Chapter 75
The child fell ill very quickly. Before long, Yuan Lu felt that the child in her arms was even hotter, and she was quite at a loss as she held the child.
"...Teacher Xu, what should we do?" She looked at Xu Gui with concern.
Ms. Xu said she was also dumbfounded, after all, she had never taken care of a child before, let alone such a weak human child. She even suspected that she could crush the child if she used a little force.
So when Yuan Lu asked her what to do, she could only look at her blankly; the two unmarried girls stared at each other in bewilderment.
"Use this," Lu Boyi said from the passenger seat, handing over a clean towel. "I've already soaked it in water. Put it on the child's forehead; it should help cool him down a bit."
Xu Gui took it and said, "Thank you." Then she carefully placed the damp towel on the child's forehead.
Earlier by the lake, the child was giggling and laughing at them, seemingly without any problems. But now, her eyes were slightly closed, glistening as if filled with tears. Her chubby cheeks were also red, making her look incredibly pitiful.
From the beginning to now, only a dozen minutes have passed.
Xu Gui glanced at the child and came to a conclusion: human infants are really too fragile, they seem to die very easily.
Thinking this, she carefully placed the damp towel on the little guy's forehead, but as she withdrew her hand, the little guy suddenly reached out and grabbed her fingers.
Xu Gui paused for a moment as he pulled his hand away, looked at the little guy, and heard him whimpering in discomfort.
So soft...
Xu Gui held her breath. She felt that the hand holding her fingers was incredibly soft, as if it had no bones. This made her wonder if she would hurt the hand if she used even a little more force.
Xu Gui's fingers twitched.
Don't let the little one's small size and chubby hands fool you; she has a surprisingly strong grip. Xu Gui felt her fingers being held tightly, and her little hand was warm and damp, probably because she was sick.
Xu Gui pulled hard and freed her gripped finger. She did this very carefully, her face showing extreme anxiety. Once she had completely freed the finger, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Just then, a dry white towel appeared in front of her. Xu Gui looked up and saw Lu Baiyi, who was sitting in the passenger seat, turn to the side behind them and look at her with a smile.
"Miss Xu, please use this to wipe it," he said.
Xu Gui looked down at herself and realized that she had just come out of the water and was covered in water. She thanked Lu Baiyi, took the towel, and dried her wet hair and body.
As she wiped herself, she couldn't help but smell her arm—she wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, but she felt like she smelled bad.
Lu Baiyi looked at the child in Yuan Lu's arms and naturally asked Xu Gui, "Where did this child come from?"
Xu Gui was drying his hair when he heard this. He looked up and casually said, "Oh, I fished it out of the artificial lake in the park."
Lu Baiyi: ? ?
"Drowned out of an artificial lake?" For once, Lu Boyi looked somewhat bewildered, as if his brain was struggling to process what was happening.
Seeing his expression, Xu Gui explained, "She's the child from the small shop across from our orphanage. Her brother took her out and threw her into the artificial lake... I told her this to her elders, but they didn't believe me and thought I was a liar, so I had to come out and look for her myself!"
At this point, she said with some pride, "Now that I've found the child, let's see how they still have the nerve to call me a liar!"
Lu Boyi understood, but found it somewhat unbelievable. He couldn't help but ask, "How old is her brother? How could he throw her into the lake? Throwing such a young child into an artificial lake, isn't that murder?"
Xu Gui casually remarked, "It's probably because of jealousy."
"Her brother is not very old either, only nine years old. Before his sister was born, he was an only child and enjoyed the exclusive love of his parents and elders. But after his sister was born, the love from his parents and elders was divided into two, and they even cared more about his sister than him... This may have caused him to feel a sense of loss and become jealous of his sister."
It may have started as a slight imbalance, but over time, this imbalance turned into jealousy, and eventually, jealousy turned into malice and sin, until he could no longer resist taking his sister out.
Xu Gui: "He probably thinks that as long as his sister disappears, his parents will only like him as before."
Listening to this, Yuan Lu couldn't help but say, "Families having a second child do need to pay more attention to the mental health of the older child... There was a family like that in our area before. After the younger brother was born, they probably neglected the older brother a bit, and the older brother killed the younger brother and even cruelly dismembered him."
"Later, this older brother probably got scolded by his parents too much, and one day he committed suicide!"
This family had only two children. The younger one was killed by his older brother, who later committed suicide. The family lost both children in an instant, which was undoubtedly a huge blow to them. Later, Yuan Lu's sister told me that the couple was not even forty years old, but their hair was completely white, making them look more than ten years older.
Yuan Lu spoke of this with a hint of sorrow—just hearing about it was shocking.
“It’s fortunate that this child met you, Teacher Xu…” Yuan Lu couldn’t help but say.
If they hadn't met Xu Gui, and if Xu Gui had really abandoned the matter, then this family's final fate would most likely have been the same as the family Yuan Lu described—a broken family.
It can be said that Xu Gui saved not only this child, but this entire family.
As Lu Boyi was thinking this, he looked at Xu Gui and saw her sniffing her hand like a little animal sniffing its scent. Her face was tightly scrunched up, and her expression looked serious and disgusted.
Lu Baiyi smiled.
Half an hour later, Xu Gui and his group parked their car at the entrance of the emergency room building of Ruian Hospital.
Before arriving, Lu Boyi had already contacted his friends. As soon as their car stopped, they saw a young man in a white coat walk up to their car, followed by two nurses.
Lu Baiyi got out of the car and told his friend about the child's condition: "This child was abandoned in the artificial lake before, and now he has a fever..."
Xu Gui also got out of the car, wearing a large towel draped over her shoulders—she had been sitting in the car with the air conditioning on and felt a bit cold, so Lu Baiyi had given her a large towel to wrap herself in.
