Chapter 3

My father came in carrying two bowls of porridge.

He glanced first at Roger on the bed, then at Ivy,

and finally handed one bowl to my mother and set the other in my hands.

"You've been running around all day. Eat something."

His voice was flat, giving nothing away.

But as I looked down at the bowl, my hand started to shake.

After I was brought back to the Edwards house, my father was the one who spoke to me least.

A single day of talking to Ivy added up to more than a whole month with me.

In my last life, after Ivy's accident, he didn't say one word to me for two full weeks.

Then the first thing he said, standing beside my mother, was to call me cold-blooded, and he beat me until I lost hearing in both ears.

The chicken and rice porridge was still hot, and I sipped it in small mouthfuls,

tears dropping into the bowl, swallowed down with the porridge.

Ivy cried herself out, then straightened up and wiped her face.

She turned and saw me by the window with the porridge, and came over with a complicated look to sit beside me.

"Iris, thank you for today. You called 911 in time."

"It was nothing." I set the bowl down and turned to her. "Don't carry it. Roger chose to save you himself. No one blames you."

Her eyes reddened again. "But I heard everything the relatives said."

"Don't listen to them." I reached over and patted the back of her hand.

She looked at me, her lips moving, her eyes redder still.

And looking at those tear-reddened eyes, what I was thinking about was something else.

In my last life, when my parents beat me, she was there too.

She was lying in the hospital bed, still wrapped in bandages,

watching my father knock me to the floor with a slap, watching my mother drag me by the hair and slam my head against the wall.

All it would have taken was one look from her to make my parents stop.

But she didn't say a word.

And she didn't lift a hand to stop them.

That was when I understood.

There was a bond between the Edwardses that I could never break into.

The moment anything went wrong, I, the outsider, was always the first one held to account.

But this life, I hadn't done anything.

The one it happened to was Roger, the only son of three Edwards generations.

The family that had huddled together now seemed to be pulling apart.

Once the porridge was done, Roger's anesthesia wore off completely and he began crying out in pain.

Ivy started to go call a doctor, but my mother gently blocked her.

She turned to me. "Iris, go get the doctor."

Ivy's eyes were red, glinting in the light,

and she said softly, "Mom…"

My mother acted as if she hadn't heard, walking straight to my brother's bed, wiping her tears as she tucked the corner of his blanket.

But the next second, Roger passed out again from the pain.

This time, he slept for three full days.

It was only after Roger woke that he truly grasped what those amputated hands meant.

That morning, a nurse came to change the dressings.

When the bandages came off, he looked down.

Then his whole body went as if nailed to the bed, staring at the raw wound of his amputation without moving.

He moved his arms in disbelief, and got fresh blood welling up from the wound.

His voice was dry, his lips trembling wildly, as though something had struck him in the throat.

"Nurse, my hands… where did they go?"

The nurse didn't answer, keeping her head down as she wound the bandage.

Roger's voice shot up all at once, the veins standing out on his neck.

"I'm asking you! What happened to my hands?"

The piercing sound reached my mother out in the hallway.

She rushed in from outside and pressed down on Roger's shoulders,

her eyes filling with tears in an instant.

"Roger, don't get worked up, the doctor says the wound still needs to heal, don't rush—"

"How am I supposed to not rush?"

Roger stared hard at the stumps wrapped up tight in bandages, roaring in refusal to accept it.

"Mom, I'm a surgeon. These hands were supposed to feed me for the rest of my life!"

He tried to lift his arm to pound the bed, but his hands couldn't even make a fist.

The pain from the wounds bent him double, and his face went white in an instant.

My mother wept, her heart breaking, her shoulders jerking with each sob.

Ivy stood in the doorway of the ward, holding a thermos of soup.

Her lips moved, and she started to push the door open.

My father came up behind her, took the thermos from her hands, his face going colder.

"Don't go in yet."