Chapter 418: Chapter 418
"That’s so strange! Why is Chairman Ian’s vitals dipping so much?"
The doctor in charge murmured after they had been able to stabilize him, "Check the ....."
He barked instructions one after the other, added,
"Ensure that there is an eye on him around the clock!" The doctor added and then stormed out of the room. None of the tired nurses around saw how shaky the man looked. In his mind, he tried to calm himself up, for he did not know what would happen to him if Ian Thornston died on his watch.
He brought his wrist up to check the time, ’About two hours before my shift ends...’ He lamented at that thought.
First, they did not know why Ian was comatose and then this? If he died, they were really done for!
However, this doctor would have vomited blood in its literal sense if he had heard what the nurses were talking about when he left,
"Maybe Chairman Ian is missing his wife!"
"Heheheheheeee... you and your naughty mind!"
"She just left a few minutes ago, and his vitals are dipping... like he had a heart attack just from missing her! How loving is that?!"
"Shut the fuck up! A man nearly died, and you still have time to joke as that love nonsense!" The third nurse, who hardly spoke, shouted at them. The two shut up, but that did not stop them from rolling their eyes at this person.
Ian’s lids registered faint movement, but none of the three in the room saw anything.
He floated in a strange, liminal space, a hazy void where time and reality twisted like a cruel mirage. That void felt familiar, yet foreign, painted in muted hues of grey and black, where shapes twisted and blurred at the edges of his vision. It was simply a sad place... wherever that was.
The air, or what passed for it, felt heavy, pressing down on him like an unseen weight. It wasn’t silent; a faint, eerie hum filled the space, punctuated by echoes of distant whispers, their words unintelligible but laden with foreboding.
He stood, or at least, he thought he stood, yet his feet found no ground, and his body felt weightless, suspended in nothingness. He turned in every direction, seeking an anchor, a way out, but all he found was more of the same: an infinite, oppressive haze stretching as far as his eyes could see.
Ian’s body lay motionless on the hospital bed, surrounded by the beeping of machines and muffled voices that reached his ears as though travelling through water.
He screamed, his voice a thunderous roar in his mind, but it did not even register as a whisper in the room. Ian tried to lift a finger, to twitch a muscle, anything, but his body was a prison, unresponsive and heavy, like a stone tied to his soul. He could do nothing! This was how he had been when that venomous woman had been there!
’Had she always been ?’
Aliya’s voice had been like nails on a chalkboard, dripping with malice as she recounted the unthinkable: his Elfin, lost and unaccounted for, the victim of circumstances so vile Ian could hardly bear the weight of the words. Ian did not care about those rumours in the media as he could take care of them, but his wife had to be there for him to do that!
That was all Ian got from Aliya’s words, but she had said with such relish, her cruel tone striking him like a physical blow. Ian clenched his fists in his mind, wanting nothing more than to lash out, to reach across the ethereal divide and claw her heart from her chest.
But he was powerless. When had he gotten so powerless?
’What is wrong with me?!!!!!’
He was trapped, his anguish an endless loop of soundless screams and impotent fury. The knowledge of his wife’s absence gnawed at him, a bitter reminder of his helplessness. In this in-between world, he was nothing, but a ghost tethered to a body he could not command.
Ian seemed to feel a presence around him, but his anguish was too much for him to make sense of that.
His mind filled with desperate images of Shelby.
Where was she? Was she hurt? Or worse? The thoughts and questions clawed at his sanity, threatening to pull him deeper into despair. Yet his rage at the Aliya’s cruel words anchored him, preventing him from succumbing entirely to the abyss.
’Why blame anyone? You know this of her already but choose to doubt and seek more clarification. You can’t blame anyone but yourself, Ian Thornston!’
Even as his mind screamed this to him, his other self, got more enraged as tears ran down his cheeks. He could even feel it, but Ian could do nothing.
The tears reminded him of when he had gotten extremely weak some moments before as if his very soul was being sucked out of him. He had no idea what that was, but Ian could do nothing but cuss.
"I’ll make you pay," he growled internally, the promise echoing in the void. It was all he could do—make silent vows and stoke the fire of his will.
"A man should not be indecisive!"
A calm male voice said, echoing all around him, so Ian was not sure who had spoken or the direction from which he had. However, he did not have the strength no did he care for who that person was.
