17. He thinks of himself as a piece of mud
After a full day and night of coma, Tang Sizhu finally regained some consciousness. Her eyes were so swollen that she couldn't open them. She vaguely saw a man in black walking back and forth at the foot of the bed, as if he was talking on the phone, but she couldn't hear clearly because of the alarms and the clamor of people around her.
She was said to be drowsy, but she couldn't sleep soundly in such an environment. She woke up several times intermittently. She was either being carried around, swayed, and wheeled for various examinations, or there were arguments with people nearby. She even vomited once in the middle of the night.
His senses gradually returned. His head was splitting, his throat was burning, his limbs were sore and swollen, and his wet clothes were sticking to his chest, making it hard to breathe. Tang Sizhuo instinctively opened his mouth to breathe in more air, but the strong smell of disinfectant irritated him and he started coughing violently.
The man heard the noise and realized that she was awake. He quickly hung up the phone, walked over, and handed her some tissues.
Tang Sizhuo almost coughed out his lungs. It took him a while to recover. He was sweating all over. He lay on the bed, gasping for a while, and then barely raised his eyes to look over.
It’s Raymond Lam.
I can’t describe what I feel. I feel lost, but also normal.
Lin Feng pulled a bottle of energy drink from the plastic bag beside the bed, inserted a straw, and fed it to Tang Sizhuo. The refreshing scent of lemon soothed her stomach a little, so she sat up and took a few sips. The cool liquid slid down her throat, significantly relieving the burning pain.
This couldn't have been bought by Lin Feng. He wasn't that thoughtful at all. It would have been good enough if he knew to buy a hospital meal or pour a cup of hot water.
However, Tang Sizhu's mind was a mess and she couldn't think clearly. She leaned on the edge of the bed, her voice hoarse, and asked weakly, "Why are you here?"
Lin Feng was so angry that he laughed, and put on an expression of helplessness, not knowing where to start.
"Why am I here? I was just about to ask you, why am I here?"
He screwed up the drink and put it back, then grabbed Tang Sizhuo's arm and slid her back to the middle of the bed, then pulled the quilt up.
"I'm hot."
Tang Sizhuo protested and wanted to lift the quilt to expose his arms and legs, but was pushed back by Lin Feng.
"It will get better only if you sweat."
Tang Sizhuo wanted to scold him for saying that this was an outdated almanac and that it had no scientific basis at all, but he didn't have the strength to do so and could not persuade him, so he could only stay in the hot and damp quilt and endure the scolding.
"Do you know how serious a mess you've made? The emergency contact in your phone is your boss, that Lawyer Qiao. The nurse called Beijing and asked Lawyer Qiao to come and look after you."
"......Then what?"
"Then Lawyer Qiao wanted to contact your assistant, but when she called your law firm, the front desk refused to transfer her. Finally, she called our bureau and asked if there was a criminal police officer from a nearby county who had gone to college in Beijing and had been recruited through the social recruitment process. That's how she found me!"
Lin Feng glared at Tang Sizhuo with gritted teeth, "I was scared to death, you know? My boss's boss called me directly and asked if I knew you and told me to come to the hospital immediately."
Tang Sizhuo was stunned for a long time before realizing why Qiao Shu hadn't found Wang Yue. She had told the administrator not to transfer the call, and now she had to bear the consequences. Lin Feng finally got a day off, but it seemed she had completely ruined it.
"I'll give you a banner when I get back—"
"Forget about it." Lin Feng waved his hand dismissively, unplugged her phone from the shared power bank, and placed it next to her pillow. "When you feel better, call Lawyer Qiao back. Also, tell your assistant to come pick you up. I'll be leaving at noon at the latest."
Tang Sizhu nodded, turned his eyes to the plastic bag hanging beside the bed, and asked him who bought it.
"I don't know. Maybe the person who brought you here was kind enough to buy it. There's some food in it. It was hanging here when I got here. But I checked, and it's unopened."
"Who sent me here?"
Lin Feng shrugged, "I don't know what's going on. When I came in, I only saw a nurse taking care of you. She was very busy, so she confirmed my identity and left."
As soon as he finished speaking, his stomach growled. Tang Sizhuo finally seized the opportunity and quickly told him to go have breakfast. As soon as Lin Feng turned out of the emergency room door, she quickly crawled out of the quilt.
The electronic clock on the wall showed the time was 7:30 a.m., and the nurses were changing shifts. Tang Sizhuo watched them walk over from next door, wanting to find someone to ask about what happened last night. Unexpectedly, a nurse suddenly stopped after meeting her gaze, turned back to whisper a few words to the head nurse, and then quickly walked towards her.
Tang Sizhu looked at her in confusion. The nurse walked to her bedside and pulled the curtain again, and the light suddenly dimmed.
"Check your clothes and belongings for any abnormalities."
"ah?"
Tang Sizhu was completely confused and subconsciously looked down. Her phone was there, her handbag was there, her clothes were wrinkled, but nothing strange about them. Her outer coat had been taken off and hung to the side.
