His Gentle Touch, A Cruel Deception
Two years into my marriage with Julian, a car accident left me quadriplegic.
My parents immediately cut ties with me.
My former friends and relatives? They couldn’t distance themselves fast enough.
Only Julian remained, steadfastly by my side.
An esteemed professor, he began taking on private tutoring gigs and even filming short online comedy skits just to pay for my medical bills.
His colleagues and alumni, proud of their Oxford roots, scoffed, calling him a disgrace, saying he’d sacrificed his dignity.
He ignored them all, continuing to do my laundry, cook my meals, and clean up after my incontinence.
I couldn’t bear to be a burden on his life, so I suggested a divorce.
Julian fell silent for a moment, then smiled, gently taking my hand.
“We swore an oath when we got married.”
“For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, we promised to never leave each other.”
“Naomi, I love you, and I will never leave you.”
In the years that followed, Julian faithfully kept his promise.
And under his devoted care, I miraculously regained sensation.
Just as I was about to share this incredible news with Julian,
I overheard him talking to a female student.
“Julian, I’m pregnant.”
“If you don’t take responsibility, I’ll end both my life and our baby’s right in front of you!”
My hand, newly restored with sensation, trembled.
Before I knew it, I slipped and fell into a murky puddle in front of me.
Foul-smelling muddy water seeped into my nose and mouth.
The air in my lungs was cut off at my neck.
It was excruciating, agonizing.
Instinctively, I wanted to cry out for Julian.
But the dirt choked my throat, and no sound escaped.
At the last moment, Julian turned and saw me, rigid and lifeless.
“Naomi!”
He frantically hung up the phone and pulled me back from the brink of death.
Then, with shaking hands, he held me close, carefully wiping the grime from my face.
Over the years, similar incidents had happened countless times.
Julian had grown accustomed to it.
And I, too, had long grown numb.
The car accident ten years ago had left me quadriplegic.
Everything below my neck was utterly devoid of sensation.
Every moment, I needed constant care.
Julian had hired caregivers and sought out doctors for me.
But everyone just shook their heads, helpless.
Doctors had given me death notices more than once, declaring I wouldn’t live past three years.
Yet Julian refused to give up.
He worked himself to the bone, taking on countless side jobs and tutoring classes to earn money for my medical expenses.
A man with a meticulous nature, day in and day out, he had to turn me and massage my limbs.
He cleaned up after my incontinence, the waste flowing out beyond my control.
A man with a brilliant future, he repeatedly sacrificed opportunities for promotions and raises.
He carried the burden of my care, relentlessly searching for doctors and experimental treatments.
He was only thirty.
Yet, gray hairs already speckled his temples.
A thin layer of calluses covered his hands.
His once tall, upright posture had gradually stooped under the immense weight of his life.
More than once, I saw him sighing over his past glories, or shedding tears at the cutting remarks of his peers.
When I asked him about it, he would just smile and say,
“Naomi, I have no regrets.”
“As long as I’m with you, I’ll never regret anything I do.”
But at this moment, I regretted it.
I regretted living this ugly, undignified existence.
I regretted that my momentary desire had burdened Julian’s entire life.
I lowered my head, the only part of me I could move, and spoke softly.
“I heard everything you and Serena said.”
“Julian, let’s get a divorce. You’ve done more than enough for me.”
Julian froze.
Large, heavy tears streamed down his face.
He gripped my hand tightly, repeating over and over,
“Naomi, I won’t divorce you.”
“Serena and I, it was just an accident. I love you, only you.”
“Please don’t make me leave you…”
He explained frantically.
There was no real affection between him and Serena.
“The boss of that tutoring center forced me to drink last time. I drank too much, and when I woke up, I found myself in Serena’s bed.”
“Naomi, please don’t be angry with me. I truly… truly never meant to betray you.”
Julian explained, fumbling for words.
But he didn’t even notice the profound tenderness in his eyes when he spoke of Serena.
Long ago, when we first met.
He had looked at me with that same tender, ardent gaze.
But after I became paralyzed.
Throughout these ten years of torment.
The look in Julian’s eyes when he saw me was nothing but deep weariness.
He pretended to still love me, pretended he couldn’t leave me.
Only then could he convince himself to grit his teeth and carry on.
Only then could he prevent his decade of sacrifice from seeming like a joke.
Julian thought he was an excellent actor.
But he forgot.
Before my paralysis, I was an outstanding psychology PhD.
I knew better than anyone what he was truly thinking.
I sighed softly, speaking in a low voice.
“But I’m tired.”
“I don’t want to live with this guilt, like an empty shell, devoid of dignity, utterly numb.”
“Julian, if you truly love me, then find me a serene, beautiful place, and let me spend my last days in peace.”
Julian was reluctant.
When I first became paralyzed, Julian had hired many nannies and caregivers for me.
