Tears slipped into my hair. Wasn’t I used to this already?
By the time the nurse found me, everything was fading. Voices sounded far away.
“Head injury! She’s bleeding a lot, call the doctor now!”
Then darkness.
When I woke up again, my head hurt and everything felt heavy. Because of the injury, I had to stay longer. Hudson never came back. Not once. But I knew why. He was with her. Of course he was. I didn’t call him. Didn’t text. What was the point?
On the day I was getting discharged, the housekeeper called. “Miss Mika, about Mr. Hayes’ birthday banquet this year, how would you like to arrange it?”
I held the phone and stayed quiet for a while.
Birthday.
I used to handle it every year. His family never cared about things like that. Power, money, business… that’s all they saw. Not him.
I remembered the first birthday I attended. Everything looked perfect, but there was food he couldn’t eat. Something that could trigger a reaction. I saw him later, alone, taking medicine quietly.
“Why didn’t you just tell them?” I asked back then, my chest tight.
“What for?” he said, not even looking at me. “They don’t give a shit about that. As long as the company’s running, that’s enough for them.”