7.
“I don’t know what you’re being stubborn about.”
“If Ethan treated you badly, you could just settle accounts with him cleanly. How have I offended you? You even want to work to pay back the money for a few bottles of medicine I bought you. Do I lack that little money?”
Adam said while returning the money I had tried to give him.
He wouldn’t accept the transfer or the cash.
I had no choice but to be honest: “I just want to leave cleanly, without owing anyone anything…”
Adam knew about my history with Ethan and sighed, reluctantly taking the money back.
“Tomorrow is your father’s death anniversary. Let’s go visit him together.”
I nodded in agreement.
Adam asked again: “Is that Ethan guy… still contacting you?”
I lowered my head. A new message had just come in on my phone.
“Rachel, I was wrong, I really know I was wrong. You can hit me, scold me, hate me, I’ll accept it all. I just beg you not to ignore me like before. Please let me take you to see a doctor, okay?‘
He had sent thousands of similar messages over the past month.
But it was all in vain. My illness couldn’t be cured.
Arriving at my father’s grave, I burst into tears before I could say a word…
“Dad, I was wrong. I should have listened to you back then!”
“I shouldn’t have gone back…”
Our Wilson family had a serious hereditary disease, with a 50% chance of developing it. Once it developed, there was no cure.
Ethan said I didn’t love him, that I only cared about money.
If I didn’t love him, why did I leave when I found out I had a high chance of developing the disease?
If I didn’t love him, how could I endure being tormented for 7 years without revealing the truth?
When I was sick, he suffered a thousand times more than I did.
If the day really came when I fell ill and couldn’t be saved, how much pain would Ethan feel, having to watch me die?
I didn’t know. Just thinking about it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.
That’s why I asked my childhood friend Adam to help me stage a play.
I thought this way he could let me go, but three years later, the successful Ethan found me, wanting to reconcile.
I didn’t want to agree at the time, but my dad fell ill and we had no money for treatment.
I asked Ethan to borrow money. He agreed, on the condition that I marry him and never mention divorce.
11:39 AM.
<
The night before I agreed to his terms, my dad held my hand and earnestly advised: “Rachel, don’t go back. If we had the conditions for medical examinations back then and could have found out about my chances of developing the disease, I would never have married your mother.”
“Because what’s more terrifying than death is watching the one you love die before your eyes, powerless to do anything.”
I soon understood this sentence.
More painful than my father was my mother.
After my father was hospitalized, my mother cried almost every day. She who had always cared about her appearance no longer bothered to dress up.