Travel Talk, Three Stories
When we said we were going back home, the three of us didn't have anything special to pack, so we just said hello to the other guys, took an unused second-hand van and hit the road directly. The whole process was so simple and smooth that I was a little dazed.
The only surprise was that before I left, I went to discuss discharge with the attending physician. I thought I would be scolded for running away from the hospital in the middle of treatment for a seriously injured patient like me, but he was not surprised at all. He collected the sundries on the desk and said, "Okay, you are leaving now?"
I said "Ah?" and stared at the other person.
She looked at me and asked, "Anything else?"
I shook my head subconsciously, feeling a little embarrassed. I wondered why he didn't try to keep me. Didn't he have any medical advice to give? He didn't seem to value me at all. Isn't the person in front of you the beloved little ancestor of the Zhang family?
He just stood there, hesitating and actually didn't want to leave.
In the end, I didn't leave, but she did.
"It's time." The attending physician smiled at me politely and pointed at the wall clock. "I'm off night shift."
I was embarrassed and quickly stepped aside. I saw her take off her white coat, put on the casual coat on the hanger next to her, and slowly opened the door. Then she walked away in a flash, disappearing around the corner of the corridor in two or three steps. She exuded the cold and ghostly charm of someone who didn't care about the mundane world after work.
Once upon a time, I also had that kind of cool feeling when I closed the shop on time at 7:30 every evening.
I sighed and felt melancholy for a moment, but there was really no one around to support me. The nurses who occasionally passed by were also busy and had no time to ask me "Why is the king sighing?" I had no choice but to keep the cat in my pocket and go to the door to meet my two cheap brothers.
After leaving the hospital, there were still a few big stars in the sky. From a distance, I could see Zhang Tianyi leaning against the car door, smiling and talking about something. Sanyi had already sat in the passenger seat, his face still looked very bad, and he ignored Zhang Tianyi.
Before I could react, I went up to him with bad intentions and added fuel to the fire, saying happily, "Why are you angry again? Plus two? If you have something to say, tell me, and I will definitely give you justice."
Before I could finish my sentence, the side door of the van slid open and I was frozen in place.
I saw that the front and rear seats in the small, broken van had been removed to leave as much space as possible.
Then they got on the wheelchairs one by one.
Five familiar faces were lying in wheelchairs, some with bandages, some with plaster casts. They all looked up and smiled at me. The scene was both miserable and spectacular.
At first glance, it turned out to be Xu You, Zhang Jia, Wu Chou, Huo Bing and Fang Ao, who used wheelchairs to spell out five golden flowers.
My jaw may have dropped, and I stammered for a long time before asking, "What, what's going on? The Beggars' Sect Assembly?"
"You are discharged from the hospital, and so are they."
There was a small stool placed in the circle of wheelchairs. The attending physician, who had already finished get off work, calmly poked his head out. There was a portable medical box at his feet. He wondered, "Why did you come just now?" He held a cup of hot coffee in his hand, blew on it, and slowly took a sip.
Needless to say, this was also due to Zhang Tianyi's sudden attack with "late-night heart-warming hot drink".
It turns out that the bastard Zhang Tianyi was smiling like a flower just now and was chatting with the doctor.
Damn it, I'm returning home, why is this person in a wheelchair following me in a van?
Seeing that I was furious, Xu You, who had half of his face wrapped like a mummy, was still confident and asked me in confusion: "I am your second uncle, shouldn't I go home with you for the New Year?"
I was stunned. It seemed to make sense. I almost got fooled by him. I immediately got furious and said, "I found you on the street! You are not recognized in our household registration book!"
Zhang Tianyi was still laughing on the side. I was so angry that I looked at Sanyi's silent face and felt sympathy for him. I said to him, "Brother, I support you to fight back. Just hit Zhang Tianyi in the face. I will help you to trip him."
Sanyi ignored me and remained alone and cold, which made me speechless.
At this time, the team leader who was also lying in a wheelchair explained with a smile that the equipment in this hospital was not complete, especially in the field of dermatology, so they had made an appointment to transfer to another hospital and invited an expert for a consultation. The attending physician also accompanied them to participate in the discussion and research.
It just so happened that I was about to return home, and we were going the same way for a while, so he could drop me off at my doorstep.
Our van was actually one of the last few to set out. The others with serious injuries had already been transferred to the hospital there this morning.
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, thinking that this is what is happening, these guys are just bored and are actually teasing me on purpose.
But this is indeed something they can do. Looking at this broken van, it has a kind of malicious taste of deliberately selling pity.
As expected, I heard the team leader lower his voice and suddenly revealed Xu You's past to me: "The broker instructor will come back to pick us up. Look, some people who were able to walk have jumped back into their wheelchairs and are half dead. What can we do? Cheng Tianzhimei will be gasping for breath in the wheelchair with them."
Xu You remained calm.
The team leader added: "But the instructor was worried about you and said he would pick you up at the station to see how serious your injuries are. In fact, he never said he would..." The wheelchair slipped and was dragged away by Xu You viciously.
