Begging Me to Set Him Free

At twenty-five, I saved Sean Vance’s life and became a vegetable. Sean worked himself to the bone, day and night, to cover the staggering medical bills that kept me alive in a private ICU. When I woke up seven years later, the world had been turned upside down. Terrified and disoriented, I waited for Sean to come and take me home. But when I saw him again, my young lover had fine lines etched around his eyes. He knelt before my wheelchair, holding another girl’s hand. And begged me to set him free. … When I first woke up, the hospital was full of strangers. The world had moved on for seven years, and I was terrified. I kept calling Sean’s name, my voice a slurred whisper. My caregiver tried to comfort me. “I’ve never seen a more devoted man than your boyfriend,” she said. “The nurses told me that on the night you were brought in, you were covered in blood. Your boyfriend held you and just sobbed his heart out.” “He swore he’d get you the best treatment, no matter the cost. And those astronomical bills? He’s never missed a single payment.” “In the beginning, he was here every day, washing you, talking to you.” “He must be incredibly busy now, that’s why he comes less often.” “But he still has me send him a picture of you every single day.” Hearing this, the panic I’d felt when I first saw my atrophied muscles and the scars that littered my body seemed to fade, just a little. Sean finally appeared two weeks after I woke up. He stood taller, his features sharper and more mature than the boy in my memory. His hands inexpertly wiped away my tears, his voice filled with a bittersweet nostalgia. “You’re awake.” I learned that for my sake, Sean had worked himself half to death, drinking so much at business dinners that he’d ended up with a perforated stomach. He’d heard about advanced medical technology overseas and flew back and forth constantly. He’d humbled himself, bowing and begging strangers, just to find better treatment options for me. For him, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stand. The pain of physical therapy was excruciating, but I never made a sound. I hated that I couldn’t get better faster. It went on until my doctor, his face stern, finally put a stop to it. He turned on Sean, who had rushed to the hospital. “What kind of family member are you?! You can’t rush rehabilitation like this!” Sean stood to the side, his expression unreadable. When I tentatively reached for him, he flinched away. Then he exploded, a stranger in a familiar body. “Clara Hale, I’ve spent almost twenty million dollars on you! When you first had the accident, I couldn’t sleep for nights on end. Can you please, for once, stop making me worry?” “My life doesn’t revolve around you! Why is it that the moment you wake up, you’re causing me trouble?” “What’s the difference between you and an invalid right now? Do you think you’re healthy? That you can just push yourself like this?” His eyes were red as he screamed, his voice raw with an emotion I couldn’t decipher. I tried to take his hand, but he shook me off again. All I could do was offer him a placating smile. “I’m sorry, Sean. I didn’t mean to.” Sean started supervising my physical therapy sessions. He never looked happy, but he never looked unhappy either. He just grew quieter. The seven-year gap between us felt like a chasm, and I didn’t know how to cross it. Back when our love was new, whenever I was upset, Sean would make silly faces to cheer me up. Now, when I clumsily tried to imitate him, he just pinched the bridge of his nose. “Clara, you’re thirty-two now. Try to be a little more mature.” He turned his back on me. I slowly lowered my hands, my heart sinking. The days in the hospital were a monotonous blur. One afternoon, as Sean was helping me practice walking, he looked up and froze. Through the window, a young woman was staring at us, tears streaming down her face. She was young, beautiful. She looked just like I did, back when I was healthy. The moment he saw her, his hand supporting me was suddenly gone. His eyes trembled. He ran after her in such a hurry that he slammed into the wall, never even noticing that I, having lost my balance, had crashed heavily to the floor behind him. I dragged myself to the wall and slowly pulled myself up. And I finally understood. All of Sean’s recent distraction, his unspoken words, it all made sense now. A smile, uglier than any sob, stretched across my face. Waking up has been so bitter.

