"How's your brother and your mother? You should talk to your mother. She lost a lot of weight. Are you sure she's taking good care of herself?"
"Era?"
"Hmm?" She looked up to see the worried look in her father's eyes and she cursed herself inwardly."
Her encounter with the tall Baby Shark still shook her to the core. She had already paid some amount to her father's hospital bills to lessen it up, for the hospital to continue letting her father stay and get the necessary help.
While she was handing the money to the cashier, the voice of the Baby Shark rang in her ears and she felt scared and guilty but her father's well-being won in the end.
To make herself feel better, she promised herself that the next time she goes out with Ridge, she's going to give another amount to the Baby Shark's lending company. She would prioritize their loan from there.
She exhaled a deep breath, scolding herself for she was just kidding herself.
There are other lending companies running after them that the money she's going to get from Ridge isn't going to be enough to cover half of everything.
"I told you many times. I'm fine just being at home. I don't do anything here. Just lying in this bed and the hospital are asking for money for a thing that I can do at home."
"No, Pa. You must stay here for a bit longer," she said l, raising her hand and showing him the small gap that she made with her thumb and index finger.
"You're not just lying down here. You are given medicine twenty four seven and being monitored by doctors as well. We can't do that at home."
"You can't look after your old man?" He asked in a whiny tone of voice.
Era smiled brightly. She knew what her father was doing. They have done this exchange so many times, she already knew how it would go.
She picked up his bony hands and brought it to her face. She had to bite the inside of her cheeks when she felt the bones and the dry skin of her father's hand in her cheeks. Her heart felt like it was being pressed dow, breathing became painful.
But she steadied herself and kept a bright smile on her face.
"You know that I'm going to be an old maid because I want nothing in this world but to take care of you?"
"Tsk…" he hid his smile that broke his gaunt face. "You're being silly, child. You're too beautiful to be an old maid. I'm not going to forgive you in this life and in the next if you don't give me rascals that look like you."
"Pa, giving you a bunch of kids aren't going to be a pr-problem," she choked on her words because the Baby Shark, Trez, and God forbid, Ridge's face flashes at the back of her mind, thinking of who could impregnate her to give her father grandchildren.
Era felt trapped when her father turned serious and looked at her with an odd expression on his face.
"W-what?" She asked for she could not take the silence. Her chest was pounding in an erratic rhythm, she wondered if she should see a cardiologist since she's already in the hospital.
"Era, my precious child."
She gulped down a lump at the back of her throat and gripped her hands on her thighs, when her father used the word precious. The name he used to call her, growing up.
She came to their family at the age of seven. She remembered that she was seven and she was at a party playing with kittens. Other than that, she didn't remember anything about herself.
She was given the name Emerald because it was the color of her dress when they found her wandering at the roadside at five o'clock in the morning, she was wet, hungry, and so scared.
She was told later on that fever didn't leave her for a week. Her parents did not have a lot of money and not even a glance looked at her. They did not want to question how a child like her was in their care.
Miraculously, her fever broke after a week and she asked for something to eat.
Since then, she stayed with them as their daughter and her brain still refused to remember what happened to her that day.
There were fragments of memories but none of them point her to her real identity—-until when she was fourteen. When she sat down behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
A memory of a man, letting her sit down on his lap, telling her that they are going to go out for a ride hit her like a tidal wave. She screamed in excruciating pain. She stayed in bed for two days.
She never told them that memory. But it fueled her desires about cars. She had a feeling that she's going to find what was missing of her if she's around cars—expensive cars.
"I know that you love me as your father but you know that you're not just mine, right?"
Era forced a smile our of her lips as her lower lips quiver with the strong foothold of emotions that were ravaging her chest.
The words that came out of her father's mouth was too much for her.
"Who am I but yours?" She asked, faking annoyance.
"My precious child, you're a gift from God. But you know what I'm saying. There's a family looking for you out there."
"How do you know they are looking?"
"Because who wouldn't? I have nothing to do with your birth in this world but I love you like my own. When Jake came into our life, I felt the heaviness of my guilt. I should have not hide you. It was my greed. I'm sorry."
"Pa, no, please, don't say that," she said, shaking her head, "you save me. Believe me. If you didn't hide me, I'm not going to be lucky next time."
Her father's eyes bulged out their socket.
"You can remember now?"
"No, Pa. It has been the feeling I have in my chest even in the past. I have a feeling that the only reason why I'm still alive is because someone thought I'm already dead."