Life is Like a Journey – Chapter 87
by Little PandaVolume 3: Transition
Remains
Lu Qingshi’s remains are donated to the medical school for research.
“Thank you.” Yu Gui carried her new SIM card and phone out of the carrier’s store. This time, when she returned to her position at the medical office, they not only reissued two months’ salary but also gave her the department’s bonus from the last quarter, along with the prize money from the last skills competition.
Her phone had long been broken from a fall. Even though it was a considerable sum, she still chose the cheapest model. She used the remaining money to pay rent and buy clothes for Zhiyou and other things.
Yu Gui, carrying a large bag of vegetables, snacks, and such, walked towards her rented apartment while calling Fang Zhiyou. The first call didn’t go through, and the second call was not answered. She took out her key, opened the door, placed the shopping bag on the table, and pressed the dial button again.
After a long time, a tired and heavy “Hello?” came through the receiver.
“It’s me, Xiaogui.”
At the very instant she heard her voice, tears couldn’t stop falling, and Fang Zhiyou leaned against the hospital’s peeling wall paint and couldn’t speak, covering her mouth as she sobbed.
“What’s wrong, Zhiyou? Zhiyou?” Yu Gui immediately jumped up from the bed, tightly gripping the receiver.
There was no response from the other side, only the sound of fragile sobs coming through the receiver. She had always been a strong, independent person with her own opinions. Even when she failed her college entrance exam and her mother had a car accident that year, she was never seen crying so sadly. Yu Gui suddenly became flustered.
“You… you don’t cry… where are you… I’ll come find you…”
A minute later, Yu Gui flagged down a taxi at the corner and called Liu Qingyun: “Senior brother, I would like to ask for leave.”
After a short break in the morning, Liu Qingyun returned to his post for rounds: “What’s the matter, how many days are you asking for?”
“Something happened at home… I need to go back… three days… three days should be fine… I’ll hurry back as soon as possible…”
Liu Qingyun agreed without much hesitation: “Alright, you go ahead, I’ll cover for you with Director Xu.”
Before hanging up, she asked, “Has Teacher Lu woken up?”
A long sigh came from the other side: “Not yet, the anesthesia and neurosurgery people have already gone for a consultation.”
Yu Gui felt a sudden thud in her heart: “Okay, thank you, senior brother.”
24 hours after the surgery.
The Renji Medical University First Affiliated Hospital held its first full-department consultation regarding Lu Qingshi not waking up after the anesthesia should have worn off.
Lu Xucheng attended as an observer. Although the old man appeared to be sitting upright and staring straight ahead, his hand holding the cane was slightly trembling, and the tea on the table quickly reached the bottom.
The perceptive Liu Changsheng quickly refilled it. Meanwhile, the neurosurgery professor finished presenting his opinion, passing the scans to him: “Mr. Lu is also an authority in the medical field, please have a look.”
The old man’s beard was trembling: “Just tell me, is that good-for-nothing little animal of mine never going to wake up?”
He really didn’t leave Director Lu any face…
The neurology professor wiped the sweat from his forehead: “Well… not necessarily… we should wait and see… wait and see… The biopsy results are benign, but the main issue is that Director Lu has multiple organ injuries this time, and the hematoma in the brain is too close to the nerves. We really don’t dare to proceed rashly…”
Meng Jihua, without saying a word, took the lead in bowing and apologizing: “I’m sorry, Mr. Lu, we really did our best.”
Lu Xucheng, supported by the nursemaid, shakily stood up, let out a cold snort, and stormed out: “I know you did your best, otherwise this old man wouldn’t be so easy to talk to!”
48 hours after falling into a coma, Lu Qingshi was fitted with an ECMO artificial heart-lung system. Dark red venous blood flowed through the catheter to the outside of the body, was oxygenated artificially, and then pumped back into the body through an artificial heart.
Medical staff busied themselves at her bedside, while Lu Xucheng stood quietly outside the door watching her. Ever since her parents passed away, there had been a rift between the grandfather and granddaughter. After the incident with Lele that year, Lu Qingshi had completely severed ties with him.
The last time he saw her like this was on the day she married Fu Lei.
The old man turned away, using a hand as wrinkled as orange peel to wipe the corner of his eyes.
The nursemaid urged him to go back and rest: “Let’s go, sir, there’s nothing you can do here. Miss is a good person with heavenly protection, she will surely be alright.”
“This flood rescue operation was a complete success, thanks to everyone’s hard work. Tonight, we’ve arranged a banquet at the Furong Restaurant, and we sincerely hope all the leaders will do us the honor of attending.”