Seeing that she didn't find anything unusual, the nurse finally breathed a sigh of relief. She leaned close to her ear and explained softly, "Two men called 120 yesterday to bring you here. They both left, and then one of them came back and helped send you for tests. Because you do have a very high fever, we need to rule out pneumonia—"
"Where are the others?"
"After the examination, he still didn't leave and kept lingering around your bed. I asked him what his relationship was, and he then said he was your friend, but he only knew basic information and it's possible he saw it on your ID card. When I asked him where you worked, he couldn't answer. And judging by his appearance, he didn't seem like a friend."
Tang Sizhuo's heart skipped a beat, and she stared at the nurse in a daze. The nurse thought she was frightened and kept comforting her, "It's okay, nothing happened. We already called your emergency contact. Later, Officer Lin called and said he would be here soon, so we asked the man to leave."
The nurse's words echoed in Tang Sizhuo's head, every word clear, yet she felt a little lost in her understanding. She opened her mouth several times, but no words came out. She vaguely remembered Zeng Xiasheng carrying her onto the ambulance stretcher, remembered herself wrapped in clothes that smelled of him while she was fluctuating between hot and cold, remembered him placing his hand over her eyes, blocking out the glaring light from the emergency room.
No wonder I heard arguing, it turns out they were trying to chase him away.
The nurse noticed her expression was frozen, hesitated for a moment, and then told the truth.
"Actually, I was planning to wait for Officer Lin to arrive. If your real friend showed up, he would have left naturally. But I... I accidentally noticed him messing with your clothes, so I reported it to the head nurse, and she asked him to remove him immediately. But don't worry, we didn't specifically say that was the reason, so no one else will know."
The heat that had finally dissipated suddenly surged into his heart and rushed straight into his nose. Tang Sizhuo's chest throbbed with pain and he squeezed out a sentence with difficulty, "I understand. Thank you. You've worked hard."
After the nurse left, she did not open the curtain, but curled up in the darkness, hugging her knees.
She hadn't noticed it at first, but after the nurse asked her to check her clothes, Tang Sizhuo gradually realized that it was only the front of her clothes that was damp, not her shoulders. She reached into her undershirt and found a towel on her back, flat and smooth, with a small fold at the top to cover the neckline, so it wouldn't slip down even when she moved around.
She wanted to call Zeng Xiasheng and hear his voice, but she didn't know what to say.
He was always silent, treating himself like a piece of mud, hoping only that the seeds he nurtured would grow, sprout, and blossom in the sun. Misunderstood, driven away, he didn't even send her a message, as if he didn't care whether Tang Sizhuo remembered him, didn't care if she would blame him for leaving, and even less did he care if she would attribute all this to his cowardice and avoidance.
Tang Sizhuo felt distressed and angry, his head became more and more dizzy, and he gradually could not sit still.
When Lin Feng came back, he saw her huddled in the corner of the bed like a shrimp, her eyes red and dazed, her gaze fixed on nowhere. She was in even worse condition than when he left for dinner.
He was startled. "What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell? Do you want to call a doctor?"
Tang Sizhuo glanced at him, indicating that she heard what he said but didn't want to pay attention to him.
Lin Feng didn't know the reason, but he was familiar with Tang Sizhuo's look. He probably didn't think she was feeling unwell, but rather that she was feeling better and was remembering something that happened a few days ago. Ever since he met Tang Sizhuo, she had often been emotionally unstable, and he had gotten used to it over the years. When he couldn't figure it out, he would just attribute it to a relapse of an old illness. In short, he couldn't provoke her at this time.
After he sat in the chair beside the bed for more than ten minutes, Tang Sizhu was finally willing to speak.
“How’s the website check going?”
Lin Feng was stunned by her question, then sighed quietly. Tang Sizhuo's dissociative symptoms had once been severe, and although he had recovered considerably, the aftermath remained, typically manifesting in the unnatural calmness that follows depression. He hesitated for a few seconds, wondering whether to continue her conversation or find a way to get her to rest. However, before he could even open his mouth, Tang Sizhuo cut him off.
"I won't sleep. I can't sleep. I need to find something to do."
After all, we're in the hospital, in the emergency room. If anything goes wrong, we can just call a doctor immediately. Lin Feng convinced himself, moved closer, and lowered his voice to say to her, "Liu Dong admitted it. Even though that website has only been around for six or seven years, their underground group for exchanging photos has been around for a long time. They initially communicated through QQ, and it's been there for over a decade."
Tang Sizhuo responded softly; she wasn't surprised. This kind of quirk is like a rat in the gutter, afraid of the light. It has to rely on spreading branches to identify its own kind before it can muster the courage to build a network. Logically, it's impossible for a forum to form before gathering.
“Who’s online?”
Lin Feng's expression turned serious. Instead of telling her directly, he said, "I need to confirm whether you have any connection to this case. If so, and you are a victim or an insider, I can tell you everything I know so that you can assist in solving the case. If not, no."
Tang Sizhu was unusually calm. She slowly sat up, facing Lin Feng, and looked into his eyes.
"When I was in high school, Sun Changming secretly took photos of me and said he gave them to someone else."
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