Grandma paused and said, "The old man has been lying there for so many years. Sometimes I feel that I am the one who forced him to stay and suffer. I have always had this thought in my heart: my second son is gone, and I have to stay with him, hoping that he will wake up one day."
She added: "I forced you to pay for him. I live in this ward every day. I am not in good health, so I have to hire a nurse. I have seen how much you have paid over the years. It is for my little wish. I am afraid that if I lose this wish, I will also want to follow them."
"But, things have to come to an end. Now that it has come to this, instead of wasting a few more days, it is better to let him go." Grandma finally said this and sighed.
Uncle said, "Then I'll go get a doctor."
The others fully agreed.
I walked to the bed and looked at my grandfather quietly.
He had a thick breathing tube in his mouth, fixed with white tape, and the tube forced his mouth to open slightly. His face was thin and sallow. I hadn't looked at him seriously for many years, and his memory had turned him into a blurred figure.
My grandma was a thin person, and people said I looked a bit like her when she was young. My grandpa passed on all his characteristics of being short, fat, white and curly to my father. When I was a child, he doted on me much more than my father. Once, because I got lice in the countryside, my grandma ridiculed my grandma and grandpa, and shaved my hair with a clipper in front of them to vent her anger. As a result, the children in the alley said I was a little nun and refused to play with me. My grandpa made a lot of small craft toys to coax them and told them not to bully or laugh at me.
After a while, the uncle called the doctor and the nurse brought the form for them to sign.
My aunt asked, "Just remove the machine?"
The nurse nodded.
Grandma couldn't bear to watch it, so she was helped out by other relatives.
I stood there and suddenly said calmly, "I don't agree."
The voice was not loud, but the four words were particularly clear in this small room.
My uncle and the attending doctor looked up at me at the same time.
"I said I disagree," I repeated.
My aunt stopped crying and looked at me as if I were a monster: "Xue Tong."
At home, I have never disobeyed my elders, let alone in such public places.
Uncle explained: "Xiaotong, this is what your grandma agreed to."
I said, "But I don't agree. My father died early, so I am speaking for him. If he were still alive, he would definitely think the same way."
The doctor looked at me, then at my uncle, and said a little impatiently: "Your family members should discuss it first. I have a lot of things to do over there." After that, he winked at the nurse and left.
My aunt immediately got angry. "You're just a kid, what do you know? Do you know how much money it costs to delay the treatment for an hour? Your grandfather doesn't have a job, and he doesn't have social security, so he has to pay for everything himself. Have you ever been considerate of others? It's not that we don't want to treat him now, it's just that this is the only way. You heard what the doctor said with your own ears!"
I bit my lip and said stubbornly: "You just feel sorry for that little money, don't you? At most, I can work hard to earn more money, sell blood and borrow money to pay you back, I..."
Mu Chenghe pulled my arm from behind and signaled me to stop talking.
"Xue Tong!" Auntie became even angrier, "This is outrageous!"
The other relatives were nearby and didn't want to say anything, so the atmosphere remained deadlocked.
Amidst the solemnity, Mu Chenghe, who had been silent all this time, suddenly spoke.
Mu Chenghe said, "Uncle and aunt, I apologize to you on behalf of Xue Tong. She is young and naive, and she said some angry words. Please don't take it to heart. It's just that this news was quite sudden, and she can't accept it. Maybe she can take some time to calm down. Her mother is not here. Although her husband has passed away for many years, when the old man is conscious, she is still his daughter-in-law. Otherwise, let's wait a little longer. Let's wait for Xue Tong's mother to come back and see her. Anyway, it's been so long, there's no rush. Just use this time to prepare some things for the old man, so that Xue Tong can also process it in her heart."
Originally, I had been tough, and I didn't cry even when I heard the doctor announce the desperate bad news. But when I heard Mu Chenghe behind me speaking so softly and politely for me, it was like I found a life-saving straw. The weakness in my heart suddenly had an outlet to vent, and two lines of hot tears rolled down.
I hurriedly turned my head away and looked at the snow-white wall.
Mu Chenghe asked: "Do you think this will work?"
Uncle said, "That's true. We were a little hasty and didn't take everything into consideration. It's a good opportunity for me to call a few people to prepare for the old man's funeral, so that we won't be caught off guard and have nothing prepared."
Everyone agreed with one voice, and then the uncle assigned them work and they left one after another.
My aunt said, "Your grandma is still sitting outside. I'll help her go back and have a rest."
Finally it was just him and I left.
I stood in front of the bed and turned my head to the corner. He stood behind me, motionless.
The tear marks on my face also dried naturally.
He moved the chair over for me to sit on and then sat next to me.
After the two of them were silent for a long time, he said softly: "Otherwise, you can say something to grandpa in private."
"Can he hear me?"
"Maybe," he replied.
"real?"
“I usually don’t tell lies.”
"When do you tell lies?"
His expression paused for a moment: "When you are kind, when you feel embarrassed and ashamed."
