Waking up from nightmares at night will bring a cold sweat, and a nerve in the brain will continue to twist, making it impossible to fall back to sleep.
Xia Mian has long been used to this feeling.
He woke up panting heavily, lying sideways on the side of the bed, with a space for someone in his arms, arms folded forward, as if he was holding someone in his deep sleep.
He turned over to get up, skillfully washed, changed clothes, ate breakfast, and sat in front of his notebook to start working.
He was on a business trip and had stayed in a hotel on the other side of the ocean for more than ten days.
Surrounded by western faces coming and going, talking to each other in English, no different from his eight years abroad. The work schedule is tight, and the day's schedule is scheduled from morning to night. He doesn't have much free time, and he doesn't have the leisure to think about things other than work.
That's fine.
After dawn, the assistant knocked on the door and asked Xia Mian if he could go out. They are going to participate in a major meeting today, and there is an hour's drive from the hotel to the meeting place.
Xia Mian put on his coat and poured a cup of sugar-free black coffee before leaving.
The meeting lasted all morning. After the end, Xia Mian came to the smoking room of the building and stood opposite the window, unbuttoned his suit, and lit the cigarette between his fingers.
He bowed his head and smoked, frowning tightly in the smoke. The assistant opened the door and came in, calling him, "Mr. Xia?"
Xia Mian turned around, and the assistant raised his mobile phone to signal him: "You have more than 20 missed calls. You have called since around ten o'clock, almost every five minutes. They should be looking for you urgently."
During the meeting, Xia Mian's cell phone was set to vibrate. He valued the meeting, so he threw the phone to the assistant and asked him to take it out of the conference room. No matter who called, he ignored it first.
"Give it to me." He reached out and took the phone back into his hand.
The assistant also stayed in the smoking room to smoke. Xia Mian turned on the screen, and more than 20 missed calls were crowded in the center of the screen. The caller is the same number and the same contact person, and he noted it as "Li Li".
"I'll make a call." Xia Mian said, "You have lunch first, don't wait for me."
He leaves the smoking room and enters the deserted public terrace.
Missed calls were marked in red in the call log, Xia Mian flipped through each one, and his fingers paused for a long time before dialing the call.
After two beeps, Li Li answered.
"Hello, Xia Mian?"
He called Xia Mian directly. In fact, this is very rare.
"It's me." Xia Mian asked, "What's the matter?"
"Sorry, I was too impatient, so I made a lot of phone calls. It's not really urgent. Is it convenient for you to talk now?"
He no longer used "you" to address him, as if he finally understood that his self-righteous and deliberate behavior of lowering himself could not please Xia Mian.
Xia Mian squeezed the phone tightly, smelling the vague smell of tobacco remaining between her fingers: "How long do you need?"
"It won't be long."
Li Li spoke slowly, carefully considering every word. His voice came through the earpiece, spanning half of the earth and traveling tens of thousands of meters, distorted by the distance, so it seemed extraordinarily clear-headed and firm.
"I want you to give me one more chance, meet me, and let me say what I have to say. I will explain to you about the scar and everything that happened eight years ago, and you will leave me with the last favor Here, listen to what I have to say, and then you decide whether to end this relationship with me."
There was no wind on the terrace, and the sun was shining on a sunny day, but Xia Mian's hands were cold.
The feeling of being stretched into the brain and pulled emotionally came back. No matter how long it takes, he can be roped by Li Li again.
"I'm not in the country." He said coldly, "We're done."
There was a soft gasp on the other end of the phone, and there was a moment of silence.
Li Li didn't speak, and Xia Mian wouldn't take the initiative to say a word. They confronted each other silently without seeing each other, Xia Mian heard Li Li's heavy breathing, so he began to uncontrollably imagine Li Li's appearance on the other end of the phone.
Did he have red eyes, did he curl his body into a small ball with his back hooked
Are you holding your phone tightly like him, being emotionally affected by every syllable from the receiver
"Please, Xia Mian." Li Li said, "I beg you, please meet me."
For a moment, on the balcony with no one else, in a foreign country without Li Li, Xia Mian's throat choked up and he almost lost his voice.
"Don't beg me, Li Li. If you really want to explain, you can explain it on the phone now. It's not that I didn't give you a chance. I said to separate, and you just let me go without saying a word. You can do it anytime during the past half month." Call me, but have you called? You are deliberately torturing me, don’t you realize it?”
"I didn't explain that day. It was my fault. I will explain later..." Li Li's voice trembled, "It's hard for me to explain clearly on the phone. Let's meet and talk about it. There are some things that I really can't say. I..."
Xia Mian didn't finish listening.
Li Li's voice stopped abruptly, and the terrace was as quiet as it was late at night. Xia Mian couldn't see him, couldn't hear him, so he wouldn't be bothered by it anymore.
Xia Mian lowered his hands, put his phone into his coat pocket, and walked away from the terrace—
He hung up the phone.
Unlike the clear sky on the other side of the ocean, the drizzle in the country continued for several days without stopping.
Early in the morning on weekends, Xia Mian's cousin came to the hospital for a routine check-up. After finishing the work, the whole family could gather for lunch when the cousin took a lunch break.
The sister-in-law took Guoguo and sat in the obstetrics hall waiting for her husband, and was tortured to death by Guoguo. The little girl doesn't understand her mother's hard work. The basis of her perception of the world is herself. She is full of vitality, full of curiosity and desire to explore everything in the world, so she feels that her mother must be the same as her.
Empathy is something even adults can hardly do.
"Mom, mom, mom..." Guoguo asked, "Where did I come from?"
The cousin felt that she had already answered this question ten thousand times, and she was so annoyed to death, she still tried to maintain her mother's patience and gentleness, and said to her: "Guoguo came out of mother's belly, look, it's a little girl. Where Yao is staying now, you touch him, you haven't said hello to him today."
