Sheng Xia, Cheng Liang

The night after the surgery, Sheng Xia had been half-asleep and half-awake.

At first, the nurse instructed her not to fall asleep, not to drink water, and should try to move around on the bed as much as possible to help her pass gas.

Sheng Xia was someone who followed instructions seriously, so even without Tang Caixi nagging by her side all the time, she could force herself to stay awake and move her butt every few minutes.

Furthermore, Tang Caixi, who claimed to have a sore throat, was still hyped up due to the stimulation from waiting outside the operating room. She started by teasing Sheng Xia for her persistence in asking the doctor “cheer up”, then went on to criticize her obsessive-compulsive disorder with planning, and finally described how terrifying the surgery waiting room was. When the nurse called her name, Tang Caixi felt like an old father waiting for his wife to give birth.

“Where’s Aunt Liu?” Sheng Xia asked Tang Caixi.

After entering the ward, Sheng Xia hadn’t seen Aunt Liu again. Initially, she thought that Aunt Liu had gone to discuss the surgical plan with Director Lin. However, several hours had passed, and the bed next to hers was still empty.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Tang Caixi slapped her forehead. “There were too many things this afternoon, I almost forgot.”

“Aunt Liu took a leave.” Tang Caixi said. “She left when the nurse asked me to come down and clean up the things on the bedside table during your surgery.”

Sheng Xia frowned.

“She said she was going out to sell her house to raise money for the surgery,” Tang Caixi said. “She also asked me to bid you farewell. She said she would be out for three or four days this time, and by then, you should be discharged from the hospital.”

The last words left by Aunt Liu was: “Let’s not say goodbye.”

Auntie Liu was superstitious. She believed that you shouldn’t bring many things or say goodbye in a place like a hospital. She waited until Sheng Xia entered the operating room before leaving. When she left, she took away the disposable toiletries that Sheng Xia had given her.

Sheng Xia looked at Aunt Liu’s empty and murmured, “I wonder if she has chosen her trustee.”

She didn’t know if Aunt Liu had found someone she could trust, if her surgery would be successful, if she would be able to see the finale of that drama series.

“She will,” Tang Caixi smiled, imitating Aunt Liu’s tone. “After the surgery, you’ll wake up and your illness will be gone.”

They didn’t say goodbye, so she would definitely get better.

***

The day after the surgery, the nurse helped Sheng Xia remove the ECG and blood pressure monitoring cables attached to her body, removed the urinary catheter, and took off all the external devices on her body except for the indwelling needle for IV drip. Sheng Xia felt much lighter, and she finally began to regain some clarity.

She still had a low-grade fever, but the nurse said it was a normal reaction after surgery, and it would be fine as long as it didn’t exceed 38.5 degrees.

Now, it was the long recovery period.

The nurse instructed Sheng Xia to get out of bed and move around more. So, Sheng Xia gritted her teeth and got out of bed four or five times a day. Each time, she would walk around the long corridors in circles with Tang Caixi’s support.

Sometimes, she would encounter Cheng Liang.

He basically stayed in the operating room or the outpatient clinic during the day, only appearing in the corridors in the late afternoon or evening. At that time, he usually had droopy eyelids and exuded the “withered” aura described by Tang Caixi.

But Sheng Xia felt that the atmosphere between him and her was a little strange.

She felt embarrassed because of the commotion she caused after the anesthesia wore off. She didn’t know why Cheng Liang was like this, and she even felt that Cheng Liang was avoiding her.

Perhaps he was afraid that she would remember his WeChat ID, Sheng Xia thought. After all, it was really a big trouble for doctors to let a patient know their personal WeChat ID.

“Dr. Cheng, I don’t remember.” So, on the third day after the surgery, when the upright Sheng Xia encountered Cheng Liang alone while walking, she stopped him, “I don’t remember the WeChat ID I asked you for after the anesthesia.”

Cheng Liang raised an eyebrow, and the teardrop mole under his eye moved: “What?”