“Hey, Captain Gu, aren’t you going?”
“No, I’m not going,” Gu Yanzhi replied as she took off his mud-stained uniform, pulled a clean regular outfit from the locker, quickly washed her face, and rode out on her motorcycle.
First, she went to the pet shop to pick up the brother and sister pair. Hamburger really missed his owner terribly, and jumped up affectionately as soon as they met. Even French Fries, who was usually cold and didn’t pay much attention to people, hugged her leg and meowed.
Gu Yanzhi’s heart melted. She put the big one and the little one into a carrier to take them home. She placed a handful of cat food and dog food into their bowls, and then quickly grabbed her keys to run downstairs to buy groceries and cook.
“Wow, buying so much again? Can you finish it all by yourself?” The auntie at the downstairs market handed her the weighed pork ribs.
Gu Yanzhi handed over some change: “Well, I’m eating with Dr. Lu.”
“Really? With the heavy rain recently, you all must have been very busy. I haven’t seen her come to buy groceries for a while.”
The smile on Gu Yanzhi’s face faded a bit: “Auntie, please give me one more crucian carp.”
“Is it freshly caught today?”
“Of course, my husband went to the fish farm before dawn to catch them. These are the last few left. Look, since you’re buying so much, I’ll give you a bunch of lettuce for free. It’s really fresh!”
Gu Yanzhi couldn’t refuse and went back home fully loaded, running up the stairs to start cooking.
The milky white crucian carp soup was boiling in the pot. She lifted the lid to taste it, then added some white tender tofu. Before taking it off the heat, she sprinkled in some chopped green onions, and the aroma was mouthwatering.
Worried she wouldn’t have enough to eat, she also made salted bone porridge in a clay pot. After washing the lettuce and blanching it, she put it in a lunch box with a spoonful of soy sauce.
Before leaving, she refilled water for Hamburger and French Fries, then checked herself in the mirror by the door. Aside from the dark circles under her eyes from several sleepless nights, everything was perfect.
Gu Yanzhi gently closed the door and hurried away.
“Hello, no matter who you are or what your reasons are, you cannot enter the sterile ward.”
“Why not?! I’m Qingshi’s friend…” Gu Yanzhi placed the lunch box on the triage desk.
The young nurse glanced at her: “You should take this back.”
“What do you mean by that?” She almost started arguing when Liu Qingyun pulled her aside.
Five minutes later.
In the corner of the hospital corridor, Gu Yanzhi paced back and forth, wanting to smoke but instead crumpling the cigarette pack into a ball and throwing it into the trash can. Then she suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Liu Qingyun by the collar.
“It’s been so many f*cking days, and you tell me she still hasn’t woken up! There’s still a possibility she might become a vegetable, and I…”
She wanted to curse, but her eyes silently reddened with tears. She released his collar and supported her forehead with her hand.
“Captain Gu…” his lips moved, his face full of sorrow.
Gu Yanzhi held out a hand to signal him not to say anything more. Liu Qingyun had no choice but to leave, allowing her to digest the news on her own.
“I’m also a doctor, please let me go in and take a look,” Yu Gui presented her credentials, and only then was she allowed to enter wearing isolation clothing.
The county hospital’s conditions and equipment weren’t very good. Mother Fang was just lying quietly in bed with a respirator on, and the room had an unpleasant smell of excrement mixed with disinfectant.
Yu Gui lifted the blanket to take a look, then used a penlight to check her pupils, which had completely lost their light reflex.
When she came out, the attending doctor walked beside her, speaking: “By the time she was brought in, it was already too late. We did our utmost to save her, but she didn’t make it. Your friend refuses to accept the reality of brain death. You should try to persuade them; keeping her here is just wasting money. Besides, there are still unpaid bills.”
“How much is owed?”
“With the emergency rescue and subsequent treatment costs, it’s twelve thousand.”
“Okay, I’ll go pay it in a moment. Thank you for your help.”
“Actually, if she’d been taken to a major hospital earlier, there might have been a slim chance…”
The conversation from over there faintly reached Fang Zhiyou’s ears as she sat on a worn-out chair, cradling her head in her hands.
Yu Gui took her wallet to go pay. After leaving enough for the two of them to cover their transportation costs, she emptied everything she had, but it was still two thousand short.
In a situation of utter helplessness, she hid in a corner to call Hao Renjie: “Good-hearted sister, can you lend me some money…”
Fang Zhiyou stood up: “I’m going to buy something to eat.”