The first nanny poured boiling water onto my legs.
Although I felt no sensation.
My scalded flesh stuck to my clothes, and I almost died from a high fever and infection.
The second nanny, worried about me, kept me locked in a dog crate all day.
When Julian came home from work and saw this, he nearly broke down.
This usually gentle and polite professor lost his temper in public for the first time.
“My Naomi is a human being, a person with flesh and blood, dignity, and feelings. How could you treat her like an animal!”
The other person scoffed indifferently.
And sneered,
“Living like that, she’s worse than an animal.”
Julian couldn’t endure such humiliation.
He fired the nanny on the spot and from then on, took care of everything himself.
For ten years, I never developed a single bed sore.
That alone was enough to show his dedication.
He had done more than enough for me in this lifetime.
Our love was utterly drained.
I couldn’t selfishly trap him by my side any longer.
I started a hunger strike, threatened to end my life.
Julian, initially resolute, slowly began to waver and compromise.
Finally, he withdrew all his savings and arranged for me to stay in a high-end rehabilitation center.
When filling out the admission papers, Julian refused to let go of my hand.
He told me again and again.
“Naomi, I won’t divorce you, and I’ll never abandon you.”
“Just give me some time. There are many excellent medical resources abroad.”
“When I return, I’ll come straight away to take you home, and I’ll find a way to cure you.”
A quadriplegic patient, abandoned by her family, with no relatives, was left in a rehabilitation center.
Her fate was predictable to anyone.
Yet Julian and I both tacitly agreed to deceive each other and ourselves.
He swore he would come back for me.
And I nodded, as he wished.
However, on the very night Julian left, another accident occurred.
The patient in the next room, suffering from dementia, accidentally set fire to the curtains in my room during his afternoon nap.
I was quadriplegic, unable to move.
I could only watch as the intense flames rushed towards me.
By the time the caregiver found me, I had extensive burns all over my body, my flesh rotting, with only a breath left in me.
Receiving this news, Julian immediately canceled his flight and rushed back to my side overnight.
I lay in the intensive care unit, listening to his furious shouts.
This man, who had been respectable his whole life, always speaking with a gentle tone.
He screamed and yelled like a madman in the hospital corridor.
“Is this how you care for my wife?”
“She was such a beautiful woman, so fond of her appearance. How can she live like this now?”
He tore up the appointment letter from the overseas prestigious university.
He stayed by my bedside, not leaving for a moment, expressing his deep regret.
I had ruined his life again.
But there was nothing I could do.
I could only squeeze my eyes shut, pretending not to hear his tormented voice.
Until one quiet afternoon, Serena burst into my room.
She grabbed my hair and slammed my head viciously against the bed frame.
Then she dragged me along, pulling me to stand before a mirror.
The grotesque and terrifying face in the mirror startled me.
But before I could speak, Serena suddenly broke down in tears.
She punched my thigh repeatedly, muttering,
“Why aren’t you dead yet? Why are you still alive?”
“Why did you call him back at the last minute?”
“Julian had already agreed to go abroad with me. Why won’t you just let him go!”
“Naomi, how can you be so selfish? Do you know I’ve waited for him for ten whole years!”
Julian hadn’t lied to me; his acquaintance with Serena was indeed an accident.
But this accident hadn’t happened recently.
It was ten years ago.
At a dinner party ten years ago, they met for the first time and fell in love.
Julian had considered divorcing me and marrying her.
But in the end, he chose me over love and responsibility.
He told Serena that, according to the doctors’ diagnosis, I wouldn’t live for many years.
He had to fulfill his duties as a husband before he could be with Serena with a clear conscience.
Serena agreed.
But that wait lasted for a full decade.
Julian had wasted his years and delayed his future for me.
Serena, too, had spent the most beautiful years of her life waiting for him.
Her eyes were filled with helplessness and resentment.
Her voice became choked with emotion.
“Naomi, please, let him go.”
“It’s been ten years. Julian and I are not young anymore.”
“This one in my belly, it might be the only child we’ll ever have. Can you really bear to see us lose our chance at a family?”
“He’s done enough for you over the years.”
“I beg you, give him, and give my unborn child, a chance at life.”
Serena told me many things.
She spoke of the humiliations Julian endured to earn money for my medicine.
She spoke of how he fainted several times in his office from overwork.
“Three years ago, a client, just to humiliate him, forced him to drink.”
“He drank until he had a stomach hemorrhage, and still, enduring the shame and pain, he picked up the scattered payment notes from the floor, one by one.”
“Watching his reddened eyes, my heart nearly shattered.”
“But he… he said that with that money, he could buy better quality medicine for his wife, so you could sleep peacefully at night.” Serena cried harder as she spoke.
Her eyes, as she looked at me, held both jealousy and blame.