2 Sean came back late that night, carrying the faint, unfamiliar scent of another woman’s perfume. I turned away from him, my eyes shut tight. He sat down on the edge of my bed, his exhaustion a palpable weight in the room. “I broke up with her.” He paused for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with tears. “But God, Clara, I hate you. I hate you for saving me that day.” Business is a cutthroat world. Sean had climbed too high, too fast, making enemies along the way. Some were jealous enough to hire a hitman. That day, when the car came barreling toward him, my body had moved on pure instinct. I’d used every ounce of strength I had to push him out of the way. “For years, I sat by your side, day and night. You were just… a living corpse lying there, and no one could tell me what to do.” “I watched your body waste away. You couldn’t even control your own functions… I had to clean you.” “I waited for you, year after year, but you never woke up. In my darkest moments, I thought about us just dying together.” “I was so tired. I would have rather been the one lying in that bed.” “I had finally, finally crawled out of your shadow. I was ready to start a new life. I had someone new to love.” “She could cry, and laugh, and share things with me. She wasn’t just lying there, motionless.” “So why, Clara? Why did you have to wake up now?” I bit down on my lip so hard I could taste blood, fighting to keep my own sobs from escaping. So, my waking was no longer something my lover had hoped for. He resented me. I had become his burden. He bent over, his body wracked with sobs, a man at the end of his rope. “You just can’t stand to see me happy, can you?” “Whatever I owed you, haven’t I paid it back by now? After all these years? Why are you doing this to me?” My throat was raw, and my heart felt like a gaping wound, cold wind howling through it. The next day, however, Sean acted as if nothing had happened. He took my hand, a robot going through the motions. “Sorry I wasn’t with you yesterday.” I saw the dark circles under his eyes. I hadn’t slept either. I gently pulled my hand away, forcing a light, cheerful tone. “If you have things to do, you should go. Don’t worry about me.” “Those first two weeks, I was on my own anyway.” Sean’s face darkened instantly. He grabbed me from behind, his body trembling with a suppressed violence. “Clara, what’s that supposed to mean? Are you blaming me?” “What right do you have to blame me?” His voice rose to a desperate shout, a release of pent-up frustration. His grip was painful. I sniffled, my nose stinging with unshed tears, but I kept the smile on my face. “Sean, you misunderstood.” “I really can manage on my own.” He took a deep, shuddering breath and slowly released me, his expression smoothing over into a calm mask. His voice was flat, devoid of emotion, tinged with a weary resignation. He sounded like a man surrendering to his fate. “Alright, Clara. Stop it.” “You can barely walk. What could you possibly do by yourself?” “I don’t have anything else to do. I made all this money to pay for your treatment in the first place.” An impulse seized me. “Sean,” I asked, “do you still want to marry me?” His hand stiffened. After a long pause, he sighed. “When you’re better, we’ll get married.” He lowered his eyes, his expression wooden. It was the look of a man accepting a life sentence. Before the accident, when I was twenty-five, Sean and I had already started planning our wedding. We were excited, getting married for the purest reason: because we were in love. Now, it was just something he repeated, as if trying to convince himself as much as me. “We should have been married a long time ago.” “Marrying you… it’s the right thing to do.”

3 The second time I saw Chloe, she came to the hospital to find me. She told me she’d met Sean in my fourth year of the coma. He was in a terrible state back then, and she had burst into his world like a ray of sunshine. At first, he’d ignored her, but slowly, he’d softened. They traveled together. The number of photos grew—holding hands, kissing, embracing. The smile had gradually returned to Sean’s face. “He loves me,” she said, her voice sharp. “If it weren’t for me, the torture of you lying there like a zombie would have broken him long ago.” Those two weeks after I woke up, they had been on a trip for her twenty-fifth birthday. “When he got the call that you were awake, it was like he was dragged right back to the day I met him. A walking corpse.” “He’s only taking care of you now because you saved his life. He can’t abandon that responsibility. I’m begging you, can’t you just let him go?” Before I could form a response, Chloe cried out in pain and stumbled to the floor. I looked up and saw Sean standing a few feet away. He rushed over, shoved me aside—my wheelchair slammed into the wall with a dull thud—and knelt by Chloe, frantically checking if she was hurt. Then he turned to me, his eyes cold, a deep-seated resentment simmering beneath the surface. “Clara, I already promised I’d marry you. What more do you want?” He was so blinded by worry, he’d forgotten. I didn’t even have the strength to push a healthy adult to the ground. The day I was discharged, Sean carried me to the car. He barely spoke to me. In his free moments, he just stared at his phone, unconsciously scrolling through pictures of Chloe. I had snuck a look at his phone once. The moment it unlocked, my eyes had filled with tears. His passcode was still my birthday. I also saw that he had muted all notifications from my caregiver. There were nearly a thousand unread messages. He hadn’t opened a single one. I held his phone, laughing and crying at the same time. Pathetic. Tragic. My love was no longer my love, and I didn’t know who to blame. A specially designated ringtone shattered the silence in the car. I saw Sean’s eyes light up. He