After being carried and set down, the wheels of the emergency gurney rattled and rolled in one direction, sounding like the heavy rumble of a shifting boulder. Qi Bailu woke briefly amidst the jolting, catching the sharp scent of disinfectant. Doctors shouted for people to clear the way in the corridor, and the gurney accelerated across the smooth floor. The boulder rumbled on, as if it were about to crush Sisyphus.
A vast expanse of darkness bore down once more. Even without opening his eyes, Qi Bailu could feel a cold, stern gaze fixed on his face, following the gurney as it moved. Finally, the gurney turned into a room, and that gaze vanished around the corner, blocked by the closing door. In the distance, he heard a sharp voice ask, "Mr. Zheng, you performed emergency emesis on the patient, correct? What was the patient's condition at the time? Has it been more than four hours since the ingestion? What was the specific type of medication..."
Zheng Kunyu’s response and the voices that followed were drowned out by new sounds. Someone pried his mouth open to check his oral cavity; someone else called out urgently about respiratory distress and low blood pressure... Then, a ventilator mask was pressed onto his face, while another person began bandaging his arm, shouting that the patient needed immediate debridement and suturing.
Qi Bailu tried to lift his eyelids. The voices drifting from mid-air were slightly distorted, eventually turning into blurred murmurs that buzzed in his ears like the beating of bees' wings. He hadn't expected it to be this agonizing. It felt as if a massive stone had been shoved into his stomach, weighing him down so heavily he could neither breathe nor turn over. What kept him conscious in that moment was the piercing pain radiating from his arm.
The irony was—only when the blood began streaming down his arm did he realize he had hemophobia. The rusty scissors in his hand had become impossible to hold steady, preventing him from making a clean, decisive cut. He could only wrap his arm in a towel and use his last shred of consciousness to stumble back to the bedroom for Zheng Kunyu’s sleeping pills. When he twisted the cap off the bottle, the nerves in his arm throbbed with such pain that his hand could barely grip the pills; a dozen small tablets slipped through his fingers and scattered.
He had never made such a pathetic mess of himself, and perhaps he would never have the chance to do so again... Qi Bailu didn't know how long he had been lying on the floor; it might have been close to four hours. If he had known dying was this painful, he would have just jumped from the balcony after all.
Perhaps Zheng Kunyu should be grateful that he didn't know how to cook. His kitchen was never used; it didn't even have a set of pots or pans. If Qi Bailu had been holding a kitchen knife or a fruit knife instead of those extremely blunt shears used for pruning flowers, the sight of his lover lying in a pool of blood when he walked through the door would have been far more "stimulating."
Qi Bailu wanted to cry, but he couldn't squeeze out a single tear. His head spun, and he felt on the verge of blacking out at any second. He felt like he was being held by a pair of chopsticks and fried in a vat of oil, the chopsticks repeatedly stabbing down his throat and into his stomach, as if trying to skewer him through. Fine, he truly was being split in two now. Even when Zheng Kunyu was tormenting him in bed, it hadn't been this unbearable. Between love and death, which was truly more agonizing?
The doctor leaned down and said they were going to pump his stomach now, telling him to prepare himself. In his daze, his lips moved as he tried to say something, but no one could hear him. The hands continued their busy work on his body, and the doctor used a mouth gag to pry his jaws open. The tube was too thick; he wanted nothing more than to pull it out, to vomit it out. The nurses held down his struggling head and hands. Over a nurse's shoulder, Qi Bailu saw Zheng Kunyu walk in. He was still wearing his indoor slippers, and his expression was terrifyingly grim. He stood there, staring straight at Qi Bailu’s face, which was contorted in agony. His glasses glinted with a cold light under the lamps. In the midst of his intense suffocation, the only thing Qi Bailu wanted to say was: *Let me die.*
Because Zheng Kunyu had found him a bit late, Qi Bailu continued to vomit for a long time after the procedure was over. By the time he was pushed into the ward, he was in a semi-comatose state. Zheng Kunyu sat by the bed, watching him. Qi Bailu didn't speak, and neither did Zheng Kunyu. The silence in the room was unbearable; even the rhythmic dripping of the IV was audible.
Zheng Kunyu kept his eyes fixed on his face. After a while, a nurse came in to give Qi Bailu a tetanus shot and asked if Mr. Zheng wanted to go rest, saying there were people here to take care of him. Zheng Kunyu’s jaw remained tight as he said nothing. Once the injection was finished, the nurse left, closing the door behind her.