“Many times, I wished he could be a little crueler, a little less responsible.”
“But he just… couldn’t let you go.”
“He’s such a proud and brilliant man, and now, because of you, look what he’s become…”
A cheating man wanting to bear the responsibility for two women’s lives.
In the end, he only brought pain to everyone.
I should have hated him.
But ironically, I was the one person in the world least qualified to blame him.
Julian’s mistake was betrayal.
His greater mistake was taking such good care of me.
I lowered my head, murmuring,
“What do you want me to do?”
Serena suddenly stopped crying.
She stared straight at me, saying without hesitation,
“I want you to die!”
“If you don’t die, Julian will never find peace.”
“If you don’t die, none of us will be happy.”
With that, Serena grabbed my neck.
And said, almost cruelly,
“Look at you now, like a monster. What’s the point of living?”
“Just die, okay? Die!”
Serena’s grip tightened.
And in that pain, I actually felt a sliver of release.
I slowly closed my eyes, waiting for the nightmare to end.
But Julian, once again, saved me.
He embraced Serena, holding her tightly.
“Serena, are you insane? Why would you do that?”
“Do you realize you nearly took a life just now?”
“You have such a bright future ahead of you. Is it really worth ruining your life for someone like this?”
At that moment, Julian finally, unconsciously, blurted out his true feelings.
To sacrifice his entire life for “someone like me.”
It wasn’t worth it.
He loved Serena.
Loved her so much he couldn’t bear to see her destroy her future, ruin her life for “someone like me.”
And I, like forgotten trash,
Lay quadriplegic on the cold floor.
Spying on the happiness that once belonged to me.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and into my ears.
But I couldn’t even lift a hand to wipe them away.
I could only wait for Julian to help me up with his pitying gaze.
This time, in front of me, he broke things off with Serena.
Serena didn’t try to stop him, she silently got up and left.
As if this kind of scene had played out between them a thousand times before.
They both knew.
Neither of them would truly leave.
In the days that followed, Julian and I continued our ‘normal’ lives.
He tacitly stopped mentioning going abroad.
I, being ‘sensible’, didn’t press him about his relationship with Serena.
We carried on just as before.
Calmly, deceiving ourselves and each other.
But I could see it. Julian was truly exhausted.
He dared not leave me with anyone, nor even let me out of his sight.
Even when he taught classes, he brought me along.
The university, aware of Julian’s situation, didn’t object.
But I, more than once, suffered incontinence in front of everyone.
In the meeting room, in the classroom.
As the foul odor permeated the air,
Everyone’s eyes would turn to me, piercing my soul like knives.
Julian, however, acted as if he smelled nothing, routinely cleaning and tidying up after me.
“Professor Julian is so noble! His wife is like this, and he still doesn’t give up. If it were me, I really couldn’t do it.”
“I say Professor Julian and Ms. Serena are a match made in heaven. That woman is like a ghost, clinging to Professor Julian.”
“Look at her face, wouldn’t you have nightmares at night?”
Facing all these whispers, Julian acted as if he heard nothing, continuing to push me around the campus.
Watching the sun dry my urine-soaked clothes.
Everyone thought he loved me dearly.
But I always felt it was an unspeakable form of revenge.
Until one day, our story attracted the attention of reporters.
The reporters weren’t interested in anything else, instead digging deep into the complicated relationship between the three of us.
Gossip and speculation abounded.
Such humiliation was more painful than torture for a proud man like Julian.
Serena was the first to break.
She had an abortion, went abroad alone, and left Julian’s world forever.
Upon receiving the abortion photos, Julian also broke down.
His eyes red, he glared at me, furious.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You called the reporters?”
“Haven’t I been good enough to you? Why, why would you do this to me?”
“Even if I owed you in a past life, these ten years should have paid it back, right? Why won’t you just let me go?”
“Naomi, I’m truly tired. Serena’s presence was like the last light in my life, my only solace.”
“Why, why would you take away even this last bit of hope!”
Overwhelmed by emotion, Julian randomly grabbed a handful of sleeping pills and shoved them into his mouth.
He then turned on the gas taps in the house, intending to die with me.
I smiled helplessly.
And as I smiled, tears welled up in my eyes.
He didn’t need to do this.
My death alone would have been enough.
I hadn’t told Julian that my right hand could move.
I could control my wheelchair myself.
And I could choose whether or not to continue living.
As the sleeping pills began to take effect, I bit down on Julian’s collar with my teeth.
Maneuvering my wheelchair, I slowly pushed him out.
The moment Julian’s body was propelled outside the house,
Sparks from the wheelchair’s mechanism instantly triggered the explosion.
Raging flames instantly consumed everything.
I smiled and closed my eyes.
Julian.
This time, we both can finally find release.
I hope that after I die, you can find the happiness you desire.
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