A slight movement from the hospital bed interrupted Ming Can’s train of thought. By the time she reacted, the syringe in Su Zhi’s hand had already slipped out of her vein. A violent headache caused Su Zhi to instinctively press her temples.
“Ms. Su, what is wrong? Is something hurting you?”
Ming Can rushed over immediately, intending to check on her, when her wrist was suddenly gripped by an immense force.
“Ms. Su,” she tried to struggle, only to notice that the patient’s pupils looked abnormal. “Ms. Su, are you all right? Do you need me to call a doctor for you?”
Her long-repressed emotions had completely spiraled out of control. At this moment, Su Zhi could no longer hear anything around her; she simply kept a death grip on the other woman’s wrist.
“Let go.” Ming Can felt as if her bones were about to be crushed. Unable to break free, she became flustered. “Ms. Su, please do not do this. If you are in pain, I can call a doctor for you. Ms. Su.”
Ming Can’s voice shifted from clear to distant, as if she were separated by a layer of water.
The pressure on her wrist continued to intensify, and she could hear the faint creaking of her joints being compressed. She gasped, not daring to struggle further. The patient’s pupils were unfocused; there was nothing in them. They were so empty, so hollow. Ming Can had never seen such a look before.
“Ms. Su.” Her voice trembled. Feeling somewhat helpless, Ming Can looked down and saw that her wrist had been squeezed into a shade of pale blue. Her pulse felt stilled, and the pain climbed upward along her radius bone.
The hand clamped around her wrist had veins bulging from the exertion. Where the needle had been, blood beads were seeping out, a grisly and terrifying sight.
Su Zhi remained completely silent.
Her lips moved, but she could not make a sound. Ming Can held her breath, leaning her ear closer, though she hesitated, worried that the patient might suddenly lash out and bite her.
“The medicine is in the bag.”
Su Zhi’s consciousness was intermittent, yet she managed to squeeze out a few words by sheer instinct. Once Ming Can understood, she reached for the bag on the bedside table almost instantly.
She rummaged through it with one hand for a long moment before pulling out a blue and white medicine bottle. It was labeled in English, which Ming Can did not understand well. She held the bottle up before Su Zhi’s eyes: “Is it this one?”
The other woman clearly could not spare the mental energy to reply. Ming Can hesitated for a few seconds, unscrewed the cap with one hand, poured out a single pill, and brought it to Su Zhi’s lips.
Feeling the movement, Su Zhi parted her lips slightly and took the medicine. As she did, her fingers loosened slightly, not because she had regained her senses, as she did not even know what she had been gripping.
Seeing this, Ming Can seized the chance to pull her hand from the other woman’s grasp, immediately leaning over to press the emergency call button.
Having lost its hold, Su Zhi’s hand slid weakly to the side of the hospital bed. Whether due to the medication or something else, her breathing began to even out, and her consciousness slowly returned.
She lowered her gaze and saw the winding bloodstains on the back of her own hand, the medicine bottle tilted on the sheets, and the young girl across from her, who was lowered, cradling her injured wrist with her other hand.
Looking at the pale blue bruise, she vaguely realized what she had just done.
She remained silent. Her throat moved, and she tried several times to apologize, but only one word escaped her: “Leave.”
Ming Can did not speak, nor did she leave. She stood there, wooden and still. Before long, the on-duty doctor arrived.
Knock, knock, knock.
The door to the hospital room was rapped upon. Ming Can collected herself and asked vigilantly, “Who is it?”
“It is me!”
It was Gong Que’s voice. Only then did she feel at ease enough to open the door. Standing outside, besides Gong Que, was the on-duty doctor.
“Why are you here? Are you not off duty?” Ming Can asked in a low voice, looking quite despondent.
“I received a report that someone was causing a disturbance in this room, so I rushed over. Are you all right?” Gong Que asked, noticing Ming Can’s wrist hanging at her side. “What happened to your hand?”
“I am fine.” Ming Can subconsciously hid her wrist behind her back, her gaze immediately shifting toward the person on the hospital bed. “She is the one who is not.”
Gong Que followed her line of sight and understood. She reached out to stroke Ming Can’s hair in comfort, then walked over in two or three long strides to look at the patient: “Director Su, I have told you many times, you must cooperate with the treatment.”
The tone was flat, yet it carried the inherent authority of a doctor.
Su Zhi had survived the worst of the episode and returned to her usual cold and indifferent self. Faced with Gong Que’s interrogation, she merely lifted her eyelids slightly, too lazy to offer an explanation.
Gong Que was not a talkative person either. Seeing that the patient was unyielding, she could only patiently help her treat the wound. The on-duty doctor helped as well, and the two quickly reinserted the IV drip into the back of the patient’s hand.
After finishing, Gong Que turned to Ming Can: “Come here.”
Ming Can shuffled over slowly and was pulled by Gong Que to have the injury on her wrist treated: “In the future, if something like this happens, call me or the on-duty doctor directly. Do you understand?”
Ming Can was left speechless.
She wanted to call, but she had been trapped and unable to break free. Who could have imagined that a patient lying on a bed, so weak she could not even turn over, would have such strength in her hands? And as for this useless friend of hers, what kind of terrible part-time job was this!
Gong Que raised an eyebrow: “What? Am I wrong?”
Ming Can rolled her eyes at her.
