It was then that an explosion happened.
Duty-bound to save lives, Gianna Brooks, a medical intern, pounced on the man and exhausted the last of her strength to protect him.
As her consciousness slipped away from her, she felt her eyelids getting heavier until they closed.
What was left of her energy had been drained away.
Prior to coming across a crashed helicopter, she'd been foraging for an entire day in the mountain for medicinal plants. She had exhausted every last bit of her strength to rescue the man from the cockpit.
The last sight she'd seen before she passed out was the blast wave from the explosion expanding toward her. She thought that it was her end.
But...
Why did she feel as though she was being buoyed up?
The man's unfamiliar and hot breath closely enveloped her.
The night in the mountain was chilly.
Gianna shivered and regained consciousness.
In addition to fatigue, she sensed an inexplicable difference in her body...
She sat up, but her palm touched a hunky chest.
Being made aware of it, she looked down...
Under the moonlight, the man's face was covered by weeds. As she lowered her line of sight, his body came into her vision.
At the same time, there was a low and hoarse voice echoing in her mind.
"You saved me. I will marry you."
"Excuse me?" Gianna thought, but didn't voice out.
How the h*ll did she go from saving a life to getting a marriage freaking proposal? She would curse her heart out if it wasn't for the situation they were in.
But soon, she noticed something strange.
Her palm was planted on the man's chest, underneath which was the faint "lub-dub, lub-dub" of his heart. His skin was cold.
She only allowed herself a moment of discomposure before she kept her wits about her again.
Feeling the man's pulse with one hand, she checked the rest of his body with the other.
Soon, she noticed the wound on the inside of the man's thigh.
That explained the heavy stench of blood in the air. He was slowly bleeding out from what could be a potentially fatal gash.
And if she didn't save him in time, he would die from a loss of blood.
But, on second thought...
Gianna adjusted her clothes and scrambled to get up, yelling at the man on the ground, "You sicko! I saved you and this is what you've done to me? You should die in h*ll!"
Then, she walked forward without looking back.
But she stopped after taking a few steps and fell into silence.
As a doctor, it was her duty to cure and save; it was the highest philosophy that she had built her life around.
In a doctor's eyes, there were only patients and no enemies.
Gazing into the starry sky, she raised her hand to wipe away the tears of grievance in her eyes.
When she, again, turned to look at the man who was on the verge of death, her eyes became firm.
Picking up the medical kit and mobile phone by the river, she returned to the man, albeit sullenly.
With the help of the phone's light, she quickly helped him with the wound, then crushed the anti-inflammatory herbs and pressed them on his wound.
However, when she thought of her long-time-but-still-no-marriage-in-sight relationship with her boyfriend, Joseph Clarke, she couldn't stifle the resentment in her heart. She felt that her chastity had been stained.
Her eyes fell on the man's lower abdomen.
She might have saved him, but it did not mean that she could forgive what he had done.
He had to pay a price!
There was a flash of ruthlessness in her eyes as she took out a set of tools from the bottom of the medical kit, keeping stoic in the process.
This was the silver needles that her grandmother had given her.
She'd studied clinical surgery in college and, at the same time, also inherited her grandmother's acupuncture skills.
The silver needles were glinting with cold light.
Gianna was decisive. With her practiced movement, she accurately stabbed the acupuncture point in the man's lower abdomen.
The unconscious man released a muffled groan.
She would see how he could harm more women in the future after this!
Gianna's lips curled into a cold smile as she put everything away.
Before leaving, she suddenly thought of something.
She shone the light from her phone on the man's face and was about to see what it looked like under all the leaves and dirt.
But the light dimmed.
Her phone was dead.
The moon was also obscured by dark clouds at the moment.
Gianna frowned, but she didn't give much thought to it.
Anyway, it's a big world out there, and they might not meet again in the future.