DBTHDCAR Chapter 64

After lying in the hospital for more than half a month, Fan Xia was finally discharged and returned home to recover slowly. At the same time, just a day earlier, Ning Xiaobei had also had the bandages on his head removed, truly a case of double happiness arriving together.

For someone who had almost been stabbed to death to be this lively again in such a short time, Ning Xiaobei found it extremely puzzling. His own stitches had been removed, but his head still throbbed faintly.

As he thought about it, he rubbed his newly grown stubble. The short, bluish hair close to his scalp made his palm itch, with a strangely satisfying texture. So recently, Fan Xia kept reaching over to rub his head whenever he had the chance, basically treating him like a cat. Fortunately, although the wound looked scary, it would be hidden once his hair grew back.

Speaking of scars, Ning Xiaobei unconsciously touched the outer side of his left arm.

Ever since returning from the dream world, a faint, inch-long flesh-colored scar had appeared on what used to be smooth skin, barely noticeable unless you looked closely.

It seemed the scar-removal ointment prescribed by Grandma Ning’s traditional Chinese medicine friend’s son was quite effective. He wondered if, after going back there and applying it more diligently, even this trace might disappear.

Ning Xiaobei waited outside the inpatient building for a while, but Fan Xia still hadn’t come down, so he gave him a call.

“Mm, I’m coming down soon. There’s just a small issue with the reimbursement paperwork; once that’s sorted, I’ll be right there.”

This time, Fan Xia had been injured in the line of duty, so all his hospitalization and medical expenses could be reimbursed through public funds. Since he also had private insurance that had already paid part of the costs, the procedures were a bit complicated.

After hanging up, Ning Xiaobei began thinking about what nourishing food he should make for him when they got home.

Meanwhile, another important thing had happened over the past few days — Uncle Zhao had moved back from the nursing home to the tube-style apartment. He didn’t trouble the two injured patients and instead hired a temporary cleaner to tidy up the place before moving into the second bedroom where Ning Xiaobei used to sleep.

That’s right, although Ning Xiaobei didn’t know exactly what key turning point Fan Xia’s butterfly effect had triggered in this world, this major change greatly boosted his confidence.

He was certain that everything was moving in a better direction.

As for Shanghai’s winter, it was truly unpredictable. Just a moment ago the sky had been clear, and now a misty drizzle had begun to fall. Ning Xiaobei looked up at the endless threads of rain and hurriedly grabbed his luggage bag and washbasin, running back.

After entering the glass doors of the inpatient building, he placed his things on the silver bench in the waiting area. Before he even had time to shake the raindrops off his coat, he turned around and saw a caregiver outside struggling to push a wheelchair into the building.

The wheelchair had gotten stuck somewhere. No matter how she rocked it back and forth, it simply wouldn’t budge. The old man sitting in it, dressed in a hospital gown, grew anxious and kept calling out, “Ai, ai!”

Ning Xiaobei hurried over and crouched beside them.

“The wheel’s stuck.”

He took a closer look, then turned to the caregiver. “Auntie, can this grandpa walk? Why don’t you help him inside first? I’ll deal with the wheelchair. If he doesn’t stand up, I can’t get the wheel out of the jam.”

“Alright, thank you so much. Sorry to trouble you, sir.”

The caregiver in her uniform nodded gratefully. Supporting the old man, she helped him stand up with difficulty, and they slowly made their way step by step into the inpatient hall.

Ning Xiaobei gripped both handles of the wheelchair, stretched out his right foot, and stomped down hard. Finally, the jammed part loosened.

He pushed the wheelchair up the side ramp. Just as he stepped under the eaves, the drizzle suddenly turned heavy, with raindrops the size of soybeans pelted against the glass canopy, making loud pat-pat sounds.

Ning Xiaobei glanced back, still a little shaken, thinking he had almost been soaked like a drowned rat.

“Sir, I’m really sorry; such nice clothes, they must have gotten wet.”

The woman helped the old man sit on a bench, then hurried over to Ning Xiaobei. Seeing his damp coat, she took out a handkerchief from her pocket and made a move to wipe it for him.

“No need, no need, this trench coat is waterproof. Just shake it off and it’ll be fine, no problem.”

Ning Xiaobei smiled and waved his hand, stepping back a couple of steps as he brushed the water droplets off.

The droplets scattered onto the floor. Worried someone might slip on them, he looked around and spotted a mop leaning against the wall, so he picked it up and started mopping the floor.

The woman lowered her head and glanced at her handkerchief, stained with what looked like soy sauce, then at Ning Xiaobei’s clearly expensive long coat. A trace of embarrassment crossed her face, and she turned to wipe the raindrops off the wheelchair seat instead.

