I did not know how long it had been when I woke up.

My attending physician, Dr. Tara Wells, looked at me gravely and warned me, "Do not let yourself get worked up again. Your surgery was very successful, but after surgery, the most important thing is to stay calm. Emotional swings that intense can cause you to cough blood and pass out like today. In severe cases, they can be life-threatening."

I stared at the ceiling and forced myself to control my emotions.

Joanna's message notifications kept sounding beside me.

I did not even have the strength to read them.

So I asked the housekeeper to read them for me.

The housekeeper cleared her throat awkwardly and spoke with care.

"Adrian is doing a little better today. The doctor said I am his medicine. As long as I stay with him, he will recover quickly. You have no idea how happy I am watching him get better."

"Adrian loves pear blossoms. It's been snowing these days, and all the white reminds him of them, so he's been overjoyed."

Then, as if afraid I would get angry, the housekeeper tried to defend Joanna.

"Sir, I think those are just polite words from Ms. Cross. This next sentence is probably what she really wanted to say. I will read it to you now."

"Mason, the strawberry cake from the west side bakery is very good. I will buy you one later."

"See? Ma'am still loves you the most. Even when she is beside that man, she is thinking about you."

...

After that, I could no longer hear what the housekeeper was saying.

I closed my eyes and let the tears slide down.

I was allergic to strawberries.

For someone with a heart condition, a serious allergic reaction could even be fatal.

I never touched strawberries.

The person who liked them had never been me.

It was Adrian.

My brows drew together. I bit my lower lip against the ache in my chest.

Dr. Wells added new medicine to my IV.

"Since you are in this much pain, I will increase the pain relief. Remember, do not get emotional."

When the medicine took effect, my mind cleared again. I nodded along with Dr. Wells.

"Don't worry. I won't."

I messaged my lawyer.

Draft a divorce agreement for me. I want to divorce Joanna Cross.

She was tainted.

I did not want her anymore.

Naturally, I would no longer let my emotions fall apart because of her.

For ten whole days, I ignored Joanna. Once I stopped paying attention to her, my body recovered quickly. The doctor said I could be discharged.

I moved into the studio where I used to run my counseling practice.

Then I sent Joanna the divorce agreement.

Her calls came in like madness.

I hung up again and again.

Half an hour later, Joanna knocked on the studio door.

The housekeeper had been following me and taking care of me the whole time, so I was not surprised Joanna arrived so quickly.

I opened the door.

This was the first time Joanna and I had seen each other since the surgery.

She froze in the doorway. The urgency on her face stiffened into pain.

"You... why have you lost so much weight? Did the housekeeper not take care of you?"

"I did not want to eat. I had no appetite." I mocked her. "Why are you here? What if Adrian gets upset and tries to kill himself?"

Joanna opened her mouth, but not a single word came out.

I turned and sat back down on the sofa. Just opening the door and saying a few words felt as if it had drained all the blood and energy from my body.

I could barely stand.

Joanna reached out to touch my face, but I avoided her.

"I will not divorce you."

Her tone left no room for discussion.

I lay down and replied weakly, "Suit yourself. Once we have been separated long enough, I can sue for divorce."

Joanna half-kneeled in front of me and took my hand.

"Mason, Adrian and I grew up together. I admit I once loved him, but now I only see him as a younger brother. I was sickly as a child. A fortune teller said I would not live past twenty-five. The only way to change my fate was to save lives all over the world and build good karma. Adrian went to Africa as a volunteer doctor to save my life. We had agreed that when his two-year term was over, he would come back and marry me, but then he disappeared. I searched for him for three years. I often think that if I had kept searching, maybe he would have come home sooner. Maybe those foreign monsters would not have tortured him until he lost his mind..."

Joanna paused.

Her voice choked. "I owe him. It is only guilt. I cannot watch him become this broken, confused person and do nothing. I have to save him. I am his medicine, do you understand? Mason."

My heart, which had not hurt for so long, was thrown into chaos by her words. I nearly fainted.

I struggled to speak.

"Nonsense."

But Joanna did not care what I said.

She held me tightly and said, word by word, "I will not divorce you."

Her tight embrace made it harder and harder to breathe. In the end, I could not even sit upright. I curled into myself.

Joanna panicked.

"Mason, what is wrong?"

I reached for the medicine Dr. Wells had prescribed and placed it under my tongue, but this time, it did not work.

The pain was unbearable.

My hands and feet went ice-cold, and it felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.

I did not even have the strength to answer.

Joanna lifted me into her arms.

"Wasn't he already better? Why is it this serious?"

Then she called Dr. Wells.

She asked anxiously, "Why is Mason in pain?"

I only heard Dr. Wells say, "His condition has stabilized. He should not be hurting anymore unless he is pretending."

Joanna fell silent.

After she hung up, her phone rang. I saw it clearly. It was a message from Adrian.

Joanna glanced at it and stood up without hesitation.

"I have to go."

I called her name.

"Joanna."

Thousands of words were trapped in my chest.

I wanted to ask her why she believed a doctor but not me.

Why she turned a blind eye to my pain.

Why she chose Adrian again and again.

But I had no strength to ask any of it.

Joanna left only one sentence behind.

"You heard what Dr. Wells said. There is no point in acting anymore."

Then she walked away without looking back.

I fell heavily from the sofa, laughing and crying as I rolled on the floor in unbearable pain.

The housekeeper called 911 in a panic.

I was sent to the nearest hospital.

In a daze, I saw Joanna's figure. Adrian stood beside her.

