Peerless Beauty – Chapter 88
by Little PandaConscience
Struggle with darkness
The light in the study was turned off, and the room fell into dimness.
The light from the living room shone in, illuminating their faces half bright and half dark.
Everything around became hazy and unclear; in Lu Yinxi’s eyes, there was only Jian Qing, only seeing Jian Qing.
Her body was encircled by Jian Qing’s arms; she leaned back slightly, stood on tiptoe, her body rising, and sat on the desk, extending her arms to embrace Jian Qing’s neck: “You are intimidating me, trying to change the topic, aren’t you?”
Before Jian Qing could open her mouth to answer, she leaned in again and kissed her, saying: “What’s there to be unhappy about? Back at home, you can vent all you want. Look at me, I laugh when happy, cry when unhappy, and if you make me unhappy, I scold you, because I know you won’t be angry with me. But you’re not like that, you always like to hide your emotions, whether happy or unhappy, making me guess…”
Because of those past experiences, Jian Qing always lived very repressed.
Knowing her for so long, Lu Yinxi had never seen her openly laugh.
She seemed like she was never truly happy.
Jian Qing was silent, not speaking, her heart gradually soaked with soft emotions.
“I might sometimes not guess your inner thoughts accurately, but today you definitely encountered something. If you don’t want to talk to me about it now, that’s okay, just speak when you’re ready.” Lu Yinxi opened her arms and pulled Jian Qing into her embrace, “I now want to recharge you.”
The term “recharge” was first mentioned by Jian Qing after the two of them met and embraced at the subway station, saying “recharge complete.”
In the dim room, they wrapped around each other, necks intertwined in an embrace, exchanging warmth and breath. Their bodies were like a phone being recharged, with the battery level filling up gradually.
Tightly embraced by warmth, Jian Qing extended her hand to encircle Lu Yinxi’s waist, forcefully returning her embrace, and tiredly closed her eyes, leaning into her embrace.
Lu Yinxi deeply inhaled the fragrance of her hair, softly muttering: “If I were a cat in a previous life, you definitely would be my catnip.”
Jian Qing lifted her eyelids, feeling somewhat disdainful of this peculiar metaphor.
After quietly embracing for a few minutes, Jian Qing loosened her embrace: “Charged.”
Lu Yinxi jumped down from the desk and followed her out of the study.
The disaster area has entered the reconstruction phase, with the dispatched medical teams returning one after another.
The province began holding commendation meetings, awarding certificates, and selecting outstanding representatives for earthquake relief.
The hospital’s publicity department called to urge for manuscripts, wanting team members to write about touching stories and experiences for promotional purposes.
The director of the publicity department heard about Jian Qing’s mother’s death and called Jian Qing, asking her to write a manuscript as well.
Jian Qing refused, saying her writing was not good.
The publicity department director then sent an officer to the oncology department to find Jian Qing and conducted a brief interview.
The officer asked: “Did you rush back overnight when auntie passed away?”
Jian Qing replied: “No, I was at the disaster area’s settlement feeding mosquitoes, waiting for news about her surgery.”
“Did you see auntie one last time?”
“I did.”
“What was the scene like at that time? You must have been very reluctant for her to leave, right?”
Jian Qing, with an indifferent expression, calmly said: “No, I let her go at ease. After she fell, her cerebral aneurysm ruptured, causing a deep coma. Shortly after surgery, a second rupture occurred. Her physical condition was not very good to begin with, and she had other chronic diseases. It was basically very hard to recover, so leaving earlier was an earlier relief.”
Like terminal stage malignant tumor patients, in situations where euthanasia is not legal, they endure with difficulty, suffering from the torment of pain, with fundamentally no quality of life to speak of. Leaving earlier is a form of relief.
The publicity department officer listened and was dazed for a moment, then comforted her by saying, “Condolences, condolences.”
A few days later, the hospital’s public account published an article titled “Mother’s Death, Disaster Relief Doctor Tearfully and Sorrowfully Bids Farewell!” The words were sincere, with every line rendering a sentimental and sorrowful atmosphere.
Jian Qing clicked to read it, and the description of her feeding mosquitoes at the disaster area settlement was changed to her anxiously pacing outside the disaster area tent, occasionally looking into the distance, eyes filled with tears…
The words “earlier leave, earlier relief” were changed to her crying bitterly in front of the sickbed, tearfully saying goodbye, grief-stricken…
The article was published, leading many people to repost it. Official media also followed to repost the report, and it even once appeared on Weibo’s hot search.
Lu Yinxi showed the hot search screenshot to Jian Qing, who looked at it and then paid no further attention.
The article portrayed her as a completely unfamiliar image.
Perhaps how she actually is not important; what is important is that the publicity department needs to establish such an image.
An image of sacrificing the small self for the greater good, putting the needs of everyone above family.
Jian Qing does not feel that the medical profession is particularly great; to her, it is just a job, like millions of other positions, except that a doctor’s work happens to be entrusted with health and relied upon for life.
Overly mythologizing this profession brings no benefit to the industry.
God is omnipotent and without blemish, but doctors are not gods; they are just ordinary people.
Doctors will experience failures and setbacks; they have a conscience and also darkness.
And her conscience is battling with her darkness.
In early July, during graduation season, they again sent off the graduating medical students.
The last few exams of the end-of-term month will also end, and Jian Qing was assigned to invigilate over at the university town.
After coming out of the exam hall, she plans to stroll through the Life Science Museum.
There, a group of five-year clinical class graduates were filming an oath video in front of the Life Science Museum: “Health entrusted, life relied upon. When I step into the sacred medical academy…”
Every year, a large batch of freshmen, during the first week after school starts, must stand in front of this Life Science Museum, solemnly swear, and then enter the museum to receive life education and learn to revere life.
