Chapter 2

**Nora's POV**

I looked down, my blank gaze falling onto my hands.

Over the past three years, I had ruined them.

Constant washing, cleaning, and cooking in cold water had left my knuckles rough and slightly red. My skin bore various faint burn scars, and my fingertips were calloused from carving custom braille tools for him.

Below those hands, I was wearing a cheap, faded cotton shirt with slightly frayed cuffs.

Looking at myself, my mind drifted back to three years ago.

Back then, Ethan had just woken up from a horrific car accident. The doctors told him his optic nerve was severely damaged, and he might be permanently blind.

The golden boy of New York had fallen from his pedestal, and he completely lost his mind.

He locked himself in this VIP room like a wild animal, smashing every single object he could reach.

The sound of shattering glass and his desperate screams had terrified everyone.

Outside, his mother, Victoria Carter, was crying so hard she almost fainted.

All the doctors, nurses, and bodyguards were helpless. No one dared to go near the raging madman.

Except me.

I was just a poor student who had only managed to finish med school thanks to the Carter family's scholarship program. But back then, I don't know where I got the strength. I threw myself against the locked door, broke in, and ran through the shattered glass.

Amidst the chaos, Ethan was swinging a heavy metal IV stand.

Without hesitation, I lunged forward and threw my arms tightly around his waist.

"Get out! Everyone get the hell out!" Out of his mind with rage, Ethan violently shoved me away.

The force sent me flying backward, and the back of my head slammed hard against the sharp edge of a solid oak coffee table.

Warm blood immediately gushed out, blurring my vision and dripping onto Ethan’s hospital gown.

Everyone was terrified, but I didn't cry, and I didn't let go.

Fighting through the dizzying pain of a severe concussion, I crawled back to him, wrapped my arms around him again, and whispered in his ear over and over: "Ethan, you still have me. I’ll be your eyes."

The next day, with a thick white bandage wrapped around my head and my face pale as paper, I was right back at his bedside.

I took his hand, which was raw and bloody from his own self-destructive fits, and patiently taught him how to feel the world again, piece by piece.

Three years. Over a thousand days and nights.

I turned down a fully-funded residency program recommended by my mentor. I gave up a prestigious ophthalmology fellowship at a top clinic. I turned myself into a human crutch, a 24/7 on-call nanny.

I had thought that if you treated someone with unconditional love for three years, even a heart of stone would melt.

"Chloe, I don't blame you for what happened back then. I know your parents forced you. Come back. I’ll be waiting for you in New York."

Inside the room, Ethan’s tender promise felt like a vicious slap across my face.

My three years of absolute devotion were nothing but a pathetic joke.

It turned out he wasn't naturally cold. He had just saved all his tenderness for the ex-girlfriend who had called off their engagement and fled the country the very day he went blind.

And I, Nora Miller, was nothing but a cheap tool used to get him through his darkest nights—a placeholder to be discarded.

When disappointment reaches its peak, all that's left is a suffocating peace.

I began to step back slowly.

One step, two steps, moving away from that door that let in the light but would never belong to me.

Finally, on numb legs, I walked to the nurse's station at the end of the hallway.

I set down the thermos—still warm after a whole night—onto the counter.

"Nora?" the nurse on duty asked, surprised by my pale face. "Why aren't you going in? Ethan just got his bandages off. He must be starving."

I looked down at my disheveled reflection in the stainless steel thermos, a bitter smile tugging at my lips.

"I'm not going in." My voice was barely a whisper. I turned away, leaving the nurse with only the view of my retreating back. "If he asks, just say it's a patient meal from the cafeteria."

With that, I walked to the elevator.

The doors slid open slowly, then shut with a cold, metallic click.

I closed my eyes, letting the last trace of my hope, along with three years of my youth, crush into nothingness.

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