Chapter Text
Sometimes, in the nights that cradled the starry Beijing skyline with pitch black ink, the summer heat seeped deep into the peak of midnight; even despite the sun’s absent rays of light. On these nights, the heat was not as unbearable as its daylight, but it still remained odd, and a little more dreary than it already was.
Xiao Zhan hated summers.
Hates them.
When he was a child, when his mother left him at the nursery while she worked, Xiao Zhan took justice in the blazing heat and roamed to the courtyards with an easel and a canvas. He used the violent sunlight as his muse, painting some obscure work that highlighted the waves of orange and yellow that illuminated the skies before the moon completely took over with its ocean at blue hour.
Now, as an adult, Xiao Zhan could not find anything but qualms about the damned season as he leaned against the building walls, the sweat pricking at his skin incessantly and stubbornly staying despite how much he tried wiping it away with the back of his hand.
The sun was a vice; the heat, its poison.
Or maybe Xiao Zhan had just gotten used to the violent winters of Switzerland, where the wind was sharp and frigid, almost as if it stabbed into the skin with its tiny, invisible icicles. Somewhere along the line, Xiao Zhan learned to love the snow that suffocated the barren streets.
Or perhaps it was because he’d learned how nice it was to get drunk off of Swiss beer.
He didn’t know how or why he found himself leaning against the brick wall outside the hospital’s emergency bay, nursing a rumbling headache and the tell-tale signs of heat-induced nausea.
Xiao Zhan tried breathing, letting his body slide down against the brick wall and burrowing his head in between the gaps of his knees. He observed the ebb and flow of patients that flooded into the emergency room, some walking with life in their eyes while others were pushed in on a gurney with blood dribbling from the corner of their lips.
A woman he had not noticed standing beside him sighed, fiddling with a black pen that held steady in between her fingertips. Her other hand was stuffed deep in her salmon pink scrub pockets while she hummed lightly, tilting her head back to face the pale and shimmering moonlight.
“You look like death ate you for dinner,” she sang, clearly amused with Xiao Zhan’s torrid state. “At least your shift is done now.”
Xiao Zhan scoffed, struggling not to roll his eyes at the younger woman. He adjusted the watch on his wrist, briefly glancing at the time that ticked away amongst the banded silver.
21:00 , one hour past his shift.
Within those sixteen hours, Xiao Zhan could count on the tips of his fingers how many patients had coded, some of which he failed to bring back to life. Sometimes, he would consider getting the fleeting signs of a shockable rhythm a quiet victory.
He wondered how many more people he would lose within the next sixteen hours.
Xiao Zhan always hated slumming it in the pits. The emergency room was always on two realms of the extreme—uneventful with a few nosebleeds here and there, or flooded with torrent traumas from nearby accidents.
When he was in Switzerland, he made it a habit to avoid the emergency rooms, preferring to spend his time in the ICU where life and death was more predictable, where there was a pattern to the madness.
Or perhaps he simply liked being in the position of Chief of General Surgery in Switzerland.
Here in Beijing, Xiao Zhan simply had nothing. He was a general surgeon, still and all the same, but somewhere along the way, his passion and talent had dulled out into something meaningless. Less than extraordinary, specifically.
At least his mother would be proud of herself for being right about her son.
“Are you going to change?”
Xiao Zhan peered up at the woman and then turned his attention back down to his rumpled navy blue scrubs. It was wrinkled at the hems and splotched with a few crimson blood stains here and there, but Xiao Zhan could name a few other occurrences where it had looked worse. However, in comparison to her pristine pink scrubs, Xiao Zhan was aware that he looked like a wreck.
Still, the stench of blood would soon become uncomfortable to breathe in. Regardless, Xiao Zhan could sit with it for a few more moments while he struggled to regain his strength.
“No, not yet,” he sighed, groaning a bit when his muscles pulled as he sat up, trying to stand as straight as he could even with the dull ache between his shoulders. “Huang Jinan, have you checked on the patient in trauma room three? He’s been there for a while now.”
Huang Jinan narrowed her eyes but drew her attention back to the tablet, scrolling a bit before she smiled back at him, “He’s been taken to get a head CT and neuro consult thirty minutes ago.”
Xiao Zhan nodded. “Good,” he quipped and bit back a yawn. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“You’re finally going home?” Huang Jinan asked, tucking the tablet under her arm and snapped off her surgical gloves, crumpling them into her scrub pockets. “Better get some rest, you’ve been on shift for twenty-four hours.”
Humming, Xiao Zhan nodded, figuring that it was easier to simply agree rather than tell the truth.
Xiao Zhan had always considered his mother to be a formidable woman; although the people that have worked with her would probably say that she was innovative, passionate, and ambitious. They drew her up to be a person that questioned the state of medicine, only to answer it with her brilliant brain and her extraordinary talent.
When he first came to work at Wangyue North Beijing Hospital, Xiao Zhan knew that he would be picking up his mother’s legacy. After all, the Chief of Surgery used to be his mother’s closest coworker. And although he chose this path for himself, Xiao Zhan couldn’t help but to regret it whenever his fellow surgeons chalked him up to be his mother’s son.
“You’re lucky, Doctor Xiao,” a young resident had said while grumbling offhandedly about his blood-stained scrubs, “You’re Xiao Yan’s son. Talent practically runs in your veins.”
They would commend him for simply inheriting her surname instead of his father’s, focused on the multitude of possibilities that a mere name could have brought him. And when he talked to the Chief of Surgery for the first time, surgery was a conversation left on the back burner while the older man rambled on and on about the times he used to work with Xiao Zhan’s mother.
Xiao Zhan felt small, sometimes.
When his mother burned so brightly, Xiao Zhan was merely a star within the vast galaxy that contained so much more.
“Xiao Zhan,” the receptionist greeted, her usual perky smile already having dimmed from the long nights she had to endure. She pushed a clipboard in front of him with the word Visitor written haphazardly in blue ink. “Here for your mother?”
He nodded wordlessly, hastily signing his name and slapping a sticker onto the throws of his scrubs before being led down the hallway.
The nursing home was open for twenty-four hours every day. Sometimes the staff switched out, and on occasion, the nurses would remember his face, saving him from an embarrassing and awkward introduction. Xiao Zhan’s favorite part of the nursing home, however, was the ice cream bar that was located just down the hallway from his mother’s room.
Whenever he finished having a short chat with her, Xiao Zhan would find himself sitting pitifully on one of the red bar stools, slowly stuffing down a styrofoam cup of generic strawberry ice cream. Usually, he ate while crying. And sometimes, when he had more willpower, he wouldn’t stop by the ice cream bar to begin with.
