Eric imagined it clearly: the girl, Riley, sobbing gratefully as she collapsed into his embrace. ‘So innocent, so pure…Holding her close would feel incredible.’
It was an easy decision to make.
An empty room was perfect. No witnesses, no need to hide. He could finally focus entirely on the treatment… Eric eased the door open and carefully shuffled inside.
He forced himself to take small steps, wincing. He could feel the tell-tale dampness spreading beneath his pants, his stitches must have ripped open again. ‘Thank God for the thick gauze,’ he thought grimly, ‘or I’d be leaving a trail of blood.’
His eyes swept the room, searching for hidden cameras or listening devices before he allowed himself to relax even slightly.
Past failures had left him jumpy, almost paranoid. Now, before helping anyone, he instinctively scanned for annoyance pr threatgs. He still couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling of being watched.
He eased himself closer to the bed. Standing was agony, but sitting was impossible with his injury. Carefully, he reached out and took the old woman’s wrist in his hand, feeling for her pulse.
He drew a sharp breath through his teeth. “Damn… lucky to be breathing,” he muttered. “Just these needles won’t be enough. She needs herbs, and that too potent ones, to really pull through.”
His gaze landed on the bedside table, a fresh pen, a blank sheet of paper. “Right, the prescription,” he murmured. “Riley seemed sharp. She’ll know how to handle this.”
Fetching the herbs himself, brewing them, delivering the medicine, that would be ideal. But he was broke. And even if he had cash, no regular pharmacy would sell the… specialized ingredients he required.
He quickly scratched out the formula, tucking the paper under a water cup. Then, bracing himself, he began the intricate, demanding work with his needles, his so-called method.
Half an hour crawled by. Finally, Eric placed the last needle and let out a shaky, exhausted breath, sweat dripping down his temples.
It was only thirty minutes, just one sequence of the technique, but the intense focus had drained him. Standing perfectly still had been torture, every tiny shift threatening to rip his wound wide open.
He leaned in, fingers finding her wrist again. The pulse beneath his touch was stronger, steadier. This one treatment, he knew, had likely bought the old woman another year, maybe more.
A wave of fierce relief washed over him. ‘It had worked.’ After so many failures since leaving the mountain, failures that had chipped away at his nerve, he’d finally succeeded.
‘Yes!’ The legendary prodigy doctor, he, was back in business and confidence!
“Your grandma’s safe now, Riley,” he thought, a cocky grin spreading across his face. “Soon you’ll be thanking your hero properly…” The grin turned into a sharp wince as the movement sent agony lancing through his injured backside. “Gah, damn it!”
He froze, teeth clenched, waiting minutes for the throbbing pain to subside just enough to move.
Then, ever so slowly, he shuffled out.
In the dim hallway, facing the dark stairwell, he felt the fresh, warm wetness seeping through his pants again. Humiliation and pain burned in his chest.
Just as Eric painfully navigated the stairs down to the sixth floor, the old woman’s door swung open again. A man stepped inside. With his neat suit and gleaming gold-rimmed glasses, he looked smooth, sharp.
He moved quietly to the bedside. He noted the improved color in the old woman’s face, healthier, less frail than before. The oppressive feeling of sickness in the room seemed to have lessened considerably.
His eyes fell on the paper tucked under the water cup. He picked it up. A hurried scrawl covered the page, completely unreadable.
…
Later…
“A prescription, you say?” Alex listened to the report over the phone, one hand steady on the car steering wheel. He glanced towards the bright lights of the university library as he spoke, then ended the call and immediately texted Riley.
His message was brief: “Which dorm building?”
Riley had just walked into her dorm room after a long shift. She stared at the phone, her heart jumping. Behind the familiar large glasses, her eyes widened in surprise, then panic.
‘He wants to come here? Now?’ She looked out at the dark campus, then shook her head with a small, nervous laugh. ‘No way. Impossible.’
Another message popped up almost instantly: “Quick. Downstairs now. Got you something. Lots of your classmates around.”
‘He was really here? Right downstairs?’ Riley’s mind raced. She felt trapped, she couldn’t possibly refuse him, could she? He wouldn’t take no for an answer, not him.
Heat rushed to her face, her pulse hammering in her ears. Taking a shaky breath, she typed out her dorm number and hit send.
She had no idea Alex was actually still wandering near the university library, cynically soaking up the ‘scholarly atmosphere’. Only after her message arrived did he retrieve a shopping bag from his car and start heading casually towards her dorm.
Thankfully, Riley’s dorm building was on the opposite side of campus from Sera’s, minimizing the risk of an accidental encounter between those two.
Not that Alex feared confrontation. That kind of messy, emotional drama was for the heroes, the protagonists.
He was the villain, complications were dealt with, not wallowed in, especially when relationships, for him, were purely physical transactions.
Alex was more concerned that Riley wasn’t quite… ready yet for emotional things. Sera was mostly there, but Riley still needed work.
Now wasn’t the best time for them to know about each other… No, more accurately, it wasn’t the right time for Riley to know about Sera.
At the very least, he had to mold her into the kind of person he wanted first. He didn’t understand relationship drama, but he knew a thing or two about handling two women at once.
It was nearly ten at night. The campus was quiet, with only a few students around, mostly those heading back from late-night studying in the library, or couples returning after finding some privacy in grassy areas or little groves.
There weren’t many students on the paths, but the lights were still on. When he arrived downstairs at the dorm, the dorm supervisor walked him into the girls’ building.
Female students passing by looked surprised to see a man there, but they only glanced briefly. It wasn’t unheard of for male Supervisor to check girls’ dorms, and it was around nine o’clock, the usual time for checks.
Still, they’d never seen such a handsome Supervisor at the school before! The dorm supervisor went back downstairs after he reached the right floor.