To Covet (GL) - Chapter 90

I’m standing in the hospital corridor. At this hour, the outpatient clinic downstairs is incredibly crowded. With the recent change in seasons, many people have caught colds, and the bitter, sour scent of illness diffuses from their bodies into the air, clashing with the pungent smell of disinfectant and medicine.

I take the elevator up to the emergency resuscitation floor, and the surroundings suddenly fall silent.

My uncle and aunt are pacing back and forth anxiously. I walk up to them, but my aunt doesn’t seem to notice another person has arrived. “God bless, God bless…” Her hands and lips tremble as she prays incessantly.

“Family members can wait in the seating area over there.”

My uncle hurriedly asks a nurse coming out how my grandmother is. The nurse shakes her head without a word, tells him to wait patiently, and rushes off before her voice even fades.

I stand there until my legs feel stiff; moving even a small step is exceptionally difficult.

The light for the resuscitation room goes out.

My aunt sees my grandmother being wheeled out intact, wearing a ventilator and covered in various tubes. Fortunately, there is a faint, living color on her face. Her heart finally settles back into her chest, and her legs go weak. If my uncle hadn’t caught her in time, she probably would have collapsed on the floor. She stumbles forward, grabbing the doctor’s sleeve, nearly kneeling in gratitude.

I stand at the door of the ICU. I can’t see the person inside, and the words the doctor spoke keep circling in my head—cerebral hemorrhage, critical period, risk of paralysis, loss of speech function…

“What are we supposed to do now?” My aunt hugs her shoulders, leaning against the hospital’s lime-washed wall. The hospital’s whistling air conditioning surges up from the soles of her feet, and her voice sounds just as cold. “Yang Jun, this is all your fault. Mom wanted to drink and I was there trying to talk her out of it, but you just went along with her. Now look, she drank herself into this. Thank God they saved her, but if she hadn’t caught that one breath, you…”

My uncle fiddles with the lighter in his hand, then puts a cigarette in his mouth and walks out. My aunt follows him.

“We both have to work the day after tomorrow. Let’s figure out how to take leave, otherwise, there’s no one to look after Mom.”

That was the last sentence I heard.

Now, I am the only one left in the hallway.

I wash my face and run into a middle-aged woman with a leg in a cast. Following her downward gaze, I notice the soy-sauce-colored soup stains on my dress—a large patch, completely dried and stiff, giving off the sour smell of spoiled food.

“Go on back.”

My aunt’s voice is like a signal momentarily pardoning me from this pain. However, I don’t feel the relief of a survivor; the shackles are still clamped firmly around my neck.

“Aren’t you going back?” I ask her.

“No, the two of us will sleep here at the hospital tonight to watch over your grandmother. I wouldn’t feel right going back. It’s a whole night; if something happens, your uncle and I wouldn’t make it back in time. We’d miss the window.”

“Take a taxi back yourself. You have money on you, right?”

I nod.

I press the button for the first floor, but following the crowd out, I walk into a deep, dark corridor. It turns out I got off on the wrong floor.

The soup stains on my dress feel as heavy as stones, dragging my whole body into a hunch, almost pulling me down to the floor.

The bright red digits on the digital clock flicker.

Beep beep.

It’s 11:00 PM.

The phone in my backpack vibrates continuously. I sit on a planter outside the hospital, looking through the photos Yu Zhouwan sent me one by one, then I place a voice call to her.

“Sister.”

The background noise on her end was very loud at first, but within seconds of the call connecting, it quickly became quiet.

“Not asleep?”

Yu Zhouwan’s voice is a sort of emotional catalyst. For a moment, I want to tell her everything that happened today in one breath, but when I open my mouth to speak, all that comes out is a dry response: “Not yet.”

“Do you have class tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

I feel heavy, both emotionally and physically. After a moment of mutual silence, Yu Zhouwan takes the initiative to speak:

“Did you see the photos I sent you?”

“I did. Where did you go today?”

The background of the photos features towering Gothic architecture. The pedestrians and vehicles on the road are looked down upon by the square windows of the brick-walled houses on both sides.

Yu Zhouwan tells me that it rains almost every day in the UK. However, in the photos, she is holding a coffee cup under an umbrella with a bright, radiant smile that makes it easy to ignore the gray, overcast sky above her.

