Fu Hanzhou suddenly grabbed her hand, and his hot breath swept across her trembling eyelashes.
The infusion tube made a crackling sound as it shook.
"Military marriages can't be divorced, and now they are even more impossible."
The falling hair blocked Qin Ying's red eyes:
"Next time you act like this..."
The voice stopped abruptly, she took a deep breath, stood up and walked towards the door:
"I'll call the doctor."
When Zhang Jianguo hurried over with the nurse, Fu Hanzhou was holding Qin Ying's hand, his thumb stroking the thin calluses on her palm again and again.
His gaze lingered on their clasped hands for a moment as he flipped through the medical report, repeatedly confirming each piece of data. Finally, he took off his stethoscope and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Captain Fu, you are blessed with good fortune! This operation was successful thanks to your wife. She proposed the surgical plan..."
He pushed up his glasses and looked at Qin Ying with admiration:
"Conventional methods are completely incapable of treating portal vein variations. It was Comrade Qin's modified compression method, combined with improvised instruments, that dramatically reduced the surgical risk by 60%. The entire operation lasted eight hours, and she operated non-stop without a break."
Fu Hanzhou's grip on the bed sheet suddenly tightened, and he stared intently at Qin Ying's evasive eyes.
"Did she perform the surgery?"
His voice suddenly became heavier, and his eyes were filled with shock and understanding.
Qin Ying bit her lip and nodded, and the ward fell into a brief silence.
"Thank you, Director Zhang. Without your cooperation, she wouldn't be able to perform the entire operation alone."
Fu Hanzhou uttered a hoarse thank you, but his eyes never left Qin Ying.
Until the door clicked shut and the footsteps in the corridor gradually faded away, the only sound in the dead silent air was the regular ticking of the monitor.
Qin Ying's fingers unconsciously stroked the infusion tube. The touch of the rubber tube reminded her of her tense nerves on the operating table.
But he didn't dare to initiate the conversation.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fu Hanzhou supporting himself by the headboard and sitting up. He groaned as his wound moved, but he stubbornly looked at her.
"Qin Ying!"
His voice was so low that it seemed to be squeezed out from his chest:
"From the violin to this surgery, how many things should I know but don't know?"
The moonlight outside the window slanted into the ward, stretching the shadows of the two people on the mottled wall.
Qin Ying took a half step back, and her heel hit the bedside table, making a dull thud on the wooden cabinet.
She thought of Fu Hanzhou's determination to join the suicide squad, her panic when he left without saying goodbye, his gradually weakening heartbeat under the shadowless lamp, and her throat felt like it was tightly wrapped with gauze:
"Wait till you're better..."
"Wait until I'm healed?"
Fu Hanzhou suddenly coughed violently, and his breathing became very unstable.
"You couldn't even look at me when you said that."
He managed to sit up again and stared at her intently:
"Qin Ying, is this step between you and me going to take my life?"
Qin Ying's eyelashes trembled violently, and when she raised her head, she met the dark tide surging in his eyes.
There was the smoke of the battlefield, unhealed wounds, and more complex emotions that she could not understand.
"I……"
Her voice choked in her throat as she saw blood seeping out of the gauze on Fu Hanzhou's abdomen on the fallen quilt.
"Fu Hanzhou!"
"Don't lie!"
He suddenly grabbed her wrist:
"When you wanted to leave with Wei Zhuolan, I knew you were hiding a secret. Why didn't you tell me?"
He slowed down, speaking with great effort but with a strong sense of oppression:
"Are you going to wait until I'm dead? And then disappear with the secret?"
"Fu Hanzhou, there are some things...even if I tell you now, you might not believe it. Take care of your health first, okay?"
Qin Ying saw that he was angry, and she felt distressed and helpless. No matter how clear she was to him now, these things would require a special time to digest.
"You are now using a surgical skill unknown to any expert to save me..."
A rusty laugh escaped from Fu Hanzhou's throat:
"Qin Ying, are you my savior or my death warrant?"
"I just don't want you to die."
Qin Ying looked at him with a hoarse voice:
"Like you don't want me to leave."
Fu Hanzhou's grip on her wrist suddenly increased, staring at Qin Ying's pale lips. The bloody taste in his throat made his words intermittent:
"Next time you dare...to do that to Wei Zhuolan..."
"Stop talking!"
Qin Ying suddenly leaned over and pressed his shoulders as he tried to sit up. Her palms touched the scorching heat beneath the thin fabric.
"You need to rest now!"
The ends of her hair brushed against his jaw, causing a slight shudder.
Fu Hanzhou looked at her rapidly heaving chest, suddenly loosened his grip, and leaned back on the pillow. The metal headboard made a dull sound.
Qin Ying settled him down and continued to sit down beside the bed, twisting the sheets unconsciously with her fingertips:
"When you're healed, I'll tell you everything... including the violin and the surgery."
Her voice was as light as the night wind:
"But now, you have to get better first."
Fu Hanzhou closed his eyes, his eyelashes casting a trembling shadow on his pale face, and squeezed out a sentence from between his teeth:
"Remember what you said."
His voice carried an unquestionable command, yet concealed a subtle fragility.
Qin Ying tucked the corner of the quilt for her, and suddenly glanced at the schoolbag on the table, her eyes darkened.
The sycamore leaves outside the window turned light brown, and the glass bottles on the IV stand reflected tiny spots of light in the morning light.
On the third day after Fu Hanzhou's operation, the bleeding under the gauze finally stopped. Qin Ying had been guarding him but never dared to open the schoolbag that hid the secret.
Whenever it was late at night and everyone was asleep, the green light of the monitor would sweep across the raised corners of the diary, and she would always think of Fu Hanzhou's hoarse voice when he asked her questions.
That gold-embossed diary was always pressing against her tense nerves.
As the morning light faded into dusk, Xiaocheng, still shivering, slammed open the ward door. The rubber soles of his Liberation shoes scraped harshly against the cement floor.
"Sister-in-law! Qin Qinghua's body was found in the reed marsh west of the city, and there was..."
His voice stopped abruptly and his eyes glanced towards the door vigilantly.
Fu Hanzhou suddenly stood up, groaning as the wound moved:
"Who's in trouble?"
Qin Ying's fingers froze as she folded the towel. Was he dead already?
She glanced at Fu Hanzhou, took a deep breath, and continued to fold the towel neatly, her fingertips unconsciously stroking the thread ends on the edge:
"He actually died like this. It's time for some closure."
She raised her eyes to look at Fu Hanzhou's suddenly tense jawline:
"On the morning of the surgery, when Xiaocheng was taking me to school, an explosion occurred in the west of the city. It was right on the road we were passing. Fortunately, Xiaocheng was there and protected me from the disaster. The perpetrator... was my brother."
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
Fu Hanzhou's pupils suddenly shrank, with deep self-blame and regret on his face, and his eyes unconsciously looked at her.
"You dare to do this even though the whole city is wanted. It seems you are really desperate."
His Adam's apple rolled violently, his fingers clenched the bed sheets, and his knuckles turned white as bones.
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