Chapter 267: Chapter 267: It Was Actually Because of Her
In the vast hospital room, sunlight streamed through the clear windows, enveloping the long figure asleep on the bed.
Even lying there silently, nothing could diminish his sharpness and elegance.
Ann Vaughn quietly stood by the bedside, staring at his finely chiseled features for a long time before lowering her eyes and placing her slender fingers on his wrist to carefully check.
But this glance nearly startled Ann into a jump due to the pulse reading results.
Compared to the extent of the depletion within his body, these hideous and terrifying scars on him were insignificant!
How exactly has he been living these past four years? To have tortured a good body into this ghastly state!
Ann Vaughn quietly took a cold breath, her delicate brows lightly furrowing as she withdrew her hand, concealing the chill that lingered at her fingertips.
"Miss Vaughn, the doctor will be coming to examine President Hawthorne later. You should go back for now, I’ll notify you when he wakes up." Mark Joyce glanced at the time and couldn’t help but remind her.
Besides, Mrs. Hawthorne would be coming by personally to visit later. If she saw Miss Vaughn here, it might cause another commotion.
Ann Vaughn nodded slightly, looking at Cyrus Hawthorne’s face, which appeared softer in sleep, her slender fingers tightening and then loosening again, before turning to leave the ward.
As soon as she went outside, the stifling feeling hovering in her heart seemed to intensify, impossible to dispel.
She couldn’t even explain what it was.
After going downstairs, Ann returned to her own room, seeing Kenny lying on the bed, limbs sprawled out and snoring, his little chubby legs kicking. A wave of warmth filled her heart.
Forget it, she thought, no matter how much he does now, it can’t erase all the hurt she’s been through.
Some wounds don’t stop hurting just because you say they do.
Ann lay back on the bed, picking up her phone to send a message to Sherry, asking her to bring the little medicine box from the apartment.
Consider it repayment for him saving her with his own body, so that they would owe each other nothing.
The room was silent, only a bit of moonlight spilling through the curtains from outside, enveloping the side of the bed in dimness.
Ann’s gaze rested vacantly on the dark phone screen for who knows how long, until sleep gradually took over, and she slowly closed her eyes.
It was deep into the night.
A spark suddenly ignited in the dim and hazy wooden house, the fierce flames brightly illuminating everything.
The crackling of the fire roared louder, with the temperature climbing ever hotter.
Ann was trapped in the center of the wooden house, trying to struggle but her whole body seemed to be fixed in place, unable to move. She could only watch helplessly as the fire tongues engulfed her, fear consuming her along with it.
The cry for help stuck cruelly in her throat, unable to escape!
Suddenly, Ann felt a pair of strong hands give her a hard shove, forcibly pushing her out of the searing flames.
When she snapped back and turned around abruptly, she only saw that slender, clear-cut figure standing within the sea of fire.
His narrow eyes slightly curved, thin lips carrying a faint smile, beaming at her from afar.
Like the March breeze melting the cold frost covering the earth, bursts of vibrant green unexpectedly surged into her view.
But as the roof collapsed, the flames burned that figure until it became fainter, nearly making Ann lose sight of him.
Her heart thudded heavily, and she rushed towards the collapsing wooden house, wanting to pull him back but tripped and fell to the ground with a ’bang’.
The scene shifted, the scorching fiery sea vanished, leaving only darkness and silence in sight.
When she looked up, she saw a man gripping a vine with one hand, his wounds hideous, and his arm bones seemed about to burst from bearing too much weight, with blood trickling down.
Yet his lowered voice of comfort held an almost casual air, making one wholly trustingly.
"Don’t be afraid, trust me."
With those slightly cool but extremely reassuring hands supporting her, she safely returned to the ground, her lovely face instantly blossoming into a joyful smile.
"I’ll pull you..." she leaned down, reaching out her hand to him below, barely touching the warmth of his fingers before missing, watching as he fell from the cliffside.
"No..."
"No!"
With a shout, Ann Vaughn sat up abruptly from the bed, her cheeks tacky with sweat, and her eyes filled with fear and bewilderment, unaware of the current time and place.
Her heartbeat raced, as if it wanted to leap out of her chest, the piercing pain radiating from the dream nearly suffocating her, leaving her gasping for air.
Sherry, awakened by Ann’s scream, sat up from the companion bed, but upon seeing Ann putting on a jacket and getting out of bed, she quickly asked, "What’s wrong? Tell me, and I’ll get it for you."
"No need, you go back to sleep, I’ll be right back!" Ann couldn’t suppress her increasingly rapid heartbeat, a vague sense of foreboding creeping in.
She grabbed the medicine box Sherry had brought, leaving the room and heading straight for the elevator.
The elevator doors happened to open just then, with Mark Joyce’s hurried form emerging. Upon seeing Ann, his eyes brightened immediately.
"Miss Vaughn!"
"Special Assistant Joyce!"
Both spoke at once, but Ann beat him to questioning, "You’re here at this time, has something happened to Cyrus Hawthorne?"
Mark Joyce nodded gravely, stepping aside to let Ann enter the elevator, while pressing the button for the direct floor.
"There are inhalable toxins in the room, we suspect an internal issue, and all related doctors have been detained. I can’t trust anyone, but I trust you."
Calmly listening to Mark’s words, Ann’s fine brows furrowed, "How could you be so careless?"
"We didn’t expect them to make a move on you."
"What do you mean?!" Ann was shocked, her delicate face turning pale.
Mark explained, "Upon investigation, the most suspicious doctor had brushed past you on your way up, you probably didn’t notice, but he had poisoned your clothing."
"This poison is hard to detect when used alone, but its effects are released when it interacts with a certain plant placed in President Hawthorne’s room."
Upon hearing this, all the blood in Ann’s body froze.
She hadn’t noticed anything odd about those doctors or nurses earlier, nor realized her clothes had been poisoned.
It was all because of her...
Ann’s body swayed slightly, her teeth biting her lower lip hard enough almost to draw blood.
Even the elevator’s ascend seemed unusually slow at that moment.
As they neared the seventeenth floor, Ann finally managed to smooth over her tumultuous emotions, asking Mark, "Since this arose because of me, why would you still come to me?"