Treatment

“If you agree, sign here.”

After laughing for a while, Hua Yu composed herself and handed over the documents in a formal tone.

Wei Yin came back to her senses. Only then did she realize she had been staring at someone for far too long; embarrassed, she took the papers and signed her name.

“Aren’t you even going to read it carefully?” Hua Yu asked suddenly.

Wei Yin had always been gentle and slow-moving, a temperament shaped by the frailty she’d had since childhood. It also made her naturally cautious. And yet, when it came to a medical document, she had signed without even skimming the details; her guard had been far too low.

“I already looked,” Wei Yin said with a smile. She lifted her head to look at Hua Yu, trusting her completely. “I don’t have anything worth scheming over, and I trust the doctors at the provincial hospital. You’re all good doctors who heal the sick and save lives.”

Although she didn’t know why her medical fees had suddenly been reduced, she truly had nothing to lose, so she was willing to trust.

Hua Yu looked at her and said nothing for a moment.

Wei Yin’s smile revealed a small dimple on the left side of her face. She handed the documents back to Hua Yu and said, “Thank you.”

They looked at each other. Hua Yu was the first to look away, taking the documents and setting them aside. She took a deep breath, picked up a sheet of paper, and began writing as she spoke.

“When you were admitted, you reported a history of mental illness, and memory loss caused by a forehead injury. I need to understand that in detail.”

There was a strain in Hua Yu’s voice that even she herself did not notice. Her professional manner kept her composed, but emotionally, it was another matter entirely.

The way Wei Yin looked at her was the way one looked at a stranger: curious, surprised, puzzled. None of it resembled a long-awaited reunion.

If Wei Yin still remembered her, then there would have been many questions she could ask outright. But Wei Yin had lost her memory; she didn’t remember her former best friend, her “bestie,” and she had forgotten everything between them.

Wei Yin touched the left side of her forehead, where a faint scar matched the “injury” Hua Yu had mentioned.

Hua Yu stood up and, before Wei Yin could react, came over and lifted her hair aside.

“What are you doing?”

In her line of sight was a pale red scar about the size of a five-cent coin; half hidden by her hair, half exposed.

Wei Yin leaned back awkwardly, the tips of her ears turning a little red. She casually swept her hair over it to cover the scar. “It’s ugly, isn’t it?”

Hua Yu said through clenched teeth, “It’s not ugly. It healed very well.”

Wei Yin only took that as consolation and said softly, “Once, I had low blood sugar. I got dizzy and fell down the broad steps in the open square, then hit a stone bollard. There wasn’t an open wound, and I didn’t bleed; it was just swollen. Later it hurt so much that I finally went to the hospital, and they found that a lot of my memory was gone.”

Wei Yin’s voice was just like her—soft and gentle. Her past had been almost entirely hardship, but the hardships of life were blurred by that airy tone, as if she had merely fainted from low blood sugar by accident instead of suffering from long-term malnutrition.

After graduating from university, Hua Yu had not seen Wei Yin again. She had thought Wei Yin, who had refused her, would be living well, because not long after that, rumors spread that Wei Yin was together with Yu Tiantian. The other woman was rich and generous; at the very least, she could provide financial support to her girlfriend.

But the reality?

Just looking at her current state made it obvious how difficult her life must have been.

If Hua Yu had known earlier, would Wei Yin still have rejected her back then?

Hua Yu tightened her grip on the paper. Pheromones suddenly leaked from her, instantly filling the entire ward.

“Hm? It smells nice.” Wei Yin wrinkled her nose and rubbed it a little uncomfortably.

Hua Yu quickly reined in her pheromones and apologized in a low voice, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Wei Yin said with a smile. “Anyway, I don’t really react to it.”

Her glands had already atrophied to stage three; they were practically decorative, and she hardly reacted to alpha pheromones at all.

Hua Yu controlled her expression and asked about the other circumstances, her pencil moving steadily across the page. She stopped now and then to ask for details, and by the time she finished, it was already lunchtime.

Wei Yin’s mouth had gone dry from talking. Just as she was about to get up, Hua Yu handed her a glass of water.

Wei Yin took a small sip, licked her lower lip, and said, “Salty?”

Hua Yu gathered up all the materials and nodded. “The nutritional formula I had made for you. You don’t like IV drips, so from now on I’ll replace them all with supplements.”

