Me After Meeting You

“Then why did say that you brought him home? And before that, he was even at your place naked ….”

“It’s all a big misunderstanding.” Amber was much more direct with her brother. “The two of us are in the same boat. At any rate, you have to believe me-you can’t start making a disturbance like mom!”

Having a sister like Amber truly exhausted one’s heart! Ruby shook his head. “If you’re not with him, then don’t act so intimately with him. It’ll cause misunderstandings.”

Amber was surprised that Ruby would make such an insinuation. “Why do you care so much about this?”

It was just an innocent question, but Amber the gulped.

“What opinion could I even have? It’s just that I feel like you’re not very sincere about this. In fact, your ambiguous statements about your relationship with him only makes me even more curious. It wouldn’t be bad if you were really in a relationship, since I could even get some useful connections out of it.”

“Aside from business, is there anything else in your mind?!”

“You, and our parents. Besides money, the three of you are the people I love the most in this world.”

Amber harrumphed. “Actions speak louder than words, and just having a silver tongue won’t save you.”

Ruby chuckled.

The siblings were extremely close, so close that Amber didn’t even notice the small bit of guilt in his laughter.

As they talked, they reached the hospital. Amber went to work, and Ruby, not wanting to return home and be nagged at again, said, “I’ll wait for you to finish. Call me when you’re done with work.”

“You’re going to wait for that long? It’s only about noon right now.”

“That’s fine. I’ll wait for you no matter how long you take.” Ruby waved his phone as he continued, “My friends are asking me to go play cards with them. Just let me know in advance when you’re ready to leave.”

Amber nodded, and as Ruby was about to drive away, he got a message on his phone “It’s the new year … I really didn’t expect that this would still happen in the end. I clearly met you first”.

The tone of the message was so bitter that Ruby’s teeth ached just from looking at it. He glanced at his sister standing out the window, cowardly deleted the message, threw his phone to the side, and summarily left without another word.

His phone was thrown into a corner of the passenger seat, so he didn’t see the following message “He sees you in broad daylight, but I can only hide in a corner”.

The car drove away. It was still early in the day, but there were already the sounds of fireworks in the air. As that weak light from the phone, along with that line of text, slowly faded from view, silence reigned once again.

Amber was only able to say, “Be careful,” before Ruby’s car rapidly drove out of sight. She shook her head in annoyance as she walked up the stairs to the hospital, her hand carrying her lunch box. When her colleagues saw her, they rapidly swarmed her. “What food did you bring us?”

“Dr. Camille is the only one who remembers that we’re here.”

Everyone happily dug in as Amber looked through the day’s records. As she flipped through the pages, a nurse came up to her. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, Dr. Camille, your boyfriend came over to visit Elly.”

Amber was a bit surprised, and immediately put down the records and walked over to Elly’s ward. When she reached the corridor, she saw a man wearing a windbreaker.

It was Calvin, not Ian.

At the same time that she realized the visitor’s identity, she also realized, somewhat shockingly, that she had started tacitly considering Ian as her boyfriend in her heart.

As a psychiatrist, Amber was very clear on what accepting Ian as her boyfriend in her heart represented, while not necessarily love, it meant on some level that she had acknowledged him.

She had been too overconfident about treating Ian’s illness with her relationship strategy, and now, she had become embroiled in this whole affair.

Amber caressed her forehead as she stopped in place with a somewhat bewildered expression on her face. By that time, Calvin had already turned around and was looking at her.

She could only steel her expression and walk over.

“Happy New Year,” he said with a smile.

“Happy New Year.”

Beyond the standard greetings, there weren’t many other words for the two of them to exchange. Calvin awkwardly said, “Since it’s the new year, I came to check on how she’s doing.”Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

The two of them then turned to the window together to look at Elly. She was doing much better than before. Although her thoughts were still somewhat chaotic and disordered from time to time, and although she still didn’t like bright environments, she was already able to communicate normally with the people she was familiar with.

And she had also picked up her old hobbies again. Today, there were constantly fireworks and firecrackers going off in the streets outside, and the loud noise drew almost all the patients to their windows. But Elly remained in her bed, just drawing very seriously under the little lamp by her bed.

Of course, her drawing posture was still very different from the norm. She gripped her pen forcefully, and her expression was always somewhat fierce, as if she were venting her emotions rather than creating a piece of art.

“She’s much better now, as she can already hold a normal conversation with people and think for herself. However, her recovery process still has a crucial hurdle that she has yet to overcome-she has to restore her personality and to properly understand and accept her past. In other words, she has to face reality.”

Once Elly regained her personality, she would naturally start recovering and move towards a healthy mindset; but if she didn’t, then she might very well relapse and degenerate into her previous state. Elly’s past was, without question, filled with pain and hardship.

She was already fifteen, but her life was almost completely devoid of normal kinship or love. Her memories were filled with constant fear of being harmed and frightening humiliation, so Amber had to be very careful, slow, and methodical about how she approached her mental condition.

“Before we start trying to bring her personality back, I’d like to try my best to establish a familiar and stable environment around her until she feels sufficiently secure. For this reason, there may be a period of time during which her family will be unable to directly meet with her.”