"Ah!"

The man stumbled and dropped to the floor.

I went down too, from the impact, the back of my head slamming hard into a fire hydrant beside me.

Warmth spilled out, and my vision blurred.

Not enough to stop me from seeing Miranda leap off the hospital bed and run straight at me.

On instinct, I reached out to her.

But she went right past me and gathered the man off the floor, her face full of tenderness.

"Michael, are you okay? Did it hurt?"

Then, without turning her head, she snapped at me, cold:

"Are you blind, or in some rush to the afterlife—"

I drew my hand back and gave a bitter laugh.

Laughing at myself for flattering my own feelings.

Miranda's whole body went rigid. She turned, saw clearly that it was me, and her face darkened further.

"Eric? It's you?"

Michael leaned against her, choking back tears.

"Miranda, don't blame Eric. He cursed me, shoved me, and I'll take it all! It's my fault you almost died!"

With that, he slapped himself hard across the face and apologized to me.

"Eric, you're right, I deserve to die!"

I hadn't said a word, and already he was putting on a show.

And Miranda, of all people, believed it.

She couldn't see how pale I was, couldn't see that I'd fallen too, couldn't see the blood running down into my black funeral clothes.

She just raised her hand and slapped me.

"When Michael said you refused to come to the hospital to be with me, and cursed at him, I didn't believe it! But I never imagined you could be this vicious! Coming all the way to the hospital just to pick a fight with him!"

"Do you have any idea that the smallest injury could kill him right now?"

"Are you taking your father's death out on him? Getting revenge?"

"If you're angry, come at me. Why torment Michael?"

Her three questions, one after another, only made me want to laugh. Laugh at eight years of devotion spent on the wrong person.

"Don't laugh! Say something!"

I opened my mouth and only then tasted the rust filling it.

My throat hurt like I was swallowing razor blades, and I couldn't get out a single word.

Miranda took it as an admission.

She grabbed me by the collar and forced the words out of me.

"Apologize to Michael! Or don't blame me for not mourning at your father's funeral!"

Cecily came back with the medicine and saw me forced down on my knees.

Her eyes went wild as she shoved Miranda aside and tried to lift me up.

And felt the blood on my back.

Both women's faces changed. Without a word between them, they both moved to hold me.

Michael suddenly clutched his head, retching without stop.

"Miranda... my head hurts..."

Miranda instantly pulled her hands back and caught Michael, who had already gone limp.

Cecily had gotten to me first and rushed me straight to the ER.

"Doctor, hurry, help him!"

Before the doctor could examine me, Miranda squeezed into the room with Michael, her eyes red, shrieking:

"Doctor, treat him first! He has late-stage brain cancer, and someone shoved him on purpose—now he's retching, his head hurts, and he's passed out!"

The doctor looked at the unconscious Michael and took over at once.

But still found a moment to call an intern over to clean my wound and stop the bleeding.

The intern brought us to the room next door, and the moment he saw the gash at the back of my head, deep enough to show bone, he flinched on instinct.

"I can't handle a wound like this. I'll go get another doctor for you!"

The one who came was Dr. Lambert, who had written up my medicine earlier.

She knew I was allergic to anesthetic, and looked at me, uneasy.

"I'll use acupuncture anesthesia to dull the pain, but it may still hurt a lot. Can you bear it?"

I nodded hard.

Even braced for it, the moment the needle and thread went through the scalp at the back of my head, the pain had me trembling all over.

Dr. Lambert couldn't work like that, so she had Cecily hold me tight.

By the time she'd finished twenty-four stitches, the pain had drained every trace of color from my face.

Dr. Lambert told Cecily:

"Take good care of your husband. Don't let him step out the door and come back hurt again!"

Miranda walked in just in time to hear those words.

The worry on her face vanished in an instant.

Her face black, she rushed over in a stride and yanked hard, trying to drag me out of Cecily's arms.

She couldn't budge me at all.

Seeing me cling to Cecily for dear life, she felt a fire burning in her chest.

"Eric, your father isn't even cold in the ground, and you've got time to chase after another woman? What do you take me for?!"

"Or is this your way of goading me into going back to mourn at your father's funeral?"

I looked at Miranda coldly, and with everything I had left, let the words drop light as air.

"My father's already been buried. No need to trouble yourself."

Her whole face went slack with disbelief.

"That's impossible! If I didn't come back to mourn him, how could he be buried? Have you forgotten your father's dying wish?"

The question made me want to cry and laugh at once.

Cry, because she still remembered my father's dying wish.

Laugh, because she'd broken her word and still had the nerve to interrogate me.

Cecily drove her heel hard into Miranda's shin.

"Can't you tell he's sick? Or can't you tell he's hurt?"

Miranda flinched at the pain, and the fury she'd been holding back finally broke loose.