“Here she is,” the nurse quipped, her overly sweet voice showing a rare tinge of bitterness, sending chills down Xiao Zhan’s spine. She leaned down, tapping the old woman on the shoulder to get her attention. “Miss Xiao, your son is here for you.”
Xiao Zhan’s mother turned her head and simply frowned. “What is he doing in the operating room? He’s just a child,” she scorned, her voice coming out gravelly and dry and hateful . “Get him out of here!”
The nurse turned back to Xiao Zhan, the concern clear on her face. He did not need her sympathy, he needed no one’s sympathy — not even his own. His mother wouldn’t have allowed it. But Xiao Zhan simply nodded, letting the nurse dismiss herself down the hallway, perhaps to another Alzhiemer’s patient who was in a better mood than his mother.
Xiao Zhan sighed, kneeling down to meet her eyes. She huffed in return, but did not respond negatively, regardless.
He often wondered how his perfect mother had come to this.
She was a woman whose name lived in infamy within the walls of Wangyue North Beijing Hospital, where the newest interns asked of her work and the oldest attendings reminisced their times with her.
Xiao Yan was the pioneer for women in medicine.
Her brilliant mind was published in papers and ravaged for the most prestigious of awards. His childhood home was filled with her trophies, adorned with her name and sketched with her accomplishments. At one point, Xiao Zhan wished to be everything like her. And yet, now he feared many parts of it.
“Mom,” he whispered, holding out his hand for her to take. “How are you feeling today?”
The old woman grumbled, but settled her hand in his anyway. “You should be with your father,” she demanded, “You’re always running around the hospital, can’t you see that I’m busy?”
Xiao Zhan forced himself to swallow the lump in his throat. He wondered if it would be a good idea to correct her, to tell his mother that she was no longer a surgeon and that he was no longer the five year old boy that looked at her as if she was the sun. But after a moment of thinking to himself, Xiao Zhan kept silent.
“You’re old enough to play on your own,” she scolded, finally yanking her hand out of his weak grip, pushing his hands back and away from her as if they burned her skin to touch him.
Pursing his lips, Xiao Zhan willed himself to control the sting that threatened to spill from his eyes. He inhaled a sharp breath, trying to meet her eyes with his own, but his mother had always been a defiantly stubborn woman.
“Mom,” he pleaded again, reaching out for her trembling hands. “Mom, please? Can I play with you just for a little bit?”
She stared back at him, her frigid eyes softening slightly as she surveyed him from head to toe. With a sigh, she placed her hands in his, “Only for an hour. I have a bowel resection scheduled later and you’re not allowed in the gallery.”
Xiao Zhan laughed, nodding enthusiastically. “Okay,” he said, “Okay, Mom. Tell me about your bowel resection, then.”
“A little boy like you won’t understand what a bowel resection is.”
Xiao Zhan went to the little ice cream bar down the hallway that night. He picked the strawberry ice cream out from the pile, tossing away the paper lid with a frown. Even the tiny, little spoon that the styrofoam cup came with no longer amused him anymore.
He ate through soft hiccups, not quite minding the salty taste of his tears that mingled with the overly sweet and creamy taste of ice cream.
It was a little bitter that night.
In the early wake of the morning, Chief Liu, the estranged and eccentric Chief of Surgery, had paged all of his attendings into the conference room just right outside of the Neurosurgery ICU ward.
Xiao Zhan was the last person to arrive.
“Glad you could make it, Doctor Xiao,” Chief Liu greeted, but his voice was tinged with the bitter taste of sarcasm that made Xiao Zhan feel a lot smaller than he actually was. “Let’s not make being late a habit.”
Xiao Zhan nodded and cleared his throat, squeezing his body between two burly surgeons who hid him well from Chief Liu’s accusatory eyes.
Chief Liu sighed and leaned back into the leather chair, pointing a sharp finger to the empty office room on the other side of the East Wing, “We need a Chief of Neurosurgery, if you all haven’t noticed.”
At this, the neurosurgeons inside the conference room straightened up, almost like peacocks hoping to impress their future mate. They slicked back their hair, fixed their skewed and colorful ties, but the stoic expressions on their faces still remained like a permanent sticker.
Xiao Zhan never truly understood neurosurgeons — had it always been hard for them to express their emotions like regular people?
“However,” the chief interrupted, slamming a hand on the wooden table. The staff quieted, their eyes widening at the sudden rumble that cloaked the room. “I felt that we need a new wind inside this hospital. We rank number four as a teaching hospital despite being a level-one trauma center. We need something new, something fresh!”
The neurosurgeons frowned, their eyebrows knitted together in between their foreheads as confusion clouded over their faces. It spread almost like a disease, for the rest of the surgical attendings began murmuring to themselves regarding the topic which Chief Liu spoke of.
Xiao Zhan bit the inside of his cheek, wishing nothing more than to leave the room. After all, the new Chief of Neurosurgery would have little to nothing to do with him.
“That is why I have chosen our new Chief of Neurosurgery. Wang Yibo, you can come in now!”
Xiao Zhan stiffened.
Wang Yibo ?
That was new and fresh, alright, if Xiao Zhan were to be honest and true with himself.
He tucked himself further into the gaps between the two other men, curling in on himself as the door swung open, presenting itself with the familiar sight that Xiao Zhan wished he never had to see again.
Wang Yibo walked in with long strides, not bothering to bat an eye at the other attendings in the room. He was already donning the official hospital scrubs, tall and pristine-looking in the navy blues, and yet, he still exuded a different energy than everyone else.
His unruly confidence made him the odd one out.
“Good morning, everyone,” Wang Yibo greeted, his low voice sending a stiffening rumble across the room. “I’m Wang Yibo, your new Chief of Neurosurgery.”
Xiao Zhan sighed amongst their awkward applauses, opting to bury his head into the safety of his palms.
So far, if Xiao Zhan had not been wrong, Beijing truly hated him.
It brought him away from his comfortable life in Switzerland for the last few years, put his mother in the nursing home for Alzheimer’s, and made his ex-husband the Chief of Neurosurgery.
His ex-husband — Wang Yibo , the Chief of Neurosurgery, in this hospital, with him.
Xiao Zhan bit his lip at the thought, finding himself rubbing absentmindedly at his empty ring finger like a tormenting learned habit.
