Chapter 11, Volunteer No. 1 attaches electrodes, takes a deep breath, hugs...
At the Elim Rehab Center in Palm Springs, Melinda, the receptionist, watched Liang Siyu walk in, followed by a petite, dark-haired girl.
She was wearing a thick windbreaker, her hair was tied in a casual low ponytail, and half of her face was wrapped in a scarf. Even though it was only a few steps from the parking lot, she seemed to be unable to open her eyes because of the cold wind, and the corners of her eyes were slightly red.
He looked down at her, raised his hand to touch her scarf, then put it down again: "Are you alright? It was a bit windy just now."
This hospital is located on the Upper East Side; it is a historic building and has no underground parking.
Xu Aida shrank his neck and complained, "Is it a bit big? It's as sharp as a scalpel."
For Californians, the strong cold winds in New York are really unfriendly, especially along the East River, where the wind carries ice crystals.
But once inside, it was much more comfortable. A gentle, warm breeze carried the scent of fresh grass, like a lawn freshly mowed after a rain, instantly making one forget the cold winter outside.
The scent was exactly the same as the one she had visited in her previous life at the Long Island branch. She had initially thought it smelled like grass, but now she realized it was a custom-made fragrance.
She looked up and noticed that this place was different from the natural atmosphere of the Long Island campus; it felt more like an art gallery. The oatmeal-colored stone and soft lighting gave it a warm, non-cold feel, unlike the typical hospital environment.
A painting of pine trees and cranes hangs on the wall of the front hall. Several white cranes are painted in meticulous detail, making it extremely elegant.
Is this... French-style Chinese design? It must be his mother Claudia's aesthetic; the screen in the small living room of his villa on the long island is also in this style.
Liang Siyu explained to her, "Dad wanted this place to be warm and natural, so people could relax. There are several treatment rooms on the second floor, mainly for exercise rehabilitation therapy, and eight wards on the third floor."
This is a small rehabilitation medical center. The property is owned by a family foundation, which focuses on providing high-quality services and experiences. It has nearly fifty years of history and a stable customer base.
On Long Island, they also have a slightly larger facility with about thirty wards and more advanced equipment.
For nearly a decade, they have also partnered with a country club to offer services such as sports relaxation, aromatherapy, and spa treatments, enriching the customer experience.
Liang Siyu walked to the front desk: "Hi, Melinda, this is Ada."
Melinda greeted the two men and handed them their temporary work cards to facilitate their access to the hospital and meals.
She led them toward the elevator: "The laboratory is on the fourth floor, next to Chairman Liang's office. It's quieter there, and no one will bother us."
Liang Siyu raised an eyebrow slightly; he had thought it would be in that cubicle inside the neurorehabilitation training room on the second floor.
Next to Dad's office? Isn't that the VIP visitor room? But he didn't ask any more questions, only saying "thank you".
As Xu Aida walked, he untied his scarf. He reached out and took it, saying, "Give me your backpack too, and your coat as well."
Melinda pressed the elevator button first, then looked back at them, secretly marveling at how thoughtful Ned had been. His manners were impeccable, of course, but he rarely displayed a "service-oriented" attitude beyond mere etiquette.
She led the two up to the fourth floor, to the "experiment room," swiped her card to open the door, handed the card to Liang Siyu, and seeing him nod, she left decisively.
She knew that Ned was very familiar with the hospital and the equipment. He had been interning and observing since his second year of high school. He liked working on his own and didn't like being given extra care.
He came many times, but apart from a few senior employees, no one else knew that he was Richard's youngest son.
Liang Siyu led Xu Aida into the room. This room used to be a VIP visitor room, with thick carpets.
In the center of the room are two leather armchairs facing each other, and a small round walnut table. On the same side of the door, the wall cabinet is fully equipped with tea set, water set, and refrigerator.
On the innermost desk, the signal acquisition device and electrodes they needed were laid out.
Xu Aida took out her laptop and was about to walk to her desk when he called out to her, "Ada, have a cup of hot tea first. Your hands are frozen, aren't they?"
She stiffened slightly. Those annoying New Yorkers!
In her past life, after being with him, she gradually fell in love with hot tea, and even kept several kinds of herbal teas on hand at the recommendation of his mother.
For some inexplicable reason, once she entered this place, she kept thinking of his parents—even though she hadn't had much interaction with them in her previous life, only politely spending a few holidays together.
She absentmindedly drank a cup of hot tea, steadied herself, and forced herself to focus on the project. She was there to do scientific research, not to think about these old stories.
She connected the adapter cable, opened the software, and the device worked perfectly, with the interface responding smoothly.
"Shall we begin?" she asked, turning her head.
He took off his cashmere sweater, leaving only a short-sleeved T-shirt, moved the single sofa to the desk, took out the electrode patches and alcohol wipes, put them away, and then sat down on the sofa.
