Me After Meeting You

“Are you going to call that a pretense? I didn’t think so.”

Ian even looked a little proud of his speech, opening his eyes to observe Amber.

Amber responded, “At least it’s not just me who hasn’t noticed. I think that your grandparents haven’t either because they’ve always believed that you’re an intelligent, capable, righteous, and kind child.

Your friends haven’t noticed. Billy is very protective of you. Because he thinks that you’re loyal and always willing to help, he treats you as his best friend. If so many people haven’t noticed, then how do you know that that’s not the real you?

Perhaps those words are the actual lies. Perhaps in reality, you really are intelligent, handsome, and sympathetic and passionate. It’s just that you haven’t noticed.”

As Ian listened, the pride in his face transformed into doubt, almost as if he were asking himself, ‘Could that really be the case?’

Amber smiled, and reached out to grasp his hand. “Alright. You can think about this problem yourself later. Now, let’s look at your condition, okay?”

Her finger lightly pressed down on where she had seen scratch marks. With a sigh, she asked, “You’ve scratched away all the skin in this region. Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts.”

“Does it itch?”

“Yes, it itches.”

“It hurts and itches? How uncomfortable that must be! Shall we call the doctor in to take a look at you?”

He stared at her. “Aren’t you a doctor?”

“This isn’t my specialty, and you’ve been sick for quite a while. Thus, you need a holistic checkup.” She went on, asking, “You’re tired, aren’t you? If you’re tired, then you should go to sleep for a while. The checkup will be very quick.”

Ian frowned and he adamantly refused. “No!”

“Why not? It’s just a cold. Many people go to a doctor for this.”

“You too?”

“Me too.”

“You are a failure of a doctor.”

“….”

His tone was so serious that Amber almost accepted it as a fact. But then, Ian yawned and simply said, “I’m tired,” before falling forward and landing in her lap.

She had seen what had happened last time he was tired, so Amber wasn’t surprised when it happened again.

She steadily propped him up until he was comfortably resting against her body with one hand clutching hers and the other unrestrainedly reaching into her clothes and pinching her waist as he sighed, “How comfortable.”

“….”

Once he was sound asleep, Amber carefully extricated herself from Ian and went outside to call for Dr. Benny.

“Let’s just have Dr. Benny enter, it’s better to have as few people inside as possible so that he doesn’t wake up.” She looked toward Ian’s anxious grandparents. “Would the two of you mind waiting a while?”

Despite their worry, they didn’t object. Dr. Benny followed her in. He first put a hand to Ian’s forehead, before taking out a thermometer from his medicine box and giving it to Amber. “Take his temperature.”

Amber took it and carefully maneuvered his hand around before putting the thermometer in his armpit from his collar. The cold sensation shocked him awake, and Ian opened his eyes.

Amber explained, “You have a fever. I need to take your temperature.”

Ian didn’t respond, and merely looked at her, but he didn’t object either. After a while, he took her hand and used it to prop his head up like a pillow.

Amber was speechless, as now she was forced into a half-kneeling position to serve as his human pillow. Their postures were embarrassingly intimate, but Dr. Benny ignored them. He put on his stethoscope and very seriously moved it about Ian’s body for some time before asking Amber, “Can you have him stick his tongue out for me?”

This was a highly difficult request, and Amber wasn’t sure if she could accomplish it. The key was that she didn’t know what would happen if she woke him up, so after a moment’s thought, Amber said, “Can you look at something else first? He’s still suffering from an allergic reaction.”

The old doctor nodded and removed Ian’s clothes, but the resulting sight caused both of them to suck in a breath.

Underneath the clothes, Ian’s back was all but covered with lacerations; the key point wasn’t just the wounds, but the fact that the edges of those wounds were turning white from infection-a few places even showed signs of serious ulceration.

No wonder Ian had been sleeping on his front when Amber had entered. Even now, he wasn’t in a normal sleeping posture.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

Dr. Benny looked at him severely. “Did he scratch himself with a blade and then dunk himself in water? How could it get so bad? I can’t treat this; with the way he is now, he has to go to the hospital and receive specialized treatment for infection. We can’t delay this any further, or he’ll really lose his life.”

When he was finished with his diagnosis, he peeled back Ian’s eyelids to check on his pupils, took his pulse, and then went out with a serious expression, saying nothing more.

Amber also wanted to go out, but Ian was holding her hand so tightly that she couldn’t move.

The door outside wasn’t shut completely, so she could hear snatches of the conversation going on. Ian’s grandfather seemed to be calling his son, Ian’s father. “Your son’s so ill that he’s about to die. Even if you can’t come back right now, can’t you think of a solution? He has to go to the hospital now, but the way he is, who can send him there?”

Not long after the call, she heard Dr. Benny angrily shout, “What’s the purpose of having all these people come over? In his condition, he needs a perfectly germ-free environment to recuperate in, and he also needs a fair number of examinations to ascertain how deep the infection is… To think of building a germ-free environment here and to even bring the diagnostic machines over? You guys are really ….”

‘Silly but rich.’ Amber finished Dr. Benny’s evaluation that he couldn’t say out loud in her head before looking at Ian and smiling. ‘All of you are so similar, just waving money around to get your way.’

Ian slept quietly. It was the first time that Amber had ever been this close to him. Only now did she realize that the man in front of her was really a beautiful man; his skin was white and delicate and his facial features exquisite, cool, and grave. After meeting his father, Amber felt that his mother either had to be a peerless beauty or Ian had inherited the best features of his parents.

The way he slept very much made him look like a sleeping beauty.

Amber sighed, thinking that even if she couldn’t be a prince, then she could at least be a manly enough woman to wake up a sleeping beauty-as a doctor, she very much understood Dr. Benny’s exasperation when the Axton family had proposed bringing a whole hospital’s worth of equipment to the Axton estate.

If Ian still refused to cooperate, she was prepared to punch him in the face again and forcefully bring him to the hospital while he was dazed.

He was different from Elly, so … being a bit rougher wouldn’t matter.