In such a state, rest was impossible; there was only the bitter endurance of the hours. Perhaps an hour or two passed before Qi Bailu regained a bit of clarity. He opened his eyes and shifted his gaze toward the person beside him. He saw Zheng Kunyu leaning against the back of the chair, staring at him. Though he was dressed in his usual refined manner, his slicked-back hair had become slightly disheveled, and his expression remained frightening. Perhaps he had never imagined that the canary he held in his hand for amusement would nearly end up a corpse.
"I should have known. You're a lunatic. When Zhou Xiaozhi said it, I didn't believe him," Zheng Kunyu said coldly. Qi Bailu blinked very slowly. He was too weak to speak, forced to watch as Zheng Kunyu leaned down, looking into his eyes. "So your mother was a lunatic, and you're a little lunatic yourself."
Qi Bailu’s eyes widened slightly. Hearing Zheng Kunyu mention his mother made his heart throb with pain, and his stomach churned with a renewed wave of nausea. He lifted his hand—the one without the IV—to strike Zheng Kunyu’s face, but Zheng Kunyu caught it instantly. Zheng Kunyu said, "If you really wanted to die, why didn't you jump from the building? That would have ended it once and for all."
Zheng Kunyu’s voice was fierce, sounding as if he were speaking through gritted teeth, and his grip on Qi Bailu’s wrist was painful. The two stared at each other for a moment. Qi Bailu pressed his lips thin, and a faint tear slid from the corner of his eye. Zheng Kunyu immediately dropped his hand back onto the quilt as if recoiling from a venomous snake.
After a long silence, Zheng Kunyu answered his own question: "You did it on purpose. You wanted me to see you in this half-dead state just so you could coerce me into letting go. You don't want to die at all. If you wanted to die, you would have broken your neck at the bottom of the building long ago. You want to live more than anyone."
His voice was as clear and forceful as the clicking of abacus beads. Zheng Kunyu pressed a hand over the back of Qi Bailu’s hand and said slowly, "Very well. I’d like to see just how many lives you have to throw away."
Just as he was about to withdraw his hand, Qi Bailu suddenly grabbed it, his nails digging into the flesh of Zheng Kunyu’s hand. In a raspy whisper, Qi Bailu asked, "Why are you doing this to me?!"
"And you? Why did you do this? Are you a mute? Do you have to use death to threaten me?"
"Get out! You're a liar! A liar!"
By the end, Qi Bailu’s emotions were clearly becoming agitated, his voice cracking. In his illness, he was already fragile and vulnerable; provoked by Zheng Kunyu like this, he nearly vomited again. But he had nothing left to throw up. He leaned over the side of the bed, and in the end, he only spat out streaks of blood.
Zheng Kunyu sat on the edge of the bed, one hand supporting his shoulder while the other quickly pulled out a tissue to cover his mouth. Qi Bailu hung his head. After a moment, large tears began to fall onto the back of Zheng Kunyu’s hand. Zheng Kunyu froze without warning, as if he were recognizing what those bright droplets of water were for the very first time.
Zheng Kunyu looked at Qi Bailu’s earlobe and tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. He carefully wiped Qi Bailu’s lips with the tissue, speaking in a tone he himself couldn't describe: "Bailu..." Zheng Kunyu tried to look at Qi Bailu’s face, but Qi Bailu pushed him away with desperate strength. His heart was shattered; he didn't want to see him at all. Yet Zheng Kunyu still wouldn't leave. He immediately rang the bell for the doctor to come and give Qi Bailu an anti-emetic injection.
The doctor arrived and saw that Qi Bailu’s emotions were too volatile—it was obvious he had been arguing with Zheng Kunyu. He suggested that Zheng Kunyu pay more attention to the patient's emotional state and subtly hinted that it would be best if he stepped out for a while. Seeing that Qi Bailu truly did not want to see him, Zheng Kunyu turned and left in silence.
The nurse taking care of Qi Bailu was waiting outside the door. Zheng Kunyu was on good terms with the director of this private hospital, so the nurse greeted him familiarly as "Mr. Zheng" when she saw him come out. Zheng Kunyu stopped beside her and said, "Remember to wipe away his tears."
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Countless Blossoms: The Actor's Gamble | Chapter 39 | Wipe Away the Tears | Novela.app | Novela.app
