"Carrying another person's whole life on your shoulders. It wears you down."
"Reginald, I saved you because I chose to. I never wanted to guilt you into it, never wanted to hold some debt over you."
"How about this. Just put me in a nursing home."
But Reginald refused, flat out.
"Don't be so cruel to me, Priscilla."
"Let me stay by your side and take care of you."
"This isn't suffering for me. It's redemption."
But now, that redemption had turned into suffering, completely and utterly.
And this relationship should have ended too.
I don't know how many bottles Reginald put away that night.
I don't know how many times I said I was sorry.
Until he was so drunk he could barely stay conscious.
He gripped my hand and asked.
"If you could do it all over again, would you still save me in that accident?"
I nodded without hesitation.
Of course I would.
Even if it left me crippled. Even if it cost me my life.
I would never let anything happen to Reginald.
But he pushed me away, a bitter little laugh on his lips.
"If I could do it over again."
"I'd shove you away as hard as I could."
"Priscilla Fox, I don't want to owe you anymore."
Looking into his eyes, I froze for a moment.
Then something in my nose stung sharp.
So it turned out they were right after all.
A great kindness becomes a great grudge.
I never once meant to trap Reginald with the debt of what I'd done.
I only, only wanted to keep him from getting hurt.
And yet, in the end, he was the one I'd trapped.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
If that was how it was.
Then in the next life, I'll keep my distance. I won't save you again.
Reginald was dead to the world.
But the tears kept sliding from the corners of his eyes, on and on.
His heart was full of bitterness.
If I go two days without changing the bedding, sores break out on my skin.
My stomach is weak too. Prepackaged meals always upset it, always leave me doubled over with cramps.
So Reginald cooked every single meal for me with his own hands.
And then there were the medical bills, the enormous ones.
After I lost my leg, my parents cut all ties with me and moved abroad.
The last thing they said to me was this.
"As far as we're concerned, we never had this daughter."
So in this whole country, all I had left was Reginald.
He couldn't stand to watch me rot in the mud like some useless thing.
So he worked himself half to death, earning money, then came home and cared for me day and night.
No matter how exhausted other people get, at least they have room to rest.
But he'd been chained to me, this dead weight, for three years.
Never once able to catch his breath.
"Don't cry, Reginald. It's all my fault..."
I turned my wheelchair gently and stopped beside him.
Carefully I reached out to wipe away his tears.
But he caught my hand on instinct.
"May, don't go..."
"Don't leave me."
I went still, my expression frozen along with me.
May. May McClain.
That was the name of the girl from earlier that day.
I'd heard they met while he was working one of his side jobs.
Reginald worked himself to the bone at those jobs to earn my medical bills.
All so he could fit me with the most expensive prosthetic leg.
And him, working that hard, shining bright in the middle of the crowd, that was exactly what caught May's eye.
May was a college student who'd come back from studying abroad.
They were kindred spirits who fell for each other at first sight.
They'd often have lunch together, take walks together.
They'd even talk about their dreams for the future, their philosophies of life.
I knew that, to pursue Reginald.
May had given up the whole prestige of being a returnee from studying abroad.
She'd actually gone and taken a part-time job at a coffee shop right downstairs from our place.