“So, I won’t contact you after I’m discharged from the hospital,” Sheng Xia said, very apologetically.

She would definitely not touch a drop of alcohol in the future, because this anesthesia incident taught her that she probably had a poor alcohol tolerance.

Cheng Liang stood still, and after a moment, he opened his mouth and reported a string of numbers.

Sheng Xia: “?”

“My WeChat ID,” Cheng Liang said. “Didn’t you say you didn’t remember?”

Sheng Xia’s eyes widened.

“In your current condition, you must have someone with you when you go out.” Cheng Liang instantly switched back to his doctor state in a second.

“Xixi went to get food……” Sheng Xia answered subconsciously, the numbers still lingering in her mind.

Cheng Liang raised the corners of his mouth slightly, nodded at Sheng Xia, and walked away with his hands in his pockets. The moment they passed by each other, Sheng Xia smelled the smell of disinfectant on him.

Why did he give her his WeChat ID?

The key point was, she actually remembered it this time.

Should I add him…

***

Why did he give her his WeChat ID again?

Cheng Liang thought, it was probably because Sheng Xia said she didn’t remember it.

And the way this serious and straightforward girl widened her eyes was quite amusing, making him feel that it was worth giving her his WeChat ID.

“I heard everything.” In the corner of the corridor, Xiao Zhou pushed his glasses up and walked out of the shadows.

Cheng Liang: “……”

Damn. That scared him to death.

“You’re still laughing.” Xiao Zhou stated the facts mercilessly and calmly.

Cheng Liang: “……”

“This is the first time you’ve given a patient your personal WeChat ID.” Xiao Zhou wouldn’t let it go.

Cheng Liang surrendered: “…What do you want?”

“The air conditioner in the apartment you rented to me is broken.” Xiao Zhou looked at Cheng Liang, emphasizing, “Summer is coming soon, but the air conditioner is broken.”

“…Call the agency to fix it,” Cheng Liang waved his hand.

“The agent said that the air conditioners on our floor are all broken and need major repairs since there’s a problem with the wiring,” Xiao Zhou replied.

Cheng Liang was taken aback: “Why didn’t the agent tell me?”

“The agent said your phone has been out of service for a long time, probably about half a year,” Xiao Zhou looked at Cheng Liang’s phone. “I think you changed your number and forgot to give it to the agency.”

……

Cheng Liang coughed lightly in guilt: “Then I’ll find time to check it out…”

He forgot that the phone number he gave to the agent, explaining that he was tired of dealing with trouble, was the one that came with his broadband subscription. He probably never turned on that number……

“You won’t have time for that,” Xiao Zhou was cold-blooded. “The expert invited by Director Lin is coming to Lucheng next week, and your project will start evaluation soon.”

Cheng Liang: “……”

“Give me a 10% discount on the rent from the beginning of summer to the beginning of autumn, and I’ll find workers to fix it myself.” After a series of blows, Xiao Zhou finally gave a solution.

“Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.” Cheng Liang waved his hand as if shooing away a fly, trying to get rid of Xiao Zhou.

Xiao Zhou’s family background was not bad, and the things he used in his daily life were even more expensive than Cheng Liang’s, but he was stingy and petty. Even when splitting the bill for lunch, he insisted on exact calculations to the cent, not allowing Cheng Liang to round up or down.

“Why did you give the patient in bed 16 your WeChat ID?” Xiao Zhou didn’t leave. He circled back to the topic. “Even the number you gave to the agent is out of service.”

“She said she forgot.” Cheng Liang replied. “So I gave it to her again.”

Xiao Zhou: “……”

“You gave it to her twice.” Xiao Zhou reminded Cheng Liang, “If she doesn’t add you, won’t you lose face?”

Cheng Liang: “……”

Damn it, he didn’t think that far.

***

Xiao Zhou’s words came true.

