Jack nodded back. No matter what happened, it had nothing to do with him anymore.
He had already done so much for the sake of their previous relationship.
But they should accept that it would be better if they ended their friendship.
He took a piece of tissue to wipe his hands with. "Rest well. I need to go back now. Call me if anything
happens."
He turned around and was about to leave, but Celine reached out and grabbed his suit. She held on to
it tightly as she stared straight into his eyes. "Don't go," she said in a coarse voice.
Beads of tears started to flow down from her eyes and down to her pillow.
He hesitated for a while as he looked at her. At length, he finally took her hand and placed it back in the
quilt. "The nurses are just outside. Call them if you need anything," he said in a calm tone of voice.
"I feel scared when you're not here.
But if you really have to leave, can I go with you? I don't want to be left here all alone."
Celine gritted her teeth and forced herself to sit up. The intravenous needle connected to her arm was
moved at an irregular angle and her blood started to flow into the tubing.
Jack felt that he had no choice but to pull up a chair and sit down next to her bed. "Go to sleep. I will
not leave," he said.
'Rachel must be asleep already,' he thought to himself.
The two never noticed that just outside the ward, a man proudly put away his mobile phone and left the
hospital with a brief smile on his lips and a spring in his steps.
He had had a stomach problem and gone to the hospital to have himself treated.
He never expected to see Jack with Celine in his arms as he hurried to get in.
At Rachel's apartment
It was already late but she remained sitting on the sofa. She barely moved from her initial position
when she first sat on the sofa earlier that evening.
It made her feel colder and colder the longer she sat there. Her body started trembling gently like she
was dropped into an ice cooler.
She called Jack's phone, but he was not within the service area.
She thought to call Austin, but she remembered that she had deleted all of his call logs, and she never
saved his contact information.
Rachel sat on the sofa like a statue. She stayed there, unmoving, until a bright ray of sunshine started
to push its way through the window and to her eyes.
It made her feel like her spirits were uplifted.
Rachel sighed deeply, as the disappointment slowly took a firm grip at her heart. She brought herself
up from the sofa and was about to prepare for work.
She dragged herself to the bathroom, and decided to just wash her face. When she got out of the
bathroom, she suddenly heard her mobile phone vibrating against the table.
'Did he finally call?' she thought to herself.
When all she saw was the name "Lucas" across the display screen of her phone, she felt a wave of
disappointment wash all over her.
"Hi, Lucas," Rachel greeted on the phone as she dried her hair.
"Where are you now?" Lucas asked.
"Still at home. Why? What's wrong?" Rachel felt that there was something odd with Lucas' call that
early in the morning. "Is there something wrong with Iris?"
"It's nothing, Rachel. I noticed that you've been working too hard lately. So, I decided to request a day's
off for you today. Enjoy your well-deserved rest at home!"
But instead of feeling happy for the thoughtful gesture that Lucas did for her, she felt uneasy about it.
She frowned and there was a feeling of apprehension in her heart that she just couldn't explain. She
felt that something bad was about to happen.
"Why did you request for a leave in my behalf? There's really no need for it." "It's nothing. I just want
you to slow down a little bit and take some rest," Lucas explained.
Normally, even if she worked late at night on an overtime, she could still go to work the next day. It was
normal for doctors to have odd hours of work.
"There's nothing important in the hospital today that requires your attention. You can take the day to
have a rest. Anyway, there is something that I need to take care of. Talk to you later. Bye!"
He had no idea how to explain to Rachel why he suddenly decided to do what he did.
He could still remember clearly the words that he said to Rachel when he came out of the director's
office yesterday. He never expected that those words would prove to be wrong that soon.
Rachel stared at her phone long after they ended the call. She planned to call him back to ask more
about the matter, but Lea's call interrupted that call and she had to answer it first.
The morning made her feel so busy as the phone calls came one after the other.
"Are you okay, Rachel?"
"Why would I not be okay?" Rachel thought that it was odd that they all acted strange that day.
First it was Lucas and now it was Lea.
"Don't push yourself too hard, Rachel. You know you don't have to do that. You can cry to me if you feel
like you need to. Jack is such a bastard. Don't let me see him again!"
Henry pulled Lea's arm when he heard her words.
He never expected that a beautiful woman like Lea could have such a bad temper.
Lea held the phone tightly in her hand as she relaxed her other hand on her hip. Her belly had started
to bulge as her baby grew within. An intense feeling of anger made her curse under her breath.
"Don't forget about fetal education," Henry reminded her in a gentle tone of voice.
"Stop bothering me!" Lea glared back at him. The more she saw his face, the more disgusted she felt
because of what she found out that morning.
Why did she ever thought that he was so handsome from the very start?
Henry's eyes widened in disbelief. "What are you talking about? Mind what you're saying!"
"Birds of a feather flock together. Jack has been your friend for a long time. I am starting to think that
you're not so different from him."
