Things always looked a little blurrier when you were staring at them using one eye instead of two.
John stepped into the room and brushed past the nurse, who couldn’t help but gaze admiringly at him. A man with his handsome looks was bound to attract female attention wherever he went.
He was probably used to it as well. He walked into the room and gazed down at me, his eyes full of worry. After glancing up and down my body, his eyes settled on the pinpricks of blood on the back of my hand.
“How did you manage to do that to yourself?”
I replied blithely, “My skin is too fair, I suppose. It was very difficult to find the veins.”
John frowned a little but didn’t say anything more. As he continued to gaze at me, he asked, “Well, how do you feel?”
I evaded his question expertly. “Have you found Summer?”
John nodded and replied, “Yes, we’ve already found him. Ashton suspected Kristina all along, but it wasn’t until he found Summer that he realized something was terribly off. That was when he went to look for you in the factory.”
I pursed my lips. Ashton was a very clever man indeed. Also, that taxi driver had disappointed me greatly! I thought he would at least be kind enough to help me call the police.
I couldn’t help but sigh. Strangers weren’t to be trusted, after all.
John looked at me with a strange expression on his face. “Why aren’t you asking me how Ashton is?”
That was a difficult question. How was I supposed to answer that?
Ashton had shielded me from most of the sulfuric acid, so his injuries were probably far worse than mine. However, I was still a little hesitant about asking John about his condition.
I looked up at John and asked morosely, “John, don’t you think I’m pretty selfish?”
He knitted his brows together. In a low voice, he replied, “Jared has been planning this for a long time. You’re not to blame for this incident, because you couldn’t have predicted his actions. It’s well within your rights to be mad at Ashton, but Scarlett, you must know that he has put in his best effort for you.”
Yes, Ashton had put in his very best effort. He was a human being and not a god, after all. He couldn’t have known that Jared was hiding a deep grudge and that after so many years, Jared had finally laid a trap for the both of us.
However, Ashton was the root cause of that grudge in the first place! That was an undeniable fact.
Seeing the complicated emotions swirling in my eyes, John sighed a little, looking very helpless. “Scarlett, if you don’t let go of your grudge now, you’ll have an even harder time in the future.”
I looked up at him and retorted, “What about you, then? Can you disregard Hannah’s family background and live happily with her for the rest of your life?”
John fell silent at my question. Looking rather perturbed, he muttered, “We’re talking about your situation right now.”
I nodded. “Yes, we are talking about me right now. I’m just making you see things from my perspective. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand the viewpoint of the other party when you aren’t in their shoes. You might even think I’m making a big fuss over nothing. However, if the same thing happens to you, you might be singing a different tune.”
John pursed his lips, probably thinking that I was a lost cause. The room descended into an awkward silence.
As the anaesthesia began to wear off, a burning feeling gripped my face. I lay in bed, thinking miserably about how my face would look after the injury started scarring.
Because of my incident, Zachary and Cameron rushed over to the hospital immediately. The moment she saw me, tears fell from Cameron’s eyes like a string of broken pearls.
I wasn’t in a talking mood, so both of them chose to remain silent as well. Knowing that Ashton had caused my injury indirectly, their faces were clouded over with rage.
However, after they found out that Ashton had taken the splash of sulfuric acid for me, their expressions lightened up a little.
That, however, didn’t change the fact that I had been injured anyway. They wanted an explanation for this.
Louis was a very powerful man. If he employed his usual methods of chasing down people, the Crest family would be defenceless regardless of how much influence they commanded in society. After all, they had injured someone.
Hence, Jared had been apprehended for charges of causing intentional hurt before long. Everyone had expected this outcome. The man was now a criminal.
Ashton had been very badly injured by the sulfuric acid, and a large part of his skin had been corroded by the chemical. He had to be kept under strict observation by the hospital at all times.
After spending a few days in the intensive care unit, his condition finally seemed to improve.
When they finally transferred him to a normal ward, he was still confined to his bed. The doctors had already removed the bandages from my face, and my eyes had made a full recovery. However, my face was scarred for life.
The scar was on the left side of my face, right next to my eye. It was a rather small wound that was no larger than the size of my thumb, but it seemed so much more obvious because it was on my face.
Because the scar was so obvious, I had put some silicone tape on it. The nurses had recommended it to me, telling me that it could help improve the appearance of the scar over time.
Since I was still alive, I couldn’t let this scar cause too much disruption in my life.
Ashton was still in a coma. The doctors said he needed to rest—he had been very badly injured, so much so that he had damaged some nerves in his brain.
I grabbed a stool and sat down next to him, gazing at his face. Because he had been burnt on his back, he was lying down on his stomach.
Seeing his face, which was still as handsome as ever, I mused that we both made up for the defects in each other’s appearance.
After so many years, we could no longer tell whether we were together because of love, or because we owed too much to each other.
Because we owed each other too much, we were bound to each other for life.
Ashton finally woke up at night. The doctor changed his bandages and warned, “You’ll be in a great deal of pain when the anaesthesia wears off.” He turned to me and continued, “The patient will be bedridden for now. Make sure to change his urine catheter and wipe him down every couple of hours so he doesn’t feel too uncomfortable.”
I nodded— I already knew what I had to do. This was probably the first time I had been entrusted with taking care of Ashton.
He had always been very healthy in the past. I couldn’t recall a time when he was gravely ill.
What a sad life he led. He had lived peacefully for the first half of his life, and now he was in for the trial of his life.