I stared into his eyes and vaguely knew what he was referring to.
Avoiding his gaze, I turned to look at the bed and said, "I remembered that I have something to tell Grandpa in private."
"Shall I step aside?"
I thought about it, shook my head, and then nodded.
Mu Chenghe stood up and said, "Then I'll go out and smoke."
I lowered my head and leaned it against the old man's pillow, then fell into long memories.
"When I was little, I stayed at your and grandma's house for a while. Every time I finished a test, my parents had to sign my test papers. But I was not good at Chinese since I was a child, so I didn't dare to show you my poor test scores. In the end, I imitated your handwriting to sign."
"Another time, I was talking in class and the head teacher caught me and asked me to invite my parents, otherwise I would not be allowed to enter the classroom. At that time, there was no telephone at home, so I lied and said that you were seriously ill and your grandmother took you to the hospital. Only then did the teacher let me go."
"You often put money in the inner pocket of your shirt, and then you don't really count it, and just hang your clothes on the bed. When you're not paying attention, I'll steal a few dollars and go out to buy candy."
"The jade bracelet that my sixth cousin brought back from Yunnan for grandma was actually broken by me. But I was so scared at the time that I put it in the box intact. Later, when you gave it to grandma, you found that it was broken into two pieces, and she scolded you for that."
"You attended the parent-teacher conference on my behalf. The teacher said I didn't behave well, and you came back and told mom everything. After you left, mom beat me up. I cried and cursed you in my heart, saying you were not my grandfather."
"You told me that you wanted to live to be a hundred years old and watch our three grandchildren get married. Now my brothers and sisters are all married, and you've seen Mu Chenghe. He's a good person, really a good person."
…
I didn't know how long I was talking until two nurses pushed the door open and came in to copy down the vital signs. Then, the nurses continued to put fluids in and give Grandpa an IV.
I made room for them and went outside.
It was already dinner time, and the smell of food wafted through the other wards.
My cousin and his wife happened to come over, and when they saw me, they said, "You go eat first, I'll stay here, and I'll call you if there's anything."
We all know what the so-called "something is happening" is.
I didn't see Mu Chenghe in the corridor, so I walked around and saw him in the stairwell near the emergency exit. He was sitting on the floor at the corner between the two floors, staring at the autumn rain in the twilight, smoking quietly by himself.
I walked over and sat on the ground next to him in the same posture.
"Are you hungry?" he asked me after putting out his cigarette.
"Yeah, I'm hungry."
"Is there anyone over there?"
"Um."
"Let's go eat first, then go back and get you some clothes. The temperature is low in the middle of the night."
I had just walked downstairs when I received a call from my cousin. Then I rushed upstairs to the hospital floor and saw people in white coats coming and going in the ward.
When my cousin saw me, he hurriedly explained, "Just now, the heart suddenly failed and the doctor is doing first aid."
After a while, everyone shook their heads helplessly. The doctor asked the nurse to look at the clock and said to her, "Time of death: October 1, 19:31."
Then the power to the instrument is turned off.
I squeezed over and touched my grandfather's hand. It was still warm and soft, and it seemed that all this was not yet real.
In the end, my obsession still failed to keep him.
Grandma arrived shortly afterwards and when she saw the body on the bed, she couldn't help sobbing.
Finally, I sat with my grandma in the corridor. Mu Chenghe and the others were contacting places and people to handle grandpa's funeral. After a while, grandma stopped crying, but kept talking about my dad and grandpa.
She hadn't eaten, so I was afraid she was hungry, so I asked her what she wanted to eat.
She said, "Peel the pear for me."
When I went downstairs to buy her pears, she started clamoring for apples.
I patiently went to buy her another apple.
She looked at the apples and pears and murmured, "Old man, we share the apples but not the pears."
Share the fruit but don't separate the pears.
This is a local saying that my grandfather often mentioned in the past, which means that apples and pears should be eaten together and cannot be separated. In this way, the family will always be together.
I couldn't help but feel sad.
I borrowed a fruit knife, washed everything on my hands, and then peeled an apple for her.
After the skin was peeled and handed to her, she didn't eat it. She held it in her hands and looked at it quietly.
So I continued to peel the pears.
When I was halfway through peeling the fruit, grandma suddenly grabbed me and said excitedly, "You can't split it! You can't split it!"
My hand slipped and I cut a gash on my palm. It was numb at first, and then it started to bleed after a while. I comforted her, put down my things, and ran to the bathroom to rinse the wound.
The blade was so sharp that although the wound was only half an inch long, it was very deep. Blood oozed out with the tap water. I washed it and casually covered it with a napkin.
When he returned to his seat, he found that the pear was also stained with blood, so he threw it away and took another one out of his pocket to continue peeling it.
My grandmother once scolded me for having a hard heart, and her heart was cold and hard.
I didn't cry.
Because the cut was on my palm, and I was holding something and it split when I moved it slightly, so it was still bleeding. I didn't take it seriously, and I changed the tissue when the blood turned red.