These graduates were filming the scene from when they first entered the school!
Jian Qing stood aside, quietly listening to the entire oath, and then walked into the Life Science Museum.
The last time she came was when she brought Lu Yinxi for a visit.
She took her to see the famous smiling baby and explained the process of how a fertilized egg develops into an embryo and grows into a baby.
At that time, Lu Yinxi hooked her pinky finger, full of emotions, and said: “Life is so miraculous.”
Her pinky finger seemed to retain the warmth from between Lu Yinxi’s fingers.
Jian Qing gently rubbed her own pinky finger.
She had recently been too immersed in her own emotions and sometimes accidentally neglected Lu Yinxi.
Lu Yinxi never had any complaints, just silently accompanied her, with a gentleness in her gaze as if it could drip water.
Recalling such a gaze, Jian Qing’s heart ached slightly.
Lan Bin had been hospitalized for treatment these days, suffering daily from the torment of cancer pain, often emitting painful groans at night.
But he is not a solitary person; he has prison guards accompanying him.
Those two prison guards were personally saved by him, and now they still considerately care for him.
Jian Qing has many methods to deal with him, like low potassium, high potassium… all could take his life.
But she is a doctor, and he is her patient, a patient with an estimated survival period of less than 3 months.
To him, an early death would also be an early relief, so better to keep him alive and let him suffer a few more days of torment.
Jian Qing wholeheartedly treated him, which in his eyes became an act of kindness.
One day, Jian Qing went to the ward to inquire about Lan Bin’s past.
Lan Bin established a trust with her as between doctor and patient, and told her about his straying into the wrong path when he was young.
In earlier years, he had a gentle and virtuous wife, who fell seriously ill after giving birth to their daughter.
His family was poor, unable to afford treatment for his wife, and also unable to raise his daughter, so he sent his daughter to a childless couple.
He then bitterly sought a way to make money and finally, with Liu, a big brother from the same village, started a human trafficking business.
At first, their gang did not abduct other people’s children; they only found parents willing to sell their children and introduced them to families wanting to buy children, earning an intermediary fee from it.
This work brought money quickly and would not harm lives, but after all, it was against conscience. He planned to do it for a while, save enough money to treat his wife, and then wash his hands of it.
Who expected that later, Liu from the same village would develop the operation to directly stealing, abducting, and carrying away children to sell to others.
At that time, he learned the couple who adopted his daughter had their own biological child and had abandoned his daughter.
He felt it was retribution for the many bad deeds he had done, and urged Brother Liu to stop, disband the gang, and not continue.
Liu went to the hospital to visit his wife and conveniently stole and carried away a pretty little girl, telling him, “Sell this one and I will stop doing it, return home, marry a wife, and have children.”
He did not stop him and returned to the hospital room to accompany his wife.
That pretty little girl was abducted to their warehouse, and during a gang celebration, a drunk man from the gang, after drinking, threw her into the river.
Originally intending to scare her, who knew she would actually drown.
The next day, Lan Bin came to the warehouse side and saw a corpse floating in the river, scared out of his wits, he quickly jumped into the river and pulled the corpse up.
Liu, with the money, planned to escape, but Lan Bin’s conscience couldn’t take it, so he went to the public security bureau to surrender, later becoming a tainted witness.
After recounting the past events, Lan Bin, with a withered face, bitterly smiled and said: “Maybe it really is retribution. Some of those people in prison were almost released, but then an earthquake came, pressing them under the ruins, buried for many days, couldn’t be dug out, slowly dying inside. I got out and was almost released from prison, but I got this deadly disease. I wish I could die sooner, now my only concern is my daughter, don’t know if she is still alive or not…”
Jian Qing listened, silent and not speaking, and turned around to return to the office.
She called Hu Jianjun and said she wanted to change doctors to treat Lan Bin, as she was not skilled in treating colon cancer.
Hu Jianjun disagreed with her avoidance behavior, saying: “It’s precisely because you’re not skilled that you need to handle more such patients.”
A doctor’s skills are developed through enduring the treatment of patients.
Hu Jianjun’s implication was that such patients were for Jian Qing to practice on.
Jian Qing was unable to stop resenting Lan Bin and also unable to take action against him.
Actually, Lan Zhou is his biological daughter.
These days, Lan Zhou would send Lu Yinxi home every day. Jian Qing sought an opportunity to chat and obtained a few strands of Lan Zhou’s hair to conduct a paternity test with Lan Bin, which confirmed the result.
She had imagined plotting to harm Lan Zhou’s life, letting Lan Bin know before dying that his daughter was still alive, and then he would immediately die, as revenge on him, making his life worse than death.
But Lu Yinxi always looked at her with gentle eyes, and she gradually lost the courage for revenge.
By mid-July, the dispatched rescue medical team had all returned. Hu Jianjun held an experience-sharing meeting in the exhibition hall of a hotel near the hospital and arranged a banquet to feast all the team members, welcoming them and washing away their travel dust.
Jian Qing, after being filled with several glasses of wine by colleagues, used dizziness as an excuse to leave and return home.
Someone was still waiting for her at home, and she was unwilling to stay out too late.
She pushed open the door at home and saw a suitcase quietly standing against the wall in the living room.
Jian Qing felt a block in her heart and subconsciously went to the bedroom to search for Lu Yinxi’s figure.
Lu Yinxi’s bedroom was tidied very cleanly, with a few summer clothes missing from the wardrobe, and the cosmetics on the table neatly organized…
On the balcony, Lu Yinxi, lying on the hanging chair, was checking the charity performance schedule. Hearing the sounds of Jian Qing returning home, she quickly got up and ran inside to find her.
LP: I was wrong :( This is more sad!
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