Yu Gui covered the phone’s receiver: “Eh, okay.”
They had two bottles of mineral water and a bun split in half, sitting on the road outside the hospital entrance, eating.
Since she arrived, Fang Zhiyou hadn’t spoken much or cried. She just silently ate what was in her hand.
Yu Gui felt restless: “I’m sorry, Zhiyou, I came too late.”
Fang Zhiyou paused her chewing of the bun and shook her head.
It was she who was late, not Yu Gui.
“I beg you… don’t be like this…” Yu Gui stepped down from the stairs and squatted in front of her, looking at her. Both of their eyes were bloodshot from staying up late.
The scene was truly not beautiful; she was travel-worn, and Fang Zhiyou was in disarray.
“No… don’t be so silent… talk to me, please… or… or…” Yu Gui patted her own shoulder: “You can lean on my shoulder and cry, you’ll feel better after crying it out.”
“And then we’ll take Aunt Fang to Renji Medical University. They have the best medical equipment, the best doctors, she will definitely…”
Before Yu Gui could finish her sentence, she was interrupted: “Do you think I can afford that?”
“It’s okay, there’s still me… I…”
“You? What about you?” Fang Zhiyou lifted her head to look at her: “What can you do as a poor student? Where were you when I called you right after my mom had the accident? What are you doing here giving advice after the event? I’m telling you! Her being like this now is actually good! No one can stop us from being together anymore, are you happy?! I’m… also very happy.”
As Fang Zhiyou spoke, tears fell down. She wiped them away with her dirty hand and finished chewing the bun in a few bites before running back into the hospital.
“Zhiyou! Zhiyou!” Yu Gui, eyes reddened, quickly lifted her foot to follow.
To say this matter had nothing to do with Yu Gui would be somewhat inaccurate, yet to say it was entirely her fault would be a bit of a stretch.
Life always seems to have such twists of fate.
Fang Zhiyou missed her mother’s last call because she was out looking for Yu Gui. Before the flood came, the army had already evacuated the entire village. However, her mother, worried about the worthless things at home, had secretly returned with a few villagers.
When they came out, the continuous heavy rain had eroded the house beams until they were loose. The wooden structure collapsed quickly, and by the time people realized it, Mother Fang was already trapped underneath.
It is said that when they dug her out, she was crushed beyond recognition, and she was holding a metal box containing money in her arms, with a few of her daughter’s certificates pressed underneath it.
Mother Fang didn’t have much savings in her life. When she returned from the city to the countryside, she had only a few thousand yuan from Fang Zhiyou’s father as pregnancy expenses. He promised to send money monthly, but after three months, there was no more news. When Mother Fang, heavily pregnant, went to find him, he had already disappeared without a trace.
Her pregnancy was too advanced for an abortion, so she gave birth to Fang Zhiyou. Why did she give her this name? Because the first and only love letter Fang Zhiyou’s father wrote to her mother began with this line: “Ahem, dear Shufen, since meeting you at the factory, I finally know what it means when they say, ‘A person as splendid as a rainbow, once encountered, one knows.’.”
Mother Fang was delayed a lifetime by this single sentence.
Later, as she grew older, people in the village began to point fingers and gossip. Fang Zhiyou, with her stubborn temper, got into a fight and pushed someone into a rice paddy, breaking their nose. She would never forget how her mother whipped her with the sole of a shoe in front of others that day, cursing and crying at the same time.
The insults others used against her, like “b*tch,” “shameless,” “little bastard”, felt like countless knives stabbing her heart when they came from her own mother’s mouth.
After that, she stopped crying; she was disheartened and lost hope.
Mother Fang moved her to a different school. They still lived in the countryside, but she attended school in the town.
As Fang Zhiyou grew up, she resembled her father more and more. Every time her mother saw her, it reminded her of a past she wanted to forget, a past where she was incredibly naive to break ties with her family over a man. After having his child, her living standards plummeted, and she was left with health issues.
If you say there was love, then it was indeed true love. But to say there was no hatred at all would be impossible. During her childhood, Fang Zhiyou often suffered her mother’s unprovoked beatings, with fists and kicks, accompanied by harsh words.
For a time, she thought she must have done something wrong, which was why her mother seemed so unlike a mother.
When she grew older and understood things better, Fang Zhiyou realized that her mother didn’t beat her because she hated her, but because she saw the shadow of that man in her.
Her mother liked to see her show a look of weakness, fear, and helplessness, as if seeing that man kneeling and begging for mercy in front of her.