Lea then bent her head down at her belly and affectionately touched it. "Baby, I understand how hard it
is for you to have such a father," she whispered to her tummy with a sigh of regret.
"Don't tell me that you don't know what kind of person I am, Lea."
Rachel could no longer hear the rest of Lea's words as her heart was suddenly filled with an intense
feeling of worry. Was it because of Jack that Lucas filed a one-day leave on her behalf?
'What happened to him?
Is he in some kind of danger?' she wondered to herself.
Different nasty situations flooded her mind. Rachel took a step back and let herself fall to the sofa. The
TV suddenly turned on.
She accidentally sat on the remote control of the TV and it was turned on.
She immediately reached for the remote control that she sat on and was about to turn the TV off when
her attention was suddenly drawn to the news that was currently playing on the screen.
It was the entertainment news broadcast on TV.
"Even though the CEO of MK Group has showed off his love for his wife at various banquets in the
recent past, our reporters were able to take some revealing pictures of the CEO last night. And this had
a lot of people talking. What is really going on?"
Watching and listening to the breaking news made Rachel's heart skip a beat. It felt to her like a cold
iron hand had gripped her heart tightly that it made her heart ache.
Most of the people on the video were blurred, but the faces of Jack and Celine were clearly visible.
Although the image was not very clear, Rachel could easily recognize the two at a glance.
There were pictures of Jack carrying Celine into the hospital with a worried face. He looked anxious as
he waited outside the door of the operating room. Then there was a picture of him with his head close
to her as he whispered something to her ear. Each picture shown brought shock to her that felt more
intense than the one before.
She felt so depressed that she didn't notice that her tears had already started falling.
She felt an intense ache that gripped her heart.
She then understood why Lucas filed a leave of absence for her and why Lea called her just to curse
Jack for what he did.
It turned out that everyone in the world knew about it, and she, of all people, was the last one who
found out about it. She had sat alone in the living room of the house and waited for him the whole night.
She had even felt worried about him.
She felt that she was so pathetic for what she did.
She now thought that she was taught the same lesson twice and yet she still fell down the same path
and made the same mistake a third time.
It was said that people learned from their mistakes, but she seemed to have failed to learn the lessons
from her previous mistakes.
Each time Jack was with Celine, he always took Rachel for granted.
She was so sad that her heart felt like it broke a hundred times over.
The perky voice of the reporter on TV caught Rachel's attention. "We have sent a reporter to wait at the
gate of the hospital. But we haven't seen Jack Fu come out of the hospital yet. It appears that..."
The reporter's wide smile as he gossiped about Jack made Rachel feel even more like a fool. She
turned off the TV and soaked the deafening silence that followed.
Her phone then started to vibrate excitedly.
She hadn't answered her phone yet, but she knew that it was a call about Jack. So, she decided to just
turn off her phone.
Meanwhile, at a downtown office
"Eric, come and take a look at this. What should we do here?" The colleague scratched his hair and
studied it for a very long time until he felt it best to find someone to assist him.
At this moment, Eric walked restlessly with his mobile phone in his hand. He kept mumbling something
unintelligible as he paced around. When he heard his colleague's voice, he replied back in irritation,
"Don't make a habit of asking me all the time. Why not just give me your salary instead?"
"I just wanted to consult with you about it. Why are you so angry all of a sudden?" the colleague asked
in an annoyed tone of voice.
Another colleague approached and nudged him gently. "Don't bother him today. Haven't you noticed
that he is not in a good mood?" he whispered as a warning.
The more Eric thought about it, the angrier he became. He had a habit of browsing the web before
going to work. But he never expected to see the latest news about Jack.
Eric remembered how Jack promised that he would spend the rest of his life with Rachel.
'How long has it been now?' Eric thought angrily.
He took off the work card on his neck and tapped the shoulder of the colleague who came to him for
help. "I have something that I need to take care of outside urgently!"
Now that he was a grown man, he felt that it was his turn to help Rachel who had always cleaned up
his mess in the past.
He decided that he had to confront Jack face to face about this matter.
Jack had blood transfusion the night before and had felt weak and tired the whole night. He didn't know
when he fell asleep on the edge of the bed. He woke up when Eric started pulling at his collar.
Otherwise he would've slept a few hours more.
"Eric, what are you doing? Let go of me!"
"You should be grateful that I don't beat you right now!" Eric felt bolder because he wanted to get even
with Jack in Rachel's behalf.
"What are you doing here? What's wrong with you so early in the morning?"
Jack quickly brushed off Eric's hand away and straightened his collar. He looked dazed and confused.
Eric pointed at his nose and sneered at Jack. He looked extremely irritated. "So, what's wrong with the
woman in bed, Jack?"
It was not until he heard Eric's question that he realized that he was still in the ward. Celine quietly
watched them with wide open eyes.
"Why are you even still here?" Eric added, not giving Jack a chance to respond.
Eric opened the latest news on his mobile phone and threw it to Jack. "Many people will sure to come
here and look for you later. There, read it for yourself!"
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