Chapter 85

For the two days she stayed in the hospital, Qiu Qiu kept coming over to keep Lin Baixin company. She brought meals at mealtimes and sometimes stayed to chat with her so the time would pass faster.

Only Qiu Qiu came. No one else did.

After learning her lesson from the last time, when concerned people had bombarded her with calls, Lin Baixin had specifically told Lin Qi and the others not to let word get out about her burn. She didn’t want any more visitors.

Every meal came in the same insulated container. Each time Lin Baixin finished eating, Qiu Qiu would pack everything away, wash it out, and take it home. The next time she came, she was still carrying the same one, unchanged.

"Is it good?" Qiu Qiu asked softly. "You seem to really like it. If there’s anything else you want, just say so. I’ll bring it tonight."

Lin Baixin wasn’t picky and could eat anything, but after a pause, she still didn’t say whatever. After thinking for a while, she picked one of their old standby dishes.

"Then how about pork and vermicelli soup with greens?"

"Sure." Qiu Qiu laughed. "Eat something mild. It’ll help the wound heal. Are you feeling any better than last night? It seems like this recovery period is pretty long. Even healing is going to take at least half a month."

"A little better. It doesn’t hurt as much."

"Did the doctor say whether it’ll leave a scar?"

"If it doesn’t get worse, probably not. If it gets more serious, then it likely will."

"That’s a relief. A blessing in disguise, really. I went to A Zhen’s office today, and I heard a few people talking about it. They said some people don’t heal well and can even end up with functional problems, and might need surgery."

Lin Baixin nodded and drew her hand back a little, hiding it. The wound looked rather alarming now. To keep from scaring Qiu Qiu, she did her best to keep it out of sight.

Qiu Qiu left at one in the afternoon to find Cui Zhen. She wanted Lin Baixin to go with her and take a little walk downstairs for some fresh air, but Lin Baixin refused and stayed put.

Being alone in the ward was miserable. Aside from staring at her phone, there was nothing to do. The medical staff came in from time to time, and after the blisters were lanced, the wound had to be wrapped in sterile gauze.

Even after the blisters were drained, the pain didn’t ease much. The doctor prescribed more medicine and said she’d need one more IV before discharge to reduce the inflammation.

With one injured hand and the other hooked up to an IV, Lin Baixin couldn’t move either hand freely. She truly couldn’t do anything now. All she could do was lie on the hospital bed and stare at the ceiling. It was only when a nurse came in and saw her like that that she asked whether the bed should be raised a little; lying flat the whole time would be very uncomfortable.

That night, everything went on as usual.

Qiu Qiu brought dinner. Lin Qi sent photos of feeding the cat... but Yu Min still didn’t show up. That person didn’t seem to care about her at all, or maybe she just didn’t want to come over, as if carrying Lin Baixin to the burn ward two days ago had only been because Cui Zhen asked her to, and nothing more.

After the IV finished, Lin Baixin turned onto her side, facing the doorway.

Medical staff kept passing by outside, hurrying in and out.

She curled up a little under the blanket. The hospital blanket smelled even worse; there was always some indescribable odor clinging to it, not exactly stinky, just unpleasant.

Lin Baixin hated how unclean the blanket felt. After a while, she gave up and pulled it open, then simply stopped covering herself.

Darkness fell quickly. In the blink of an eye, thick blackness had settled over everything. A nurse came in and turned on the light. The white glare was blinding. Lin Baixin closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her gaze still instinctively went to the doorway first.

The doorway was still empty. Now there wasn’t even any medical staff passing by. The nurse who had come in to switch on the light was someone Lin Baixin had never seen before; the previous nurses must have changed shifts. The nurse asked her a few questions. Lin Baixin answered honestly. After checking her over and confirming there was no major problem, the nurse left without a word.

The room fell quiet again.

