Chapter 41: A Distinguished Guest Arrives

Tang Songyuan drew back the foot he had stretched to the floor and, glancing at Tao Fei, who had turned her back to him, pressed the answer button.

A woman’s voice came through the line, sharp and breathless with anger.

“Mom, this is my fault. Go ahead and scold me.”

Tang Songyuan’s voice was strangely calm.

The scolding that followed was very real.

Tao Fei perked up her ears, listening with fascinated curiosity. A late-night phone call meant something had surely happened in the family, and his mother calling to chew him out was only natural.

“Mm. All right. Yes. Please get some rest early.”

Tang Songyuan hung up, then looked at Tao Fei again. Tao Fei did not move a muscle; not even the faintest sound of breathing could be heard from her. It was exactly the same as in the past few days, so much so that Tang Songyuan would sometimes be momentarily convinced she was already dead and could not help but reach out to test whether she was still breathing.

The dead do not lie on their side. Tang Songyuan gave a wry touch to his cheek. He had been keeping watch at the hospital for three straight days, and the stubble along his jaw and chin had already sprouted thick and dark.

“Tao Fei.”

He called her name softly, testing the waters.

Tao Fei continued to feign sleep. The faint rustle turned into the sound of even breathing, and at last she relaxed and lay flat.

There was no way she was going to be discharged the day after tomorrow. Until the portal through time opened and she could go back, she absolutely could not leave Anhe Hospital.

Tao Fei reached up and touched the body of a forty-year-old woman.

What kind of body was this?

Cold, slender, not an ounce of excess flesh. A narrow waist that could be encircled with both hands, as though bound tight in a whale-bone corset. If not for the heart beating in the chest, one would truly suspect it was a medical mannequin.

A dim light seeped from the bathroom. Tao Fei could not resist her curiosity, and barefoot she ran to stand before the bathroom mirror, turning left and right to study herself. Though the mirror was only small and the light was far from clear, it was still enough for her to take in the full outline of her body.

This was the sort of woman who was cold and untouchable, aloof and ascetic. She seemed quite well matched with the rugged, hard-edged uncle.

Tao Fei rubbed her cheeks, and only then could she begin to accept, little by little, the face she now wore after crossing over.

That night, she was plagued by nightmare after nightmare, as though trapped inside the body of a forty-year-old woman and struggling in vain to break free.

“Family of the patient, why are you sleeping in the ward?”

The sharp rebuke of the cleaning lady woke Tang Songyuan, and also woke Tao Fei.

“I saw no one was using the bed, so I lay down for a bit.”

“How could no one be using it? Our hospital’s double rooms are the most sought after, and there’ll be another patient admitted in a moment. Honestly, you…”

The cleaner turned and brushed past Tang Songyuan, who was hurriedly tidying the bed. Tang Songyuan smiled and turned back to look at Tao Fei.

Tao Fei had just wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and was looking at him as well. In the morning light, Uncle Tang Songyuan felt completely different from the night before. A few strands of white had already crept into his temples, and his beard had taken on a grayish hue. Set against his dark suit and the pale shirt open at the collar, he actually had something of the charm of a mature man.

Tao Fei stared blankly for a moment. When Tang Songyuan asked her what she wanted to eat, she shook her head.

“You have to eat something. You can’t live on IV drips forever.”

“I have no appetite.”

“No appetite or not, you still have to eat.”

Tang Songyuan opened the cabinet, took out a square glass lunch box, and waved it at her.

“I’ll go buy a bowl of wontons and be right back.”

Tao Fei gave no answer. A little startled, she realized the voice she had just heard was her own. The voice of a forty-year-old woman was, surprisingly, not much different from the tone she had at twenty. There was not the slightest sense of mismatch.

The doctor making his rounds was in his thirties, wearing silver-rimmed glasses. With clean, pale fingers he flipped through Tao Fei’s chart while asking Tang Songyuan about the patient’s condition the previous night.

Tao Fei stared at the name tag on his chest: Chief Physician Qin Kai. Qin Kai’s manner, speech, and bearing were exactly like those of a young professor at the medical school. The strangely familiar feeling made Tao Fei feel especially close to him.

“Let me take a look at the wound and see how well it’s healing.”

The beautiful nurse, Nurse Li, quickly lifted Tao Fei’s clothes. Tao Fei instinctively resisted being touched by a stranger and raised her hand to block the nurse away.

“Why aren’t you cooperating with treatment?”

Before Li could say anything, Qin Kai smiled at Tao Fei. The tension in Tao Fei’s body loosened at once. As a medical student, she naturally understood that a doctor was the person closest to a patient.

“Don’t worry. Our Chief Qin’s checkups don’t hurt a bit.”

Li, showing no resentment, lifted Tao Fei’s shirt again. At that moment Qin Kai’s phone rang. He apologized profusely, took out his phone, and silenced it, then gave Tao Fei a courteous smile to indicate that he had to take the call.

The shirt had been lifted high, leaving half of Tao Fei’s abdomen exposed. She was somewhat displeased and pulled it back down to cover herself.

“Chao Sheng is coming back?”

Qin Kai’s voice rose in surprise at the doorway to the ward. Realizing he was still inside the room, he hurriedly covered his mouth and stepped outside.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

When Qin Kai came back in, there was a trace of helplessness in his expression. He finished the routine examination, wrote quickly on the chart, crossed out several lines after that, and pushed up his silver-rimmed glasses.

“Chief Qin, are you all right?”

Nurse Li looked at him with concern. No matter how slight Qin Kai’s expression changed, it never escaped her notice.

“I’m fine.”

Qin Kai strode out, and Nurse Li hurried after him.

“Nurse Li—”

“This Nurse Li definitely has a thing for Chief Qin…”

Tang Songyuan glanced at the nursing tag hanging by the foot of the bed and rubbed his face with a helpless laugh.

Uncle Tang was a gossip too.

Tao Fei had never been interested in gossip. She only wanted to drag out the time before discharge.

Tang Songyuan looked up and saw Tao Fei gazing blandly out the window, and he thought his offhand gossip had upset her. But words, once spoken, are like water spilled; they can never be taken back.

Just as Tang Songyuan was wondering how to salvage the image he had just ruined, the phone in his pocket buzzed.

“Songyuan, hurry down. The hospital security won’t let me up to see Tao Fei, so only you can come down and switch places with me.”

Zhou Meixiang’s shrill voice stabbed painfully at Tang Songyuan’s ears.

“Okay, all right. I’ll come down right away.”

Tang Songyuan let out a relieved breath and said to Tao Fei with a smile, “Your mother’s here. I’m going downstairs to switch with her. Hospital rules say family can’t visit while the doctors are making rounds, so we can only take turns.”

Tao Fei watched Tang Songyuan’s hasty back recede and immediately grew worried about her own situation.

Having a husband who looked like an uncle was already bad enough, and now there was also a sharp-tongued old mother! Would some son or daughter show up later as well, demanding to visit?

This life was impossible to live.

Tao Fei forced herself to calm down. For now, she could only meet force with force, and water with earth; as circumstances changed, she would change with them.

Before the IV had even been running for two minutes, a woman in her sixties appeared at the doorway of ward 515–516.

When Zhou Meixiang saw her daughter Tao Fei half propped up on the raised bed, she hurried over in a few quick steps and threw herself to the bedside.

“Tao Fei, why didn’t you tell me you were sick? If I hadn’t gone home last night and found no one there, and then called Songyuan, I still wouldn’t have known you’d had such major surgery. Since when did you start treating your own mother like an outsider?”

As she spoke, Zhou Meixiang took Tao Fei’s hand, and her eyes turned red at once.