(Jay's POV)
The liquid in the crystal glass was a bright, neon-green color that looked totally wrong under the dim library lights. My younger brother, Keigan, held it out with a completely blank face. His hands did not shake. His eyes were wide and empty, like a machine that was just running a program. He looked at me and said his voice was flat, totally devoid of any human emotion, that he had made this special drink just for his older brother. I reached my hand out to take the glass. I was confused and desperately trying to figure out how to calm his broken mind down.
Then, everything happened in a single second.
Jay flew forward. Before my fingers could even touch the cold glass, her small hand snatched it away from Keigan. I did not even have time to blink or shout her name before she raised the glass to her lips. She tilted her head back and drank the whole toxic liquid in one giant gulp.
"Jay, no!" I screamed, my voice tearing through the quiet library.
The empty glass slipped from her fingers and hit the thick rug with a dull thud. For a tiny second, she just stood there. Then, her eyes went wide with pure terror. Her face turned pale as white paper. She instantly slapped both of her hands over her throat, her fingers digging into her skin like she was trying to rip open an airway. Her chest heaved up and down as she tried to pull in a single breath, but her body refused to work. Her knees buckled under her weight.
She collapsed hard onto the ground.
"Jay! Jay, look at me!" I dropped to my knees so fast that the bone cracked against the floor, but I did not feel any pain. I gathered her small, shaking body into my arms, pulling her back against my chest. My heart was pounding like a wild animal against my ribs. "Jay, please, breathe! Look at my eyes!"
Her eyelids fluttered, struggling to stay open. She looked up at me, and I could see the sheer agony reflecting in her beautiful eyes. Her lips parted. She desperately tried to form my name. I saw her jaw move, trying to say Keifer, trying to tell me something, but absolutely no voice came out of her throat. Not even a whisper. Not even a gasp. Her throat was totally locked tight by the poison.
Her head rolled back against my shoulder. Her long eyelashes finally closed, and her body went completely limp in my arms. She fainted right there, leaving me in a world of absolute horror.
"Keiren!" I roared, my voice shaking the walls of the library. He was standing near the door, crying and shaking from head to toe. "Get the car keys! Now! Tell the guards to open the main gates!"
I scooped Jay up into my arms. She felt so light, terrifyingly light, like a leaf that could be blown away by the wind. I turned my fierce glare toward Keigan, who was still sitting behind his wall of books, staring at the spilled green liquid on the rug with no expression at all.
"Keiren, grab Keigan right now. Do not leave him alone in this house. Bring him with us to the car. Move!" I commanded.
Keiren wiped his tears quickly and grabbed Keigan's arm, dragging our middle brother out of the messy library. I did not wait for them. I ran down the long hallways of our high-security Philippine estate, holding Jay close to my heart. Every second felt like a year. My brain was screaming at me. I could not lose her. I absolutely could not live in a world where Jay did not exist.
We burst through the front doors into the humid night air. The black SUV was already waiting at the bottom of the steps with the engine roaring. I jumped into the back seat, pulling Jay across my lap, cradling her head so it would not jolt around. Keiren pushed Keigan into the front passenger seat and then climbed into the back next to me, his face wet with fresh tears.
"Drive! Go as fast as this car can move!" I yelled at the driver, slamming my fist against the back of the front seat. "Break every single traffic law! Just get us to the hospital!"
The tires screeched loudly against the gravel drive, and the heavy SUV launched forward through the open gates, flying down the dark, empty roads of the city.
Inside the car, the air was thick with panic. I held Jay's face between my trembling hands. Her skin felt cold, and a scary blue tint was starting to form around her lips.
"Jay, please wake up. Wake up for me, please," I pleaded, my voice breaking down into a sob. I rubbed her cold cheeks, trying to force some warmth back into her body. "You are going to be completely fine. We are almost there. The doctors are the best. Just open your eyes for me, sweetheart. Do not leave me here alone."
"She is a flirt," a cold, robotic voice muttered from the front seat.
I snapped my head up. Keigan was staring straight ahead at the dark windshield. His voice did not sound like my brother at all. It was flat and empty. "Jay does not deserve you, Kuya. She is just a flirt. She is bad."
"Kuya, shut your mouth!" Keiren cried from beside me, covering his ears. "How can you say that right now? Look at what you did!"
My fists clenched so hard my nails cut into my palms. A dark anger flared deep inside my chest, but I forced myself to take a deep breath and look back down at Jay's pale face. I knew Keigan's mental condition.
I knew that right now, the boy speaking was not my sweet brother Keigan. It was the defensive, broken machine created by our dead father's horrific abuse. He did not know what he was saying. He was totally detached from reality. I had to ignore his cruel words. I had to focus entirely on keeping Jay alive.
"Just drive faster!" I shouted at the driver again, ignoring the nonsense coming from the front seat. I pressed my ear against Jay's chest. Her heartbeat was too slow. It was a faint, irregular thud that terrified me to my very core.
The SUV finally veered sharply to the right, the tires screaming as we pulled up straight into the emergency bay of the hospital. The bright white lights of the entrance blinded my eyes.
