Chapter 39: Anonymous Love Letter

Tang Songyuan drew back the foot he had stretched to the floor, glanced at Tao Fei, who had turned her back to him, and pressed the answer button.

A woman’s voice came through the receiver, sharp and frantic.

“Mom, it was my fault. Go ahead and scold me.”

Tang Songyuan’s voice was astonishingly calm.

A string of furious cursing followed.

Tao Fei pricked up her ears, finding it all rather novel. Calling in the middle of the night meant the old man’s family had probably run into some trouble; his mother phoning to give him a dressing-down was hardly unusual.

“Mm. All right. Yes. Please get some rest early.”

Tang Songyuan hung up and looked at Tao Fei again. Tao Fei did not move a muscle, not even making the slightest sound of breath. It was exactly like the past few days, so much so that Tang Songyuan sometimes imagined in a daze that Tao Fei had already died, and he could not help reaching out to feel for her breathing.

The dead do not lie on their sides. Tang Songyuan gave himself a self-mocking touch to the cheek. After three straight days keeping vigil at the hospital, a dense stubble had already sprung up along his jaw and chin.

“Tao Fei.”

He tried calling her softly. Tao Fei went on pretending to doze. The rustling around her faded into snoring, and at last she relaxed and lay flat.

There was no way she was getting discharged the day after tomorrow. Until the time gate that would carry her back through time opened again, she absolutely could not leave Anhe Hospital.

Tao Fei reached out and touched the body belonging to a woman in her forties. What sort of body was this?

Cold, slender, and without a trace of excess flesh. A waist that could be encircled with two hands, as though cinched in a whalebone corset. If not for the heart beating in her chest, she would truly have suspected it was a medical mannequin.

A dim thread of light leaked from the bathroom. Unable to restrain her curiosity, Tao Fei ran barefoot to the mirror and looked herself over from every angle. The bathroom mirror was only about twenty-four by thirty-two inches, and the light was not especially clear, but it was enough for Tao Fei to make out her body in full.

This was the sort of woman who gave off an icy, aloof, abstinent air. She did rather suit the rugged old man. Tao Fei rubbed her cheeks, and only then was she able to begin, little by little, accepting the image she now wore after crossing over.

That night, Tao Fei was plagued by nightmares, trapped in the body of a forty-year-old woman and struggling in vain to break free.

“Family member of the patient, why are you sleeping in the ward!”

The cleaner’s sharp rebuke woke Tang Songyuan, and woke Tao Fei as well.

“I saw no one was using it, so I just lay down for a bit.”

“Why would no one be using it? Our hospital’s double rooms are the hottest ones. A patient will be admitted here in a moment. You really are...” The cleaner turned aside and blocked Tang Songyuan as he fussed clumsily with the bedding. Tang Songyuan smiled and turned back to look at Tao Fei.

Tao Fei had just wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, and she was looking at him too. In the morning light, Old Tang Songyuan felt entirely different from last night. There were already a few threads of white at his temples, and his beard too had taken on a grayish cast. Set off by his dark suit and pale shirt worn open at the collar, he even possessed a certain mature masculine charm.

Tao Fei stared blankly for a moment. When Tang Songyuan asked what she wanted to eat, she shook her head.

“Then you have to eat something. Living on nutrient fluids all the time won’t do.”

“I have no appetite.”

“No appetite or not, you still have to eat.”

Tang Songyuan opened the cabinet, took out a square glass lunch box, and waved it at her.

“I’m going to buy a bowl of wontons. I’ll be right back.”

Tao Fei gave no answer. She was a little startled by the sound of her own voice. The voice of a forty-year-old woman was actually about the same pitch as hers at twenty, without the slightest sense of discord.

The doctor making rounds was in his thirties, wearing silver-rimmed glasses. With a clean hand, he flipped through Tao Fei’s chart while asking Tang Songyuan about the patient’s condition during the night.

Tao Fei stared at the name tag on Qin Kai’s chest: Chief Physician, Qin Kai. Qin Kai’s speech and manner were exactly like those of the young professors at the medical school. That faint sense of familiarity made Tao Fei feel especially close to him.

“Let me take a look at the wound healing.”

The beautiful nurse, Li Yama, hurriedly lifted Tao Fei’s clothing. Tao Fei instinctively rejected being touched by a stranger and raised a hand to block the lovely nurse away.

“Why aren’t you cooperating with treatment?”

Before Li Ya could say anything, Qin Kai smiled at Tao Fei. The tension in Tao Fei’s body eased. As a medical student, she naturally understood that doctors were the people closest to a patient.

“Don’t worry, our Director Qin’s examination won’t hurt at all.”

Li Ya bore no grudge and once again lifted Tao Fei’s shirt. Just then Qin Kai’s phone rang. He apologized profusely, took it out, pressed it silent, then gave Tao Fei a polite smile and signaled that he had to take the call.

Half of Tao Fei’s abdomen was exposed by Li Ya’s lifting hand, and she was somewhat displeased, so she tugged her clothing back down to cover herself.

“...Chao Sheng is coming back?”

Qin Kai sounded surprised at the doorway, then realized he was still in the ward and hurriedly covered his mouth before stepping outside.

“Sorry to have delayed you.”

When Qin Kai came back in, his expression carried a trace of helplessness. After he finished the routine examination, he scribbled on the chart, crossed out several lines, and reached up to adjust his silver-rimmed glasses.

“Director Qin, are you all right?”

Li Ya looked worriedly at Qin Kai. Nothing, not even the faintest change in his expression, escaped her notice.

“I’m fine.”

Qin Kai left in quick strides, and Li Ya hurried after him.

“Nurse Li...”

“This Nurse Li Ya definitely has a thing for that Director Qin...”

Tang Songyuan stared at the nursing tag hanging at the foot of the bed and rubbed his cheek, letting out a silent laugh.

The old man liked gossip too!

Tao Fei had never had the slightest interest in gossip. She only wanted to drag out the length of her hospital stay.

When Tang Songyuan looked up and saw Tao Fei gazing indifferently out the window, he thought his momentary gossip had upset her. But words once spoken were water once spilled; there was no taking them back.

Just as Tang Songyuan was thinking how to salvage the image he had just ruined, his phone in his pocket buzzed.

“Songyuan, hurry and come downstairs. The hospital security won’t let me up to see Tao Fei, so you’ll have to switch places with me.”

Zhou Meixiang’s shrill voice stabbed at Tang Songyuan’s eardrums.

“All right, okay, I’ll come right down.”

Tang Songyuan let out a sigh of relief and put away his phone, then said to Tao Fei with a smile, “Your mother is here. I’m going down to let her come up. Hospital rules say family can’t visit while the doctor is making rounds, so we can only take turns.”

Tao Fei watched Tang Songyuan’s hurried back and suddenly began to worry about her own situation. Having an old man for a husband was already troublesome enough; now there was also this sharp-voiced old mother! Would sons and daughters start showing up later on as well?

How was she supposed to live like this?

Tao Fei forced herself to calm down. For now, there was only one course: meet the soldiers with the generals, and the flood with earth. She would change only when she had to.

Less than two minutes after Tao Fei was hooked up to an IV, a woman in her sixties appeared at the door of room 515-516.

Seeing her daughter Tao Fei half-reclining on the raised hospital bed, Zhou Meixiang hurried over and threw herself beside it.

“Tao Fei, why didn’t you tell me you were sick? If I hadn’t gone by the house last night and found no one there, and then called Songyuan, I still wouldn’t have known you’d had major surgery. Since when did you start treating your own mother like an outsider?”

As she spoke, Zhou Meixiang took Tao Fei’s hand, and her eyes suddenly turned red.