The puzzle of moonlight in the emergency room

As the green light from the monitor cast a bluish shadow under Ayu's eyes, Zhong Hua placed a cup of hot milk between her fingers. The warmth of the paper cup reminded her of the prayer wheels warming in the sun in front of the Potala Palace, only now the metal casing felt cool with disinfectant. A lone lamp shone at the nurses' station at the end of the corridor, and in its light, the jigsaw puzzle of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" on the old wooden table resembled an unfolded riddle, the dark brown wood grain showing through the missing corners, making it look like an unfinished boat awning on the Bian River.

“The second to last piece in the third row should be the stone railing of the arched bridge.” Zhong Hua’s fingertips traced the edge of the puzzle, the faint blue marks from peeling an apple last night still lingering under his fingernails. Ayu stared at the throbbing veins in his wrist, suddenly noticing a rhythm somewhat similar to the waveform of her father’s electrocardiogram. The wind at two in the morning rushed in from the fire escape, rustling the scraps of paper in the puzzle box. One of the paper scraps, as thin as a cicada’s wing, was printed with “Bianjing Official Kiln,” its curled edges strikingly similar to the eaves of the Potala Palace’s golden roof. She reached out to pick it up, and the moment her fingertips touched the paper, she suddenly remembered the Thangka scroll she had touched at the Jokhang Temple; the same rough edges prickled her palm with a subtle itch.

On the jigsaw puzzle board, the ripples of the Bian River meandered to the edge of the wooden table, as if about to overflow the boundaries of reality. Ayu picked up a fragment shaped like a triangular sail; the texture at the gap reminded her of the Mani stones at the foot of the Potala Palace wall—stones that have been touched by believers for thousands of years, their cracks also embedded with similar traces of time. Zhong Hua handed her a fragment of an arched bridge railing; as their fingertips touched, she heard the soft tinkling of the silver bracelet on his cuff. This sound suddenly overlapped with the hum of a prayer wheel in her memory, like some kind of hidden resonance.

As the last sail was fitted into the groove, the moon outside the glass curtain wall was peeking out from behind the clouds. The rubber soles of the nurse on duty slid across the floor: "Oh, the moon looks like it's been nibbled on by the Jade Rabbit today." Moonlight slanted across the monitor screen, gilding the peaks of the heart rate curve with a silver edge—Ayu suddenly gripped her paper cup tightly, the hot milk rippled against the cup. That year in Lhasa, prayer wheels were polished to a shine by the hands of pilgrims, and when the sunlight pierced through the prayer flags, it also cast such a silver edge on the wheels, flickering with the rhythm of the spinning, much like her father's heartbeat, sometimes strong, sometimes weak, at this moment. She suddenly saw the boatmen in the puzzle pulling cargo ships across the Rainbow Bridge, the knot at their waists exactly like the yak reins carrying scrolls in the Potala Palace murals, the faded red silk at the end of the rope fluttering in her imagination, like the flickering indicator lights at the end of the emergency room corridor.

The crisp sound of Zhong Hua crushing the empty milk carton startled A Yu from the swirling sound of prayer wheels in her mind. This sound strangely overlapped with the clinking of copper bells she had heard at the Jokhang Temple, making her vaguely see the Bian River in the puzzle overflowing the wooden table, merging with the shimmering waves of the Lhasa River in her memory. The clock at the nurses' station struck three, and the automatic door to the emergency room slid open at that moment. The doctor in the white coat, his shoes damp with night dew, the worn curve of his heels perfectly matching the heels of the straw sandals worn by the boatmen on the Bian River in the puzzle. His eyes above his mask curved, much like the smiling face of the old woman selling Tibetan incense in front of the Potala Palace.

“The old man is fine, just tired.” When the doctor took off his mask, Ayu noticed the mole on his left earlobe, exactly the same as the one on her grandmother’s earlobe in her memory. Zhong Hua helped her walk to the ward. As they passed the nurses’ station, she glimpsed the instruction manual at the bottom of the puzzle box—the printing ink shimmered faintly in the moonlight, and the strokes of the six characters “During the Xuanhe period of the Northern Song Dynasty” even had a bluish-green hue, the same as the patina on a prayer wheel. The beeping of the monitor suddenly became clear. With each beep, the golden roof of the Potala Palace lit up in her memory. Those spots of light spread along the trajectory of her heartbeat, eventually gathering into a crescent moon on the emergency room floor tiles, facing the “bitten mooncake” outside the window.

In the ward, her father's breathing was as light as a feather. Ayu tucked him in and noticed half a mooncake on the bedside table—it was brought by Zhong Hua that afternoon, its bite marks crooked and uneven, much like the "moon gnawed by the Jade Rabbit" the nurse had described. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, casting long, thin silver lines on the electrocardiogram paper. She suddenly realized that the undulations of those lines subtly matched the ripples of the Bian River, the outline of the Potala Palace's golden roof, and the carved curves on the prayer wheels in the puzzle.

Zhong Hua was asleep in the folding chair, his eyelashes casting small, fan-like shadows beneath his eyes. Ayu gently picked up the jigsaw puzzle box beside him. The "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" scroll on the lid gleamed warmly in the moonlight. The bustling city scene in the painting seemed to travel across a thousand years, yet it wove together with the ticking of the monitors in the emergency room, the nurses' footsteps in the corridor, and her father's soft breathing, creating a rhythmic melody. She remembered seeing miniature scriptures hidden inside prayer wheels in Lhasa, and suddenly felt that this half-puzzle, this moonlight, and even her father's steady heartbeat were all scriptures hidden in the folds of life, waiting to be illuminated by a chance glance.