The hands she was familiar with.
The first time, he took off his gloves to check the wires of the braces in her mouth;
The second time, she was helpless and caught up with him in that small town, holding his hand and shouting his name;
The third time, he mischievously called her name on the dark road, scaring her to tears. That time, he took her hands, put them on his face and said, "Alive."
The fourth time, he took her hand on the gear lever and pushed it into forward gear for her, teaching her how to fight back against insults.
…
Too many.
Every time it was taken for granted, so she didn't and didn't dare to take it to heart.
After the operation, he took her to have a CT scan and then to get a tetanus shot.
The injection required a skin test first, so the nurse gave her a needle in the skin of her wrist and asked her to wait for more than ten minutes. There were quite a lot of patients, and the chairs outside the injection room were all occupied, so she and Ai Jingchu went to the registration hall to sit for a while.
There were many people coming and going there. Most of the patients came to see the dentist, and few had injuries. So Zeng Li, with a large gauze bandage on his chin, was quite eye-catching. With Ai Jingchu sitting next to him, he was even more eye-catching. This was the hospital where he worked, and many of the people passing by were colleagues. They simply nodded, and the more enthusiastic ones would come over to say a few words, and some would even stop by to ask about Zeng Li's condition.
After no one came to disturb him anymore, Ai Jingchu asked, "Do you want to call your family?"
"No thanks." She shook her head.
"Where are your friends?"
This time Zeng Li didn't shake his head. He just took out his cell phone and called Ma Yiyi.
"Where have you been? I'm so busy here." Weekend afternoons are the busiest time for cafes because the weather is too hot for outdoor activities.
"I have something urgent to do, so I can't go over. Please bear with me."
"Ah? Then just keep busy." Ma Yiyi said, "Are you going on a date secretly?"
"No."
"Why do you sound like you have a lisp when you speak?" Ma Yiyi noticed something was wrong.
"Just do your thing. There's no need to talk so much." After saying that, Zeng Li hung up the phone.
Ai Jingchu asked for a bottle of alcohol from the injection room and said to Zeng Li, "Give me the phone."
She didn't know why, so she handed it over obediently.
He put on a pair of gloves and used a cotton ball dipped in alcohol to wipe the blood off Zeng Li's phone bit by bit. Perhaps because of his profession, he was very meticulous, which immediately reminded Zeng Li of her letter. Yu Yi later showed her the letter and explained, "It is said that it was already stuck together at the time, and it was Ai Jingchu who separated it."
An indescribable emotion melted from her chest, and she suddenly felt that maybe it was not her fault that she did not turn around and leave the moment she saw his name in this hospital.
"I have something to tell you," Zeng Li said, "I hope you won't be angry after you know it."
He wiped his phone clean, stopped what he was doing, looked up at her, and waited for her next words.
"I..." Facing his eyes, Zeng Li suddenly panicked and didn't know where to start for a moment.
She turned her eyes away, looked elsewhere, and finally told him everything about Yu Yi.
Ai Jingchu listened silently.
Finally she asked, "You were the one who called me, right?"
There was an old man arguing with a nurse in the outpatient hall. To be exact, the old man was yelling at the nurse. Zeng Li didn't know what they were arguing about, but there were many people watching and the noise was very loud. After she said this, her heart almost stopped, but she didn't hear Ai Jingchu's answer, so she suspected that she spoke too softly and he didn't hear it.
She turned to look at him and found that he was still looking at her, but without the anger or surprise she had imagined. He was just staring at her quietly, and that look made her feel a little flustered.
Just as she was about to continue explaining, the nurse from the injection room came over and interrupted them, saying that the time for the skin test had come. After checking Zeng Li's arm, she asked her to come over for the injection.
After the injection, Ai Jingchu drove to the hospital, saying he wanted to buy some things and asked Zeng Li to wait for him in the car.
Ten minutes later, Ai Jingchu came back holding a small transparent plastic bag.
"When you get home, dissolve this in sterile water and put it in the refrigerator. Apply it several times a day to promote wound healing. And this," he pointed to another flat box, "this is a silicone patch. After the wound heals, stick it on to prevent scar proliferation. It may not stick well on the chin, though, so put this headgear on it when you sleep at night."
Zeng Li suddenly felt a little flattered. After a while, he picked up the two injections and said, "But how do I do this?"
As if remembering something, he took out an unopened disposable syringe from his trouser pocket and asked her to put it in the plastic bag. "I know."
When he was almost at Zeng Li's house, Ai Jingchu took a detour and happened to pass by the place where Zeng Li had just fallen. He found the kind-hearted aunt and put the bicycle that Zeng Li had left there behind the car.
The aunt said: "I was so scared just now. There was so much blood. I thought something happened."
Zeng Li smiled and followed the direction the aunt pointed and saw the pool of blood on the side of the road. It was indeed shocking.
At this time, Ai Jingchu, who had disappeared for a while, came over from the fruit shop across the street carrying a big watermelon and a big bag of apples, saying that they were to thank the aunt and the colleagues who had helped.