"Help! I need a stretcher right now!" I screamed before the car doors were even fully open.
Medical staff came running out immediately with a white rolling bed. I jumped out of the SUV and carefully laid Jay down on the thin mattress. A team of four doctors and three nurses instantly surrounded her, checking her pulse and shining bright lights into her unseeing eyes.
"What did she swallow? What is her name?" a doctor shouted as they began pushing the stretcher down the wide hallway at a full run.
"Her name is Jay! She drank some kind of toxic chemical compound! It looked like a green liquid, maybe some kind of industrial mix!" I yelled back, running right alongside the stretcher, my hand tightly gripping Jay's cold, limp fingers.
"Her throat is completely closing up! We need to get her into the emergency surgery room right this second to clear her airway!" the main doctor called out to the staff.
We reached a pair of large, heavy double doors that had a bright red sign above them that read SURGERY. A large nurse stepped in front of me, putting her hands on my chest to stop my forward movement.
"Sir, you cannot come inside this room. You must wait out here in the hallway. We will do everything we can to save her life," the nurse said firmly but kindly.
"No! Let me go with her! I need to stay with her!" I begged, trying to push past her, but the heavy wooden doors swung shut right in my face, cutting off my view of Jay's pale body.
The hallway became completely quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner. I stood there, staring at the closed doors, my hands covered in the faint residue of whatever toxic stuff was on Jay's skin. My knees gave out, and I slid down the tiled wall until I was sitting flat on the cold floor. I buried my face in my hands.
"Please," I whispered into the empty air, tears finally streaming freely down my face. "Please, God, do not take her away from me. If anything happens to Jay, I will not survive. My heart will stop beating. I cannot breathe in a world without her. Take my life instead. Just let her live."
"Kuya! Help!" Keiren's voice suddenly echoed from the entrance of the hallway.
I forced myself to look up through my blurry vision. Keiren was trying to hold up Keigan, but Keigan's body had gone completely weak. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he crashed straight down onto the hard floor, completely unconscious. The intense mental strain and the massive adrenaline crash had finally broken his physical body.
"Nurses! Over here!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet.
Another medical team rushed over with a second stretcher. They lifted Keigan up and quickly wheeled him away down a different corridor to admit him into a regular hospital room. Keiren followed them, sobbing uncontrollably. I wanted to go with them, but my feet were glued to the floor right outside Jay's surgery doors. I could not move an inch away from her.
The minutes dragged on like hours. One hour passed. Then two. Then three. I walked up and down the narrow hallway, tracking the tiles with my shoes, counting every single second in my head. My mind kept replaying the image of Jay drinking that green liquid without a single moment of hesitation. Why did she do it? Why did she jump in front of me like that?
Finally, after four long, agonizing hours, the heavy wooden doors clicked open. A senior doctor walked out, pulling his blue surgical mask down around his neck. His face looked incredibly tired, but there was also a deep look of confusion in his eyes as he looked at me.
"Are you Keifer?" the doctor asked, wiping his brow.
"Yes! How is she? Is she alive? Please tell me she is okay!" I grabbed the doctor's green scrubs, my voice wild with desperation.
The doctor placed a calming hand on my shoulder. "Calm down, young man. She is stable. She is out of danger now, and she is breathing safely on her own."
I let out a massive breath that I felt like I had been holding for four hours. My shoulders dropped, and I felt a wave of pure relief wash over my body.
But then, the doctor frowned and tilted his head. "But I have to ask you a serious question. Why did this happen to her again? Why is she back here for the exact same thing?"
I froze. My mind went completely blank. "What? What do you mean again?"
The doctor sighed and looked down at his chart. "A few years ago, when she was a high school student at HVIS, she was admitted to this very same hospital. That time, she had swallowed industrial glue. It did massive damage to her internal lining. And tonight, she swallowed another toxic chemical mixture that targeted her throat area. Why does this girl keep drinking industrial toxins?"
The doctor shook his head in disbelief. "We had an incredibly difficult time in there tonight. The chemical reaction was trying to destroy her vocal cords completely. We had to work with extreme precision. We barely saved her voice. If we had been even ten minutes later, she would have been completely mute for the rest of her life. She is very lucky."
"Can I see her?" I whispered, my brain spinning out of control from his words.
"She is being moved to a private recovery room right now. You can go inside and see her in about one hour after the anesthesia wears off a bit more. Let her rest for now," the doctor said, giving me a small nod before walking away down the hall.
I stood completely still in the middle of the empty hallway. The doctor's words were bouncing around inside my skull like a loud echo. Last time also she drank glue. HVIS high school days.
Suddenly, a flood of old memories crashed into my mind. I remembered that specific week back in high school before Jay and I were not engaged. Jay had been hospitalized for days. When I had asked her back then why she was sick, she had looked me dead in the eye and told me that she had accidentally consumed something bad because of Kaizer , monster.
It was a complete lie.