Chief Liu let out a boisterous laugh and slapped Wang Yibo on the back, an encouraging, fatherly action that Xiao Zhan knew Wang Yibo would ultimately hate. After all, in the two years of their marriage, Wang Yibo hated touching him.
“That is all, folks,” Chief Liu announced, waving a dismissive hand towards the door. “Go back to your surgeries and your patients.”
The relief in Xiao Zhan’s chest bloomed like a white peony in the throws of spring. He stuck to the wall as the other surgeons pushed past him, calculating incessantly in his head the right time to leave in order to not be seen.
However, when his hand finally managed to reach the doorknob, Chief Liu had already caught his figure. He placed a hand on Xiao Zhan’s shoulder, dragging the young man back into the middle of the conference room where Wang Yibo stood.
It didn’t seem like he even noticed Xiao Zhan was there.
“Stay, Doctor Xiao, we have lots to talk about.”
“Chief Liu,” Xiao Zhan began, hoping that the panic was hidden well between the tightly sewn syllables of his words, “I left a second year resident in charge of my patients, so I need to get back.”
“Nonsense,” the old man cried. He pushed Xiao Zhan down onto the leather chair and turned his attention back to Wang Yibo, the Cheshire smile clear on his face. “I have a lot to discuss with you two.”
Xiao Zhan frowned, glancing back and forth between Wang Yibo and Chief Liu, but the younger man did not seem to have any objections. He simply sat there with the same, tight-lipped expression that made Xiao Zhan sick to his stomach. Somehow, even after years of being apart, Wang Yibo never once changed.
Seeing that he had no choice and no way of arguing between the two stone-edged men, Xiao Zhan nestled himself into the leather chair, hoping that he would be made invisible if he stayed still enough.
Chief Liu cleared his throat and clasped his hand over the conference table. “You see, you and Doctor Wang here are our best assets, despite being divorced, of course,” he began, “The Wang Foundation has been a helpful bunch — your mother worked her whole life to win their awards.”
Xiao Zhan frowned, but kept silent.
His mother worked her whole life to be an extraordinary surgeon. Wang Yibo and his pompous family of Greats had nothing to do with it.
“That is why the Wang Foundation has agreed to fund the Department of General Surgery with twenty seven million dollars.”
Twenty seven million .
Was that why Wang Yibo was chosen for Chief of Neurosurgery?
Xiao Zhan’s head raced with the possibilities, meshing together like unrecognizable questions that seemed to only make less and less sense the more that he thought about it. At one point, it began to hurt to think, with his headache coming back to life in harsh waves along his temples.
Xiao Zhan bit back a groan and straightened himself. “I’m sorry, Chief,” he began, barely being able to keep his eyes open as the conference room lights began to feel all a bit too bright. “I’m not feeling very well right now. May I be dismissed?”
Chief Liu looked at him with an unreadable expression but waved a hand anyway, the subtle lines of an empathetic smile tightening over his pursed lips. Xiao Zhan bowed, as far as his sore back would allow him, and threw the door open.
He didn’t know how he ended up in the East wing courtyard, where the second floor inched out just enough to give the doorway below some shade. Xiao Zhan sat on the limestone brick barrier, his feet planted firmly on the concrete floor before him and his back leaned against the tree within the vibrant green garden patches.
Xiao Zhan glanced at his watch; he won’t have another surgery until another two hours later. Leaving Huang Jinan to fend for herself during rounds won’t be too bad of an idea; after all, she was the best resident in her year.
But he didn’t have much room in his brain to think about the possibilities of her screwing up. Instead, his mind was plagued with the tension of twenty seven million dollars weighing over his shoulders—weighing over the General Surgery Department’s shoulders.
What was Wang Yibo trying to play at?
The Wang Foundation was a prestigious medical group, full of power-play politics and flourishing ideas for policy reforms. There was nothing they would refuse to do if it could increase the domination over the medical world.
Including arranged marriages.
And when Xiao Zhan’s mother had been clear of mind, before her early onset Alzheimer’s took over her, she regarded them as Gods of Medicine. It didn’t take much convincing for her to marry her son off, even when his father pleaded and begged and threatened her with divorce.
The Xiao family celebrated a marraige that day, but the divorce of her own marriage haunted his mother, who had no regrets linking power with the Wang family.
She had always been ambitious.
Xiao Zhan groaned, rubbing his fingers over his temples. The memories sent waves of nausea throughout his body, and Xiao Zhan bent over slightly, trying to ride the waves in a futile attempt to quell it.
The feeling of nausea wasn’t so new, however. He had been feeling sick for weeks now.
When Xiao Zhan finally looked up, he was met with a cup of coffee held in front of his face. Xiao Zhan pursed his lips, taking the warm cup and engulfed his trembling hands over the heat.
“Thank you,” he managed to say, but his voice came out embarrassingly dry and cracked, somehow trembling in ways he never realized was possible.
Wang Yibo nodded, settling himself next to Xiao Zhan with a cup of his own. He glanced over at him, and when he realized Xiao Zhan simply stared at the cup, Wang Yibo sighed and said: “It’s not coffee, it’s just green tea.”
Xiao Zhan hummed, taking a tentative sip. He sighed in satisfaction, feeling his nausea subside little by little.
“The twenty-seven million dollars was not my idea,” Wang Yibo began, cutting open the topic that hopelessly lingered between them. “And I was hired as Chief of Neuro before the donation was made.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
The two of them sat in the silence that was left, taking small sips from their cups while they watched patients walk by with a crowd of doctors and nurses trailing at their side. A little girl had been chasing a yellow balloon, clearly oblivious of the nurse in seafoam green scrubs that trailed after her, panic ridden over his face at the mere thought that she would trip and fall.
The nurse grappled a bit with her once she finally fell back into his arms, the relief clear on his face when she returned unharmed.
As medical professionals, were they taught to chase after someone when they walked away?
Xiao Zhan had often wondered how Wang Yibo was doing while he was away in Switzerland. He thought about a lot of things regarding the matter, but never let himself go any further than their last days together—their reason for divorce.
Sometimes, when he sat by himself on the trolley down to Lucerne from Zurich, Xiao Zhan would feel wronged. The Wang family pushed him off a cliff when they announced their inevitable divorce, and he lost the confidence to practice medicine in Beijing where they held all the power.
“Why are you back in Beijing?”
“I don’t know,” Xiao Zhan answered after a beat of hesitation. “I guess I just missed it here.”
Wang Yibo hummed a bit, placing his coffee cup beside Xiao Zhan. He had taken the lid off, a habit that Wang Yibo had learned during their marriage when Xiao Zhan wanted to share a cup. Even now, when they had separated for a total of five years, Wang Yibo still removed his lid whenever he was beside Xiao Zhan.