She couldn't help but laugh when she saw the comparison between his left and right arms. He had applied hair removal cream to his right arm beforehand for data collection.
He tilted his head slightly and stared at her: "Don't laugh. I'm the project's number one volunteer." — Before ethical approval, they could only collect their own data.
"Thank you, Volunteer Number One." She chuckled twice before opening the experiment record sheet seriously and quickly jotting down two notes.
"Bend your elbows." She stood in front of him, issuing the command.
To attach electrodes, the muscle belly of each muscle must first be identified. Participants need to cooperate by tightening the muscle in order to accurately locate it through palpation.
The first electrode is the simplest; it's attached to the biceps brachii, a muscle he's trained very well, with a full and rounded shape.
She gently pressed her fingertips against the middle of the muscle, then looked up and asked, "Is this okay?"
She had done it a few times before, but certainly not as accurately as a medical student like him.
“Of course,” he replied quickly.
His tense up even more at the touch of her finger. She first wiped it with an alcohol swab, then attached the electrode.
"Next, the extensor digitorum muscles."
He consciously rotated his forearm, exposing the back of his arm, and made a palm-out gesture.
As she muttered to herself, she looked for the muscles: "From the lateral epicondyle of the humerus to the dorsal aponeurosis of the fingers."
Her fingertips gently landed on his forearm, following the direction of the muscle fibers, pressing and sliding down slightly, stopping at a point, "Is this okay?"
He instructed, "Move three millimeters to the ulnar side."
"Ulnar side?" She frowned, still comparing the directions in her mind.
He chuckled softly, and his warm, large hand came up to her, making her look like a little toy.
"Here." Once the electrode was in the correct position, he withdrew his hand.
She blushed slightly, unsure whether it was because of her unfamiliarity with the material or something else.
“Next is… oh, the flexor digitorum profundus, make a fist.” She stumbled a little.
"This is a slightly deeper muscle," he said with a smile, pointing out the location to her again.
I guess the last time she had electrodes applied was when she was a research assistant (RA) during her undergraduate studies. After that, she only wrote code and hadn't done any hands-on work for a long time, so she was quite rusty.
The last spot is the pronator teres, located 2 to 4 centimeters below the elbow, on the inner side of the elbow. He made a pronation motion, and she reached towards the inside of his elbow.
He suddenly froze, his hair standing on end. The small patch she brushed across seemed to light up a strip of light, sending a jolt of electricity through his chest, deeper still, causing a tremor, and a long-dormant secret was about to resurface.
“Ada!” he exclaimed urgently, stretching out his left hand for the electrode patch: “I can do it myself.”
He took the electrode pad, and the moment it touched her soft fingertips, he felt his mind wander again.
He could only take a deep breath, quickly memorize the principles of electromyography, try to suppress the throbbing sensation, and attach the last electrode himself.
She stared at the waveform on the screen, frowned after a few seconds, wondering why it kept jumping around, and turned to ask, "What are you so nervous about?"
"Maybe... it's been too long since I've had electrodes on." He tried his best to keep his tone steady and continued to take deep breaths.
No one spoke, and the room fell silent, save for his slightly heavy breathing.
She suddenly realized something, and the tips of her ears turned red.
Finally, the waveform gradually stabilized.
She turned back to make sure the camera was pointed at him, and then activated the notification sound.
"Okay, first set: clench your fist, open it. Four seconds for each movement, ten times in total, let's check the signal stability."
And so they began their first data collection.
After finishing this set, she took her laptop, pulled up a chair, and asked him to confirm the waveform annotations.
He instinctively reached for the computer, but she stopped him, saying, "Don't move around, be careful of the electrodes."
If the electrode is displaced, the data is lost, and everything has to be started over.
She had already written a script to automatically segment and initially label the waveforms according to time, but she still needed to check the waveforms of each segment.
They huddled together in front of the screen to watch.
He pointed to the seventh time: "This time there was a delay in the action, I was a little distracted."
She labeled it "Action Delay" as suggested, then thought for a moment and said, "Let's make a screen notification instead. Voice prompts alone seem distracting. I'll write a small script and get it done right away."
After Ada finished setting up the on-screen prompts, they began the actual data collection. However, the actual data collection couldn't be paused midway through tagging; instead, they used simultaneous video recording and tagged everything together in the afternoon.
Liang Siyu did seven different sets of movements, each requiring 40 repetitions. Finally, she did two sets of random mixed movements. Including the rest between sets, the whole set took a full hour and a half.
He knew today wouldn't be easy when he designed the experimental procedure, but he didn't expect there to be such a significant buildup of lactic acid after it was over.
Many wrist muscle group movements may seem simple, but performing them slowly, steadily, and without trembling can easily lead to fatigue.