Auntie was delighted and declined, "You are so polite."
"It's her duty." Ai Jingchu said, "Thanks to your help, otherwise she wouldn't know what to do alone."
Seeing that the other party was sincere, the aunt happily called her colleagues to help collect the things.
Zeng Li returned to the car and couldn't help but sigh: "You are more thoughtful."
She was still young when she separated from her father, and she had not had much opportunity to interact with the opposite sex, so she didn't know if all men were so methodical.
Ai Jingchu fastened his seat belt, restarted the car, and explained: "Good deeds will be rewarded with good."
When they arrived downstairs at Zeng Li's building, needless to say, Ai Jingchu had to follow her upstairs, as she didn't know how to use the injection.
Zeng Li felt relaxed when he got home, but he felt tired and listless because he had lost so much blood and had been to and fro in the hospital several times.
Ai Jingchu said: "While the anesthetic is still there, go into the house and take a rest. I will prepare the medicine. I will remember to lock the door for you before I leave."
Zeng Li felt dizzy and didn't have the energy to think much, so he closed the bedroom door, changed his blood-stained T-shirt, and lay down on the bed.
Ai Jingchu waited until the bedroom was quiet before sitting down on the sofa.
In fact, he hadn't eaten lunch yet. When he received the call, he was on his way home to eat. Although he wasn't hungry, he had a stomachache. Whenever he felt unwell, he wanted to smoke. There was no balcony in the living room, and it was not convenient to smoke in someone else's house, so he opened the door, walked to the corridor to light a cigarette, and then turned back to half-close the door.
Zeng Li was still awake in the bedroom. When she heard the door unlock, she thought Ai Jingchu had left. She felt relieved and fell asleep after taking off her tight jeans.
Later, footsteps were heard from upstairs, and a middle-aged woman came down. Seeing Ai Jingchu standing at the door of someone's house, neither moving up nor down, she kept smoking and glanced at him several times in confusion.
After the man left, in order not to bring any bad influence to Zeng Li, Ai Jingchu quickly took a few deep puffs of the cigarette, put out the cigarette butt, and went into the house.
This time, Ai Jingchu took a careful look at Zeng Li's house.
The small one-bedroom house, probably because it is old and poorly designed, has three doors opening into the living room, one is the front door, one is the bedroom, and one is the kitchen. Behind the kitchen are the toilet and washroom.
The pot of green ivy that he saw last time was still as lush as before, and there was another pot next to it, but he didn’t recognize what kind of plant it was.
She had a lot of stuff. There were many skin care bottles and jars on the coffee table. There were also many colorful magazines. They couldn't fit on the coffee table, so they were piled on the floor. There was even a pile next to the armrest of the sofa. On the sofa, in addition to magazines, there were also pillows of several different fabrics and colors, and a few rabbit dolls.
The whole room looks like where the girl lives.
There are a lot of things, but it doesn’t feel cluttered.
On the other side of the corner was a rectangular dining table, but it was obvious that it was not used as a dining table. In addition to a laptop, there were some books, notebooks, colored pencils, and a puzzle that had been put together and thrown aside. The puzzle was a messy but orderly bookshelf. Perhaps the colors were too complicated, or perhaps the project was too huge, so she didn't continue.
Seeing a pen lying at the foot of the table, he walked over, picked it up and put it on the table.
On the desk, next to the computer, there was an open leather-bound notebook with checkered patterns. He glanced at it casually. There was a line of words written on it: 3 grams of white Poria cocos, 3 grams of white peony root, 3 grams of white atractylodes…
He didn't know Chinese medicine, but he knew these herbs. He thought she must have seen the beauty recipe somewhere and copied it down in a notebook for fear that she would forget it. When he thought of the little thoughts of girls about beauty, he couldn't help laughing.
However, when I changed my mind and took another look, I was in a different mood.
This was the second time he saw her handwriting. He couldn't remember exactly what her handwriting looked like back then, but he thought it was elegant and neat. Looking at it now, the elegance was still there, but it was a little sloppy.
After so many years, times have changed. Has she changed as much as her handwriting
He suddenly remembered the scene when she was crying and looking for the love lock on Dongshan Mountain. At that time, he just thought she was a silly girl, but he didn't expect that the person was Yu Yi, nor did he think that she was "her".
Ai Jingchu stood there with his eyes lowered for a long time before looking away.
Afterwards, he went to the kitchen and washed his hands carefully, then knocked off the glass head of the ampoule, sucked half a tube of liquid with a syringe, poured it into the bottle containing the dry powder, and shook it. After the dry powder dissolved, he found a pair of scissors, pricked the aluminum foil on the rubber cap on the bottle, opened it, and put it in the refrigerator.
This process is very simple and any nurse can do it easily, but an unfamiliar person may spill the liquid or cut his or her finger if he or she is not careful.
Only after he went to wash his hands did he think about dinner.