Not the kind of absolute silence that shut everything out; there were still sounds outside, the window was open, and traffic from the distant street drifted in. But for some reason, Lin Baixin truly felt, for the first time, how lonely it was. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She could no longer calmly accept this kind of solitude without company.

She clearly preferred being alone. She always had, and she even rather enjoyed that kind of life. But maybe it was because she was in a different place, not in her own home. This was the first time in her life she’d been hospitalized by herself. And for the past two days, people had kept calling to check on her, while Qiu Qiu had been keeping her company. Now the phone had gone quiet, and no one was here anymore. She just wasn’t used to it.

Maybe things would be better once she went home tomorrow.

Just like the night before, she spent most of the night unable to sleep, tossing and turning and struggling to drift off, even though her body had already reached its limit and she was exhausted.

She didn’t know when she finally fell asleep in the second half of the night; even Lin Baixin herself hadn’t realized it. Only after waking up in the morning did she discover that she’d somehow lain on her right hand. Luckily, it hadn’t caused a second injury; the pressure hadn’t been too heavy.

She handled all the discharge procedures herself this time. No one had made an appointment for her in advance. Qiu Qiu was working today, so Lin Baixin went back on her own.

After being away for two or three days, the apartment was in much better shape than Lin Baixin had expected. She had imagined coming home to complete chaos, with Lu Dagun having rolled all over the place and trashed everything. Instead, when she opened the door, the place was clean. Not only was it nothing like the mess she’d pictured, it was actually neat everywhere; there wasn’t even any spilled litter beside the litter box.

Lu Dagun was lying comfortably on its new cat lounger, basking in the sun. When it saw its owner come home, the little thing got up unhurriedly, stretched, and walked over. Once it reached Lin Baixin’s feet, it flopped right down and meowed lazily at her.

The new cat chair had been bought by Lin Qi. Or so Lin Qi said: she’d bought it and had the person feeding the cat at the door receive the package. Lu Dagun liked sunbathing, didn’t it? In the morning, the sun couldn’t reach the room, so putting the little chair under the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room was perfect. That way, Lu Dagun could sun itself in the morning too.

She was home now, no longer in the hospital, and people started calling and video chatting one after another. But that feeling still hadn’t gone away. The moment things quieted down, it surged back even harder, as if it had been waiting for the chance.

In the room where Lu Dagun usually stayed, there was a rabbit figurine on the windowsill.

Lin Baixin only noticed it a day later. She stared at the little ornament for a long time, then picked it up and held it in her palm.

But she had still overthought it. The little ornament hadn’t been left there by the person she thought it had; it was a cat toy that came free with the cat chair.

"Does your cat like it? How is it?" Lin Qi asked.

Lin Baixin parted her lips. Her mouth moved for a long time before she finally said, "It likes it. Right now it’s lying on it and doesn’t want to go anywhere else."

"I was just worried it wouldn’t like it. I’ve never raised one of these things before, so I don’t really know much about them."

"Mm."

"I might have to go back to Kyoto a little later this time. I need to stay here for a while. You’ll be okay by yourself over there, right?"

"No problem. Go ahead and do what you need to do. You don’t have to worry about me here."

The rabbit figurine was round and chubby and cute. If not for the pair of long drooping ears and the signature three-petal mouth, at first glance it actually looked more like a white cat.

Lin Baixin took the cat toy and didn’t give it to Lu Dagun. She kept it for herself, taking the figurine away from the cat, and put it on the windowsill in her own room.

Fortunately, Lu Dagun didn’t like the figurine at all and wasn’t interested in it one bit; the little thing only loved that chair.

Going to the hospital every day to change the dressing was pretty troublesome. The burn clinic was packed with patients, and every time she went, she had to wait in line for two or three hours.

Changing the dressing was like being put through a cruel punishment; it hurt much more than it had at the beginning. The pain made Lin Baixin’s face go pale. After she got out, she still went to the dermatology department herself, unable to help it.