Everything went quiet, and only Adrian's voice remained.

"Honey, you are really pregnant. I am going to be a father. Just thinking about it makes me feel like I am getting better. Are you happy?"

"I am happy."

Those two words from Joanna were too heavy for me to bear.

I closed my eyes, and my heartbeat stopped.

I never expected to wake up again.

The machines beeped around me.

I looked around. Joanna was nowhere to be seen.

Only the housekeeper and the doctor stood beside the bed.

Adrian's words about becoming a father echoed in my head, unreal and distant.

I asked the housekeeper.

"Did Adrian say Joanna is pregnant? Did you hear it? Do not lie to me."

The housekeeper nodded with difficulty.

I could not control my trembling. I felt so cold I was almost losing body temperature.

A younger brother?

All lies.

The doctor looked at me with frustrated concern.

"Stop crying. Someone else's pregnancy has nothing to do with you. You should care more about yourself. Your condition is very bad."

My brain roared.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean, very bad?"

"Wasn't my heart surgery successful?"

The doctor shook his head.

"Do not get agitated. Let us speak calmly, or your condition will worsen."

He showed me the reports and scans.

"You do have an incision on your chest, but it appears you never received a heart transplant. Also, you have recently been using large doses of cardiac pain medication. Your heart is already overburdened and at the end of its strength. Our recommendation is that for this month, you take only basic medication and go see the people you want to see."

I tried to process the doctor's words.

In the end, I felt helpless, as if I were drowning.

"I was lied to. Tara Wells was hired by Joanna. She has been lying to me. Joanna lied to me. She said the surgery succeeded, but she pushed me onto a dead end. She gave me hope, then let me fall into despair. Why? Why would Joanna do this to me?"

The blows came one after another. I could not accept them.

I spat out a mouthful of blood.

The housekeeper was terrified and hurried to support me.

"No, no. How could Ms. Cross not want you to live? She searched everywhere for a heart for you. She even had herself tested. If she had matched, she would have given her life to save yours without hesitation. How could she let something happen to you? There must be something else behind this."

I doubled over in pain.

Maybe Joanna truly had wanted me to live before.

But Adrian had come back.

Everything had changed.

The doctor held me down.

"Do not get emotional. You really will die."

Then he injected me with medication.

I grabbed my phone and called Joanna.

Even if I died, I wanted to die knowing the truth.

But the call would not go through.

Joanna had blocked me.

I kept calling anyway. Over and over, more than three hundred times.

I was like a trapped animal, ramming myself against the bars again and again until my head was bloodied, yet still unable to escape.

The doctors kept injecting me with medication, and I gradually stabilized.

The housekeeper pointed at the doctor in front of us and said, "You must have misdiagnosed him. My sir is going to live a long life."

Then she took me to other hospitals.

For three days, I saw countless doctors, but every answer was the same.

There was no treatment.

Rest well, and maybe I might live to see spring.

On the first day after I woke, I sent Joanna a message.

[My heart condition is not cured. Other doctors say I only have a few days left.]

Finally, on the third day, she replied.

Joanna asked me instead:

[Dr. Wells already said you were fine. Mason, stop lying. I know you are unhappy that I am with Adrian, but I promise you, I love you. I only see Adrian as a younger brother. For the rest of my life, my husband will only be you.]

Joanna said Dr. Wells was trustworthy.

But Dr. Wells had already disappeared.

In three days, I dug up everything about her.

She was Adrian's close friend. They had studied at the same university abroad, and she had once been Adrian's most passionate pursuer.

Seven years ago, Adrian stubbornly went to become an international doctor. Tara followed him, but she soon returned alone, without Adrian.

Only now did I understand that Tara had known something had happened to Adrian back then.

After returning, she had deliberately approached Joanna.

At that time, Joanna had spent three years searching for Adrian like a madwoman. She wrecked her own body, damaged her heart, and her attending physician was Dr. Wells.

Her therapist was me.

[Tara Wells is lying to you. That fraud has disappeared. You may not know the truth, but Tara Wells and Adrian Shaw are not innocent.]

I sent Joanna photos of the blood I had vomited over the past three days, diagnoses from more than thirty doctors in other hospitals, and all the information I had found about Tara Wells.

But Joanna only replied:

[Be good. Do not use AI. Dr. Wells is an old friend of mine and does not know Adrian. I trust her, Mason. This is not the time to be jealous.]

[I am not jealous. Everything I said is true. I also suspect Adrian has not forgotten anything at all. His innocence is all an act.]

I did not believe Tara Wells alone had the courage or ability to harm me and then leave safely.

If Joanna had not interfered, then it could only have been Adrian.

[Enough! I will not allow you to slander Adrian.] Joanna was angry.

[I will block you for now. Take care of yourself. While I am gone, the housekeeper will look after you. Remember, do not appear in front of me and Adrian.]

I tested it by sending one word.

[Wife.]

What I received was the unsent mark.

Joanna did not believe me.

She believed Adrian.

Again and again, I sent her messages.

[Why don't you believe me?]

[Joanna, you have been lying to me all along.]

[I do not want to love you anymore.]

[I hate you.]

But every message stayed gray.

The pain reached a level I could no longer endure.

I drank all the pain medication.

The doctor had advised against it, but it hurt too much. It really hurt.

Joanna, my heart really hurt.

I vomited more and more blood, staining the message where Joanna had once promised to spend her life with me.

Snow covered the whole world in cold white.

I laughed, and tears fell with the laughter.

But Joanna, I would not live to see three months from now.

I was going to die in this winter.