"If he hadn't been vicious enough to shove Michael, how would he have fallen himself? He brought it on himself! If Michael weren't so generous, he'd already be sitting in a cell for assault!"

So Michael faking a coma was fine, but my real injury was something I'd brought on myself.

Under my cold stare, an inexplicable panic rose in her, and by instinct she reached to drag me again.

She caught the wound they'd just stitched.

I couldn't hold it in; the pain sent tears streaming down.

Cecily ignored her and reached up to wipe them away.

Miranda slapped Cecily's hand aside in a rage, grabbed her by the collar, and demanded coldly,

"When did the two of you start sneaking around behind my back?"

A filthy heart sees filth in everything.

I had no strength to explain, and no wish to. My head throbbed like it would split open.

The dark kept swallowing the edges of my sight.

So I simply let myself sink into that endless black.

Only somewhere in the dark, I thought I heard someone screaming.

"Stop hitting her!"

When I woke again, I was in a hospital room.

Cecily sat at my bedside, her lip and cheek all bruised.

Miranda stood off to the side like a bellhop, her own face marked up, a dried smear of nosebleed down her chest that was hard to look at.

They'd fought. That much was obvious.

Seeing me awake, Miranda spoke first.

"Eric, you go apologize to Michael, and I'll go back and mourn your father!"

Then she pointed at Cecily.

"And you. If you don't want a lawsuit, get down on your knees and apologize, then crawl back to France!"

Cecily shot up with her fist clenched. I held her back by force.

I looked at Miranda coldly.

"Cecily and I did nothing wrong, and we won't apologize. And my father doesn't need you to mourn him anymore."

Miranda let out a scornful laugh.

"I'm your father's daughter-in-law. That's no different from a real daughter! Who else is there to mourn him, if not me? Don't tell me you're counting on her. As if she's fit for it."

I had just nodded when Michael burst into the room, dropped to his knees at my bedside, and wept.

"Eric, I'm sorry, it's all my fault, every bit of it. I never should have gotten sick! No, I should've just died from it. Then the two of you wouldn't be fighting over me..."

Miranda hauled him up.

"Michael, you did nothing wrong, don't you dare kneel! The dead can't matter more than the living. Who doesn't understand that?"

Michael's tears broke into a smile, which he forced back down.

"Miranda, it's fine if my last wish goes unfulfilled. You take good care of Eric, then go back with him for the funeral."

His thoughtfulness left Miranda's eyes shining with tears, a smile tugging at her mouth.

"That's our Michael, always the sensible one! Not like some people who stage their own little dramas to fight for attention!"

I looked steadily at the woman in front of me, and she felt like a terrifying stranger.

Back when she needed my father's money and his backing, nothing on earth mattered more than my father.

Now that he was barely gone, she'd decided the dead didn't matter, and that my injury was some ploy to steal attention.

It wasn't that my father didn't matter. It was that my father had nothing left she could use.

Seeing it all clearly, I turned to Cecily, heavy with guilt.

"Does it hurt?"

The smile Michael had coaxed out of Miranda froze on her face.

"Eric! She beat me until my nose bled everywhere, can't you see that? How can you still worry about her?"

She couldn't see when I was hurt. So what gave her the right to demand I worry about her?

Calmly, I looked at Michael's hand as he wiped the corner of her mouth.

"Cecily is my fiancée. Should I worry about you, my ex-fiancée, instead?"

"Eric, you're really something, making a scene over some little thing. Is it really worth it?"

So honoring my father's dying wish was a little thing.

"It's worth it!"

Seeing I wasn't joking, Miranda's tone cooled.

"Then go on making your scene. I won't be joining you!"

"As it happens, I need a proper role to go through the remaining nine things with Michael. If you still want me to mourn your father, if you still want our wedding to go ahead on schedule, then you'd better rein it in!"

"Otherwise, the funeral and the wedding can both be postponed indefinitely!"

"As for your precious Cecily, if she doesn't kneel and apologize within three days, she can wait for my lawyer's letter!"

Miranda slammed the door on her way out.

Watching her back as she left, the heartache I'd braced for never came.

Cecily wanted to chase after her and give her another beating. I caught her hand and said softly,

"Don't dirty your hands over someone who isn't worth it."

"Our wedding. What day would you like?"

Cecily closed her fingers around mine.

"We register on your father's seventh-day memorial, so he'll know I won't break my word. The wedding, whatever day you want, is fine by me."

So the wedding I'd begged for over so many years, and never got, was something I could have for the asking from someone who truly loved me.

Seven days later, Cecily and I registered our marriage.

Fingers laced tight, we walked out of the marriage registry office, ready to head to the cemetery and tell my father the good news.

And then we ran straight into Miranda.

She stared at the marriage certificate in our hands, and her eyes reddened in an instant.

"Eric, what are you two doing here?"