"I was so tired just now that I accidentally fell asleep. I’m sorry, Rosalyn. I must have worried you."
Jasmine Sinclair subtly pulled her arm out of Rosalyn Sullivan’s grasp. While she didn’t mind playing the part of a good best friend for Rosalyn, her body instinctively recoiled from any physical contact with her.
"Jasmine, why are your lips so swollen?"
Rosalyn Sullivan’s gaze fell on Jasmine Sinclair’s noticeably red and swollen lips.
"A mosquito must have bitten me while I was sleeping."
Jasmine Sinclair touched her swollen lips. ’Yep, a mosquito bite. A really big mosquito, at that.’
Aiden Hayes leaned against the other side of the door, listening to the two girls talking outside. He licked his lips, a smile of lingering satisfaction spreading across his face.
’So I’m a mosquito, am I? Looks like I didn’t kiss her hard enough. I should have kissed her until that mouth of hers couldn’t say another word.’
"Hayes, where’d you go? I turned around and you were gone. What happened to your lip? It’s all busted."
Connor Quinn stared at Aiden Hayes as he walked out of the theater. He could see that Aiden’s lower lip was split, with a faint trickle of blood seeping out. It looked pretty serious.
"Got bit by a female mosquito."
Aiden Hayes wiped the blood from his lip, smiling like a sated beast. ’The little thing bites hard.’
’If I’m a male mosquito, then she’s a female one—an excessively sweet female mosquito at that.’
"Huh? A female mosquito? Hayes, you’re amazing. You can even tell the difference between male and female mosquitoes?"
Connor Quinn thought what Aiden Hayes said sounded a bit ridiculous. What kind of mosquito could possibly bite someone’s lip like that? Unless it was one of those giant, mutated ones from the movies.
A black sedan pulled up in front of the hospital. Jasmine Sinclair got out of the car and looked up at the name on the building. ’Providence Private Hospital. Providence... as in, ascending to heaven? What genius came up with such a brilliant name?’
As soon as Jasmine Sinclair walked into the hospital lobby, a nurse approached her. After scanning the electronic registration on Jasmine’s phone with a tablet, the nurse led her through the VIP access to the cardiac surgery VIP waiting room on the fifth floor.
Jasmine Sinclair sank into the waiting room’s cream-colored leather sofa, gazing at the red autumn maples outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. She murmured, "The life of the rich is just too good."
No need to register in a crowded lobby, no anxious patients around, no foul smell of disinfectant, the nurses were pretty and enthusiastic, and even the waiting room was a private suite with floor-to-ceiling windows.
If you were hungry, you could eat the fruit and desserts on the coffee table. If you were thirsty, you could drink glacial mineral water. If you were bored, you could turn on the TV. If you were tired, there was even a massage chair. Jasmine Sinclair would never have even dreamed of such a hospital experience before.
’This damned life of the rich... Why can I only enjoy it after transmigrating into a book? If only I could have this kind of life back in the real world, too.’
Slumped on the sofa, Jasmine Sinclair clutched at her rapidly beating heart, feeling drowsy. ’Being a time management master is hard. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours.’
She had no classes this afternoon and could have gone home to catch up on sleep, but the damned dog of a system just had to stir up trouble again. It ordered her to come to Providence Hospital to seduce Dexter Ashford, and then, on the side, "casually" run into Ethan Payne, who would be at the public hospital next door visiting Yara Sawyer.
When she refused, the dog system actually threatened to add more seduction targets.
’Juggling five of them already has me on the verge of sudden death from exhaustion, and that’s with one of them being abroad. If it adds another target, I might as well give up on this stupid mission, find a rope, hang myself, and just start over with a new account.’
Jasmine Sinclair had been in the waiting room for less than ten minutes when the nurse knocked and entered to tell her it was her turn. She was led to the door of Cardiac Surgery Consultation Room 001.
"Miss Sinclair, Dr. Ashford is already waiting for you inside."
After speaking, the nurse quietly stepped back, her high heels making no sound on the sound-dampening carpet.
Jasmine Sinclair didn’t push the door open immediately. Her gaze was drawn to the doctor’s profile card by the door.
A standard ID photo was embedded in a clear acrylic plate. The man in the picture wore a crisp white coat, with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses perched on his high-bridged nose. Beneath the lenses, his eyes stared forward impassively, his handsome, severe face devoid of any emotion.
He perfectly matched the public’s every imagining of an "elite doctor": professional, calm, and impeccable.
Below the photo, small black text listed his name and title, followed by a string of blindingly impressive credentials, academic achievements, and awards he had received over the years.
When she saw the age category, Jasmine Sinclair couldn’t help but marvel. ’Holy crap, a 26-year-old professor of cardiac surgery. Only in a novel would they dare write something like this.’
After reading the information on the profile card, Jasmine Sinclair took a small mirror out of her bag to fix her hair and touch up her makeup. ’Men are visual creatures. To make their hearts flutter, you have to stun them at first sight.’
Once she was certain that she looked perfect, Jasmine Sinclair raised her hand and knocked on the consultation room door.
"KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK..."
"Come in."
As the deep, mechanical male voice sounded from within, Jasmine Sinclair pushed the door open.
Hearing the door open, Dexter Ashford put down the previous patient’s file and looked up toward the entrance.
The moment he saw who it was, a glimmer seemed to ripple through the usually placid, emotionless eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses. The corners of his lips unconsciously tilted up in a minuscule arc, and a subtle hint of pleasant surprise appeared on his severe face.
Watching the girl walk toward him, step by step, Dexter Ashford’s heart began to beat faster and faster the closer she got. His expression, however, remained calm and placid, though the hand holding the pen was tightening its grip.
’It’s her. She really came to take responsibility for me.’
"Hello, Doctor. My heart feels a little uncomfortable. Could you please take a look for me?"
Jasmine Sinclair pulled out the patient’s chair and sat down, offering the man across from her a polite smile.
Seeing the polite yet distant smile on her face, the eyes behind Dexter Ashford’s glasses instantly darkened, and the joy in his heart vanished completely.
’She isn’t here to take responsibility for me. She’s here to see me as a patient.’
’The way she’s looking at me is clearly how one looks at a stranger. She doesn’t remember what happened last night. Her promise to take responsibility was just drunken coaxing, and I was foolish enough to actually have expectations.’
Jasmine Sinclair’s smile remained calm and composed. Even when faced with the man’s resentful gaze, her expression showed not the slightest hint of guilt.
’What are you looking at? How can you believe a word a woman says when she’s drunk?’
’It was just a kiss. He wants me to take responsibility for that? In his dreams.’
’In those novels, the domineering CEOs don’t take responsibility even after sleeping with the female lead. They even blame her for deliberately seducing them. If she accidentally gets pregnant, they blame her for not taking the pill afterward and then forcibly drag her to get an abortion. Absolute scumbags.’
’All I did was get drunk, black out, and forget that I nibbled on and clung to him last night. What did I do wrong? The one at fault is him! He was clearly sober, yet he let me bite and hold him. He even responded enthusiastically later on, kissing me so hard I almost couldn’t handle it.’