She glanced at the name tag on the doctor's chest, which read: Yan Wenkai.
Upon hearing his friend's words, Yan Wenkai frowned deeply and immediately asked, "A child this big was thrown into an artificial lake? Did you call the police? If not, I'll call them right now!"
While he was speaking, he had already begun to examine the child's condition, listening to the child's inner thoughts with a stethoscope.
Lu Baiyi stood beside him watching his actions and said helplessly, "The person who lost the child is her brother. How can we call the police?"
Yan Wenkai's brows furrowed even more.
"The child only has a simple fever right now, and we can't see anything too serious, so for now, we'll focus on bringing the fever down. However, we still need to take her for a thorough check-up. Artificial lakes are like that; you never know how many bacteria are in the water. I'm worried that she might have drunk too much water and developed an infection in her lungs or other areas..."
He spoke very quickly, rattling off a string of words, and it took Xu Gui and the others a while to process what he meant.
Xu Gui and the others didn't understand these things. Since the doctor said so, they listened to him and had no objections. Yan Wenkai then carried the child away. The way he held the child was perfect; he truly deserved to be a pediatrician.
After Yan Wenkai left, Xu Gui stood there wrapped in a blanket and sneezed. She rubbed her nose, feeling that it was a little itchy.
Lu Baiyi was standing to one side, talking to a young woman. The young woman handed him a bag, which he took and glanced at. After exchanging a few more words with her, he walked over to Xu Gui and handed the bag to her.
Xu Gui glanced down at him, then looked up at him again, a look of confusion on his face.
Lu Boyi said, "These are clothes I asked my secretary to buy for you. They probably aren't very comfortable for you. Why don't you change them?"
Xu Gui took the bag, opened it, and saw that it contained a set of clothes.
Speaking of changing clothes, she sniffed, brought her hand close to Lu Baiyi, and whispered, "Smell my hand, doesn't it smell a little bad?"
She suddenly leaned closer, and Lu Baiyi instinctively wanted to back away, but upon hearing what she said, he stopped in his tracks and quickly glanced at her.
"How is it? Does it smell a bit bad?" Xu Gui asked, his face scrunched up.
Lu Baiyi leaned closer, took a gentle sniff, and then frowned.
"It does smell a bit bad..." he said.
Upon receiving an affirmative answer, Xu Gui immediately said, "Really? I also think it smells a bit bad. I thought there was something wrong with my sense of smell... Is the water quality of that artificial lake really that bad? I didn't notice it smelling bad before!"
I didn't notice the stench before, but as the water on my body dried, the stench seemed to become more and more obvious.
Lu Baiyi said, "It's probably because the artificial lake is stagnant water, and it's in a park, where sometimes unclean people might throw trash in, which is why it smells bad."
Xu Gui: “yue…” She felt like throwing up just listening to it.
The filming crew arrived at the hospital almost twenty minutes late. As he got out of the car carrying his equipment, he saw Xu Gui and Lu Baiyi standing face to face, quite close to each other. His expression suddenly became somewhat bewildered.
"...What's going on?" he asked Yuan Lu.
Yuan Lu's face showed only the excitement of "I've hit the jackpot," and she whispered, "I don't know... By the way, Brother Yang, who is this Mr. Lu? What's his relationship with Teacher Xu?"
The photographer's lips twitched slightly, and he gave her a look that was hard to describe.
“I remember, he seems to be the grandson of that old Mr. Lu.”
"Mr. Lu?"
"Well, the grandson of that old man across the street from Teacher Xu when she had her stall under the overpass," the person filming said.
Yuan Lu glanced at Lu Baiyi, then recalled the "old man Lu" who had appeared in Xu Gui's live stream, and exclaimed in surprise, "Was that old man's family really that rich?"
The person following her looked at her and asked, "How did you figure out he's rich?"
Yuan Lu said matter-of-factly, "Just look at this Mr. Lu. Do you know how much that car we rode in cost? I just searched it online, and it probably costs tens of millions..."
The photographer's eyes lit up: "Oh? But this car looks pretty ordinary!"
Yuan Lu said, "You wouldn't know this, would you..."
The two stood to one side whispering to each other. On the other side, Xu Gui and Lu Boyi were also whispering to each other. After Xu Gui learned how dirty the water in the artificial lake was, his face turned green.
“It’s okay, my family has a VIP ward in Ruian with a bathroom. I’ll take you there to take a shower,” Lu Boyi comforted her. “You’ll be clean after the shower.”
Xu Gui immediately nodded like a chick pecking at rice.
She told the paparazzi and then followed Lu Boyi to the ward. When they arrived at the VIP ward that Lu Boyi had mentioned, Xu Gui realized that the room was more like a resort hotel room than a ward, and it was a large suite with a kitchen.
"Wow!" Xu Gui walked in, looked around, and said seriously, "This ward is even better than my hotel room." The living room alone is bigger than her small suite in the hotel.
However, although she said this, her tone was neither surprised nor envious; she was simply stating a fact.
Lu Boyi said, "No one will come in here except our family. There are bathrooms inside and outside. Why don't you go inside and take a shower?"
Xu Gui nodded, "Okay." She took the bag and went into the bathroom.
When she entered the bathroom, she discovered that the ward was not only large, but the bathroom inside was also very large, with even a huge bathtub. When Xu Gui saw the bathtub, her eyes lit up even more—it seemed like she hadn't had a proper bath in a long time.
Xu Gui touched his arm, unsure if his skin had become dry due to lack of moisture.
While she was taking a shower, Lu Baiyi glanced at the living room and felt it wasn't appropriate for him to stay outside while a girl was showering, so he went out. Therefore, when Xu Gui finished showering and came out, he didn't see her in the room.
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