As hydrogen peroxide foamed on the wound, Ye Qingliu dug his nails into the leather mattress. The family doctor's tweezers lifted a piece of fabric embedded in the flesh, and the sound of metal clashing made the boy's pupils shrink suddenly.
Hua Jinyue suddenly climbed onto the operating table and pressed her brother's trembling eyelids with her fingers stained with blueberry jam. "Count eyelashes, like we did last time..."
Ye Chenxi's leather shoes rolled over the bloody cotton ball on the ground. He reached out and pressed the doctor's watch: "The wound at the fourth lumbar vertebra requires deeper debridement."
His thumb unconsciously rubbed his cufflinks, his eyes fixed on the radiating whip marks on his son's back—the wounds were spaced so precisely that they looked as if they had been measured with a vernier caliper.
When the first puff of white mist erupted from the liquid nitrogen spray can, Hua Jinyue placed her pinky finger in Ye Qingliu's mouth. The force with which Ye Qingliu bit his sister's knuckles made the family doctor frown, but Ye Chenxi simply watched in silence as the refrigerant formed frost on the wound.
Water droplets gradually formed on the leather surface of the medical bed, dripping along the edge of the bed onto the Persian carpet, leaving dark marks.
"Three centimeters below the left shoulder blade." Ye Chenxi suddenly spoke, his fingertips hovering in the air one centimeter away from his son's skin.
"There are glass fragments left." When the doctor pushed aside the clotted blood clot, he indeed picked out a piece of prismatic broken glass with blue glaze on the edge - exactly the same as the blue and white porcelain that was broken in the solitary confinement room.
The elastic bandage moved in Hua Jinyue's hands like a living thing. She tore open the packaging with her teeth so skillfully that Ye Chenxi had to reach out and steady her swaying body.
When the bandage passed over the deepest wound between Ye Qingliu's ribs, the brother and sister suddenly inhaled at the same time - at that moment, their breathing frequency perfectly overlapped, as if they shared the same lung lobe.
Ye Chenxi unbuttoned his cuffs and tossed them into the instrument tray, then personally pressed his son's bleeding shoulder. Amid the clash of gilded metal and stainless steel, he felt Ye Qingliu's tense muscles suddenly relax a fraction.
Hua Jinyue took the opportunity to stuff the end of the bandage into her brother's palm and let him press the dressing himself - this cunning little move reminded Ye Chenxi of an opponent on the board of directors.
As the blood-stained gauze piled up like a mountain on the silver tray, the morning light had already shifted to the corner of the medical monitor. Ye Chenxi picked up a piece of gauze stained with blueberry jam. The crooked stars painted on it with iodine were oxidizing and changing color.
Butler Li silently handed over the sealed bags and sorted the blood-stained medical waste into categories - sharp objects, pollutants, and ordinary waste, just like any ordinary family medical treatment.
When the last dressing was applied to the wound on Ye Qingliu's neck, Hua Jinyue had already fallen asleep curled up at her brother's feet. Fresh blood seeped from the hastily applied bandage on her wrist, leaving a blurry string of numbers on the white cloth—perhaps the time, or perhaps some secret date.
Ye Chenxi picked up a nearby blanket and covered the two children. As he turned around, he kicked over a glass bottle filled with hydrogen peroxide. The clear liquid flowed across the floor, bleaching the bloody cotton balls that hadn't been picked up until they were white.
Just then, Ye Chenxi's cell phone rang.
His voice was low, but as cold as ice.
"explain."
"Night Club, something's happened." Special Assistant Lin's voice was tense on the other end of the line. "Our mine in South America has been attacked by local militias. Shaft No. 3 has collapsed, and seventeen workers are trapped."
Ye Chenxi's eyes darkened. Outside the window, the night wind rustled the ginkgo trees in the courtyard.
"casualties?"
"We've confirmed two people have minor injuries, but..." Special Assistant Lin paused, "They're demanding we evacuate the mining area, or they'll blow up the main mine."
Ye Chenxi sneered, his knuckles tapping unconsciously on the oak armrest.
"Find out who is behind this."
————————————————
As the morning light seeped into the living room, six-year-old Ye Qingliu fluttered his eyelashes on the sofa, an unnatural blush on his pale cheeks.
His high fever from last night had subsided, but the low fever still made his forehead hot. His soft short black hair was slightly curled by sweat and stuck to his porcelain white skin.
"Brother..." Hua Jinyue curled up beside him and called in a baby voice.
Her calf was wrapped in gauze, and she moved cautiously like a wounded rabbit. When Ye Qingliu heard her sister's voice, she immediately forced herself to open her beautiful eyes, although the corners of her eyes were still tinged with a sickly red.
In front of the floor-to-ceiling window, nanny Chen Chunhua was wiping the glass with her back to them. The morning light cast her thin silhouette on the beige curtains, like an old newspaper that had been repeatedly crumpled and flattened.
Her movements suddenly stopped - the sunlight shone obliquely on the lower right corner of the glass, where there was a spider-web-like crack, and the fine lines were like frozen blood vessels.
Ye Qingliu groaned at this moment, his eyelashes fluttering as his gaze fell on his sister's bandages. As he propped himself up on the sofa and sat up, the friction of the fabric startled Chen Chunhua.
When nanny Chen Chunhua turned around, her knees obviously staggered, and a corner of the hem of her apron was lifted, revealing several dark purple bruises on her calves, with new and old scars entwined like vines.
"Jinyue, don't touch the wound." Ye Qingliu's voice was hoarse, but he still reached out to pull the thin blanket that had slipped off to his sister's shoulders.
His fingertips brushed across the water cup handed to him by Chen Chunhua and touched the crescent-shaped scar on the inside of her wrist - that was the mark left by kneeling on broken glass, now covered with fresh abrasions and a thin blood scab.
Hua Jinyue suddenly pointed at the crack in the glass: "The thunder last night..." Memories pierced through like sharp fragments: on a rainy night, the figure of their father, who rarely came home in their memory, flashed by in the living room.
In Chen Chunhua's medicine box lay a half-faded tube of pain-relieving ointment. As she leaned over to replace Ye Qingliu's fever patch, Hua Jinyue caught a whiff of the familiar bitter aroma, mingling with the milky scent of the woman's apron.
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