I smiled secretly. At this time, Zhang Tianyi got in the car and said, "Let's go." His shoulders were clearly shaking as he tried to hold back his laughter.
As the car started, it was very stable and comfortable. Fang Ao, Huo Bing, Wu Chou and the others were snoring and sleeping soundly. Team leader Zhang Jia held on for a while and also fell into a sound sleep.
At this time, things became quiet. I looked at Sanyi, who was sitting in the passenger seat and acting as a cold-faced doorman. I felt that he was somewhat pitiful, as if he had been excluded from the small team. I was also really curious about where his resistance and awkwardness towards me and Zhang Tianyi came from. As the saying goes, it is difficult to untie the knot in his heart, so I found a topic to talk to him about it.
The attending doctor was said to be surnamed Hu before he was picked up by the Zhang family. He looked at me, as if he saw through my little tricks, and suggested that since the journey was long, we should chat to kill time and share some gossip and anecdotes from the past.
Sanyi was getting annoyed by my pestering, but Zhang Tianyi in the driver's seat next to him kept staring at him with a half-smile in his eyes. He couldn't do anything, and he couldn't just climb out of the window to hide. He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard that, and said in a low voice, "Tell me about it."
I laughed to myself. Doctor Hu is really a wonderful person. Sanyi didn't want to say a word at first, but after our conversation, he had to participate in the story conference and even thanked us for giving him peace. I'm afraid he will be so angry when he realizes what's going on.
Now, while he was still in the dark, I struck while the iron was hot. I winked at Xu You and asked him who would go first.
Xu You, the old fox, was very savvy. He knew that I was trying every means to get Sanyi to talk, so after thinking about it, he said that each of us should share a story. He and Zhang Tianyi had the most experiences, so what they would tell would definitely be the most bizarre, so it would be better to save it for the most boring part of the ride. It would be better for Dr. Hu and I to just chat casually first.
The little fat cat over there had somehow laid on Sanyi's knees, and both the man and the cat pricked up their ears.
I thought about it and realized that everyone present knew exactly what I had experienced. It seemed that all I could talk about were some ordinary trivialities when I ran the grocery store.
Going back further, my childhood memories are also unremarkable. My two step-brothers know me very well, and I'm afraid they remember them much more clearly than I do with their good memories.
Just as I was racking my brains and thinking that the story conference would end in failure, Zhang Tianyi steadied the steering wheel and said casually:
"Ranzi, do you remember when you were a kid, there was a very rare Children's Palace near our home?"
I was stunned for a moment, and he reminded me of it. I seemed to have made some impression on me at that time.
It's been so many years, so I can't remember the kid's name, where he lived, or what he looked like. It seems his father was a part-time tutor at the Children's Palace. I didn't have much contact with that kid.
But speaking of it, my friend and I actually have a shocking misunderstanding that I can tell you about.
For the sake of convenience in narration, and because my childhood playmate also has the impression of being "stupid and unhappy", I will temporarily call him Jiaer.
(I named it like this, and Sanyi looked at me silently)
That was when I was about five or six years old.
It is said that people tend to forget experiences before the age of five. Maybe because of this, I can't remember how Jiaer and I met. Anyway, when I realized it, the two children had a very good relationship. Except when I went home, the little time I spent outside, I always stuck with Jiaer and were inseparable.
Jia Er was a notorious wild child. He was always dressed in dirty clothes and often fought with older children from other families. He would hide when he saw adults and run very fast.
I usually have to go home after playing for a while outside, mainly because I am in a hurry to go back and share with Pingping what I have played. Sometimes I see Jiaer, who just said goodbye to me, running past me barefoot, chasing after some adult and scolding him, as if he has played a prank on some older kid who bullied him.
I asked him to come home with me to play, but he never agreed. He would hide away when he saw my parents from a distance. I invited him again and again, but he tilted his head and looked at me straight, which scared me a little. I could only say sorry to him.
Perhaps it was because of his temper that many adults and children privately said that he was a ghost child who was not taken care of by anyone, and they also pointed fingers and said that one day I would be dragged away by the ghost child, skinned and eaten.
After talking so much, Jia Er, who was stubborn, deliberately acted like a ghost to scare them. He smeared mud all over his body, squeezed a kind of hyacinth that could be used to make nail polish, and smeared it on his body to draw scary-looking wounds. He also said that a thin and tall ghost was always looking for him.
Once, when I went out to play with him, I heard a few notorious bad boys whispering that they were going to block him in an abandoned house on the back street and beat him up to teach him a lesson.
I was shocked and immediately ran home to call for help, dragged my parents over, and cried that Jiaer was going to die.
By the time I took my parents to the shabby house on the back street and pushed open the door, Jia Er was lying motionless on the ground, his tattered clothes revealing his shoulders, which were covered with dense blue and purple scars, both new and old.
Hearing me crying loudly, he moved slightly, forced himself to open his eyes and look at me, and seemed to smile, revealing a mouthful of white teeth covered with blood foam, nonchalantly.
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