Wei Yin held the glass of clear liquid, unable to tell it was anything different, and blinked. “Ah. I don’t like IV drips.”

She had never really thought about whether she liked them or not. In her memory, she had often been going to the hospital since she was little; she had had injections and medicine, so she probably didn’t like IV drips. Needles piercing her body, cold liquid flowing in... yes, that did sound unpleasant.

But how did Hua Yu know that?

Seeing her blank little expression, Hua Yu couldn’t help curving her lips. “Mm.”

“Drink the nutritional supplement first. I’ll go get your lunch.”

Wei Yin reflexively answered, “Okay.”

She finished the large cup of supplement, and only then did her stomach give a growl; belatedly, she asked, “Dr. Hua is going to get my lunch?”

The hospital’s nutritional meals were usually delivered to the ward, precisely to keep disobedient patients from eating random things and affecting their treatment.

Could Hua Yu have arranged a different meal for her?

Thinking of that, Wei Yin picked up her phone and flipped through the meal plan she had been given earlier.

There were all kinds of porridges, easy to digest and absorb but hard to swallow; stir-fried dishes with almost no oil, salt, scallions, or ginger, tasting like chewing wax; coarse-grain meal buns that scratched her throat whether sugar was added or not...

Mm, she might as well look forward to Dr. Hua’s lunch.

While she waited, a young nurse came over to remove the IV that had been disconnected halfway through and, incidentally, stuffed a large insulated cup of nutritional supplement into her hands.

Wei Yin felt a little embarrassed. The infusion still had two-thirds left; what a waste.

The nurse waved a hand magnanimously. “Don’t worry! It all goes on Dr. Hua’s account!”

Wei Yin: “?”

The nurse came back to herself and quickly said, “Dr. Hua is handling your bill. Anyway, there’s no need to worry; she’s rich enough to cover everything...”

Wei Yin’s gaze turned even more suspicious.

The nurse simply clamped her mouth shut and fled in a hurry.

Hua Yu returned soon after. This time, she had taken off her white coat, as if she were off work.

“There isn’t much food, so try to finish it,” Hua Yu said as she pulled out the bedside table and set down three lunch boxes. “I’m going home for a bit; I’ll be back tonight.”

Wei Yin’s eyes couldn’t keep up.

First, they landed on Hua Yu herself: a fitted white wool sweater tucked into a red long skirt cinched at the waist, her tall, long-legged figure and perfect curves on full display. With proportions that good, she really must have some foreign blood in her, right?

Then the rich aroma reached her nose, and Wei Yin’s attention shifted to the lunch boxes.

Donggui longan black chicken soup, steamed clams with egg, and brown sugar sticky rice lotus root; three dishes in all. In terms of ingredients and presentation, they were much better than the standard hospital nutritional meals.

“Try it and see how it tastes,” Hua Yu said, not leaving right away. Leaning against the foot of the bed, a trace of fatigue flashed across her face, though anticipation was more obvious.

Wei Yin picked up a piece of lotus root stuffed with sticky rice. The texture was soft and the flavor sweet. Her eyes widened; she swallowed quickly, then took a sip of the black chicken soup and hissed at the heat on her tongue. “Mmm—good!”

Hua Yu smiled. She watched Wei Yin eat for a while, then stood up. “Then eat slowly. When you’re done, just leave the boxes here; I’ll come back tonight to clean up.”

Wei Yin hurried to stop her. “Wait, you’re coming back tonight too? What’s my treatment plan? What do I need to do?”

Although she had signed the papers so readily, she had no idea how she was going to be treated afterward. Now that she heard Hua Yu was leaving the hospital, she felt a little panicked.

“Mostly some examinations, and drinking nutritional supplements every day,” Hua Yu said, leaning back. She thought for a moment, then spoke slowly. “I want to give you Chinese medicine, then combine it with acupuncture and massage; food therapy will be the main thing. What do you think?”

Wei Yin looked at Hua Yu’s exquisite profile in the sunlight from the window, at the graceful line of her neck and shoulders, and nodded blankly. “Ah... sounds good.”

“As for me,” Hua Yu said, turning to look at her, “I’ll be bringing you dinner tonight.”

