She was not dead.
Shirley closed her eyes in disappointment, then moved gently. However, her movement shot an excruciating pain through her as if her body was in pieces.
She remembered what happened before she lost consciousness.
She no longer had the will to live. She wanted to die. She missed her parents. She missed Adam. She also wanted to apologize to Cathy.
She had rolled her wheelchair directly onto the stairs.
She had thought that she could fall to her death, but she did not.
A sudden thought came to her, and she lifted her hands to touch her flat stomach. The feeling of emptiness made her warm around the eyes.
‘I’m sorry, my baby.
‘It’s my fault for being so heinous. I’ve never wanted you to suffer the retribution.’
Shirley closed her eyes and tears silently fell from the corners of her eyes.
“Is she still not awake?” Camille’s voice came from the door suddenly.
Shirley tried to rein in her sadness, quickly wiping away the tears in the corners of her eyes, and pretended to still be unconscious.
At one side, Carter woke up from his nap. When he saw the motionless Shirley, he frowned, the exhaustion visible on his handsome face.
“I’ll stay here. You can go back.”
“Why don’t we take her back to St. Piaf?” Camille suggested. “She currently has serious bone fractures, and she’s paralyzed from the waist down. From now on, she’ll need someone to take care of her. She can’t stay in the hospital forever.”
Paralyzed.
When Shirley heard that word, she clenched her fists hidden under the blanket.
After a long while, she heard Carter’s answer. “ We’ll let her decide if she wants to go back to St. Piaf after she wakes up.”
Camille neither forced nor rejected this. “You stay with her, then, I’ll head back.”
“Okay, ” Carter answered, then shifted his attention to Shirley’s face.
Shirley’s emotions fluctuated, but she did her best in suppressing her erratic emotions and continued pretending to be asleep.
Suddenly, however, she felt Carter gently lifting the blanket. He seemed to want to hold her hand.
Shirley quickly unclenched her fist the second before Carter held her hand.
“Shirley.”
Carter called out to Shirley in this manner.
Shirley thought she was dreaming. It felt like ages ago when Carter addressed her like that
She remembered him calling her this way back then, but it had been before she left without notice.
Before that, Carter had truly been good to her.
“ Shirley, don’t worry. No matter what happens to you, I’ll take care of you forever.”
Carter promised softly.
Shirley could not believe what she heard. She felt her heart skipping a beat, and tears escaped her eyes disobediently once again.
Carter, noticing the tears in the corners of Shirley’s eyes, paused, looking pleasantly surprised.
“Shirley, you’re awake? Are you awake?”
Shirley did not want to keep up the act any further. She slowly opened her wet, red eyes, and calmly met an elated Carter.
“I don’t need you to take care of me, and I won’t go back to St. Piaf with you. I want to die in Glendale, to die in my hometown. I want to be buried with my parents and brother.”
Shirley, determined, pulled her hand away from Carter’s palm.
“I don’t want to see you again. Seeing you merely reminds me that I killed my brother and that innocent girl.”
She turned her face as she spoke. She refused to even let Carter be within her line of sight.
Upon seeing how strongly Shirley resisted him,
Carter clenched his fists, but he kept the displeasure and annoyance in his heart off his face.
“Ada was the one who set the fire that killed Adam and Cathy. It has nothing to do with me.”
“Nothing to do with you?” Shirley laughed. “Even now, you’re still trying to play innocent.”
“I’m not playing innocent. That’s the truth.”
“We’ll just treat it as the truth, then. The truth is that I no longer have any love for you, only hate. ”
“Carter, you and I are like two intersecting lines.” Shirley slowly opened her tearful eyes. “Despite our vastly different statuses, we had come together, and after that most intimate stage, we went our separate ways. This is our ending. From now on, whether I live or die, I’ll have nothing to do with you. If you still have any sympathy or humanity in you, please respect my decision.”
Shirley’s decision momentarily stunned Carter.
Seeing her avoiding his side glance, Carter pressed his lips together. He eventually turned around and left the room without uttering a word.
When Shirley heard the door closing, she opened her eyes.
She stared at the ceiling and smiled in relief.
She felt lucky that she had asked the runner to send the test reagents out the morning when Carter and Camille were busy preparing to return to St. Piaf.
Kendrick must have received it by now.
It had been such a long time. She had never thought about developing more anti-toxoid test reagents. She did not have what was required.
However, back then, she finally had a chance to enter Carter’s laboratory. After she finished developing the anti-toxoid test reagent for AXP69, she also used this opportunity to finish developing the anti- toxoid test reagent that Kendrick needed.
The process of developing the anti-toxoid test reagent for AXP69 was very complicated because it was a newly developed poison.
However, the poison Kendrick had was a mature poison that had complete data, so she could easily develop it as long as she had the ingredients.
Shirley let out a silent sigh of relief. Even though she knew that her body was completely ruined, she felt relieved for some reason.
“Addy, didn’t you wish that I’d repent one day? I’ve finally heeded your words, and I’ve earnestly fixed my mistakes. Will you forgive me?”
Shirley mumbled to herself. She knew she could never again get the answer to this.
When she thought about how Adam and Cathy died because of her, she could not forgive herself.
She could not blame anyone. She affected everyone around her because she had been on the wrong path since the start.
Regardless, Shirley did not think that Carter would let her off the hook just like that.
After some thought, Shirley lifted her hand effortfully to press the call button to send a nurse over.
The nurse ran over quickly, thinking something had happened to Shirley. However, Shirley looked at her sincerely and said, “Nurse, can you help me with something?”
When Niamh and Kendrick were about to leave the house, Kendrick received a call from an unknown number. The young woman from the other end of the line said she was a nurse from a hospital.
After listening to what the nurse from the other end said, Kendrick discussed it with Niamh and decided to drop by the hospital.
Shirly was in bed, staring at the clock in front of her as the time passed second by second. Amid her uneasiness, the door finally opened.
She had thought Niamh and Kendrick had arrived, but the one who had pushed open the door and entered was Carter.
Carter caught sight of the expectant look in Shirley’s eyes turning into disappointment in a flash.
“Who are you expecting?” Carter, finding this suspicious, asked and glanced toward the door.
Shirley did not speak. Ignoring Carter, she closed her eyes and laid back down.
Upon seeing Shirley’s cold attitude, Carter walked to the side of the bed.
“I’ll take you back to St. Piaf soon.”
Shirley did not even lift her eyelids when she heard that. “I won’t go with you.”
“When we’re back, I’ll divorce Ada, and then you’ll become my lawfully wedded wife.”
When she heard this, Shirley chuckled and remained still.
“A viscount marrying a crippled and disfigured woman as his viscountess? You won’t be able to go through with it yourself, let alone getting your family’s permission.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.