I wonder how a person who is so indifferent to his own pain can be warm to others.
At night, Mu Chenghe accompanied me back to rest.
He saw the napkin wrapped around my hand and asked me what was wrong. I didn't answer and just turned off the light and went to sleep in my clothes. He was reading a book by the bed with the light on in his room. No one closed the bedroom door, so I could see the orange light coming from his room.
I don't know how long it took before I heard the sound of his light footsteps.
Then, I heard his footsteps stop at my door, as if he was checking to see if I was sleeping well.
He stood there quietly for a while before leaving.
After a long time, I turned over and accidentally knocked the phone beside my pillow to the ground, making a dull sound. He noticed the movement and walked to the door again, still standing quietly in the dark.
This time, he didn't go back easily, but asked: "Can't sleep?"
I hesitated for a moment before responding softly.
He sighed softly, turned on the light, walked towards me and sat down beside the bed.
I turned my back.
"Xue Tong..." he said, "If you can't sleep, I'll talk to you."
"Many young children always think that the most unacceptable and painful thing in the world is the loss of love, so they despise life. In fact, most of them have never experienced the loss of their loved ones. Maybe you hold on to your grandfather's last fantasy that your father will be resurrected, so you feel more uncomfortable than them."
When I heard him say this, I couldn't help but clench my fist and pinch the wound on my palm with my fingernails, and it started bleeding again.
It seems that as long as the body hurts, the pain in the heart can be relieved.
But after a while, my hands still hurt and my heart continued to hurt.
I covered my head with the quilt and huddled in bed, then said, "When Dad got into trouble, grandma didn't allow me to tell grandpa because she was afraid that grandpa would have a heart attack, but I didn't listen. If I hadn't been so excited to tell grandpa the news, he might not have been like this. So grandma hates me, they all hate me, it's all my fault."
Mu Chenghe paused, then slowly said, "Xue Tong, I told you about my father last time, but there's actually a part I didn't finish."
I held my breath in bed.
He said: "Later, my father was sick and mentally ill. He didn't even recognize me for more than a year. He was locked up in a mental hospital. But one time, he suddenly recognized me and said, 'Xiao He, Dad is well now. Dad wants to go home.' I forced my mother to ask someone to take him home."
"At that time, they had already divorced and didn't live together. I said I could take care of him. At first he was fine. He could talk to me, eat the food I cooked, and read books at home by himself. How could I know that he would suddenly commit suicide?"
"He hanged himself in the middle of the night. I found him when I woke up in the morning. I didn't know what to do. There were no phones at that time. He was hanging at the front door of my house. I didn't dare to go out. I just sat on the floor and stared at him. It was not until very late at night that my school teacher contacted my mother's unit because I hadn't been to school that my mother came to our house."
"I kept thinking that I was the murderer. This conclusion has been bothering me for a long time. I even had an illusion whenever I saw the door, as if he was still hanging there looking at me with complaints in his eyes. Later in Russia, they told me that marijuana can paralyze the nerves and make the brain dull, so I can't remember anything. I smoked that stuff like crazy for a while."
"Afterwards, when my mother found out, she put me under house arrest to help me quit drugs and consulted many psychologists."
"But even after so many years, I dare not stay in this house. It seems that as soon as I enter the door, at night, he will come back. As long as I sit alone in the dark, facing the place where he died, it seems that I can talk directly to him or something else. Sometimes I hear voices, sometimes I hear noises. Later I went to see a doctor, and they said that I was just hallucinating. So, I would rather be deaf, so that I can never hear those voices again."
I lifted the quilt, sat up, and saw the pain in his eyes. I always thought that he would never tell me this in his life, and would never want to recall that past again in his life. I gently hugged his neck and said in a trembling voice: "You don't have to say this."
"No, I have to tell you. Otherwise, my heart will always be a place that cannot be seen in the light, and I will feel inferior when I see you," he said.
"I don't know why, but I love children so much, so I want to teach. Looking at those energetic children, I feel that life has hope. Later, you came. Xue Tong, you came. That night, you were looking for my contact lenses for me in the cold snow, and your fingers were frozen red."
"You are simply an angel. You always have such rich expressions. You love to laugh, frown, blush, and get angry. Even when you are angry or embarrassed, you are so interesting."
"You made me realize that I can't live in the past forever. Besides, as long as you are by my side, I am not afraid of anything. At midnight on New Year's Day, you made a wish to me. In fact, I also secretly made a wish, which is to hope that the girl in front of me will always be happy and blessed."
"So, don't blame yourself. Xue Tong, do you understand? As long as you are a little sad, I will feel distressed. Whether it is grandpa or your father, their love is the same as mine, so they definitely don't want you to continue blaming yourself." His voice sounded a little hoarse.
Hearing this, I leaned on his neck and cried silently: "I know, Chenghe, I know."
"Now take out your hand and let me see it," he said.
I let go of his neck and obediently stretched my hands in front of him.
He looked down without saying anything, then went to get the medicine box and sat down again.