Chapter Thirty-Five: Emergency Room
The emergency room lobby was brightly lit late at night. Jiang Chuan's left arm, which had been treated, was wrapped in blood-soaked gauze. The cuffs of his cut shirt were rolled up slightly, and dark red bloodstains remained on them.
Lin Yu, wrapped in a yellowed old hospital blanket, curled up on a row of stainless steel chairs, staring blankly at the IV tube on the back of his hand.
Jiang Chuan rarely looked so disheveled. Sweat mixed with rainwater slid down his neck, his soaked clothes clung stickily to his body, and every exposed pore seemed to be gaping open, struggling to inhale and exhale the surrounding dirty air.
His throat was dry, and each breath felt like swallowing hot sand. His bangs were soaked with cold sweat and clung unnaturally to his sickly flushed cheeks. He knew this was the beginning of a high fever.
Despite the throbbing pain in his nerves, he turned his head hoarsely to ask Lin Yu, "Is anything bothering you? Should you get a checkup?"
"I'm fine, I was just scared by you." Lin Yu tugged at the skirt that was sticking to her legs, and hesitated before getting up. "Should I go borrow two sets of hospital gowns from the nurse? Wearing wet clothes for too long can make you sick."
Jiang Chuan laboriously pulled the car keys from his pocket and handed them to Lin Yu. "There are some leftover clothes from the company team-building event in the trunk. Go see if there are any that fit." His fingers trembled slightly from the high fever.
The downpour was about to stop, but the hospital's basement was still filled with a cold, damp atmosphere.
Lin Yu, wrapped in a blanket, bent down and rummaged through Jiang Chuan's trunk. She only found a few small-sized tracksuits, none of which fit Jiang Chuan. She had no choice but to pick out a gray suit, her mind preoccupied with Jiang Chuan's condition. She locked the car and quickly returned.
In the hospital's first-floor restroom, Lin Yu changed out of her soaking wet clothes and put them in a bag. She then washed her face with water and took out two tissues to wipe the mud off her legs.
Finally, she untied her wet hair tie, let down her long hair that had been blown into disarray by the wind, and used her fingers to re-comb a high ponytail in front of the mirror. Looking at the person in the mirror, she finally looked less disheveled.
When Jiang Chuan returned to the emergency room lobby, he was leaning back in the IV chair, pretending to sleep. His Adam's apple stretched the skin on his neck so pale that it cast undulating shadows under the lights with each breath.
There was still a little over half a bottle left in the IV drip. Lin Yu approached quietly, and as soon as her fingertips touched his shoulder, she saw his eyeballs move slightly through his eyelids before he slowly opened his eyes.
Lin Yu in front of me had already changed into clean clothes. The gray sportswear hugged her slender waistline, her face was spotless, and her ponytail was still slightly damp, neatly tied behind her head, giving her a lively and youthful vibe.
She sat down beside him, opened the water bottle she'd brought from the car, and handed it to him. "I couldn't find your size." Her fingertips touched, and she felt the coolness of his hands. "Your hands are so cold. Why don't you go borrow some clothes?"
Jiang Chuan looked away, took the water and drank a couple of sips, then shook his head and casually sped up the IV drip roller.
Just imagining clothes worn by thousands of people sticking to my skin feels like hundreds of lice crawling in and out of my body. "Forget it, I'll just finish this bottle and go home."
"Your shirt must be expensive, right?" Lin Yu's gaze fell on his blood-stained shirt, and he hesitated before speaking, "How much? I'll pay you back."
"Forget about paying compensation." Jiang Chuan shifted his posture impatiently, causing the IV tube to sway slightly. The metal chair legs scraped against the floor, creating a jarring background noise that mingled with the intermittent cries of a child in the distance.
"Then what do you want?" Lin Yu looked at him, puzzled.
He suddenly leaned closer, his hot breath brushing against her ear. "Are you sure you want me to say it?" He stared at Lin Yu's flawless white arm, his voice low.
That vague, ambiguous feeling returned. Lin Yu subconsciously leaned back, his lower back pressing against the hard chair back, and the blanket slipped off his shoulders.
Jiang Chuan's face, so close to mine, appeared sickly pale under the light, with only the corners of his eyes showing an unnatural redness. "Are you running a fever? You're not even thinking straight!"
"Do you have a driver's license?" Jiang Chuan abruptly changed the subject, asking abruptly.
"Yes!" Lin Yu paused for a moment, then smiled proudly, "Old driver, you should renew your license in two years."
She didn't know why Jiang Chuan suddenly asked this question. After all, when they arrived, it was the hotel staff who drove Jiang Chuan's car to take them here, and Lin Yu assumed the return trip would be the same.