She removed the electrode pads one by one, being exceptionally gentle when touching the inside of her elbow.
He shook his hands to relax, stretching his right wrist, his fingertips trembling slightly.
Unexpectedly, she turned around, holding a cold compress patch in her hand. She deftly tore open the packaging and applied two patches to his forearms.
"It can't be that bad, can it?"
Although he said that, a smile appeared on his lips, and the soothing coolness seeped into his skin, making him feel slightly warm inside.
"As an MD candidate, you should take good care of your wrist muscles to prevent fatigue. If you get a wrist injury, it will be too late to regret it."
She knew, of course, that he would likely change careers next year, but she would never allow him to suffer any damage to his research projects.
She felt a little lost, not really knowing what the purpose of her persistence was; perhaps it was just to move herself meaninglessly.
Without looking up, she continued to tear open the next package.
This one is a smaller size. She carefully placed it on his wrist and gently pressed it a few times to make sure it was secure.
His throat tightened, and he almost wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her like before...
It was a weekend evening. She had been debugging all afternoon, and rubbing her eyes, she said she was tired. He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.
She curled up in his arms like a marshmallow floating on hot coffee, sweet and light.
She turned back and went back to work, leaving him alone, lost in thought.
He leaned forward to take the printed paper, using it to shield his throbbing body. Two weeks had passed since they last saw each other, and every little thing she did made him want to pull her into his arms.
She was typing rapidly on the keyboard, running an automatic annotation script to cut waveforms and align the video so that it could be viewed synchronously in the afternoon.
He crumpled the corner of the paper, trying hard to read the paper, but after staring at it for a while, he was still stuck on the abstract.
Why could she change so quickly? Her meticulous care, which was clearly genuine, was always able to be quickly withdrawn, while he was always touched yet remained in the same place.
"Okay, we'll come back to annotate after lunch," she announced happily as she turned around.
"Huh?" He seemed to snap out of a daze. "So fast?"
"Of course!" She stood up, stretched, and went to pour herself some tea. "No problem at all."
She returned with her teacup and saw that he was still stuck on the first page. Curious, she leaned closer and asked, "What paper is it? Is it that hard to read?"
She reached out, wanting to take the paper and take a look.
He quickly stopped her, but in his haste, he lost control of his strength, and she leaned back, almost falling over, spilling hot tea in front of her.
Ignoring his own embarrassment, he immediately stood up: "Ada! Are you alright? Did you get burned?"
He even subconsciously lifted the hem of her hoodie. She didn't react until his fingers touched her skin, at which point she snapped out of it and quickly pushed him away.
But she herself was already unsteady on her feet. His core stability was far superior to hers, and he was also physically strong. It was as if she had pushed a boulder that was completely immovable, and all the force was returned to her.
She fell backward again, but he quickly caught her and pulled her into his arms, pressing her against the left side of his chest. She was petite, but only half the width of his chest.
A little bit of hot tea left at the bottom of the cup spilled onto the lower left corner of his T-shirt. Liang Siyu knew, of course, that the tea wasn't hot, but his body felt even hotter.
He couldn't hold back any longer, so he pressed her against his chest, scooped her up with his left arm, lifted her up so that she was at eye level with him, and protected her back with his right hand.
"Ada, look at me, okay? Don't push me away, okay?"
Her heart was pounding erratically, her limbs felt weak, and she felt as if she were about to melt from his burning heat.
This is Ned, the young man who loved her unconditionally, and the man she still loves to this day.
But thinking of the years that followed, she turned her head slightly away, refusing to look at him again: "I didn't push you away... you shouldn't have gotten so close."
It was clearly him, but he left the lab, left the United States, and drifted further and further away from her. She chased after him, even reuniting with him in Hangzhou, and would visit him on set whenever she had free time.
She still remembers that the last time she visited the set, he chased her away.
At first, everything was fine; he held her so tightly, showering her with kisses.
But a few days later, he suddenly had his driver take her back to Hangzhou, saying he didn't like her visiting the set and told her not to come again. Even though she got along well with the staff on set and hadn't caused him any trouble.
She couldn't help but shed a tear. Before he could react, she wiped it away with the back of her hand and said coldly, "Hurry up and put me down."
He did as he was told, his burning passion vanishing almost instantly the moment he saw her tears.
Something's not right. What's not right?
Her expression wasn't one of resistance, nor anger. It was...heartbreak and sorrow? How could that be?
He turned around, and she was already sitting in front of the computer, frantically typing away on the keyboard, even though the code was clearly finished.
A wall lodged in my chest, causing a dull ache. My mind was in turmoil, and my doubts deepened, but the urge to find out the truth gradually subsided.
"You have to be patient," my grandmother's words echoed in my ears once again.
He glanced at her sweatshirt, which was soaked through, and said softly, "I'm going out for a bit."
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