Unfaded hope

The windows of the inpatient ward were sparkling clean, and sunlight slanted across Xu Yanchi's hospital bed, warming the open history textbook. She had been hospitalized for almost a year, changed her hospital gown twice, but the textbooks on her bedside table had grown thicker and thicker—from her second-year high school review books to the newly issued third-year basic lecture notes, the edges of which were soft from being rubbed by her fingers, and covered with dense annotations, even the handwriting was more steady than when she was first admitted to the hospital.

She never considered giving up on the college entrance exam, nor did she forget that she was a student at Qingfan No. 1 High School. Even when she vomited so much after chemotherapy that she couldn't stand up, even when she was in so much pain at night that she stayed awake until dawn, as long as she felt a little better the next day, she would ask Song Shi to hand her her textbooks: "Mom, today I want to sort out the clues of the Industrial Revolution. Xue Su said last time that the teacher mentioned that this part was important." "Bring me the notes that Xiao Fuzhou brought. I haven't finished reading the comparison table of the two world wars he drew." There was not a trace of dejection in her tone, as if she was not lying in a hospital bed, but sitting in a classroom at Qingfan No. 1 High School, surrounded by classmates chattering about the questions.

Xue Su comes almost every day, carrying a canvas bag with the "Qingfan No.1 Middle School" emblem, and sits there for the entire afternoon. "Today in history class we talked about the post-war international order. I copied down the supplementary historical materials the teacher added. Look, these are highlighted in red; they say they're likely to be on the exam for material-based questions." "Xiao Fuzhou completed your notes for the modern history class you missed. He even put little labels next to them so you wouldn't get the timeline mixed up." Xue Su helped her flip through the notes while chattering about the daily life in the class. Xu Yanchi listened attentively, occasionally interjecting, "I underlined this point in the textbook before," her eyes sparkling with tiny lights. Song Shi sat beside her, picking vegetables, watching her daughter's profile as she worked on her problems. The tension she had felt for a year finally eased a little—as long as her daughter was still thinking about the classroom and the college entrance exam, there was still hope.

Only Xu Yanchi herself knew how difficult it was to keep going. Sometimes, halfway through doing her homework, a sudden wave of dizziness would hit her, blurring the words in her textbook. She would have to quickly close her eyes and grip the edge of the table for a while to recover. When the pain was severe at night, she would stare at the ceiling, and the thought of "just lying here" would pop into her mind like a soft ball of cotton, urging her to stop pushing herself. But whenever she thought of Song Shi squatting in the corridor secretly calculating medical expenses, or of Xue Su handing her notes and saying, "When you come back, we'll catch up on the lessons we didn't finish," reason would pull her back to reality—she couldn't give up. She had to live, she had to go back to school to take the college entrance exam, she had to get into university, and she had to make sure her mother didn't have to worry about medical expenses every day.

Later, once her condition stabilized a bit, she started "exercising." At first, she would just walk slowly in the ward, holding onto the wall, counting her steps, and getting out of breath after just one lap. Later, she could move to the corridor and slowly shuffle from walking to running, starting with 200 meters, running until she was breathless and her chest felt tight, but she wouldn't stop. Later still, she could run 400 meters and 800 meters with Song Shi in the small garden downstairs from the inpatient department—just like when she used to run on the playground of Qingfan No. 1 Middle School, her school uniform pants hanging loosely over her hospital gown, swaying as she ran, but with more determination than ever before. Once, after running 800 meters, she leaned against a tree and smiled, sweat dripping from her forehead onto the grass, and said to Song Shi, "Mom, look, I can run 800 meters again, just like when I used to do it in PE class."

Song Shi couldn't smile. Her pocket was filled with a thick stack of payment slips, a detailed record of expenses like a running account: chemotherapy fees, targeted therapy fees, examination fees—none of which covered medical insurance. Last year, to care for her hospitalized daughter full-time, she quit her restaurant job, and her employee medical insurance had been lapsed for almost a year. Initially, she thought a few months' gap wouldn't matter, until her first attempt at reimbursement, when the window clerk pointed to the "suspended enrollment" message in the system and said "cannot be reimbursed," and she panicked. Later, she tried to make up the payments, only to find that the outstanding amount plus late fees amounted to several thousand yuan. She barely had enough money for her next chemotherapy session, and could only watch helplessly as her path to medical insurance reimbursement was completely blocked.

To pay for her daughter's medical treatment, she not only spent all her savings but also borrowed from all her relatives and even took out two bank loans. But without medical insurance to cover the medical expenses, the hole seemed bottomless. Once, standing at the payment window, staring at the string of numbers after the word "out-of-pocket" on the receipt, her fingers crumpled and her hands trembled—relationships were becoming increasingly difficult to answer, and the bank was sending endless collection text messages. When she couldn't sleep at night, she would look through her old medical insurance payment records on her phone, wondering if she hadn't quit her job and hadn't missed a payment deadline, would she owe less money now, would she be in such a panic? But life is like that; one must look forward, and life must go on endlessly.

"Yanchi, Mom's going to buy you a bottle of milk." Song Shi clutched the crumpled change in her pocket, got up, and walked out, her steps heavier than usual. The sunlight in the corridor was bright, but it couldn't warm the chill in her heart—she didn't dare tell her daughter about the lapse in her medical insurance payments, afraid that her daughter would worry about money again, afraid that the little bit of effort she had painstakingly saved would vanish. When she reached the small garden downstairs, she saw Xu Yanchi sitting on a bench, head down, quietly sorting through clues in her history textbook. The wind rustled the pages, lifting the corner of her empty hospital gown. Song Shi quietly wiped her eyes, suppressing the panic in her heart, and quickly walked over: "Are you tired from memorizing? Have some milk first, rest for a while before continuing—once you're better, we'll go back to school."

Xu Yanchi looked up, smiled, and took the milk. She then pointed to the contents of her textbook: "Mom, I figured out the impact of colonial expansion today. I'll tell you about it later." Sunlight fell on her face, making her pale skin glow with a hint of color. Song Shi nodded and sat down beside her, her fingers unconsciously rubbing the bill in her pocket—even without medical insurance, even with huge debts, as long as her daughter was still holding her textbook and longing to go home, she could only grit her teeth and keep going.