The mother-in-law's baby name is "Xiaoyao", which was taken by Guoguo. She has cultivated the consciousness of being a sister since the two bars appeared on the mother's pregnancy test stick. She watched her mother's belly grow day by day, and she poured out her love for the younger brother or sister inside.
"Xiaoyao, Xiaoyao, I'm my elder sister..." She lay lightly on her cousin's stomach, stroked her hands back and forth, and murmured some words that adults couldn't understand.
The sister-in-law successfully attracted Guoguo's attention with her stomach, and she breathed a sigh of relief and found a moment of peace.
Guoguo played with Big Belly for a while, and when she got bored, she asked her cousin again: "Mom, the uncle I saw at my little uncle's house last time, is he his uncle's wife? Who will have a baby after him and my uncle?" Woolen cloth?"
The cousin was overwhelmed by this complicated question. She thought for a while, took her daughter into her arms, and said to her in a whispering voice: "That uncle is not your uncle's wife. How should I put it, they are not sure whether to have a baby yet, and they will wait until they get married." It will be considered."
Guoguo's eyes were confused, obviously he didn't understand. She asked persistently, "Then which uncle gave birth to the baby?"
The cousin looked at her daughter with a headache, and had nothing to do with her.
When I was at a loss, my cousin came over. When he saw his wife and children in the obstetrics hall, his first reaction was to put his arms around his wife, then put his daughter in his arms, and asked about the results of the obstetric examination.
"It's just an old problem, the blood sugar level is under the line... everything else is fine." The sister-in-law said, "It's not a big deal."
"Blood blood pressure was below the threshold during the two prenatal checkups, so it's not a big deal?" My cousin held the checklist, wanting to stare out a hole, "I'll go and ask what's going on!"
"Oh, I just don't want to eat those cakes and desserts." The sister-in-law grabbed him, "The doctor is busy with consultations, so you can ask him next time when you have time. Don't buy me sweets in the future Well, I think it’s up to you, I just want to eat one bite, what do you buy me a bunch of, and I want to eat it when I see it at home.”
The cousin looked at his wife and pulled her sideburns behind her ears, his eyes were filled with pity: "You want to eat, why am I reluctant to buy it for you?"
The sister-in-law took his hand away and was amused by him.
"What do you want for lunch?"
"Be lighter, go home and eat, you cook noodles for me."
"Okay." The cousin put his arm around his wife and his daughter with the other, leading them out of the maternity hall.
When passing the corner, the cousin suddenly stopped, shouted "wait a minute", pointed to their figure at the end of the corridor, and said, "that person looks like Li Li."
The cousin hurriedly turned his head and saw the man entering a certain consulting room, his figure and profile flashed past, and he really looked like Li Li.
"Why did he come to the obstetrics department?" My cousin couldn't believe his eyes, "Did you see it wrong?"
"It's him." The sister-in-law looked over there on tiptoe, "Do you think it's the same? We both think it's the same, so it should be him. What's the situation? Would you like to call Xia Mian and ask?"
Tang's sister-in-law didn't know about Li Li's gland injury, and she didn't talk to Xia Mian. She thought Xia Mian and Li Li would continue walking.
"Impossible." Thinking of Xiaonian's conversation with Xia Mian that day, my cousin denied, "We must have read it wrong."
He turned his head, ignored the strange feeling in his heart, and left the hospital with his wife and daughter.
After having lunch at home, my cousin slept with his wife for a while, and then rushed to the hospital to go to work.
He sat in his office for only five minutes, and the figure he saw at the end of the corridor kept replaying in his mind. The feeling of weirdness became stronger and stronger, and the more he thought about it, the more something went wrong, which made him unable to think about other things at all.
That's Li Li, right
Height, body shape, facial contours, dressing style... all are exactly the same as Li Li.
He was really on pins and needles, so he asked his colleagues to help him for a while, and went to the obstetrics department to ask someone to understand.
Hospitals cannot disclose patient information, and even doctors in the same hospital cannot disclose it to each other without permission. The cousin used some kindness to find the doctor who treated Li Li by means outside the rules, and asked him to take out Li Li's medical records and checklists.
"You know him?"
The doctor said, "He can't delay any longer. He is now being treated with medicine, but it doesn't help much. I think he must be hospitalized, otherwise he may have a miscarriage tomorrow or the day after tomorrow."
The cousin did not expect to find the patient "Li Li". 30 years old, male Omega, occupation is a middle school teacher. He looked at the medical records and was completely dumbfounded.
"Look at his past medical history eight years ago. He lost one before. It was not a miscarriage, but an induced labor. The baby was stillborn at 15 weeks. His treatment period lasted for a year and a half, and the entire set of reproductive organs was almost removed. Back and forth It took three transfers to save it, so it can be said that it was a narrow escape."
As an outsider, the doctor couldn't help sighing, "Can you find the baby's father? If you don't come, it will be too late. I think he wants the baby very much, and he seems to be in a trance when talking to me, and his consciousness is not so clear. This If the first child is not good, he doesn't know how heartbroken he will be."
On this day, my cousin staggered out of the hospital and searched for Xia Mian's number outside where he could make calls. The delicate spring rain blurred the screen of his phone, his fingertips slipped, and he wanted to drop the phone several times.
After the call was connected, he made the most confused and anxious statement ever made to Xia Mian on the other end of the phone. He repeatedly asked "Can you come back right away" and "Can you come over now".
Immediately afterwards, Xia Mian's assistant received a call from Xia Mian. Obviously there is still a week to finish his overseas work, but Xia Mian said that he will return to China within today.
Take the nearest flight and use the fastest speed.
No matter the cost, no matter the consequences.