Sometimes waiting in line wasn’t such a bad thing. After the dressing change, she went over and happened to catch the doctors on their lunch break, so Lin Baixin ordered coffee and had it delivered to the dermatology department. Every staff member there got a cup, as thanks for the care Cui Zhen and the others had shown her a few days earlier.

She was pretty thoughtful about these things. The next day, she also made two embroidered banners: one for the burn doctor who had treated her, and one for Cui Zhen. It left Cui Zhen both amused and exasperated, not sure whether to accept them.

They hadn’t even treated her illness, so how could she accept them? That didn’t seem to make sense.

In the end, though, they accepted them. The banner for Cui Zhen read, "A physician’s heart of benevolence." Even if she hadn’t treated her, she could still accept it. Nothing wrong with that.

Both times she went to dermatology, she had a legitimate reason, and both times she ran into Yu Min there too, right on cue.

Cui Zhen didn’t know about the past between them. Every time, she invited Lin Baixin to eat with them. After all, she was her wife’s classmate and good friend. But they could only eat in the cafeteria, or else order takeout together; there was no time to go find a restaurant and sit down for a proper meal.

Coffee was too effective at winning people over. After just one delivery, the entire dermatology department knew Lin Baixin. And let alone the fact that the very next day, even though she herself hadn’t come, she sent cold drinks for everyone again; the department wasn’t going to accept her treats for nothing, so of course they remembered her.

Yu Min was included in both rounds of drinks, too. The first time, a junior doctor set the coffee down in front of her without saying who had bought it. Yu Min had already drunk half of it before the junior mentioned, "Your sister sent it. Everyone got some. Wow, your sister is so nice."

Yu Min stopped drinking and set the coffee down, lowering her eyes to look at it.

"Aren’t you going to go see her?" the junior asked.

Yu Min didn’t go; she didn’t have time.

"Then have her come see you. Since she’s already here, why don’t you two meet up?" The junior treated them as if they really were sisters and took a big gulp. "This came just in time to wake me up. I forgot to buy coffee this morning, and I didn’t have time to go get any. This cup is basically saving my life."

"I’m not seeing her. I’m too busy this afternoon; I have a lot to do," Yu Min said calmly.

The junior had a great impression of Lin Baixin. She was the one most completely won over by the coffee, and for the next few days she kept bringing up Lin Baixin in Yu Min’s ear until it practically formed a callus.

When Lin Baixin came to dermatology a third time, she didn’t bring anything. She was keeping a lower profile. But that day, Yu Min just happened to be off and wasn’t there. It was the junior who spotted Lin Baixin waiting in the corridor and asked, confused, why she was there again. When Yu Min came back to the hospital after her day off, the junior told her about it again.

"I asked her if she was there to see you, and she said no again. Said she was only there for a dressing change and happened to be passing by," the junior said, deeply puzzled. "Burn care and our department aren’t even in the same area. How is that still on the way?"

Yu Min didn’t know, and she didn’t want to dig into it.

The junior was a gossip and had guessed there was something going on between them, pressing her for the truth and practically dying to get to the bottom of it.

Yu Min found it annoying. She turned away and refused to say anything.

The junior said with certainty, "I bet she comes looking for you again. And..." She deliberately drew out the last word, grinning. "And she won’t admit she’s there for you. Believe it or not?"

Whether Yu Min believed it or not, the junior’s prediction was right:

That very day, Lin Baixin came again. This time, she wasn’t just passing by; she didn’t make any excuse for it. She came straight to find Yu Min.

But she didn’t come during work hours. Instead, she waited until Yu Min got off work, tired all over and ready to head home. Lin Baixin, standing outside, blocked her path. Before Yu Min could say anything, she spoke first.

"I’ll drive you."

Yu Min didn’t need a ride. She didn’t need Lin Baixin to drive her.

Lin Baixin insisted, and in the end, she still drove her there. She had something she wanted to ask her.