The pieces of the puzzle finally slammed together in my mind, and the truth hit me like a physical blow to the stomach. My father did not do that to her back then. Keigan did. Keigan must have had a severe trauma episode back in that time too, and he must have mixed industrial glue into her juice. Jay had discovered it, drank it to protect someone, or suffered from his episode—and she had completely hidden the truth from me for years just to protect my little brother from my anger.
And tonight, she did the exact same thing. She saw the green liquid, she knew Keigan was dangerous during his episodes, and she took the poison herself so that I would not have to drink it.
A fresh wave of hot tears spilled over my eyelashes. I covered my mouth as a loud, painful sob tore out of my throat.
"Jay..." I whispered into the quiet hallway, my heart aching with a love so deep it felt painful. "You really are my sweet, beautiful meddler. You just cannot stop yourself, can you?"
I leaned my head against the cold wall, weeping openly. "You always sacrifice everything for me. Every single thing. And now... now you are sacrificing your own body and your own safety for my broken family too? How can you love me this much?"
After a few minutes, I wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I needed to see Keigan first before the hour was up. I walked down the opposite wing of the hospital until I found his room number. I gently pushed the door open.
The room was dim. Keigan was sitting up in the hospital bed, a white blanket pulled up to his waist. The cold, mechanical look was completely gone from his eyes. He looked like himself again—just a scared, tired teenage boy. Keiren was sitting in a chair right next to the bed, holding a small plastic cup of water.
"Kuya," Keiren whispered, looking up at me with worried eyes. "The doctor said Kuya Keigan fainted because his body was just totally exhausted and stressed out from the episode. He is okay now physically."
I walked closer to the bed. I noticed that Keigan had a small white paper cup in his hand, and he was slowly swallowing some round blue pills that the nurse had left for him. He looked up at me, and his eyes instantly filled with giant tears. His shoulders started to shake.
"I am really sorry, Kuya," Keigan sobbed, his voice cracking with genuine emotion. He looked so young and fragile. "I am so sorry. I did not mean to hurt Ate Jay. I swear I didn't. I just... I don't know what happened to my brain. I don't know why I made that drink. The monster was coming, and I thought... I don't know why I did it."
Seeing his real tears washed away any remaining anger I had left inside me. He was a victim of our father's cruelty just as much as anyone else. His mind was just broken, and he needed real help, not blame.
I stepped forward and placed a warm hand on top of Keigan's messy hair, smoothing it down gently. "Do not worry about it right now, Keigan. It is going to be okay. I am not angry at you."
Keigan looked up, wiping his nose with his sleeve. "Is Ate Jay, .. is she going to be okay?"
"She is out of danger," I told him with a soft smile. "But tomorrow, we are going to make some big changes. I am going to call the best psychiatrist in the country. We are going to get you the real professional treatment and help that you need so you never have to feel like this again. You do not have to fight the monster alone anymore. Okay?"
Keigan nodded his head quickly, letting out a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Kuya."
I gave Keiren a quick nod, telling him to stay and watch over our brother, and then I checked the watch on my wrist. The hour had finally passed. It was time.
I walked back down the long corridors toward the recovery wing. My heart started to beat fast again, but this time, it was because I was desperate to see her beautiful eyes. I reached room 402.
I took a deep, steadying breath, turned the silver doorknob, and stepped quietly inside the private room.
The room was completely quiet except for the steady, reassuring beep of the heart monitor. The white curtains were pulled back, letting the soft moonlight stream across the floor.
Jay was lying in the middle of the large hospital bed. Without her usual bright energy and loud laugh, her body looked terrifyingly little under the heavy white blankets. She looked like a tiny doll. Her face was still a bit pale, but the scary blue color was totally gone, and her breathing was deep and even.I walked over to the side of her bed on silent footsteps, as if a loud sound might break her. I sat down on the edge of the mattress and leaned over her.
I bent my head down and pressed a long, tender kiss right against her warm forehead. I kept my lips there for a long time, just feeling the solid reality of her skin, thanking whatever higher power existed that she was still here with me.
As I pulled back, I saw her long eyelashes twitch. Her eyelids slowly fluttered open. Her dark eyes were a little bit blurry from the medicine, but as soon as they focused on my face, a soft, familiar warmth filled them.
I looked down at her, a mixture of hot tears and a faint, emotional smile breaking across my face at the exact same time.
"Jay," I whispered, my voice thick with love and tears. "You are never going to stop meddling in my life, right? You just have to jump into every single fire for me."
Jay stared up at me for a second. She swallowed with a tiny wince, and then she parted her lips. Her voice came out incredibly slow, rough, and raspy like sandpaper, but it was there. It was her beautiful voice.
"Never, Keifer," she whispered slowly, a tiny, mischievous smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "You are completely stuck with this meddler forever."
A loud laugh mixed with a sob escaped my throat. I leaned down and wrapped my arms firmly around her small shoulders, pulling her up against my chest. She wrapped her thin arms around my neck, holding onto me just as tightly. We held each other close in the quiet hospital room, safe in the knowledge that no matter how broken the past was, we were going to face the future together.....