Instead of pushing the topic further, however, Wang Yibo leaned his weight back, head tilted towards the sun. “How is your mom? We haven’t heard from her in a while.”
Xiao Zhan stiffened, but forced the smile on his face, anyway. “She’s doing fine. Traveling, she does that a lot now.”
“She’s not practicing anymore?”
“Not really,” he said, and it wasn’t quite a lie. Xiao Zhan’s mother practiced medicine sometimes, but rather, mostly in her head to relive her glory days as the Alzheimer’s consumed her mind.
The mesh of unspoken words that he refused to say suffocated Xiao Zhan. He had a list—a long and forbidden, tantalizing list that he wished to tell Wang Yibo. Perhaps there were a hundred bullet points on it, all with things kept hidden in Xiao Zhan’s life from the other man ever since their marriage and up until their timely divorce.
But his mother’s condition was not on that list.
She had made him promise, right when she realized where her mind had begun taking her, that it was not to be mentioned to anyone. And even in her lowest days, Xiao Zhan’s mother wished to protect her legacy.
Xiao Zhan shuffled a bit, debating on whether or not he should leave. After all, the conversation had seemed to die out already, and Xiao Zhan didn’t wish to entertain any further conversation about his mother.
It always managed to make him feel incomplete, somehow.
“I’ll see you around, Doctor Wang,” Xiao Zhan said, struggling to force a smile onto his pursed lips. Perhaps it was one of his tight-lipped ones, the well-trained type of smile that was learned and practiced as a professional. “Congratulations on the job and thank you for your donation.”
He straightened himself, cursing when the familiar wave of nausea hit him once again; this time, returning with a violent pressure against his chest. Xiao Zhan willed himself to walk in spite of it, even when his head felt as light as a feather, and he sighed in relief when the door closed behind him and Wang Yibo was nowhere to be seen in his vicinity.
Wang Yibo didn’t stop him from walking away.
But that wasn’t the first time.
Xiao Zhan turned back around, catching the glimpse of the yellow balloon floating off into the distance. The girl had stopped chasing after it, her rambunctious attitude having been quelled by the nurse beside her as she focused her attention on something different—something new to play with.
It was his second day in a row being paged to the emergency room.
The first day, having been only yesterday, Xiao Zhan was met with a swarm of patients and three different trauma calls. By the end of the day, he treated more than twenty patients, but lost over five. The emergency room was continuously cleaned and scrubbed, hiding away the splotches and puddles of blood that haunted the floors.
Today, however, Xiao Zhan came down to the pit only to be caught in the middle of an empty emergency room. The vacancy disturbed him, but sent a chill of relief down his spine nonetheless. If he wasn’t so superstitious, Xiao Zhan would have dared to say that it was quiet down in the pit.
A senior resident, Jiang Xia, had been wrestling with a patient in one of the trauma rooms before he was finally convinced by the swarms of judging nurses to page Xiao Zhan down to solve it.
He didn’t really know how a person like him could solve a wrestling match between one of his residents and a patient that clearly looked like he worked out for every meal of the day.
“Okay, Mister Gu,” Xiao Zhan hollered over the yells of the two men. “You have to calm down, we are here to treat you.”
Mister Gu, Gu Fangyue, was a twenty-nine year old man who had come in complaining of abdominal pain. And yet right when he stepped into the room, he did not let anyone touch him. His chart had been clean from what Xiao Zhan had read, with no history of prior drug use and other illnesses.
Xiao Zhan furrowed his eyebrows as he snapped on a pair of surgical gloves. The trauma room had been evacuated of other medical personnel in fear that more people would have been hurt, leaving only him, Jiang Xia, and Gu Fangyue alone with each other.
“No, no, no,” Gu Fangyue yelled back, shoving Jiang Xia into a shelf of medical equipment, taking down rows of intubation trays and packets of gauze. “Get away from me!”
Jiang Xia groaned as he tried composing himself, shifting to face Xiao Zhan. “He was fine a few minutes ago when we triaged him,” he informed, finally regaining his balance.
“Okay,” Xiao Zhan breathed out, closing the distance between him and Mister Gu. “Mister Gu, I need you to tell me where it hurts.”
Xiao Zhan held his hands up as he approached, trying to seem less imposing to the clearly distraught man. But when he thought he was making progress, Gu Fangyue grabbed him by his arms, shoving him back against the trauma room door. Jiang Xia hissed, grappling with the patient’s arms in futile attempts to pry him off the attending.
“No, Jiang Xia, wait,” Xiao Zhan managed to mutter out, the breath knocked out of him as his body was continuously pushed against the door.
The pain seared throughout his back and his arms felt bruised and broken from Gu Fangyue’s tightening grip, but Xiao Zhan had to swallow the pain. Only from this position, where the light hit at just the right angle into Gu Fangyue’s eyes, could Xiao Zhan do a proper neurological examination on him.
Gu Fangyue’s eyes, despite seeming normal under the trauma room lighting, showed blown pupils the closer that Xiao Zhan managed to get to him. He grunted, moving his head to get Gu Fangyue’s eyes to track him, but his pupils remained blown and unfocused.
Xiao Zhan huffed and grabbed back at the man, struggling to shove him off, but his attempts remained fruitless. “Jiang Xia,” he bit out, finally getting enough air and distance between him and the patient. “Page neuro.”
He tilted his body, already losing his footing. Gu Fangyue seized the opportunity to push him against the gurney, and Xiao Zhan fell back as the patient’s hands left him. For a moment, there was relief. He could breathe, despite the soreness in his chest and arms.
“Should I page security?”
Xiao Zhan sighed, pulling himself up into a sitting position and heaved shallow breaths, feeling as if he had just run a marathon. He glanced down at his feet where Gu Fangyue had collapsed, the strength that he had used to wrestle with two surgeons finally dissipated from his body.
With haste, Xiao Zhan leaned down, using his fingers to feel the thready pulse in the young man’s neck. He shook his head and clasped his hands together over Gu Fangyue’s chest, his body moving with learned habit as the patient began to lose his pulse.
“Call a code, instead.”
Gu Fangyue was a lucky man, but even saying so remained only a bitter irony. He had managed to survive collapsing, coming back from the dead after the many rounds of chest compressions.
But how lucky could a man be when he had a tumor growing in his brain?
“Glioblastoma,” Wang Yibo declared and held the brain scans against the light to get a clearer picture of the tumor. “Rapid acting and aggressive.”
