The next day, Tao Xi did not let Lin Qinhe accompany him. He went to Hannan Hospital alone in the cold wind. He bought some fruits like last time, and went straight to Guo Ping's ward. Tao Jian was not there, only Guo was in the ward. Ping.
Tao Xi almost didn't recognize the woman on the bed with the tube on her body. Her face was so swollen that she couldn't see what she used to be. Hearing the sound of the door, she looked towards the door very slowly, as if it took a lot of effort to get it right. Identify who is coming.
Guo Ping's yellow and swollen face could not be seen, she tried her best to open her mouth and called out "Tao Xi".
Tao Xi raised his feet and walked towards the hospital bed, without calling him anything.
In fact, they didn't have much to say, or since he knew the truth, he hadn't spoken to Guo Ping much, and Guo Ping has become more and more silent towards him since then, just using a pair of saddened eyes. The eyes looked at him occasionally, and he hated the look.
Now, he saw a little smile in Guo Ping's cloudier eyes, and she said, "You came to see me."
"I'm here for Tao Le." Tao Xi said calmly, putting the fruit in his hand on the bedside table.
Guo Ping nodded lightly when she heard these words, and said, "Tao Le is at her grandma's house. She wants to come to Wenhua City with me to see you. I didn't let her come. I asked her to study hard at school."
"I'll let her transfer here to study." Tao Xi said, Yang Zhengming agreed to help him, he would find a good junior high school, and let Tao Le transfer over next semester.
Guo Ping didn't speak for a long time after hearing this, and when she spoke again, her voice was much lower: "It is her blessing that she has a brother like you."
After she finished speaking, she raised the hand with the needle in it, pointed to the drawer of the bedside table with some difficulty, and said, "There is a wooden box in the first drawer, you can take it out and take a look."
Tao Xi took out the palm-length narrow wooden box from the drawer. The wooden box should have been beaten with scraps, rough and old.
He opened the wooden box, and inside was a peace knot woven by a red rope. The hands that weaved it were obviously clumsy, and the peace knot was not very flat and beautiful.
Tao Xi stared at the string of peace knots for a few seconds, then suddenly looked up at Guo Ping.
"Your mother, she has long and slender hands. She draws so well. I don't know why learning to weave rope is so slow. I taught her for a long time before she finished this string of peace knots."
Guo Ping looked at the Ping An knot in Tao Xi's hand, and seemed to fall into memory: "The first time I saw her, I thought how could there be such a beautiful person, her eyes are always full of water, and her speech is gentle and gentle. ."
"She came to ask me if she could stay at my house. I saw that she was pregnant with a child, and I thought she was pregnant with a child, and the two could be friends, so I agreed to her, and she was not worried at all. As soon as I moved in, I gave a lot of money, and I don't think about what if I cheated her of money."
"At that time, the daughters-in-law of other families in the village envied me, saying that I was lucky to meet a noble person from a big city. I also thought so, I have been in Taoxi Bay all my life, and I have never seen anything in the world. Your mother is me. The most powerful person I know, I don't even dare to think of the word friend, but she really takes me as a friend..."
When Tao Xi heard the word "friend", his breath became stagnant. He couldn't listen anymore, and asked the question he wanted to ask coldly:
"She takes you as a friend, why do you still do that?"
She trusts you so much, but you keep the child she gave her life for, and hand over your child to her relatives.
Guo Ping fell silent, her eyes slowly moved away from the string of safety knots, her eyes were out of focus at the potion hanging by the bedside, her voice lowered, and she continued weakly:
"I haven't read much. Your mother has a lot of things I don't understand. I don't really understand what she sometimes says or draws. The only thing I can understand about her is her love for you. "
"She gave you a good name, drew a picture for you, wrote a letter, and said that she would take you to many places in the future and teach you to draw. At that time, I suddenly thought, what can I give my children? , I've never thought about this kind of problem before, the children in our place are all born and raised in the village, and they don't read any books. They grow up like me, get married, have children, and go on like this from generation to generation..."
