Chapter 3

He replied instantly: "The special medicine needs to be shipped from abroad. Half a month at the fastest. I'll coordinate it for you."

Marcus, my childhood friend.

He was an otolaryngologist at the hospital.

Two years ago he told me that a new biological drug from abroad had a 90% cure rate for my type of hearing loss and muteness.

Two million dollars per treatment course.

He said he would pay for it.

I flatly refused and didn't tell Ethan either.

Not because I didn't want treatment, but because I was afraid of crushing this family.

Now it seemed my worry was too unnecessary. This family had long since fallen apart.

During the days waiting for the medicine, Ethan was considerate to the extreme.

He would get up at dawn and wait in line for three hours to buy me the little cakes I loved.

He would insist on taking Lily to the rehabilitation center and patiently teach her to call me Mommy.

He would blow on the medicine until it was warm and feed it to me spoonful by spoonful.

I had seen what it looked like when he loved me, so I understood he was trying his best to perform love.

The medicine became increasingly bitter.

On a whim, I sent the medicine to Marcus for analysis.

When I learned the test results, Marcus panicked and asked anxiously,

"Long-term use of this medicine will severely damage the auditory nerves and worsen hearing loss and muteness. How long have you been drinking it?"

Five years.

I had drunk it for five whole years, not missing a single day.

Everything before me became blurred.

I was wrapped in bone-chilling cold, my clothes soaked with cold sweat.

The tenderness of my former bedmate had actually been pushing me into an irredeemable abyss.

I pulled myself together and persisted with treatment under Marcus's professional rehabilitation.

Ethan knew nothing about all this.

I began practicing making sounds. My throat vibrated, producing weak and unclear sounds.

"Li...ly."

When my daughter heard me speak for the first time, she threw herself tightly into my arms.

"Mommy!"

I wrapped my daughter in my embrace, tears pouring out.

I could finally speak up for myself and my daughter.

The next day, while I was doing rehabilitation exercises at home with Lily, Ethan's mistress came straight to the door.

"Hello, I'm Vivian."

After speaking, she walked right past me into the living room.

Vivian looked around, her face full of disdain, and spoke arrogantly.

"There are some things that Ethan is too soft-hearted to say to you. As his future wife, I have no choice but to take the trouble to say them myself."

The woman took out a voice recorder and pressed play.

Ethan's contemptuous, arrogant voice came through.

"She will never be able to speak again in this lifetime."

"I watch her gesture in sign language every day, like a monkey. It's really laughable."

"She's actually secretly working to save money for treatment, exhausting herself like a dog every day, and still can't earn a fraction of what I make. She might as well be reborn as a dog--at least then she could bark a few times."

I clenched my fists. My whole body trembled.

A surge of anger shot straight to my head.

Vivian stepped closer in her high heels, looking down at me condescendingly.

"Did you hear that, mute? You really think he's been searching the world for medicine for you? Dream on! When he was supposedly looking for medicine, he was in bed serving me!"

Her eyes rolled, and she smiled even more arrogantly.

"Oh, right, there's good news too. I'm pregnant, with Ethan's baby."

Vivian saw my stunned expression and became even more triumphant.

"You don't really believe his manhood is broken, do you?"

The woman leaned close to my ear, enunciating each word.

"He lied to you because he finds you disgusting and hates that you gave birth to a waste of space. When he's with me, eight times a night isn't enough. More intense than you could ever imagine!"

After speaking, Vivian yanked my daughter out from behind me.