contacts.
Her fingers stopped at a familiar name.
Stefan Neil.
The man she had loved since she was eighteen.
The man she had given her youth to.
The man she had once given everything.
She opened the messages.
“Stop being childish.”
“Come back and stop throwing a tantrum.”
“Cece doesn’t have much time left.”
Not a single message asking where she was.
Not a single message asking if she was alive.
Not a single message asking if she was hurt.
A quiet laugh escaped her lips.
Small at first.
Then louder.
Not because anything was funny.
But because she finally understood.
Even when he thought she could be dead, he still chose Cece.
She had spent years making excuses for him.
He isn't affectionate.
He doesn't know how to show love.
He has a difficult personality.
But she was wrong.
He was capable of care.
He was capable of desperation.
She simply was never the person he was willing to give it to.
Seven years ago, she had laid on a hospital bed and given him one of her kidneys.
She remembered how pale he had looked.
How she held his hand, comforting him while she herself was in pain.
She remembered telling herself that one day, he would learn to love her.
What a foolish woman she had been.
A tear slipped down her cheek.
And she made a silent promise.
This would be the last tear she would ever shed for Stefan.
She opened her gallery.
Thousands of pictures.
A decade of memories.
Their first meal together.
The first gift he gave her.
The moments she thought she was the happiest woman alive.
The countless nights she stayed awake using her designs and ideas to help him climb higher.
All those memories that once felt precious now looked like evidence of how much she had abandoned herself.
Her finger hovered over the delete button.
She hesitated.
Not because she still wanted him.
But because she was saying goodbye to the girl who loved him.
The girl who believed sacrifice could earn affection.
The girl who waited for someone who had never chosen her.
With a deep breath, she pressed delete.
Ten years disappeared in an instant.
Then she blocked his number.
She placed the phone back into her bag.
Her fingers touched something cold.
The golden card.
The Smith family.
The nurse had packed it together with her belongings.
Anita stared at it for a few seconds before placing it back into her bag.
She did not know who they were.
She did not know why they had helped her.
But for the first time in ten years, she was walking toward an unknown future.
And strangely enough…
She was not afraid.
- Writer