answered the call with an almost reverent tenderness. The voice on the other end was frantic. “Mr. Vance, you asked us to help Ms. Chen move out today.” “She got really emotional… she took a bunch of pills. We’re at the hospital now.” Sean lost all composure. The calm he had so carefully constructed shattered into a million pieces. The car screeched to a halt. His face was a blank mask as he practically threw me out onto the side of the road. He didn’t even bother to get my wheelchair out of the trunk. The car spun around and sped away. I stood there as the wind whipped past my exposed skin, a chilling breeze that brought tears to my eyes. The moon rose, but no one came back for me. So I started walking, one unsteady step at a time, leaning heavily on my cane. I had no phone, no money. A few passersby looked like they wanted to help, but their companions pulled them back. “Don’t. What if she tries to scam you?” The sky grew dark, and a heavy rain began to fall. Finally, following the faint path of my memory, I made it back to the home Sean and I once shared. My hair and clothes were soaked, plastered to my skin. I shivered. Through the black curtain of rain, Sean’s car pulled up. He was holding an umbrella, his other arm wrapped around Chloe. When he saw my pathetic, drenched figure, his eyes widened in shock, as if he’d only just remembered he’d left me behind. But his attention was quickly drawn back to the woman in his arms, and he walked past me into the house. I was exhausted. Just as my last ounce of strength gave out, Sean reappeared and helped me into my wheelchair. The house, which I hadn’t seen in seven years, was filled with the scent of another woman. Matching couples’ mugs, stuffed animals scattered about, his-and-hers pajamas draped over the sofa. Sean began to unpack the boxes Chloe had started to fill, putting each item back in its place. I watched him shield Chloe, fussing over her, giving her medicine, drying her hair. He tucked her into bed and pressed a gentle good-night kiss to her forehead. And I sat by the door, still dripping water onto the floor. The house was so big, but there seemed to be no place for me. Sean quietly closed the bedroom door and finally seemed to notice me. He walked over and slowly knelt before me. His voice was steady and clear. “Clara, I’m sorry. Let’s break up.” “When you were twenty-five, I lost you. Now she’s twenty-five. I can’t lose her too.” “I’ll take care of you until you’ve recovered. I’ll compensate you.” His eyes were red. “Please, just set me free.” I lifted my hand, but before I could touch him, the world went black. I never got to give Sean my answer. What a shame. Such a terrible shame. The last time he had knelt before me, he was proposing. His hand, holding the ring, had been trembling. He had said, “I will only ever love one person in my life: Clara Hale.” I woke up from a long sleep only to realize I was the only one still trapped seven years in the past.

4 I fell ill, a high fever that took three days to break. Sean wouldn’t let me leave my room. “Chloe’s not well either. I don’t want you getting her sick.” The room was too quiet, which only made the sounds from the other side of the wall seem louder. I heard Sean coaxing Chloe to take her supplements, telling her with a pained voice that she couldn’t play with her health like that. I heard them discussing when I would leave. I heard them watching a movie. Sean slipped socks onto Chloe’s feet, telling her she couldn’t walk around barefoot. Chloe snuggled into his arms. “Then you’ll just have to carry me everywhere.” Sean’s voice was gentle. “Okay. I’ll always carry you.” Always. What a beautiful word. He’d said it to me, too. I buried my head under the covers, weeping silently in the dark. When I was better, it was time for me to go. “Clara, I’ve picked out a new house for you.” “Chloe… she’s used to this place. She doesn’t want to move.” He had arranged everything, down to the last detail. I finally cut him off. “I get it. I’m not a fool. You should go back to her.” His hand opened and closed, over and over. He started to say my name, but I looked down, hiding my tear-filled eyes, and quickly pushed him out the door. “Go on, go. Go back to her.” I saw him glance back once before he walked away, disappearing from view. I lived alone, recovered alone. The next time I heard Sean’s voice, it felt like a lifetime had passed. He was flipping through my old sketchbook. “Clara, I’m getting married.” “Chloe found your old design portfolio. She saw the wedding dress you designed and fell in love with it. We were hoping to buy the design from you.” I had designed that dress for my wedding with Sean. It had taken months, with countless revisions. But we would never use it now. I smiled. “No need. Consider it a wedding gift.” “It’s not like I have anything else to give you.” Sean’s brow furrowed. He opened his mouth, then closed it. “Clara, you don’t have to be like this, trying to make me feel guilty.” A sharp pain lanced through my chest. I wanted to explain, but the words wouldn’t come. When my body was almost fully recovered, I received an invitation to Sean’s wedding. It was a fairytale ceremony. Staring at the names of the bride and groom printed side-by-side, I felt a surprising sense of calm. I stood in the very back, watching Sean as if it were the last time I would ever see him in this life. They read their vows, exchanged rings, did all the things I had once dreamed of a thousand times over. “Goodbye, Sean.” I lowered my head and turned to leave, bumping into a mutual friend from our past. She stared at me, stunned. I was walking too fast for her to keep up. “Clara? Is that you, Clara Hale?” Sean’s kiss on his new bride faltered. He instinctively looked in the direction of the voice. But there was nothing there. Only a branch of flowers, swaying in the wind.