Sheng Xia didn’t add Cheng Liang’s WeChat until she was discharged. The day of her discharge was a surgery day for the Hepatobiliary Surgery Department. The discharge process was handled by the resident doctor, and Cheng Liang just signed a document. In the evening, after the last surgery was done, he made his usual rounds in the ward area, and bed 16 was already vacant.

Just like other patients, doctors didn’t want patients to be readmitted after being discharged from the hospital. Except for follow-up visits, they basically wouldn’t meet again.

The difference was that he had given his WeChat ID to this patient twice.

Apart from that, there was nothing else.

The conclusion for all doctors and patients was the same.

Cheng Liang walked past the empty bed 16, took a pen from the nurse’s station. and leisurely walked back to the doctor’s office.

There was no one in the office at this hour. When Cheng Liang passed by the water dispenser, he saw the oranges placed on it, and when he passed by the balcony, he saw the gray-blue haze floating outside.

It was still a little different. Cheng Liang peeled the last orange and stuffed it into his mouth, then opened a drawer and took out the lollipop Sheng Xia had given him.

This patient ate his orange and still didn’t add him on WeChat.

Casually stabbing him several times without conscience.

“Why are you still here?” Director Lin’s loud voice interrupted Cheng Liang’s moment of leisure. “Where’s your phone? I called, but no one answered.”

“In the locker room.” Cheng Liang stood up, stuffing the remaining half of the orange into his mouth. “I didn’t bring it with me because I was in surgery all day.”

Director Lin, who also wanted to eat oranges, watched Cheng Liang chew and swallow the last orange. He could only pour himself a glass of water, took a big gulp, and looked at Cheng Liang.

Cheng Liang looked back at him innocently, his face blank.

“The expert won’t be able to come next week.” Director Lin felt that beating around the bush with Cheng Liang was a waste of time, so he got straight to the point. “Our project might be in trouble.”

Cheng Liang was stunned.

“The second department beat us to it,” Director Lin smiled.

This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, but this time, Director Lin felt a bit tired.

“All the clinical data we collected in the early stages was published in a paper by the people from the second department. The direction of their research highly overlaps with ours. The leader’s stance is that it’s a waste of time to fight for this kind of thing. Since we no longer have new clinical data to support our project, they’ve decided to allocate the project funds to the second department first. We have another big project in the second half of the year, so let’s focus that first.”

In other words, it was business as usual, watering down the situation.

“The clinical data was leaked by Xiao Sun?” Although phrased as a question, Cheng Liang knew the answer was most likely yes.

He had prepared the clinical data with Xiao Sun during the early stages. Besides him, Xiao Sun was the one who knew the most about those things.

Xiao Sun was now being ostracized in the first department and seemed to have shifted his focus elsewhere. Cheng Liang hadn’t seen much of him lately.

Director Lin rubbed his temples wearily. “That’s not the point.”

The point was that the guy from the second department actually took the data given by a resident doctor and had the audacity to publish it in a paper.

The director of the second department wasn’t like this before.

Over the years, there had been heated arguments and disagreements, even to the point where they were so angry that they wanted to rip each other’s hair and make them bald, but most of it was for the sake of treatment plans and research directions.

This level of underhandedness had never happened before.

But in the past two years…

Director Lin sighed again.

People change. And the hospital’s funding had been tight in the past two years, and the competition had become increasingly fierce, and the number of people he could trust and confide in had dwindled.

“Cheng Liang,” Director Lin patted Cheng Liang on the shoulder. “Sometimes I think, it’s not bad for you to say like this.”

He had spent the whole day running around outside for the project, while Cheng Liang had spent the whole day in the operating room. At the end of the day, Cheng Liang hid alone in the office, legs crossed, eating oranges.

When he told him that the project might be in trouble, Cheng Liang just froze for a moment and didn’t even get angry.

This was also quite good.

“Do you have anything to eat?” Director Lin stopped dwelling on the issue and stared at the unopened lollipop in Cheng Liang’s hand.

“No more.” Cheng Liang replied respectfully, tearing open the lollipop wrapper and putting it in his mouth.

Director Lin: “……”