“Dad is fifty this year, not thirty.”
Xia Zhi: “??”
She recognized every word in that sentence, yet when put together, she could not understand it at all.
What did fifty mean?
She was asking about her boss Wen Shihan. Why were they talking about their father?
“Dad, Dad is awake!” the seven-year-old boy suddenly shouted excitedly.
All four children lit up with joy and rushed toward the neighboring hospital bed. Curious, Xia Zhi stretched her neck to look, but the children crowded tightly around it, blocking her view of the man lying there.
All she could tell was that he was tall. On a hospital bed about 1.8 meters long, his feet extended beyond the edge. She estimated he was around 187 or 188 centimeters tall.
Hearing the children call him “Dad,” Xia Zhi felt relieved. Since they had a father, they probably would not cling to her and insist she was their mother anymore.
She slowly moved her legs off the bed and was about to put on her shoes when the man in the neighboring bed, with the help of the seventeen-year-old and fifteen-year-old boys, slowly sat up. She looked over again out of curiosity.
As he sat up, his previously hidden face gradually came into view.
Xia Zhi’s eyes met his. Her pupils trembled violently in shock.
Why did this man look exactly like her boss Wen Shihan?
As the two stared at each other in silence, the seven-year-old girl turned to Xia Zhi and said, “Mom, Dad is awake too!”
Xia Zhi said nothing.
An eerie silence filled the hospital room. Xia Zhi and the man stared at each other across the beds. At one moment, a loud voice seemed to scream inside her mind.
Let the world explode.
No wonder the seventeen-year-old and fifteen-year-old boys had looked so familiar. They looked like Wen Shihan.
Silence.
A long silence.
A deathly silence.
Wen Shihan frowned as he looked around the room. His usually sharp and composed black eyes were filled with confusion. His gaze moved away from Xia Zhi and settled on the four smiling children by the bedside. After being unconscious for so long, his voice was slightly hoarse as he spoke. “You… who are you?”
The moment he said this, the four smiling faces froze. In an instant, their smiles turned into tears. The seventeen-year-old and fifteen-year-old boys clenched their teeth, their bodies stiffening, their eyes reddening uncontrollably.
It would have been one thing if their mother woke up and asked that, but now their father had woken up and asked the same question. For the first time, they felt like children abandoned by their parents, forced into becoming orphans.
The seventeen-year-old boy still refused to give up and asked Wen Shihan again, “Dad, the four of us are your children. Have you forgotten us?”
Wen Shihan’s gaze was calm. He pondered for a moment, then, under the children’s hopeful eyes, slowly shook his head. The light in their eyes dimmed instantly.
“Brother, does Dad really not remember us either?” the seven-year-old boy tugged at his brothers’ sleeves and asked uneasily.
“Don’t panic.” The seventeen-year-old patted his younger brother’s head. “Let’s have the doctor come in first.” He was comforting his brother, and also comforting himself.
He pressed the call button by Wen Shihan’s bed. Soon, doctors and nurses filed in, using advanced equipment to conduct thorough and careful examinations on both Xia Zhi and Wen Shihan.
One was the boss of Wenyue Group, and the other was the boss’s wife. Faced with such important figures, the medical staff dared not be careless.
“Doctor, how are my parents’ conditions?” the seventeen-year-old, Wen Yu, asked anxiously.
As the eldest son, with both parents involved in a car accident and his younger siblings still so young, he instinctively took on the responsibility of the eldest.
The doctor recorded the examination results on the chart and said, “Your parents’ vital signs are stable. There is nothing serious at the moment.”
“But…” Wen Yu glanced at the unusually silent Xia Zhi and Wen Shihan. No matter how composed he usually was, he was still a minor. Anxiety filled his face. “Why do my parents not recognize us?”
His question left the doctors momentarily at a loss.
When Xia Zhi and Wen Shihan were first brought in, full-body examinations had already been conducted. Both had suffered varying degrees of concussion from the accident, and their memory loss was likely related to that.
The lead doctor began questioning Xia Zhi. “Mrs. Wen, do you remember hitting your head during the accident?”
Xia Zhi fell silent.
Could she say that what she experienced was not a car accident, but an elevator accident?
Thinking back to it, she still felt lingering fear. The elevator had been like a malfunctioning drop tower, shooting up and down violently. If her heart had not been strong, she might have had a heart attack on the spot. It had also shaken intensely, and her head had slammed hard against the walls several times, each impact producing a loud thud. She had even feared that blood might burst out of her head right then.
After a moment of silence, Xia Zhi said, “Yes, I did hit my head.”
The doctor nodded.
That matched the diagnosis.
“Do you clearly remember your children now?”
At this question, all four children looked at her with wide eyes, their faces filled with hopeful anticipation, as if silently pleading, Mom, please remember me.
Their gazes were too intense for Xia Zhi to bear, so she slightly averted her eyes.
“I don’t remember any of them.”
The vitality instantly drained from their faces. All four lowered their heads, looking utterly dejected, like abandoned little souls.
The doctor then turned to Wen Shihan and asked the same questions. “Mr. Wen, did you hit your head in the accident?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember your children now?”
Wen Shihan’s gaze rested on the four children for a long time, yet he did not answer immediately.
If he did not deny it right away, there was still hope.
The four bowed heads lifted at once, their eyes burning with expectation.
Their mother had already forgotten them. Their father must not forget them too.
After a long silence, Wen Shihan pressed his lips together and said, “I don’t remember.”
Xia Zhi thought, see, it is not just my imagination.