A truly weak and helpless rural woman could only vent her inner resentment in this way.
But every time after hitting her, Mother Fang would bring her a bowl of sugar water. When she was little, the family was poor, and while other kids drank cola and other beverages…
Fang Zhiyou wanted to drink them too, but her mother had no choice but to buy a small amount of sugar from a shop to mix with water for her. This was one of the few happiest moments of her childhood.
Yet, every time after drinking it, the next time her mother hit her, it was still without mercy, even more severe…
Fang Zhiyou grew up in this kind of distorted, somewhat twisted tug-of-war.
Later, she learned to fight back. The first time she pushed her mother against the cabinet, Mother Fang looked at her in disbelief, with a hint of tears deep in her eyes.
Fang Zhiyou brandished a kitchen knife and shouted, “Try laying a hand on me again, and I’ll damn well chop you up!”
In that moment, she saw fear deep within her mother’s soul.
Fang Zhiyou didn’t know why, but she felt a mix of pride and a bitter sadness that made her nose sting.
Mother Fang stopped hitting her; she couldn’t win, so she resorted to silent treatment.
Between mother and daughter, anything that could be said in one sentence would never be stretched to two.
During the day, Mother Fang worked in the fields, and at night she did sewing to supplement the household income. Fang Zhiyou would leave early and return late for school, and if she finished early, she’d wander the streets until late at night before going home.
The food left on the table would be cold; she’d quickly finish it and then go to study. When she needed money, she’d knock on the door of the adjacent room.
“Mom, I need five yuan to buy study materials.”
From inside, there would always be a barrage of curses, insulting her ancestors for eighteen generations.
The next morning, the money would be neatly stacked on the table.
Fang Zhiyou pocketed the money and went to school, spending two yuan on a pack of cigarettes, hiding in the bathroom to smoke. The rest of the money she handed over to her teacher. She sat in the back row every day, drowsy, not doing her homework, not memorizing her lessons, and occasionally sneaking out to surf the internet.
This situation continued until she met Yu Gui, and things began to change.
It was in her second year of high school. She wanted to apply to the same university as Yu Gui, so the two of them started studying hard together. After half a semester of effort, she received the first certificate of achievement in her life.
She excitedly ran home: “Mom, I got an award!”
She would never forget the suspicious and disdainful look her mother gave her: “Honestly, did you cheat? Or did you copy from Yu Gui?”
Fang Zhiyou, in anger, tore the certificate in half and stormed out: “You never believe in me!”
Watching the still-swinging wooden door, Mother Fang hesitated for a moment, then got down from the kang (a traditional heated brick bed), picked up the torn pieces of paper, and placed them on the table. She put on her reading glasses and, by the light of the kerosene lamp, carefully glued them back together, smoothing them out before storing them in her money-saving metal box.
She had long thought that what she had thrown into the trash was actually being preserved very well by someone. The tape was firmly attached, and it was wrapped in a layer of plastic film. Except for some fraying at the edges, there wasn’t a single crease.
In fact, later on, she received many more certificates, but she never brought them home again.
Although she never said it out loud, she must have been very happy at that time, right?
Fang Zhiyou crouched down, a sob emerging from deep within her throat: “Mom…”
Yu Gui leaned against the wall, crying alongside her.
“Let’s disconnect the machine.” On the third day of the artificial heart-lung system’s operation, Lu Xucheng arrived at the hospital early in the morning from the hotel. Accompanied by hospital staff, he entered the isolation ward wearing protective clothing.
Lu Qingshi lay quietly on the bed, with a tracheal tube inserted into her mouth, a ventilator on, electrodes on her chest, and an IV line connected to the back of her hand. She was completely unable to take care of her bodily functions, with a catheter bag attached, and all signs of life were maintained by machines.
He couldn’t bear to see his granddaughter suffering like this, so he turned his gaze away: “I’ll sign whatever needs signing. As for compensation, we don’t want any of it; donate it all to the medical society.”
“Our Lu family has been doctors for generations. I don’t want her to go in such an undignified way…” At this point, the old man’s eyes reddened slightly, but he quickly composed himself, his tone returning to one of firmness: “So that’s it. I guess her organs aren’t suitable for donation, but the body…”
The old man paused for a moment, then turned his face and held the nanny’s hand: “Let’s donate her body to the medical school for research… Even in leaving, if she can contribute a little, it would be good… Hurry with the paperwork… Once it’s done, I need to return to Beijing to teach the children.”
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