After his collapse and revival, Gu Fangyue was moved to the ICU where a head CT had been ordered and a consult with a neurosurgeon was scheduled. Xiao Zhan, having been the attending to treat him, found himself stuck in the same office space as Wang Yibo as he healed his wounds.
Truly, Beijing had it out for him.
“Is it operable?”
Wang Yibo sighed and set the scans down, leaning his body against his desk. “From the looks of it, the tumor has grown so much that it’s taken over almost all of his frontal lobe.” He paused and crossed his arms around his chest, “I would have to take a large chunk of his frontal lobe out.”
“So he would live with major defects,” Xiao Zhan concluded, lowering his head.
“He’s already living with major defects.”
Xiao Zhan raised an eyebrow but kept his mouth shut, already understanding what Wang Yibo had meant. After all, Gu Fangyue’s temperament was volatile and he attacked two male surgeons. Even when he had woken up, his mood was sour and as violent as it had been prior to being moved.
But there was still a person—behind all that aggression and violence. There was a person that belonged to someone else before all of this, and somewhere out there, that person was just waiting to be returned to them.
“Are you okay?”
Xiao Zhan snapped his head up, catching Wang Yibo’s gaze. The intensity of it should have been something that Xiao Zhan was already used to; after all, they were once married and slept in the same bed. And yet, after all these years, Xiao Zhan couldn’t help but to cower back as if it burned him to be looked at in such a manner.
Like it bore him naked and exposed him of all his flaws.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Besides the nausea , Xiao Zhan wanted to add, but he decided against it. He did not need to give such details to someone who was no longer in his life.
“Well,” Wang Yibo sighed, backing off on the conversation to Xiao Zhan’s relief. “The tumor metastasized in his abdomen, which explains the abdominal pain he came in for.”
He handed Xiao Zhan a manila folder, opening it to reveal a few scans of Gu Fangyue’s abdominal region where splotches of white tumors congregated around his intestines.
Metastasis, Xiao Zhan recognized with a frown, the spread of tumors in other regions of the body.
Xiao Zhan bit the inside of his cheek. With this amount of metastasis located in the intestines, the rate of survival would be low. Not including the portion within his brain, as well—Gu Fangyue would truly be a lucky man if he managed to survive.
“Are you going to operate then,” Xiao Zhan inquired, tucking the scans back into the manila folder. He could no longer bear to look at it all without his headache rumbling against the sides of his skull. “Even with the amount of metastatic tumors?”
Wang Yibo had always been a competitive man, that much Xiao Zhan remembered.
He headed his surgeries with the sense of being , as if he was a God that could control the life and death of humanity with his own hands. Saving a life was a win, losing one was a loss, but the rift between life and death never once concerned Wang Yibo.
If he found a challenge, he would be determined to tackle it, no matter the outcome.
Life and death was merely a game.
“I would have to get the patient to sign the consent form,” Wang Yibo replied with the familiar air of nonchalance surrounding him. “But if he does, then I’ll do a craniotomy to remove as much of the tumor as I can.”
“While preserving the frontal lobe?”
“Would that be within the patient’s best interest?”
Xiao Zhan wanted to bite his tongue. After all these years, Wang Yibo truly had not changed a single bit. He weighed his options based on wins and losses, and could never take anything that came in between.
Preserving the frontal lobe would mean that there would be residual tumors, but with chemotherapy, it could be controlled; although, surviving would not be a guarantee. To remove every single bit of the tumor would mean to take the personality and life away from Gu Fangyue and leave him a shell of a human being he once was.
Was it necessary to remove all of the tumor if Gu Fangyue was left with nothing of his own afterwards?
Xiao Zhan frowned and spoke without much thinking, “Must you always take it to the extreme?”
“Xiao Zhan,” Wang Yibo called out, straightening himself up from the desk in order to talk to him properly. The air between them had already been strained, and there was no longer anything to talk about. And yet, Wang Yibo still tried: “Tell me, what would the patient want? Would he want to die early, or would he want to lose his personality?”
Perhaps Xiao Zhan did not know what Gu Fangyue would want; after all, he had only met the man only a few hours prior in the trauma room. Perhaps Xiao Zhan had been thinking too much about himself regarding the matter, infusing his wants and needs into what he believed the patient would want.
His mother, who no longer knew him.
Maybe that was the reason why Xiao Zhan could not allow himself to let go of such a conversation between winning and losing.
“You’re right,” he finally decided to concede with a huff. “I don’t know. Sorry, Doctor Wang, but I have other patients to tend to.”
“Xiao Zhan, you need to stop walking away when the conversation gets difficult.”
The yellow balloon was there, but this time, someone was chasing after it. The sight made Xiao Zhan almost light headed, the feeling swelling in its surreal existence with nothing more to be said about it.
But Xiao Zhan did not want to be a yellow balloon, whether or not someone was there to chase after him. Even if it was Wang Yibo, and especially if it was Wang Yibo.
“I heard there was a patient that almost killed two surgeons in the ER!”
Rumors spread fast in Wangyue North Beijing Hospital. Sometimes, the rumors held a bit of water to them, with the truth outweighing the falsehood of its already dubious nature. Sometimes, rumors became a sort of bonding experience for the nurses and doctors of Wangyue North Beijing Hospital, who fumbled in their own little flairs of dramatics until the story was unfathomable.
Xiao Zhan made it his pride to stay out of it, but for some reason, he could not seem to escape it. Even when he sat in the canteen with Huang Jinan’s uninterested glare, trying his best to swallow the bland bites of chicken while the younger woman ran fingers through her untied hair.
“You seem to be popular,” Huang Jinan deadpanned, her voice flat and obviously unimpressed. “They can’t stop talking about you.”
Xiao Zhan let his gaze trail over to the congregation of interns that stood from afar, their eyes boring little holes into him as they observed his every movement. Perhaps it did not help that his arms had started bruising, and he had no long-sleeved shirts to wear under his newly changed scrubs.
Throwing his chopsticks back onto the tray, Xiao Zhan turned his head to face them directly, sending them obvious glares of disdain until they lowered their own gazes, fluttering away like butterflies from a predatory bird.
With a huff, Xiao Zhan opened the water bottle, throwing it back until he felt like he was drowning. “This sucks,” he groaned and wiped the remaining dribbles of water that managed to trickle over the corner of his lips. “My life sucks.”
“Well,” Huang Jinan began to drone, the teasing lilt entrapping her every word as she tugged lightly at Xiao Zhan’s sleeves. “At least you look cute in pink scrubs.”