"Your mother let me know that as a parent, you have to think so much about your child... I wonder if I should leave something for my child, but they said that day that my child was weak and would not live long at all. I'm not reconciled, how can I be reconciled, I haven't figured out what to give him in the future... "
"Maybe it's because of this unwillingness. That day, your father and the others came to Taoxi Bay to pick up your mother and son. I gave them my own child. At that time, I thought, this is the only thing I can give him, and that string The red rope I made myself…”
"Is that your thing?" Tao Xi interrupted and asked, feeling that there was no need to listen any more, there was no secret as he had imagined, everything was just a so-called mother's love for his own use, giving other people's fate as a gift to their own children.
He stood up from the chair and wanted to turn around to leave, but when he saw Guo Ping struggling to reach out to him, his voice was completely weak:
"Tao Xi, I'm sorry, I stole what your mother gave you. I know you hate me and won't forgive me. I'm going to hell soon, and I won't be able to see your mother when I die. Look at her, can you tell her for me, I'm sorry... "
Tao Xi looked indifferently at the hand with the needle inserted towards him. He had longed for that hand countless times to be able to take him home from school as he held Tao Le.
He didn't move, and asked indifferently: "You know I won't forgive you, why do you expect my mother's forgiveness?"
Guo Ping's hand gradually dropped, her eyes were half closed, and she moved her lips as if to say something, but no one could hear it except herself.
Tao Xi looked down at the woman on the hospital bed. This "mother" he once hoped to be loved, but later hated and disgusted with, he finally didn't say any sharp words, and only left one sentence: "Take care of yourself, Tao Le. I'm still waiting for you at home." Then, clutching the safety knot, he turned and walked out of the ward.
He originally wanted to ask Guo Ping why he had not treated him better out of guilt over the years, but there was no point in asking.
He came to see Guo Ping's side, just to break the "mother and son fate" for more than ten years.
Tao Xi walked out of the high-rise building of the inpatient department. It was after ten o'clock in the morning, the last sunny day before the cold wave came. The sun was shining from the southeast. He raised his hand to cover his eyes, and the street outside the hospital was lit up. At the green light, he followed the flow of people and walked across the street.
The cold wave in Wenhua City is fierce. The weather forecast said that it will snow tomorrow, but in fact, snowflakes started to fall in the middle of the night. The whole city was covered with snow overnight, just waiting for people to wake up and sigh in surprise.
The next day, Tao Xi found out about Guo Ping's jumping from the building through Lin Qinhe after waking up.
Guo Ping jumped from the high-rise building in the inpatient department in the early hours of the morning. She must have spent a lot of effort to remove the tube and needle from her body. Tao Jian slept soundly on the camp bed next to her, unaware.
Although the ground was covered with a layer of snow, there was no chance of surviving a jump from that height.
Hospitals cannot avoid patients who die by jumping off the building every year. After all, not everyone can endure the pain and suffering, so some people choose to be relieved.
Tao Xi knew that Guo Ping did not choose to die because of illness. She did not come to Wenhua City for medical treatment, but just to see her children before she died.
But Yang Duole never went to see Guo Ping.
Guo Ping gave Yang Duole birth and changed his fate for others, and now she gave Yang Duole the only thing she had, her death.
Lin Qinhe lowered his head to look at the look on Tao Xi's face, but in fact, apart from being surprised when he first learned about it, his expression was always calm afterwards, as if he was not surprised or sad.
He didn't say anything, he walked to the wool carpet by the window and sat down, quietly watching the heavy snow outside the floor-to-ceiling window.
Seventeen years ago, two children born in the snowy night were replaced by others. Since then, their lives have been reversed and their fate has been reversed. Seventeen years later, everything is getting back on track, and the person who secretly changed his fate ended his life in the same heavy snow.
From the point of view of others, they will often sigh about karma, but the wrong love, regret, pain, remorse, and unwillingness between the seventeen years of fateful subversion... are not enough for karma.
And the living people have to mend the cracks after this farce of fate ends.
Tao Xi seemed to have thought about it a lot, but he didn't seem to think about anything. Most of the 17-year memories were of Guo Ping. After all, he was the one who called his mother for 15 years, but at the end of the day, he didn't seem to remember much. Those former longings and later hatreds seemed to vanish in the swirling snow in front of me.
