After Him Chapter 11

Jameson was rushed to the island's only clinic, but due to severe injuries, was quickly airlifted by helicopter to the mainland city's military hospital.

The diagnosis was shocking: multiple rib fractures with shattered bones, one broken rib piercing his lung causing severe pneumothorax and massive internal bleeding; serious spinal damage. When he reached the ER, his heart had stopped once.

After emergency intervention they'd temporarily saved his life, but he remained in deep coma, not out of danger. Doctors privately indicated the prognosis was extremely poor—he might not make it.

Days later, Jameson's aide found Emma at the temporary shelter in town, skittish as a frightened bird.

His voice was hoarse and heavy:

"Ms. Sullivan, Major Carter... might not pull through."

Emma's body swayed almost imperceptibly.

The aide's eyes reddened as he continued: "Before losing consciousness, his last coherent words were... 'Don't tell her... don't let her... worry.'"

Then he respectfully presented an antique sandalwood box. "He prepared this long ago... said if anything happened to him, to give it to you. He said... inside are things returned to their rightful owner, and... an apology that's far too late."

Emma stared at the box, struggling internally for a long time. Finally, one dusk, she put on a face mask and went alone to that military hospital.

She stood outside the ICU's thick glass window, looking at the man inside—tubes everywhere, face ashen, chest barely rising and falling.

She stood there watching him for a very long time.

Her expression shifted from initial complexity and turbulence to finally settling into unfathomably deep, almost pitying calm.

Her love and hate, resentment and sorrow for him had long burned out in those life-threatening attacks, one after another.

That he wasn't dead was perhaps her last, insignificant mercy toward him.

But she would never shed another tear for him.

She didn't push through that door into the ward, didn't leave a single word, didn't even let anyone know she'd been there.

She quietly turned and walked away down that long, disinfectant-scented corridor, step by step, firmly leaving, never looking back.

Returning to her temporary island lodging, Emma opened the sandalwood box.

On top lay the "FORGIVENESS STATEMENT" he'd forced her to sign—torn to shreds then carefully, piece by piece, taped back together with transparent tape.

On the yellowed paper, you could still faintly see the dark brown bloodstained fingerprints from her struggles and the marks of her desperate tears.

Beneath the statement was a check for an enormous sum—so many zeros the amount was dizzying.

At the very bottom, a letter.

The paper was standard military stationery. The handwriting was Jameson's, but trembling and weak, lacking its former forceful strength. Many places were blurred by what might have been blood or tears:

Emma:

I'm sorry.

I was blind, heartless.

I... with my own hands lost the best person in this world—you.

May your remaining days be sweet, and may you never see me again.

The guilty: Jameson Carter

Emma looked at it all in silence, her face expressionless.

After a long while, she picked up the check and called an international humanitarian foundation. In a completely anonymous donation, she gave the entire sum to projects supporting women and children traumatized by war and violence.

Then she took the taped-together forgiveness statement, that blood-and-tear-stained letter, and the elegant sandalwood box, and without hesitation threw them all into the trash bin in the corner of her room.

She needed to completely, cleanly say goodbye to that past drenched in blood and tears, saturated with betrayal and hurt.

What she didn't know was that three nights after she left the hospital, Jameson's vital signs deteriorated sharply again.

On the verge of death, the curves on the heart monitor rose and fell weakly. Though deep in coma, his lips moved almost imperceptibly. The aide leaning close could barely make out those broken words spoken with his last breath:

"Don't... be afraid... go..."

No one knew if, in the moment before consciousness sank completely into darkness, he saw Emma in her cotton dress, turning back to smile at him.

Whether amid infinite regret and finally arriving release, he found a shred of humble peace.

But none of this concerned Emma anymore.

Her world, after that storm, was finally completely free and open.

Alternate Ending