“That’s what sucks.”
After leaving Wang Yibo’s office with a souring mood and an even worse headache than he had before, Xiao Zhan had been paged back down to the pit to deal with multiple traumas. Within the middle of it, his usual navy blue scrubs had been soiled with a treacherous mixture of blood and vomit and God knows what .
That had been alright, he was used to it.
What he wasn’t used to, however, was the fact that the hospital had run out of the usual navy blue, leaving Xiao Zhan with no other choice but to don the perky, salmon pink scrubs that were typically meant for gynecology. Now that Xiao Zhan has time to think about, perhaps the bumbling interns were only interested in the fact that their cold and brooding general surgery attending was now looking much softer in pink. It was out of character, and perhaps rather disturbing.
Huang Jinan let out a laugh and slapped a hand on Xiao Zhan’s back, returning her attention back to the salad in front of her. “You know what I heard, though?” She stuffed a fork-full of lettuce into her mouth. “I heard that Doctor Wang is flying some hotshot general surgeon from America over here to scrub in with him on the glioblastoma. Don’t know why he didn’t just ask you.”
Xiao Zhan blinked, but he wasn’t too sure of how to reason himself out of such a conversation. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that news traveled fast around the hospital, so quick to the point of reaching Huang Jinan’s ears despite her rounds in OB-GYN for the past week. But Xiao Zhan had grown sick and tired of hearing Wang Yibo’s name around the hospital with no one to rant to. It almost felt like his chest was going to explode from the pressure.
At least no one knew about his torrential history with Wang Yibo.
And the twenty seven million dollars he infused into the General Surgery Department after being hired.
So Xiao Zhan did not think much. He stuffed the remaining bites of chicken breast into his mouth and piled the trash onto his tray before leaning back. He chewed relentlessly, focusing his attention on the distant courtyard past the canteen windows.
“I don’t know either,” he retorted, dazedly staring at the figures that roamed around in the courtyard.
It was hard to say who rejected who; besides, Xiao Zhan had been the first to walk away during their discussion in Wang Yibo’s office. Perhaps it was best that he stayed out of Wang Yibo’s way in the hospital, especially if he disagreed with his way of treatment.
It had been like that from the beginning of their marriage, with Xiao Zhan’s reluctance to be married off for power-play, and Wang Yibo’s overwhelming ambition to satisfy the expectations of his family and the medical field as a member of the Wang family.
Sometimes, Wang Yibo reminded him of his mother.
“Well, it’s not like you’re missing out on anything,” Huang Jinan huffed, sensing her friend’s distant distress, “Are you feeling any better though? You’ve been looking a little pale for the past week.”
“Yeah, just a bit of lightheadedness.”
Huang Jinan raised an eyebrow and stacked their trays on top of each other before turning back to him. “You should probably get a checkup,” she advised curtly, “Preventative medicine is important, you know.”
Xiao Zhan rolled his eyes, scoffing. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”
Xiao Zhan already knew what was wrong with him, but Huang Jinan had been adamant and he found himself being pushed to get a full blood panel after their shift was over. By the time the clock hit 21:00 , Xiao Zhan managed to push Huang Jinan away to get his own privacy, wandering deep into the oncology ward where he found himself lying in the consultation room.
There was truly no reason for him to be here, but Xiao Zhan could feel the nagging swell in his chest that there could be something much worse that was wrong with his body. After all, he had been skipping out on his treatments after returning to Beijing, but Xiao Zhan was a picky man and preferred his personal doctor in Switzerland rather than finding a new one in Beijing where his business would be torn apart by his colleagues.
“Alright, Doctor Xiao,” the oncologist said, snapping her gloves off after receiving his blood panel results. She scrolled through the results on the tablet with a frown on her face, but Xiao Zhan knew that she was whatever displeasure she felt with his results down. “Your blood panel results are less than satisfactory.”
“I know. I have beta thalassemia, I expect it to be bad.”
The oncologist was an older woman named Tong Sijing. She was an eloquent speaker and came to her talents in Hong Kong, but recently moved to Beijing in search of better and brighter opportunities. When she spoke, she would slip in and out of Cantonese, to which she would apologize with a slight smile on her face.
Tong Sijing was a pleasant woman, and Xiao Zhan didn’t mind her, finding her reassuring presence quite comforting. However, she was not his doctor in Switzerland.
“Well, since you already know the worst part of it,” she sighed, swiveling on her chair a bit. “May I ask if you get blood transfusions?”
Xiao Zhan nodded, trying to force the hesitation away from his voice, “I do—well, used to. I got them every month in Zurich.”
“We’ll give you a temporary blood transfusion here, right now,” Tong Sijing concluded, “Your blood levels are dangerously below the average range. Since you’ve been in Beijing for a month, I assume you’ve only skipped one round of transfusions. It is concerning how low it is when you’ve only skipped it once.”
It wasn’t that he purposely skipped his usual blood transfusions, but the stern glare that the older woman had been giving him made Xiao Zhan feel an out-of-place guilt drop in his stomach.
Xiao Zhan had always hated receiving blood transfusions, and perhaps he could relate with the patients that he always stabbed with IV needles relentlessly, prior to starting his treatments. The treatments in Switzerland had been less than friendly to him, despite the friendly doctors and nurses that accompanied him, telling him that it would be over soon.
It would feel like he spent an eternity in pain, uncomfortable and nauseous, and afterwards, he would refuse to eat. Force feeding was the worst part, perhaps, when solid food would refuse to stay in his stomach and the feeding tube would be shoved down his throat.
What was supposed to be only a three hour long session of blood transfusions became an overnight stay until Xiao Zhan could eat on his own.
Rinse and repeat, every single month.
His mother had been the one to recommend the treatments, before she forgot who he was. When he caught news of her Alzheimer’s condition, Xiao Zhan had rushed back to Beijing.
Not only for her, but to finally escape the dreaded cycle of being chained to the gurney by bleeding, red IVs and bland hospital food meant for patients.
The fear of having to experience it again suffocated him, and Xiao Zhan found himself ripping the saline drip out of his arm before Tong Sijing could turn around to stop him.
“Doctor Xiao,” she yelled, trying to push him back onto the bed. “What are you doing? You’re in no condition to leave!”
Xiao Zhan shook his head, but the moment he managed to sit up, his vision became clouded and he took a few seconds to himself to regain some light in his eyes. The feeling of floating danced around him even as he breathed, but he was stubborn, and despite being a sweet woman, he did not want Tong Sijing to be right.
