Chapter 4
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The three people who walked into my hospital room froze in their tracks. The middle–aged man at the front recovered first, irritation flashing across his face.
“What the hell, Feona? Why are you playing dumb?” he snapped, moving toward me.
I panicked, swatting his hand away before he could touch me. “I seriously don’t know who you are!”
My heart hammered as I backed up against the headboard. These strangers with their predatory expressions scared the crap out of me. All I wanted was somewhere to hide, somewhere safe.
The middle–aged woman stared at the confusion in my eyes, too shocked to speak.
They were about to drag me out of bed when the young guy who’d been silently watching finally stepped in. “Sir, ma’am, why don’t you guys wait outside? Let me talk to Feona.”
The couple exchanged a look, then reluctantly left the room, suspicion written all over their faces.
The young man grabbed a chair and pulled it up beside my bed. He casually picked up an apple from the nightstand and started peeling it like we were having a normal conversation.
Chapter 4
“Look, Feona, I know you’re faking this amnesia thing,” he said, not looking up from the apple. “This isn’t going to solve anything. Quit the act.”
I stared at him, completely lost. “Who are you?”
That shut him up for a moment.
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“Feona.” His voice had a warning edge to it now, clearly pissed off. “Can you stop this bullshit? I’m not in the mood to play house with you right now.”
I sat there in total silence. The guy must’ve figured I’d finally dropped the act, because he just kept going.
“Feona, playing the amnesia card isn’t going to work. You’ve really messed up big time this time. Do you have any idea how close Tracy came to going into shock? What would you have done if they couldn’t save her?
“All you need to do is apologize. This whole thing is your fault, and you owe her that much. Look, how about this–if you just behave and apologize to Tracy, I’ll talk to your parents about our engagement. Sound good?”
I watched him ramble on, my face completely blank, then asked again, “Who exactly are you?”
My cold expression must have hit a nerve. I watched his face transform–confusion morphing into disbelief, and then finally a flash of panic crossed his features.
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As if my reaction was totally off–script from what he’d expected.
“Feona, what the… I’m James! Your boyfriend James!” His voice cracked with desperation.
His fingers dug into my shoulders as he searched my face for any hint of recognition. Too bad for him–I was like a still pond, completely unmoved. No matter how loud he yelled or how hard he shook me, I just stared back at him like he was some random stranger who’d wandered into my room.
James completely lost his cool. “Feona, stop freaking me out, okay? This isn’t funny at all.”
The nurses didn’t let him stay long before kicking him out of my hospital room.
But the guy was persistent. He showed up at my door every single day. Sometimes with that same couple from before, and other times with a girl who looked weirdly similar to me.
I found out the brutal truth from one of the nurses–that couple was my parents. They hadn’t bothered to visit me once since I’d been admitted, too busy fawning over my twin sister who was only in the hospital for a mild allergic reaction.
Then one day, they accidentally discovered I was being treated in the same hospital, and that was when they came storming into my room, creating that whole scene.
It should have crushed me. But weirdly, I couldn’t summon a
Chapter 4
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single emotion about it anymore. I just watched them hovering in my doorway again and again, their harsh words carrying clearly through the open door.
“She’s obviously faking it to get attention,” Kevin snapped while glaring at me from across the room. His voice was like ice. “Who suddenly loses their memory out of nowhere? It’s not like she was in a car crash or something. Ever since we brought her back from the countryside, she’s been acting wild. Now she’s pulling this amnesia prank on her own family? It’s completely ridiculous!”
“We’re discharging her today!” he continued, practically
shouting. “She doesn’t have anything wrong with her. She’s just wasting a hospital bed! She might not care about embarrassing herself, but I sure as hell care about my reputation!”
Unlike Kevin’s anger, Tracy’s reaction was all about making me feel small. She’d only visited once, and in that brief moment, she’d given me this dismissive once–over before her face broke into a smug smile. She’d leaned down close, her voice dropping to a whisper meant just for me.
“What’s the point of faking amnesia? As soon as I get out of this hospital, I’m confessing to James and getting engaged. Let’s see you keep up this little memory loss act at our engagement party!”
She was absolutely convinced that James proposing to her would crush me. After delivering her little bombshell, she’d just laughed to herself and walked away, leaving me sitting there completely lost, wondering what the hell she was talking about.
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Elizabeth had barely said a word through all of this. After sitting through several of Kevin’s angry outbursts, she’d finally pulled her jacket collar closer around her neck and said slowly, “Maybe we should let the doctors examine her properly. People don’t just get sick out of nowhere like this.”
Out of everyone–Kevin, Tracy, and Elizabeth–James was the only one who hadn’t said a single word. He’d just spend his time standing silently outside my hospital room, head down like he was plotting something I couldn’t begin to guess.
B