Time lost meaning as Ian lay there, a consciousness detached yet bound, yearning for freedom. He needed to find her, to know the truth, and to exact justice on the one who dared to mock his pain and their bond.
Ian just needed to wake up!
"How are you going to that when you have no self-will?"
The same voice said, and this time, the weightless Ian jumped up to his feet,
"What? Who are you?!!"
This was the first time that Ian was flustered in front of a stranger. In the hospital room, his heart spiked for exactly a second and went back to normal.
The man who had appeared looked no older than Ian, but Ian got the impression that he was much older. Ian did not know why.
"That scene looks familiar, right?" The man said, disregarding the question. Ian turned. The scene that greeted him surprised him, but he made no move to show that. However, in the second, Ian rushed forward, only to hit an invisible wall. The man made no move to stop him as Ian punched with all his might, screaming like an angry man,
"Elfin!!!!!! Shelby?!!!!!"
After a while, Ian slumped down, spent and distressed,
"P-pleas-e h-elp me..." the voice that he knew like the back of his hand pleaded. It was then that his head cleared a bit, and he noticed that they were at the park where he had first met Shelby. That night that she had nearly died by James’s side! It was a repeat of the night, but his heart leapt at his indifferent past self! Ian wished that he could dip his hands into that memory and knock some sense into himself.
He forgot about the strange man, whom he found familiar, but had no time to examine his mind, to check where he had met him.
Ian watched on as his past self’s eyes glazed over, and his voice thickened up.
"What do I get in return?" His monotone voice, devoid of all emotions, asked, watching as his Elfin struggled, clinging to the last strings of life. The weightless Ian wept as he watched on.
’Give her everything!’ He shouted from the side, yet still, his past self said, "I hope you don’t regret this!"
"STUPID! STUPID!" Ian hit his head in frustration as if he had forgotten what had transpired that night. The man just watched on.
As Ian watched himself do these, he agreed that he was nuts, but this was not what he wanted to do! He needed to get back to the real world to find his wife. Ian understood that the man was the one making him watch this as he was powerless to stop it.
"Cal the fucking emergency services, what are you doing?!" Ian screamed! His heart breaking with each painful grunt left her lips as blood gradually soaked the scarf she had on.
He saw his past self-trying to stop the blood flow. Ian knew what was going to happen. He had already relived this memory, but that did not mean he could do it again. Ian did not have the emotional strength. Shelby was his literal life and her death would kill him! At least that was what he believed.
That time was a different instance when he had no feelings for this little girl who now had him wrapped around her finger.
’She won’t make it! No matter what I do.’
His past self’s thoughts reached out to him, and the memory blurred to the present and the accident scene.
He screamed in pain—a raw, guttural sound that echoed through the surreal void around him, yet no one could hear and the only person there did not react. The agony wasn’t physical; it came from a place deeper, a gut wound that tore at his soul.
It was the pain of watching someone you love, someone who had become the very essence of your world, standing on the precipice of death, slipping further away with every second. It did not matter that it was a memory... the effect was the same!
The scene played before him like a cruel, ghostly projection. Shelby’s fragile body lay crumpled and still, her chest rising and falling with laboured breaths. He reached for her, desperate to touch her, to pull her back, to do something—but it was all useless.
"No! Please, no!" he cried, his voice breaking as his legs buckled beneath him. He sank to his knees, clutching at the air, helpless against the tide of grief that crashed over him.
As the past Ian tapped his pockets and brought out a Swiss knife. The weightless eyes zeroed in on a person in the back scenes, and Ian squinted his eyes. His heart skipped a beat even though he had already seen this before. He was still not prepared to ’know.’
His attention was diverted as he noticed Shelby flinching back a bit from the knife and commended his past self for trying to reassure their wife. At least he was not all heartless through, but then,
Ian looked at the back and in the depth of the deep trees...
"It was really her!" Ian exclaimed, noticing another person in the back, making him frown. The second person was the reason why he had wanted to make sure that his analysis had been right... but then the man interrupted his thought,
"If you knew that Aliya woman was or had the potential, then you should have gotten rid of her and not placed my daughter in danger!"
It took a moment for the words to sink in for Ian,
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