But this gentleman really was good-looking.

As she wiped, Ma Guixiang stole glances at Ning Xiaobei, who was mopping the floor.

She had worked in Shanghai for seven or eight years, moving between several hospitals. Whether doctors or patients, she had rarely seen anyone as handsome as the man in front of her, and with such a warm heart too. Truly rare.

“What’s wrong?”

Ning Xiaobei looked up and met her gaze.

The woman smiled awkwardly. Ning Xiaobei noticed that although she was older and her hair was already half gray, she still looked quite nice when she smiled. He guessed she was even older than his father, Ning Jianguo. At that age, still having to work and care for patients, it really wasn’t easy.

“Sir… have I seen you somewhere before?”

The moment the words left her mouth, she realized they might be misunderstood. She hurriedly explained in a fluster, “I don’t mean anything by it, sir. I’m not trying to take advantage of you. I just said it casually.”

People living in a big city were used to being on guard against unexpected encounters. Guixiang was afraid he might misunderstand her, especially after he had just helped her. It might look like she was trying to push her luck.

Working in hospitals, she had encountered all kinds of patients and families. By now, she had developed the habit of watching everything carefully and reading people’s intentions.

“Ah, that’s possible. I was just discharged not long ago myself.”

Ning Xiaobei smiled, unconcerned.

For some reason, he found this woman very approachable. Since Fan Xia was still upstairs and would probably take a while to come down, he didn’t mind chatting with her a bit longer.

“Oh my, your head was injured so badly by bad people?”

The woman looked at the scar Ning Xiaobei deliberately revealed by bending down slightly and covered her mouth in shock.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“It’s alright. They used anesthesia when stitching it up, so I didn’t feel anything.”

Ning Xiaobei looked at her slightly pale face and wondered if the scar might be a bit too frightening. Because of the angle, he couldn’t see it himself. When he asked Fan Xia, Fan Xia said it wasn’t scary at all and told him not to overthink it.

And he had actually believed Fan Xia’s judgment; what a serious miscalculation…

Better go buy a hat at a mall later, he thought, touching his head.

The woman looked at his profile. Because of his recent illness, his cheeks had visibly thinned, giving Ning Xiaobei back a faint trace of that fragile, youthful look.

She felt certain she had seen him somewhere before, but definitely not in the hospital. The patients she cared for here were all in the oncology ward, while this handsome gentleman had been in the trauma department; there was no way she could have seen him there.

Ma Guixiang wanted to chat a bit more with this warm-hearted gentleman, but the old man was already growing impatient from sitting. With no other choice, she thanked Ning Xiaobei once again and pushed the wheelchair toward the elevator hall.

With a ding, the elevator doors opened. A dark-skinned man stood inside, frowning, holding a stack of documents. Only after seeing them did he react and quickly step out.

Ma Guixiang pushed the wheelchair into the elevator and pressed the button for the 13th floor along with the door-close button.

“Xiaobei! That insurance company is so unreliable, clearly they hadn’t processed the claim yet, but they told me it was already settled. I ended up wasting all that time upstairs for nothing!”

Fan Xia ran toward Ning Xiaobei in a huff. Ning Xiaobei quickly told him to slow down, lest he tear open his wound.

“Xiaobei?”

At the very instant before the elevator doors closed, the woman suddenly lifted her head in disbelief. Through the narrow gap, less than a centimeter wide, she looked at the two figures standing in the hall.

She remembered!

When she first came to Shanghai, borrowing money from her then father-in-law to treat his illness, she went around asking for news and finally found out which school her son attended. It was a large, excellent school, and it said to admit only the very best students in all of Shanghai.

She brought with her a whole bag of snacks specially carried from the Northeast, thinking they were things children would like. There was also honey; honey was the most nourishing, and Xiaobei was still growing, so he needed nutrition the most.

On the phone, Brother Jianguo had told her it would be best if they didn’t meet. But even without him saying it, she wouldn’t have dared to face the child in person.

Since she had entrusted the child to Brother Jianguo back then, she knew she no longer had the right to see him again.

She left the things she brought at the dormitory gatehouse. The old guard there said impatiently that he would pass them on to the child and told her to leave quickly.

She lowered her head and looked at her worn Liberation shoes, stained with mud. Then she glanced at the spotless floor tiles, so clean they reflected people like water, and the freshly painted snow-white walls. Feeling deeply uneasy and out of place, she backed away in apprehension.

Her steps hurried as she crossed the playground toward the main gate.

“Xiaobei!”

A boy’s voice sounded from behind her.

