"As long as you like it," Lucas replied softly. He hadn’t noticed me trembling in the corner. It wasn’t until Sharon pointed me out that he looked over, shocked to see me.
He pulled me from the corner, his grip firm but not painful. "Helena, why are you here?"
His voice was filled with surprise and concern as he examined me closely. He held me tightly, his hand gently patting my cheek in an attempt to bring me back to reality. "Helena, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you speaking?"
Just seeing Sharon was enough to terrify me and now Lucas was here too. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked at him and I couldn’t hold back any longer—I fainted.
I had a dream, a terrible dream. In it, I was back in the mental hospital, with the attending doctor administering electroshock therapy while relentlessly drilling into my mind that I was unworthy of Lucas. The agony was unbearable and I screamed for mercy, “Please, let me go! I swear I don’t love Lucas anymore! I don’t love him! I don’t love him!”
But then Lucas appeared in my dream, holding me tightly and begging in a hoarse voice, “Helena, don’t leave me.”
I jolted awake, staring at the white ceiling, realizing it was just a nightmare. But one part of the dream was real, I was in Lucas’s arms. I tried to push him away, but he only held me tighter.
“Helena, please, get better,” he murmured.
Get better? Yes, I had to get better. If I didn’t, he and Sharon would send me back to the mental hospital. I nodded numbly in his embrace. “Lucas, I’m fine.”
“Helena, what did they do to you?” He finally let go, looking down at me with concern.
I stared back at him blankly. Did he not know what they had done to me? He should have known. In the first year, I called him for help, telling him about the inhuman torture I was enduring. He didn’t say a word before hanging up. After that, I lost hope and never called him again.
“Why is your leg broken?” Lucas asked. “Who did this to you?”
I didn’t want to relive those memories, so I remained silent. He finally lost patience and yelled, “Helena, answer me!”
Startled by his outburst, I stammered, “The attending doctor said I was shameless. He sent me to the male patients’ ward on the third floor. They cornered me and bullied me. In desperation, I jumped from the third-floor window and... became crippled.”