Wei Yin’s eyes widened, and she didn’t respond. After Hua Yu turned and left, Wei Yin lowered her head, picked up a clam with her chopsticks, and put it into her mouth before finally snapping back to herself.

“Dinner?”

The scene felt oddly familiar, like some sentimental family drama in which an old mother fell ill and was hospitalized, and the children took turns bringing her meals... no, she was definitely not the old mother.

The point was, Hua Yu was bringing her dinner, which meant... was this food made by Hua Yu herself?

No, no, that would be too time-consuming. It probably wasn’t.

-

Hua Yu lived at Shui’an Apartments, two kilometers from the provincial hospital; it was a twenty-minute walk. The single-floor unit was just over one hundred and ninety square meters, and recently the drain in the house had become somewhat clogged; the housekeeper had contacted her many times, hoping to arrange for someone to come repair it.

“Sorry, something came up at work, so I’m home a little late.”

Hua Yu saw the housekeeper off to the door.

The housekeeper said warmly, “No problem. If anything else needs fixing at home, just contact me directly.”

After closing the door, Hua Yu lay down on the nearby sofa and closed her eyes.

Her eyes were dry, her shoulders and back a little sore; she felt like she had become the embodiment of the word tired.

Yesterday she had worked overtime to perform gland-removal surgery on an omega. The patient was only twenty-three, but her glands had already atrophied after repeated marking cleanings, and there had been no choice but to remove them.

Cases like this were far too common. Omegas were inherently at a disadvantage in front of alphas; one wrong move, and they could end up hurting themselves.

It had been a hundred years since the first recorded ABO differentiation among humans; in recent decades, the number of gland-related illnesses had increased, and their courses had become more and more complicated. The provincial hospital where Hua Yu worked was among the country’s leaders in gland research; it had cured many difficult and complicated gland disorders. As a promising young deputy chief physician in the gland-differentiation department, staying up late and working overtime was Hua Yu’s normal routine.

But today had indeed broken her overtime record. She hadn’t slept for thirty-one hours.

She should have been able to go home and rest in the morning, but she had run into Wei Yin. After reading all of Wei Yin’s medical records, she rushed home to cook, then went to the ward to see her, then came back and dealt with the drain for a while. By the time she finally lay down, it was already past two.

“Wakeup, wakeup...”

The alarm rang. Hua Yu struggled to open her glued-shut eyelids, grabbed her phone to check the time, and squeezed in a few replies on WeChat.

Then a call came in.

“Huahua, are you off on the 21st?” On the other end was a bright female voice, brisk and familiar.

Hua Yu rubbed her temples and got up to uncover the pot. “I still haven’t taken this month’s leave.”

“Then come to the gathering. All our childhood friends have come back to the country; let’s find time to meet up,” the other woman said happily. “It’s been two months since I last saw you too. Auntie keeps telling me every day that you’re too busy with work to go home. After the gathering, I’ll go with you to see Auntie.”

Hua Yu tossed a handful of longan flesh into the soup and said with a headache, “I’m not going. I’m busy.”

“Busy with what?” the other woman said, thoroughly puzzled. “Besides that 24/7 soul-crushing balding job of yours, do you have any other social life worth mentioning?”

“My job is very good,” Hua Yu said, setting down her phone and starting to pack the food. “And there’s no point in a gathering anyway; we weren’t close to begin with.”

“Tsk, that hurts,” she said with a laugh. “Fine, actually I’m not close with them either, and Yu Tiantian is there too. I’ve hated her since childhood. If you’re not coming, then I won’t go either.”

Hua Yu closed the lunch box lids, then suddenly asked, “Yu Tiantian?”

“Yeah. She’s back in the country. This whole thing was put together by her; she went abroad for two years and came back with some fake master’s degree, acting all high and mighty to show off. What’s there to be smug about? Forget it, maybe I shouldn’t go after all.”

“No,” Hua Yu said. “Don’t refuse yet. I’ll think about it.”

The other woman paused, then said, “Fine. Give me an answer later. If you don’t go to the gathering, then it’s just the two of us.”

“Mm.” Hua Yu ended the call, her expression gradually turning dark.

TL Note:

24/7 soul-crushing balding job (007熬死人的秃头工作) is slang for a nonstop job with constant overtime, jokingly implying it will make you go bald.