In that instant, she forgot even to breathe and suddenly whipped her head around.

The woman turned back and saw a wheat-skinned boy laughing as he pounced onto another boy.

“Xiaobei.”

He wrapped an arm around the other boy’s shoulders, resting his head on him, grinning with a mouthful of white teeth.

The boy seemed to notice something, then lowered his head to whisper into the ear of the boy called Xiaobei. Xiaobei elbowed him lightly, and the two burst into laughter together.

Right… ever since the child had been adopted, he was no longer called Baose; his name had been changed to Xiaobei.

Xiaobei is a child who came from the North to the South.

When he left her, he had just turned one year old and could already recognize people.

When Brother Jianguo took him from her arms, the child cried with heart-wrenching anguish, the kind of cry that seemed to pierce the ears and tear her heart apart. Even now, that sound still echoed in her ears.

In the blink of an eye, he was already in high school.

He really looked so much like his father.

The woman gazed greedily at Ning Xiaobei’s handsome profile, almost entranced.

She remembered that when Brother Wu enlisted in the army back then, he had been about this age too, wearing a green military uniform with a big red flower pinned to his chest. She had only taken one look before deciding she would marry him.

Xiaobei was even more delicate and refined-looking than his father. Truly, the land and waters of Jiangnan nurtured people well, giving him an air of scholarly elegance.

A golden leaf fell onto Xiaobei’s head, then slid to his shoulder before finally drifting to the ground.

Watching the two boys walk off with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, she stepped to the spot where he had just been standing, picked up that ginkgo leaf, and tucked it into her wallet.

“Xiaobei!”

Yes, that was Xiaobei. Her Xiaobei.

The tall, dark young man standing beside him was also that same classmate from back then. How had she not noticed earlier? How had she not realized it!

The elevator doors closed. Like a madwoman, she frantically pressed the button for the second floor. When she realized the elevator wouldn’t stop in time, she simply pressed every button from the third to the twelfth floor.

By the time she finally pushed the old man to the fourth-floor elevator hall and rushed down the emergency stairs to the lobby, only two visitors who had just come in from outside remained. They were shaking their umbrellas, leaving water all over the floor. A cleaner came out of the break room, muttering complaints as she picked up the mop Xiaobei had used earlier, wiped the floor dry, and then placed a yellow sign reading [Caution: Wet Floor] by the entrance.

“Xiaobei… Xiaobei…”

She rushed to the doorway and looked out into the vast curtain of rain, but where were those two boys now?

The woman lowered her head and pulled out her wallet from her coat pocket.

No one knew how many years she had used it, calling it a wallet was almost a stretch. Only a brown, worn core remained, dotted sparsely with patches where the leather had peeled away.

She opened it. Inside the transparent plastic sleeve for photos was a black-and-white picture. A chubby, fair-skinned baby smiled at her, showing two tiny teeth, white like glutinous rice.

This was taken when Xiaobei was 100 days old¹100-day photo: A cultural tradition where a baby is photographed at around 100 days old to mark healthy growth and survival in infancy, when she had brought him to the town photo studio. It was also the only photograph of him she had.

Tucked together with the photo was a ginkgo leaf that had already withered.

“Xiaobei…”

Leaning against the doorframe, the woman let tears slip from her tightly shut eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Sitting in the passenger seat, Fan Xia fastened his seatbelt. Seeing that Ning Xiaobei still hadn’t started the car, he looked over with concern.

“Is your head hurting? If you can’t drive, I’ll do it.”

As he spoke, he reached to unbuckle his seatbelt.

“Sit still, will you? If your wound bursts open, that’s on you. Your blood splattering five steps away is one thing, but my car just got serviced. How am I supposed to explain to the 4S shop²4S店 (4S shop): Authorized car dealership/service center in China (Sales, Spare parts, Service, Surveys) why it’s covered in blood?”

Ning Xiaobei joked, then stepped on the gas. The car slid smoothly out of the underground parking lot.

The hospital parking garage was located behind the inpatient building. As the car turned, Ning Xiaobei deliberately turned his head to glance in that direction.

The caregiver and the old man in the wheelchair were already gone. For some reason, he felt a little disappointed.

They had only exchanged fewer than ten sentences, yet it had felt strangely warm and familiar. Ning Xiaobei found the feeling a bit ridiculous.

He thought, this must be what people call fate.

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• 1
  100-day photo: A cultural tradition where a baby is photographed at around 100 days old to mark healthy growth and survival in infancy
• 2
  4S店 (4S shop): Authorized car dealership/service center in China (Sales, Spare parts, Service, Surveys)