The small episode ended. The doctor left, and Gong Que gave a few final instructions before heading off to attend to other matters. Once again, only the two of them were left in the room. Facing Su Zhi, Ming Can was no longer as polite as before. After a cold huff, she walked over to the water dispenser, filled a cup of warm water, and drank it by herself.
Glug, glug. The sound echoed throughout the room.
While drinking, she glanced at the hospital bed from the corner of her eye. Su Zhi had just survived a life-or-death crisis and was now so exhausted that even breathing was difficult; she had no energy left to care about Ming Can’s presence.
After drinking for a while, Ming Can felt bored. She found a clean cup, poured half a cup of warm water, and carried it to the bedside. She observed Su Zhi carefully, and once she was certain the woman truly had no strength left to go on a rampage, she inserted a straw and tremblingly held it to her lips.
“Here, drink this!”
Su Zhi did not open her mouth at first, but after Ming Can tried several times, she finally bit onto the straw and took a slow sip.
The warm water washed over her tongue, and the bitter residue of the medicine spread across her mouth. She swallowed repeatedly, yet it seemed she had forgotten how to swallow in that moment. It took several attempts before she managed to gulp down the water.
“Drink a little more!”
Ming Can wanted to feed her more, but the other woman refused to open her mouth again. Having no other choice, she picked up a cotton swab, dipped it in water, and moistened her lips.
Fortunately, it seemed the woman’s conscience had returned, and she did not resist or push her away as before.
After Ming Can finished moisturizing her lips and was placing the cup back on the bedside table, she accidentally glanced at the medicine bottle again. After seeing the long string of letters on it, she silently committed them to memory.
Su Zhi eventually succumbed to her exhaustion and drifted off to sleep. While she slept, Ming Can took out her phone, scanned the medicine bottle and its QR code, and the search results immediately popped up on the screen.
It was a medication for suppressing mental illness. After reading this, Ming Can was stunned. Her mind flashed back to the hollow, ferocious look in Su Zhi’s eyes when she had gripped her wrist, and the fact that a person so weak she could barely move had the potential to crush a person’s bones in an instant. The thought alone left her trembling with fear.
She hesitated for a few seconds before taking out her phone to message Gong Que: “The week is ending. You should find someone else.”
Half a minute after the message was sent, she received a reply. A single word, okay.
Ming Can stared at the screen, her emotions complex, but she quickly adjusted her mindset.
There was no other way. Encountering a patient with such an illness was truly frightening. She had been lucky today, but what if something even more unexpected happened in the future? She was not a professional caregiver, let alone a psychiatrist. Though she was poor, she had a long life ahead of her. She could not lose her life just for a little extra cash.
Yes, exactly! In this life, safety is the most important thing!
After formulating her own plan, Ming Can felt a bit better. However, since she had already received the caregiving fee for the week in advance, she could not back out. Operating on the principle of doing her duty for as long as she was there, she checked on the patient’s condition once more.
Su Zhi was sleeping soundly. Such a close-up look gave Ming Can a chance to see her facial features more clearly.
After observing carefully, Ming Can sighed silently in her heart: “What a pity. Such a beautiful woman!”
Time ticked by. Around one o’clock in the afternoon, Su Zhi woke up, partly from pain, and partly from the noise.
“I will definitely return the money. Please, give me a few more days. This Friday, is that all right? I get paid this Friday, and as soon as the money hits my account, I will transfer it to your card immediately.”
Su Zhi frowned. Her heavy eyelids lifted slightly. After overcoming the black dizziness in front of her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of someone pacing back and forth by the window with a phone, performing a bribing smile while bowing her head.
She was a bad child, not learning anything good at such a young age, full of nothing but bad intentions!
That was Su Zhi’s evaluation of her, within the limits of her current capabilities.
Ming Can, who was still on the phone, seemed to sense the gaze from behind her and instinctively turned around. Her smile, which had been frozen on her cheeks, collided with Su Zhi’s pitch-black pupils. It was so abrupt that it stirred Su Zhi’s heart.
The creditor was still giving her a final warning. Ming Can did not have the speaker on, but the room was quiet enough for it to be clearly heard.
Once the call ended, facing Su Zhi’s scrutinizing gaze, she just offered a sheepish grin: “It is not what you think. I am actually very hardworking!”
Su Zhi remained utterly speechless.
“Really, do not disbelieve me. Those debts, sooner or later, I will find a way to pay them back.”
She tried frantically to justify herself, but Su Zhi grew weary of listening. She looked away, refusing to grant her any more attention.
Being young, Ming Can was ignored. She rolled her eyes at the person on the bed and silently muttered to herself, “It is only a six or seven-day job anyway, why am I bothering to explain so much to you!”
After she finished muttering, she remembered there was another debt that needed to be paid that day, but she had no money in her pocket. After much internal struggle, she took out her phone and sent a short voice message to her roommate: “Xuanxuan, do you have any living expenses left for this month? If you do, can you lend me five hundred? I have a sudden emergency.”
Su Zhi, who had already closed her eyes for a light nap, could not help but lift her eyelids upon hearing this.
Caught in the act, Ming Can was flustered: “Why? I am truly in a bit of a difficult spot, that is why I asked my roommate. I will return it as soon as I turn things around. We live in the same dorm; I would never cheat her!”
Su Zhi closed her eyes in exasperation.
She lifted her eyelids and helplessly closed them again. A complete little rascal. Whether she pays it back or not, what does that have to do with her!