The last picture in my mind was neither Guo Ping nor myself.
Lin Qinhe walked to Tao Xi and sat down, took his hand, and found that it was cold.
After a long time, Tao Xi turned to look at him and said softly:
"My sister doesn't have a mother anymore."
Lin Qinhe raised his hand and wiped the corner of Tao Xi's eyes with his thumb, took him into his arms, warmed the hands of the person in his arms with his palm, and said to him, "She has our two brothers."
Tao Xi did not participate in Guo Ping's funeral. After the cremation in Wenhua City, Tao Jian took away a box of ashes. Later, Tao Xi heard that Tao Jian did not know where to find Yang Duole, and there was a lot of incident between father and son. The conflict between the two, Yang Duole was probably beaten hard by Tao Jian, and actually followed Tao Jian back to Taoxi Bay.
After Fang Zuqing and Ye Yurong knew about Guo Ping, they only sighed for their sins. The two old men hated to sue Guo Ping at first, but they gave up temporarily after learning about Guo Ping's illness. There is no place to pursue.
Tao Xi asked the Qingshui County junior high school teacher for help and called Tao Le. The little girl was out of breath crying on the other end of the phone. She had to accept her mother's suicide overnight. Her brother was not biological. Too cruel for an older girl.
"Brother, are you not coming back in the future?" Tao Le asked helplessly while crying, and then said after a pause, "I saw that person, he hates me very much, and I hate him very much, I don't want to recognize him. He's a brother."
Tao Xi couldn't imagine how Yang Duole would get along with Tao Le. He said to Tao Le, "I won't come back, but I'm still your brother, and you're still my sister."
Tao Le cried for a long time after hearing this.
Tao Xi appeased Tao Le for a while, explained to her about the transfer over next semester, and told her to take medicine several times before hanging up.
After dealing with these matters, Tao Xi and Lin Qinhe went to Fang Sui's tomb together. He tied the string of peace knots that Lin Qinhe had woven for him on his wrist, and the string that Lin Qinhe gave him. Turquoise together.
These are the two most important people in his life, a blessing to him.
On their way down the mountain after sweeping the tomb, Tao Xi put his head in front of Lin Qinhe, stared into Lin Qinhe's eyes and asked, "Did you quietly say something to my mother just now?"
When he was cleaning the residual snow beside the tombstone before, he saw Lin Qinhe looking at Fang Sui's tombstone for a long time with a serious and solemn expression.
Lin Qinhe raised his hand and pocketed the white-haired hat around Taoxi's white down jacket, and said, "You told her so much about me, of course I have to express it."
Tao Xi's whole head was put in his hat. He was stunned for a while, remembering what he said as if he had brought his boyfriend to the door, he felt a little embarrassed, so he grabbed Lin Qinhe's arm and asked, "You What did you say? You didn't speak ill of me, did you?"
Lin Qinhe looked at Tao Xi's face surrounded by a circle of white fluff, raised his eyebrows and said, "What can I say bad about you?"
Tao Xi felt that the white fluff made his face itchy, so he threw the hat behind him and nodded in agreement, "Yes, I don't know what shortcomings I have."
After he finished speaking, he saw the corner of Lin Qinhe's mouth curled into a smile, and realized that Lin Qinhe was changing the subject, so he quickly pulled back and asked, "So what did you say?"
Lin Qinhe put the hat up again and said, "I didn't say anything, I just thank your mother for giving birth to you."
"Oh, that's to thank you." Tao Xi followed Lin Qinhe and continued to walk down the mountain. When the wind blew the white fur on his face, he realized that the hat was on his head again.
"You like this hat so much?"
"It looks cute."
"Oh." Tao Xi was a little embarrassed again, and jumped forward a few steps, but did not take off his hat.
Lin Qinhe glanced back, the stepped cemetery in the remnant snow on the green hills was silent, and the tomb of Fang Sui could no longer be seen, but it seemed to be still watching them tenderly.
The author says:
Lin Qinhe's feelings for Fang Sui are very complicated