Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 226: The Past

Chapter 226: The Past

"I need Rip," I grunted. I didn’t know how much time had passed, but I knew that my power was not going to last forever.

If you consider Wu Ying Tai a cup, my power was water that I was using to fill the cup to the top. However, there seemed to be a hole in the bottom of it so that no matter how much power I poured into her, it was just never enough.

I had been trying to find the hole to plug it, but I was getting stretched thin. My powers were the only thing keeping her alive right now. If I stopped for a second, she was going to die, and I wasn’t going to deal with that on my conscience.

"Okay," grunted Huang Xiao Wen as he came to his feet. He gently stroked Wu Ying Tai’s hair before kissing her on the forehead. Turning around, he strolled out of the room.

It was like the sun had stopped shining. I watched her wither away under my power the second that man was no longer in sight.

"Really?" I grunted, pushing my power harder than I ever had before. "Now is when you give up?"

"What do you know?" she hissed at me, blood leaking down her chin from her cracked lips.

"You would be surprised," I replied, rolling my eyes. The dying were always more dramatic than the living. It was like they no longer had to play by society’s rules. And technically, they didn’t have to.

"Just let me die," she grunted, sending me whirling back into long-suppressed memories. Camp Hell 2.0 was getting to be just as bad as the original.

"Sorry, no can do." I knew I said the words; I said them almost every time Alpha made me choose between myself and my patient. I knew I was doing the right thing this time. She wouldn’t have to keep fighting after I saved her, but it was getting her to realize that she really didn’t want to die. That was going to be the hard part.

Almost every doctor knew that it was the patient’s will to live more than most medicines that tipped the scales when it came to life and death.

But what could I do to make her want to live?

I was becoming weaker with every passing minute, so I needed to come up with something now, or I was doomed.

Rip wasn’t here to catch me.

"Fine," I shrugged like it wasn’t that big of a deal. "I guess I’ll just have to convince Huang Xiao Wen that I am a better option. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to convince him at all. I mean, we had a special bond back in Camp Hell. Being prisoners together would solidify almost any type of bond."

Her head snapped around, and she glared at me as I spoke. "He seems pretty devoted to you, but once you die, you will be nothing more than a memory."

"I would come back and haunt you," she growled, showing more energy in the past minute than she had the entire time I had been in here.

"You could try. But one of my other men is a Monk. I’m pretty sure that he would know how to exorcise you." Fan Teng Fei wasn’t an actual monk, but that didn’t mean Wu Ying Tai knew that.

"Your other man?" she asked, her voice growing stronger. However, my power was still leaking out of her at an alarming pace. I had to find that hole.

"Mmmm," I hummed, "Right now, I have seven of them. But I am sure that Huang Xiao Wen wouldn’t mind being the eighth. Or I can always bring him to see your sister. Do you think she would be interested in adding to her men? She has an entire city bowing to her feet, but between you and I, I don’t think that is enough to satisfy her."

"Wu Bai Hee is still alive?" asked Wu Ying Tai, looking at me with a look I couldn’t quite understand. I thought she would be raging at the idea of her sister taking her man, but instead... she looked scared.

"Unfortunately," I murmured. "The Princess of City A is a major pain in my ass right now, but it’s not like she can live forever. No matter what she might think."

"Do you like her?" asked the sister tentatively. Her energy was starting to wane again, and I needed to get her back to fighting.

"Did you miss my comment about her being a complete pain in my ass?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "I genuinely dislike that woman. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I hate her and have contemplated her death on an almost daily basis."

Wu Ying Tai paused and looked at me. I didn’t know what she saw, but whatever it was, it gave her comfort.

"She is the one that did this to me," the other woman finally admitted. "She poisoned mom because she got pregnant. Then blamed me for her death when she bled out after delivering me." Taking in a deep, shaky breath, Wu Ying Tai continued.

"She had been giving me a drink every day since I was born, a suppressant keeping the poison in my body down and manageable. I was weaker than everyone else, more breakable. But everyone had assumed it was because of what happened to Mom. None of them looked deeper."

I let out a long sigh. I didn’t see that coming. Sure, the woman was a bitch, but this was some next-level daytime drama shit.

"You don’t believe me, do you?" she sighed, and I chuckled.

"No, I completely believe you. She is narcissistic enough to do something like that," I assured her. I mean, she is sending people to their deaths simply because she wants softer sheets. Was there really anything she was incapable of?

"I tried to tell Dad, but he didn’t believe me. He thought that I was jealous of her because she was always more popular. He thought I wanted to be the center of attention," confessed Wu Ying Tai. It must have been crushing for her to learn that her parent didn’t believe her.

"I told Xiao Wen," she continued, turning her head so that she was staring at the ceiling. "He believed me. All of my food, my drinks, everything went through him. He even washed all of my sheets and clothes just in case I was absorbing the poison that way."