The moment the words left his lips, a powerful fist violently slammed into his face without warning.

"Ethan! I should have delivered this punch to you four long years ago!"

Discarding every shred of his professional decorum, Julian looked as though he desired nothing more than to grind the man into dust. "Clara loved you with everything she had for ten whole years! Because of you, she lost her baby and failed to see her mother one final time before she died, and now she's on the literal brink of losing her own life! How dare you trample over her devotion like this?!"

Inside the quiet corridor, the atmospheric pressure seemed to instantly drop tenfold.

His face frozen, Ethan wiped the trace of blood from the corner of his lip, a rare, piercing mockery flashing across his dark features. "She loved me? Then how do you explain the fact that she systematically ran to the hospital to carry out an illicit affair with you, and even wound up pregnant with your child?!"

"The year we graduated from high school, the love letter she clumsily stuffed into my backpack carried your signature at the bottom!"

Near the stairwell, Melanie, who had originally hurried to the hospital to witness the drama unfold, froze in her tracks, her heart hammering in sheer guilt, not daring to take another step forward.

The love letter...

Years ago, she had secretly swapped out Clara's original confession letter. She still vividly recalled the chilling fury on Ethan's face when he saw the signature at the bottom... But he hadn't mentioned it once throughout all these years, so why on earth was he bringing it up now?

"You absolute bastard!"

Driven completely mad by Ethan's words, Julian launched himself forward, swinging another fist toward his face.

This time, however, Ethan calmly sidestepped the blow. "Now that the mask has been ripped away, you're reacting with blind rage?"

The sheer certainty in his tone sent a wave of chilling desolation through Julian's chest.

He truly could not comprehend what kind of agonizing mindset Clara had been forced to maintain while enduring such horrific, unjust accusations...

Abandoning any further physical conflict, he simply stared at the illuminated red light of the emergency theater with bloodshot eyes, his tone dropping into a tragic, hollow whisper: "That confession letter back then—I watched her write it with my own two eyes before she personally slipped it into your backpack. Why on earth must you lie to trample over her sincere heart?"

"The child was yours as well. The hospital retains blood samples from the fetus; if you refuse to believe me, you are perfectly free to carry out a paternity test. Finally, as for why she always came to the hospital..."

He paused, slowly turning his head to look directly into Ethan's eyes, delivering each word like a heavy blow: "It was because she was diagnosed with ALS! She only wanted to live a few days longer!"

Boom—

It felt as though a massive explosion detonated right inside Ethan's ears. The indifferent mask on his face instantly fractured into a sharp, lethal glare, slicing toward Julian like a blade.

After a long silence, he spat out a clinical remark, "With a talent like that, remaining confined to a hospital is a complete waste of your skills. You should go write fiction instead."

His words projected absolute skepticism, yet his hands tightening into white-knuckled fists completely betrayed his internal chaos.

Julian offered no further defense.

However, the thread of dread coiling within Ethan's chest only continued to climb. He reached up, irritably yanking at his necktie, telling himself it was all a lie—there was absolutely no reason for him to lose his peace over a manipulative fraud.

Right at that moment, the surgical lamp suddenly extinguished, and the heavy doors of the operating room were pushed wide open.

Ethan took a sharp step forward, locking his gaze onto the exit. Two nurses slowly rolled a surgical gurney out into the corridor, and the form resting on the mattress was entirely covered by a stark white sheet—

"Deepest apologies. Halfway through the surgical procedure, the patient suffered an acute onset of her ALS. Her entire physiological system locked up completely, and we were entirely powerless to save her..."

Chapter 12

The air surrounding them seemed to be vacuumed away in an instant, and a massive, crushing weight caused Ethan's frame to violently stagger backward.

As the moving gurney rolled past his position, a stray draft lifted the edge of the white sheet, exposing a lock of dark hair.

With a sharp "clang," he suddenly reached out and clamped his hands around the handrails of the gurney.

The attending nurse looked up in absolute shock. "Sir, you..."

Ethan's breathing turned incredibly heavy, and a wave of panic—something that had never once entered his world—flooded his reddened eyes.

The hands hanging by his sides felt completely paralyzed, entirely lacking the strength required to lift the fabric and look underneath.

Staring at the desperate struggle written all over his face, Julian's tone turned incredibly biting: "You possessed a heart ruthless enough to murder your own child, yet you lack the courage to take one final look at Clara?"

The accusation stabbed like a blade directly into Ethan's chest, causing his features to turn a ghostly white from the sheer impact of the pain.

A heart that was already tightly constricted instantly lost every shred of its courage. It felt as though the moment he lifted that sheet, it would truly solidify as the absolute final look...

Marshalling every ounce of his remaining strength, he lifted his freezing hand and pinched a corner of the white cloth.

Just as he prepared to pull it back, a tragic, screeching wail caused his movements to instantly freeze.

Turning his head toward the sound, he watched a simply dressed, middle-aged woman sprint down the corridor while wiping streams of tears from her face. "My baby..."

She threw herself over the moving bed, her hands trembling violently as she yanked the white sheet away.

Catching sight of the youthful, pale face resting underneath, she erupted into a heart-wrenching sob: "My beautiful baby, Mommy is here! Open your eyes and look at Mommy!"

Staring at the entirely unfamiliar face exposed beneath the sheet, Ethan froze, the intense tension locking his nerves instantly snapping.

It wasn't Clara!

Right on cue, the doors of the operating room opened once more, and a surgeon clad in surgical scrubs stepped out into the hallway. "Are the family members of Clara present?"

Before Julian could offer a response, Ethan stepped forward ahead of him. "I am her husband. How is she?"

Julian glared at his profile, his brows knitting into a tight line of pure frustration.

The doctor pulled off his surgical mask. "The patient is temporarily out of life-threatening danger, but she must be transferred to the intensive care unit for close observation. If she fails to regain consciousness within the next seventy-two hours, she may slip into a prolonged comatose state..."

As the words left his lips, Clara was wheeled out of the theater.

Her head was tightly bound in layers of white gauze, and her emaciated frame looked as though it were entirely swallowed by the vastness of the hospital mattress. An oxygen mask occupied nearly the entire surface of her small face.

Ethan's heart tightly constricted.

The Clara lying before him right now was far more fragile and broken than at any other point in his memory.

Around the corner of the hallway, Melanie, who had taken in the entire sequence of events, stood with her face entirely bloodless.

Cold sweat coated her forehead, and alternating waves of heat and frost rippled down her spine.

Catching sight of Ethan preparing to follow the gurney down the hall, she turned on her heel and fled the building in absolute panic.

Watching Ethan's silhouette retreat into the distance, Julian finally turned back to the physician. "Dr. Chen, is there any other complication regarding Clara's condition?"

Driven by his professional intuition, he sensed that Dr. Chen was intentionally holding back part of the medical reality.

Dr. Chen remained silent for a long moment before offering a flat reply, "She will never be able to conceive a child again."

Julian's expression froze instantly. "What did you say?"

Dr. Chen's features turned incredibly solemn. "The physiological depletion caused by her recent abortion procedure hadn't fully recovered, and the vehicular collision inflicted severe, irreversible trauma upon her uterus. Consequently, it is a medical impossibility for her to carry a child in the future."

Hearing those words, an even heavier weight settled onto Julian's chest.

Within the span of a few brief days, she had systematically lost her child, lost her mother, and was now stripped of her fundamental capacity to ever become a mother again. Was she truly strong enough to survive such a catastrophic sequence of blows?

Faced with the profound worry etched across his features, Dr. Chen let out a heavy sigh. "Let's try our best to wait until the family member's emotional state has stabilized before breaking the news to her."