Chapter 100: Patricia Breakdown

She stared at me, her hands gripping the hospital blanket tightly, her eyes glassy with confusion and lingering fear.

"Why?" she whispered, her voice cracking slightly. "Why are you doing all this for me? I don’t even know you. People don’t just... pay hospital bills and carry strangers into cars out of the goodness of their hearts. What do you actually want from me?"

I pulled the armchair closer to the side of her bed and sat back down, keeping my posture relaxed and unthreatening.

"I told you yesterday, Patricia—I’m an investor," I said smoothly, looking her straight in the eyes. "I look at people the way other guys look at real estate or stocks. When I look at you, I don’t see an overworked waitress dumping wine by accident. I see someone with elite, world-class culinary talent that’s being completely suffocated by a fifteen-hour-a-day grind."

I leaned forward slightly, resting my elbows on my knees. "I’m helping you because it’s an investment. I believe in what you can become if someone actually gives you the room, the resources, and the platform to breathe. But if we’re going to build a partnership, I want to actually know who I’m backing."

Patricia swallowed hard, looking down at her lap as my words sank in. The defensive wall around her began to crack, replaced by a deep, weary silence.

"Tell me about yourself," I urged gently. "Where do you come from? What about your family? Is there anyone looking out for you?"

The moment I mentioned her family, the atmosphere in the room froze.

Patricia went completely motionless. The color drained from her face even further, and her lips pressed into a tight, pale line. She didn’t answer. She just stared blankly at the white hospital sheets, her breathing shallow, her hands trembling so hard under the blanket that the heart monitor beside her began to beep just a fraction faster.

"I’m an orphan," she said, her voice dropping into a flat, eerie calm that contrasted sharply with the monitor’s rising beep. "No parents. No family waiting at home. Just me, trying to make a living and pay rent."

She kept her answers incredibly vague, carefully scrubbing away any specific names, places, or dates. It was a textbook defense mechanism—putting up a wall of generalities so no one could probe deeper. I didn’t push her on the missing details. I just sat back and let her sit with the silence, letting her know I was listening without demanding more than she was ready to give.

I waited a moment, letting the heavy quiet settle before I opened my mouth to steer the conversation back toward her culinary dreams. "Look, if you don’t have—"

"You don’t get it, do you?" Patricia cut me off suddenly, her calm demeanor shifting into a sharp, passive-aggressive edge. She didn’t raise her voice, but every word was laced with a cold, simmering bitterness. "You sit there in your tailored clothes, talking about ’investing’ in me like I’m a project. You have no idea what it actually takes to survive when you have nothing. You don’t know what it’s like to work until your feet bleed, to skip meals so you can keep the lights on, or to suffer every single day just to earn the right to wake up and do it all over again."

She leaned her head back against the pillow, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. "So don’t talk to me about my potential like it’s some simple math problem."

I took the verbal strike without flinching, keeping my tone grounded. "So you really have no one around? No friends, no mentor, no one in your corner?"

The passive-aggressive bite drained out of her just as fast as it had flared up. Patricia went completely silent again, her shoulders slumping as she pulled the blanket higher around her chest.

"It’s personal," she muttered, turning her face toward the window, effectively closing the door on the topic.

I let the heavy silence hang in the hospital room for a long moment, allowing her anger and exhaustion to settle. I didn’t get defensive, nor did I press. I just stayed sitting there, steady and unbothered, showing her that her bitterness wasn’t going to scare me off or make me abandon her.

Slowly, the tension in her shoulders began to loosen. The quiet between us stretched until the only sound was the steady, rhythmic beep-beep of the heart monitor.

Patricia finally let out a long, weary sigh, rubbing her temples with her pale hand. The sharp, defensive edge in her posture completely collapsed.

"Look... I’m sorry," she murmured, her voice sounding far smaller this time as she stared down at her lap. "I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. It’s just... hard."

"Take your time, Patricia," I said softly, keeping my tone warm and unhurried. "I’m not going anywhere."

She took a slow, shaky breath, her fingers picking at the threads of the hospital blanket before she finally cracked the door open on her past.

"When my parents passed... I wasn’t entirely on my own at first," she revealed quietly, her eyes shadowed with old memories. "I have an uncle. After the funeral, he stepped up and volunteered to raise me."

She paused, her jaw tightening slightly as if speaking about him brought back a whole new weight of memories.

"He took me in," she continued, her voice trailing off as she looked over at me, gauging my reaction to see if I was actually listening to the story she had spent so long hiding.

"What happened with him?" I asked gently, keeping my attention entirely on her.

"His name is Gerald... Akin Gerald," she said, her voice carrying a distant, hollow echo. "He was rich. Really rich. But he was never actually there. To him, I wasn’t a niece—I was just an inconvenience he could throw money at. Have a problem? Here’s cash. Need food? Here’s an allowance. Need comfort or someone to talk to? He’d just hire someone or buy a toy and leave for weeks on business. He treated every human connection like a transaction."

She paused, her eyes widening slightly as if she had just realized how much she had let her guard down.

A heavy, embarrassed sigh escaped her lips, and she threw her hands over her face. "Ugh... why am I even telling you all this? You’re a stranger. I don’t even know why I’m talking."

Exhausted from both the physical drain and the emotional spill, Patricia let herself fall back onto the bed, burying her face in the white hospital pillows to block out the room.

I sat back, processing the name Akin Gerald. A distant, wealthy guardian who solved problems with money but provided zero genuine care—it explained perfectly why my initial "investor" pitch had triggered her defenses so badly. To her, I was just another rich guy trying to buy her loyalty or throw money at her situation instead of actually seeing her.

"Patricia," I said softly, standing up from the armchair and stepping closer to the bed. "I hear you. And I’m not Gerald."