Chapter 9
372words
In her nightmare, Adrian's face shifted constantly—sometimes showing the bitter hatred of a nineteen-year-old, sometimes the tender affection of a thirty-one-year-old. The overlapping images tore at her sanity.
Until a hoarse call—seemingly from the depths of a soul—shattered the illusion.
"Ella..."
Reality snapped back. She found herself leaning over the stretcher, that voice coming from below.
Adrian was awake.
He gazed at her steadily. Gone was the confusion and anger of youth; those profound eyes now held what she'd been starved for—deep affection, remorse, and pain intense enough to drown in.
"Adrian?" She trembled, disbelieving.
He didn't answer. Instead, he raised his uninjured hand and—as if touching the world's most precious treasure—gently caressed her cheek. His fingertips brushed her tear tracks with such tenderness it shattered her heart.
That look. That gesture.
Not the nineteen-year-old Adrian she'd pushed away.
It was her husband.
The man who'd woken her with such gentle touches countless mornings. Her lover.
He had returned.
"No... impossible..." Ella shook her head desperately, tears flowing harder. "Your... your memories..."
"I remember now." Adrian's voice rasped like sandpaper. "Ella, I remember everything."
Just then, a nearby medic shouted: "Patient's intracranial pressure critical! Get him to the emergency center now!"
The stretcher lifted quickly, forcing her to release his hand. She watched him being rushed away, his eyes never leaving hers, filled with desperate urgency.
"Ella!" he shouted with all his strength. "Don't do anything stupid! Wait for me!"
"Miss, you're injured too. Please come with us!" Another medic supported the swaying Ella.
Ella followed in a daze, her mind reeling. He remembered. He actually remembered. Then her plan... everything she'd done...
Suddenly, her assistant Linda rushed over in tears, grabbing her arm: "Miss Ella! Dr. Woods says your condition can't wait—he's arranged a helicopter to take you directly to surgery! The specialist team you arranged for Mr. Adrian is standing by!"
Adrian... specialists for him?
Ella jolted with sudden realization. She'd already arranged the world's best brain specialists for Adrian in case his condition worsened. And now Dr. Woods was diverting them to operate on her instead.
No.
She couldn't have surgery now.
Adrian had returned—how could she leave him now?
***