“No.” He swung his legs off the gurney, cursing when his legs had gone numb. “I’m fine! I just need some sleep, no more blood transfusions.”
Tong Sijing huffed, “Doctor Xiao, you need to think more about your health. You’re leaving against medical advice—”
The door swung open without much of a knock to warn the two and it immediately cut Tong Sijing from finishing her scolding. Xiao Zhan stumbled back, hitting his back against the gurney as he stared with wide eyes at the new intruder. Pursing his lips, Xiao Zhan struggled to straighten himself, hoping that his low energy levels would not be as obvious if he tried to look well.
Wang Yibo furrowed his eyebrows, his usual stoic expression showing a bit more of recognition when he set his eyes on Xiao Zhan’s pale figure.
“Doctor Tong, I came here to give you the scans for Gu Fangyue,” he announced, handing her the manila folder that he kept tucked under his arm. “And, if you don’t mind, can you please excuse us for a moment?”
Tong Sijing nodded before Xiao Zhan could argue back, thanking Wang Yibo on the way as she carried the scans with her outside.
The room settled, the hushed silence quelling between the two men into a dreadful tension that begged for an inkling of sound to cut through it. Disturbance was welcome in the black hole that existed between Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, but neither man wanted to be the one to break first.
Xiao Zhan let out a long breath, wincing when the sound that came from his lips resonated around the small space louder than he had expected. Looking up, he let himself survey Wang Yibo for a moment, hoping that he could read him the more he looked.
Wang Yibo wore his usual, schooled expressions, but the lightest tinges of a frown played around his face, going from the wrinkles between his eyebrows to the dip at the corner of his lips. He looked imposing, as usual, dressed in the white coat and navy blue scrubs that made him seem stiff, but greater than life. Wang Yibo took a few steps towards him, and Xiao Zhan didn’t find the strength in him to move; instead, he settled back onto the gurney, eyes dazed away to focus on the cold floor beneath them.
“Xiao Zhan, what medical advice are you leaving against?”
His voice was deep, but the low rumble was comforting enough—if only Xiao Zhan had enough courage to admit it.
He had always liked when Wang Yibo talked to him like this, when it was just between them and the quiet was fragile. But that was when they were married, and Xiao Zhan no longer had the right to feel the same bloom in his chest as he did now underneath Wang Yibo’s stern gaze.
“That’s not your concern,” Xiao Zhan replied, cutting his voice off short and curt. “I’m fine, anyway, there’s no medical advice needed.”
Wang Yibo wrapped his hands around Xiao Zhan’s wrist, presenting his own hand in front of his face. “You’re shaking.” He let his hand go and sat in the empty space beside Xiao Zhan. “Either you’re scared of me or something is wrong, which is it?”
“I’m not scared of you!”
“So something else is wrong.”
Xiao Zhan gnawed at his lips defiantly, not quite willing to spill all of his secrets out to Wang Yibo simply because he was feeling unwell. Being sick made him vulnerable, both physically and emotionally, and he often took pride in being sound of mind with control over both aspects in his life.
The bullet-pointed list was there, but Xiao Zhan refused to tell.
“Okay, fine,” Wang Yibo settled, slapping his hands against his kneecap. “I’ll just ask Doctor Tong what’s wrong.”
“You don’t even have the right to do that.” He paused, trying to catch his breath after the sudden surge of energy. Wang Yibo crouched back down, a hand painting soft circles on his back. “You’re not my husband, you don’t have access to my medical records.”
Xiao Zhan felt Wang Yibo’s hand stiffen above his back, but it flattened as quick as it stopped moving, widening its expanse across Xiao Zhan’s back like a threatening, looming presence.
Wang Yibo hummed in agreement, “Not anymore, but I am the one that gave twenty seven million to this hospital. Do you want to see me pay for access to your medical records, too?”
Xiao Zhan choked on the air he was breathing in. Whipping his head back to stare at the neurosurgeon with an aghast expression on his face, Xiao Zhan slapped Wang Yibo’s hand away before chastising, “Do you want to lose your medical license? That is unethical!”
“I’m willing to do it, you know that.”
No matter how many times his eyes wandered over Wang Yibo’s expressions, the tautness of his face remained unchanging, and it gutted Xiao Zhan to understand clearly that he had not been kidding. Xiao Zhan pulled back and leaned against the wall where the gurney was shoved up against. He watched with drifting eyes as Wang Yibo’s gaze followed him, marking every single rise and fall of his chest as if he was afraid that Xiao Zhan would stop breathing right then and there.
He had honey in his eyes.
But sometimes, honey tasted too bitter for Xiao Zhan’s preference.
“I need blood transfusions,” he finally managed to say after a moment of thinking. Wang Yibo moved his hands to tighten around Xiao Zhan’s own, an action that was so unfamiliar and affectionate that he had to stop his stomach from lurching.
“And what, you’re refusing them?”
“I don’t want them anymore.”
Wang Yibo frowned and raised an eyebrow, “ Anymore ? This is chronic?”
He didn’t let Xiao Zhan answer, however, his hands already searching for the charting tablet that contained every single inch of Xiao Zhan’s medical history. When it finally found its way into Wang Yibo’s hands, it told him every single thing that Xiao Zhan had managed to hide away during their two years of marriage.
Wang Yibo dropped the tablet onto his lap. “You have beta thalassemia, and you didn’t tell me?”
Xiao Zhan turned his head away, already feeling his body beginning to betray him with the familiar prickle behind his eyelids. “I didn’t want you to know,” he whispered, voice barely audible to keep it from trembling.
“Xiao Zhan, I was your husband.”
“We were pretending !” Xiao Zhan reeled back at his own tone, surprised that he managed to spit back so harshly. “We were pretending—to keep your parents happy, so why should I tell you?”
Wang Yibo didn’t speak. Perhaps he had no argument to defend; Xiao Zhan had been right, and deep down, both of them knew it. They had pretended for two long years until it was obvious that nothing they tried bore any fruit. They tried almost painfully for it to work, but ultimately, it just wasn’t meant to be that way.
He deflated visibly, his shoulders slouching and his usual pristine aura coming down like a burned building at the realization. But Xiao Zhan knew that Wang Yibo never gave up easily.
“You’re getting that transfusion.”
Xiao Zhan jerked away from Wang Yibo’s hand, shaking his head furiously. His mind had been taken back to the hospital room in Zurich, where the nurses looked down at him with their masked faces and pitiful eyes. They grabbed at him when he panicked, sometimes strapping him down until he couldn’t resist anymore.