It had just finished raining, so the ground was wet, making the colors of the buildings stand out even more—including the red telephone booths by the street and the yellow paint lines on the road.

“I went to Edinburgh today. Professor Sheng had a lecture at the University of Edinburgh, so we went for a tour.”

Yu Zhouwan is in a great mood; her words come hopping out like cheerful sparrows.

“Professor Sheng’s daughter took me to… let me think, the Chinese name should be the National Gallery. We walked around the area. Time was very tight, so we only saw a small part of the first and second floors. It’s a pity many famous artists’ works are in the third-floor galleries, but I bought some limited-edition souvenirs, and then we ate Pork Belly…”

I snap a blade of grass growing out of the planter and tie a knot in my hand, the green juice staining my palm.

“What’s wrong?” Perhaps sensing something off in my silence, her enthusiastic narration comes to a sudden halt.

“Nothing.”

“Did something happen today that made you unhappy?”

“Maybe there’s just a lot going on, I’m a bit tired,” the grass stem in my hand snaps with a pop. “My grandmother got sick today. She’s hospitalized.”

As soon as the words are out, I feel I shouldn’t have told Yu Zhouwan.

Firstly, she has no real connection to my family; at most, she would express concern out of shallow sympathy. Secondly, I have gradually realized that a distance this great causes emotions to be diluted. Our common language was already pathetically scarce; I once even felt that, aside from sex and primal desire, there was nothing else to talk about with Yu Zhouwan.

Once physical touch and intimacy are gone, even if we can exchange details of our daily lives through a virtual network—as we have been doing frequently lately—the emotions conveyed by words always lag behind physical contact.

My eyes suddenly fill with a stinging ache, and the red “Emergency” sign above me blurs into a mess in an instant.

“Have you had dinner?” I ask her, steadying my knotted throat.

“Not yet, I’m waiting for the bus.” Yu Zhouwan pauses, then asks tentatively, “Keyi, are you… crying?”

“No, the temperature dropped recently, I just have a bit of a cold,” I sniffle exaggeratedly. “Are you going anywhere else tonight?”

“No plans for tonight. It’s not very safe to walk at night, but we plan to stay in Edinburgh for a few days, just for sightseeing, and go back in a few days.”

“That’s nice.”

“What happened to your grandmother?”

“Cerebral hemorrhage.”

Yu Zhouwan is silent for a moment, then consoles me: “Don’t be sad, Keyi. Your grandmother will be fine. She loves you very much; she’ll pull through.”

“Mhm.”

“You can go see her.”

I don’t need to go anywhere. She is separated from me by only a wall, but unfortunately, I can’t see her.

“Everything will get better. Don’t cry, okay?”

Walking on the road under an umbrella, the surroundings are quiet. I can hear her breathing and can’t help but fantasize that Yu Zhouwan is standing right in front of me saying those words. I am too cowardly; I instinctively evade the coming danger and fear.

I want to smell the scent of Yu Zhouwan’s body, to have a good cry buried in her warmth after being soaked and washed in hot water. Maybe then I could learn to express myself through venting and screaming, instead of waiting in a void with a rigid body to be judged by the Creator.

But the only thing I can smell is the earthy scent of the rain pelting down on me.

The word “love” from her mouth reminds me of the voice I couldn’t manage to cry out when facing my unconscious grandmother, and the shocked, resentful looks from my uncle and aunt—even though they vanished in a flash, I caught them.

“Your granny loved you in vain.”

I remember my aunt sighing and saying those words while standing at the resuscitation room door. I didn’t let them into my ears then, so why are they suddenly popping up now?

“Being loved” always makes me feel a sense of debt and guilt. I can’t live up to it.

“Be good, Keyi. Go home quickly. It’s not safe to be out this late.”

“You know I’m outside?” My heart stirs.

“There’s the sound of a car horn… Ah, are you asking me? I’m talking to my sister.” Yu Zhouwan responds to someone beside her, then says to me, “I’m on the bus now. I’ll be back at the place we’re staying tonight soon, and then I’ll have dinner.”

“I’m fine.” I swallow all my emotions down.

“Go home. The signal on the bus is a bit bad.”

“Okay.”

I hang up the call.

I shouldn’t ask for anything more.