Chapter 3

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that Stella had been wearing a ring on her right hand for a while, and it was a couple pair with the one on Damon's hand.

I smiled bitterly, feeling the last of my hopes completely dashed to pieces.

So, as it turned out, I was the only one kept in the dark about this.

"Sounds good."

I stood up amidst everyone's surprised expressions. I wasn't welcome in this place anymore, and I wasn't shameless enough to continue staying here anyway.

However, just as I was about to walk out of the main door, Stella suddenly called out to me from the back.

"Noah Mendoza!"

I didn't stop walking. She continued chasing after me.

She caught up to me and grabbed me by my sleeve, panting loudly as she looked at me with a dissatisfied look in her eyes.

"Why are you running away? Don't take what my parents just said to heart. Damon and I just have a really close relationship because we grew up together. Don't take it too seriously.

"That part about marrying him was also just a spur-of-the-moment thing that my parents decided by themselves. I haven't agreed to it yet.

"But you know, Mom and Dad are right. Your illness is really—"

She continued explaining herself to me frantically, but I cut her off at the end.

"You can't say that you don't know why I turned out like this, Stella Nielson."

Her face turned pale as she stopped short, stunned by my words.

I looked straight into her eyes.

If she really cared about me, she would have immediately defended me the moment her parents brought up the topic of marriage at the dinner table earlier. But instead, she just came out after me after the whole ordeal to give me weak excuses like this.

I suddenly chuckled out loud and said coldly, "Damon is very young and bubbly. He's your type, isn't he?"

I recalled the time when Stella and I first met each other. She was the one who fell for me at first sight. She was also the one who kept pursuing me and telling me that she loved me.

She also said that she would never let me die before she did.

I shook off Stella's hold on my sleeve and got into a cab. Then, I watched her from the rearview mirror, noticing that she was still standing there completely stunned instead of leaving.

I shut the curtains in the backseat of the car and felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. It was a text message from Damon.

"Don't you think that women prefer bright and bubbly people, Noah? If you'd just look at yourself in the mirror, you'd understand why Stella won't even bother looking at you anymore."

I pressed my lips in a thin line and deleted his text message before blocking him.

When the phone screen went out, I caught sight of my current appearance in the reflection. My cheekbones were protruding, my eyes were sunken, and I literally looked like I was about to die.

I sighed and asked the cab driver to drop me off at the hospital instead.

My attending doctor, Dr. Carl Peterson, was happy to see me there. He immediately dragged me to a full-body checkup. However, the outcome still wasn't optimistic.

"You'd have had a 50% chance of survival if you went through with the surgery the last time. But now, after the delay, it's a little…"

He paused mid-sentence and looked at me with a complex expression on his face.

"If you want to live, you really need surgery now. We can't afford to delay it any longer."

I looked at the hospital bill and spoke in a hoarse voice, "Will there be a 100% chance of survival if I had the surgery?"

Dr. Peterson hesitated. He didn't look like he was able to guarantee it.

I then handed him the medication that Stella had bought for me.

"Do these meds work?"

He just glanced at the boxes for a while before frowning hard and chiding me in an urgent tone.

"Are you crazy? There's no alternative medication for your illness! You can't just take random medication like this! Are you trying to shorten your own lifespan or something?"

I was extremely calm as he got frantic with me, putting the medicine away and speaking in a low voice.

"I don't have any money, Dr. Peterson. I can't even afford the 15,000 dollars needed for the surgery. So, we can just forget about the treatment."