Wang Yibo’s hands did not feel as cold as theirs, but the pang in his chest hurt just the same.
“Stop, don’t touch me,” Xiao Zhan demanded, holding his head in his hands to calm himself. It was getting harder to breathe and the tell-tale signs of the familiar panic had begun to rise from his chest and up into his throat. “Please, I don’t want it.”
“Xiao Zhan—”
“No, please…” Xiao Zhan cleared his throat, trying to compose himself. But the tears had already started to run and the air in his lungs had already begun to deflate. “I’m begging you, don’t.”
Wang Yibo kept his eyes on him, lowering himself slowly as if he was a young kitten who could be easily frightened off. He didn’t want to be looked at in such a way—to feel the eyes that practically reeked of pity.
“Yibo,” he pleaded, trying to control the tremble in his voice as the name left his lips, odd and barren and all too familiar.
The younger man paused and settled back into the gurney, wrapping firm arms around Xiao Zhan’s shaking body when he finally stopped flinching away. Xiao Zhan buried his head into Wang Yibo’s neck, disregarding all of his walls and pride, innately finding comfort in Wang Yibo’s tightening embrace.
It was simply science—a way of treatment, Xiao Zhan reminded himself when his tears managed to soak through Wang Yibo’s white coat. Hugs quelled the sympathetic system, reducing the stress hormones and the need for fight or flight. It was simply a way of calming him.
Science. Medicine.
That was all it was.
“Xiao Zhan, why do you not want the transfusions?”
Xiao Zhan hiccuped, feeling quite embarrassed that he’s bawling into his ex-husband’s arms. His hands clutched onto Wang Yibo’s white coat, afraid that he would pull away at any moment. He knew Wang Yibo was expecting an answer, but Xiao Zhan couldn’t breathe enough to reply.
But to his surprise, Wang Yibo did not mind. Instead, he tightened his grip, rocking their bodies in motion that ebbed and flowed freely, patiently. Xiao Zhan rested his forehead against Wang Yibo’s shoulder, biting down on his lip to prevent a sob from escaping them, but it was no use, and he let it out freely. He wrapped his arms around Wang Yibo’s neck, the feeling of defeat and fear proving to be all too strong for him to battle by himself.
“It’s okay, I’m here,” Wang Yibo sang in a hushed voice next to Xiao Zhan’s ear. “I’m here. You’re fine, you’re safe.”
Xiao Zhan felt the familiar sting in his eyes and the rising swell with his chest at Wang Yibo’s words. He let the tears flow freely, now, unable to dismiss the thoughts that had been haunting him ever since he arrived in Beijing. It all crashed into him, all at once with the strongest force he had felt in his thirty-one years of life, thrusting out every single ounce of self-control he had left.
His cries were muffled into Wang Yibo’s shoulders, but his body shook to convey every scar that bore into his body ever since his birth. Every single time the IV had been prodded into his flesh, every single feeding tube forced down his throat, every single pill that he was forced to swallow since he was a child.
Every single word his mother had given him when he revealed he was going into medicine. All the discouragement, the shame, the guilt, the disappointment.
Pain, pain, pain.
That’s all Xiao Zhan learned throughout his life.
How to shut up about it.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Wang Yibo coaxed, rubbing circles around his shoulder blade. A hand came up to Xiao Zhan’s nape, giving gentle squeezes to his neck as he continued to weep. “I’m here, you’ll be alright, hmm? You’ve worked hard today, so lean on me. It’s okay…”
“I really don’t want the blood transfusions,” Xiao Zhan hiccuped, finally finding enough strength to let himself leave Wang Yibo’s embrace, but only partly. He could still feel Wang Yibo’s hands around his back and over his nape, the same circles being drawn lightly across his skin.
Wang Yibo nodded, using his thumb to wipe away the tears that managed to run down his chin. “I know, but you need it.”
Xiao Zhan bit into the inside of his cheek, feeling another surge of tears come at the words as his lips trembled. He was a man of logic—he knew what Wang Yibo was saying was only right. Perhaps it was the pent-up stress that made him feel so childish now, looking up at Wang Yibo with pleading, red-rimmed eyes that watered every now and then at a single sad thought.
He fiddled with his fingers, rubbing against his empty ring finger in thought.
“Xiao Zhan? Could you tell me why you don’t want it? We can work from there.”
Xiao Zhan blinked away his tears and then wiped away the remaining, stubborn droplets that clung onto his eyelashes, letting out a drawn out breath to calm himself.
The bullet pointed list that he had kept would finally have an item crossed out.
“Can you promise me—” his breath hitched as he forced down a hysterical hiccup, “Can you promise me that you won’t strap me down, even if I get agitated? And I don’t want a feeding tube… I promise I’ll eat so please… please don’t use the feeding tube.”
Wang Yibo reeled back at Xiao Zhan’s desperate pleas, looking back at him with incredulous eyes. He had been keen on knowing, and now when he did, Wang Yibo couldn’t possibly believe what had left Xiao Zhan’s mouth.
Feeling delirious from his episode, Xiao Zhan worried that Wang Yibo would refuse his requests, and he grasped miserably at the younger man’s arms. “Please, please, please don’t strap me down. I promise I’ll be good,” Xiao Zhan pleaded, having no awareness anymore of where he was, nor who he was talking to. In his head, the vision of the Zurich nurses had taken over, and when his tears dried, they were all he could see.
“Xiao Zhan, what?” Wang Yibo grappled with Xiao Zhan’s arms, forcing them into his lap and gave him gentle, intermediate squeezes around his wrists. “No one is going to strap you down, and there’s no reason to use a feeding tube. It’ll be a regular blood transfusion. Xiao Zhan, can you hear me?”
“They’re going to strap me down…”
“I’m not going to let anyone do that, okay?”
“The feeding tube—”
Wang Yibo squeezed his hand again, ripping him away from his dazed staring. “You like that cake down at the bakery around the corner, right? The strawberry flavored one that you always forced me to eat with you.”
Xiao Zhan nodded, wordlessly trying to grapple again with what was reality and what was his disillusioned panic.
“I’ll buy it for you, however much you want. I’ll eat it with you. You don’t have to eat anything else if you don’t want to,” Wang Yibo said, looking back at Xiao Zhan with bright and determined eyes. “I’ll be right here the whole entire time, okay? I won’t let anyone do anything that you don’t want.”
“Besides the transfusion.”
Wang Yibo couldn’t help but to let a soft laugh escape from his frowning lips. “Yes, besides the transfusion, only because you
need
that.”