"Yeah, that's good!" Jiang Chuan nodded, and was about to speak when his phone suddenly vibrated. He frowned as he answered the phone and began discussing work matters with the person on the other end.
As he hung up, he glanced up and saw that the IV fluid had just finished dripping out, leaving only a still stream of water in the transparent tube. He moved his slightly stiff wrist and looked at Lin Yu.
"Go home."
......
The car heater was blasting, managing to dry Jiang Chuan's clothes until they were half-dry. Throughout the drive home, Lin Yu was completely flustered and had no time to pay attention to the patient's condition.
Jiang Chuan leaned back in the passenger seat, his face flushed. He threw the prescribed medicine into the back seat, gave the address, and then leaned back in his seat and fell soundly asleep.
Lin Yu stole a glance at the person next to him who was breathing evenly, and suddenly wondered if he would still be sleeping so soundly if he knew that the person driving was a road hazard with six years of driving experience but almost zero on-road experience.
She remembered when she had just gotten her driver's license, Chen Guang insisted on being her personal instructor, claiming he needed to hone her skills. But the first question Lin Yu asked after getting into his automatic Passat completely surprised him.
Which side is the brake?
Chen Guang had anticipated that Lin Yu's skill level wouldn't be too high, since driving skills need to be honed and improved through constant practice. However, he didn't expect Lin Yu to be this bad, and he immediately began to doubt the quality of the driving school's instruction.
At first, he cautiously chose a dead-end road that few people traveled on, to prevent Lin Yu's driving skills from harming innocent people.
But when it came to a simple reverse parking maneuver, without the driving school's markings, she seemed like an insect without antennae, waving the steering wheel like a drunken crab, and the car tires inevitably ended up riding on the curb.
Chen Guang gripped the seatbelt tightly. He had been practicing communicating with people on an equal footing lately, and after holding back for a while, he gritted his teeth and squeezed out, "It's okay, practice makes perfect."
So for the next week, the curb on that road witnessed the most bizarre tacit understanding between humans and machines. Lin Yu always managed to ride it precisely at all sorts of tricky angles.
In the end, even the roadside weeds learned to automatically move aside when she reversed. The curbs became more and more familiar with her, and Lin Yu's riding style became more and more skillful.
After a month of grueling training, Chen Guang finally relented and allowed Lin Yu to practice on the road. The plan was to gradually break him in on the outer ring road, but Lin Yu got distracted and turned the wrong way, causing the car to bolt onto the elevated highway like a wild horse.
Lin Yu was in a state of tension, confusion, and excitement. His right foot, which was on the accelerator, unconsciously pressed down, and the car's speed was approaching 100 miles per hour. "Slow down! Slow down! Keep your distance! Were you German in your past life? Don't you know how to spell the word 'speed limit'?"
Chen Guang leaned back against the seat, his usually lazy and dreamy eyes wide open, completely forgetting about emotional control, and his voice even changed tone.
"Did you bring the brakes yourself? You just opened them and you're reluctant to use them? Are you ready to commit suicide with me? Yes, give it another push on the gas, and we'll be flying to the sky. This time next year will be our birthdays."
Lin Yu stared intently ahead, his palms sweating, the steering wheel hot and slippery in his hands, leaving a dark stain.
The scenery outside the window rushed past, and in the rearview mirror, the vehicles left behind were rapidly receding, shrinking into dense black dots.
The wind whistled sharply through the cracks in the car window, involuntarily reminding her of her experience riding on the back of Chen Guang's motorcycle. The same thrill and excitement, but a completely different experience.
No longer passively enduring the impact of speed, but personally taking control of this danger. This contradictory feeling made her throat tighten, yet her blood surged through her veins as if on fire.
Lin Yu's lips curled up uncontrollably. Just as she was on the verge of losing control, she suddenly realized that she really enjoyed the thrill of having life and death firmly in her hands.
At this moment, the unfamiliarity of not having touched a steering wheel for six years left Lin Yu's mind blank, and the traffic conditions in Shanghai were far more complex than in Linjiang. She dared not risk her own and Jiang Chuan's lives.
What's more, even a minor scratch on this car could cost her half a month's salary just for paint repair. She turned to wake Jiang Chuan in the passenger seat, but suddenly stopped as she got closer.
His usually meticulously styled hair was now disheveled, his ear tips, pressed against the car window, were burning red, and his breath created swirling mists on the window. His furrowed brows revealed a rare vulnerability in his otherwise invincible profile.
Lin Yu, who was about to pat him on the shoulder, turned her hand and gently tugged at the blanket that had slipped off.
As the navigation prompted her to turn right, a food delivery scooter suddenly darted out from around the corner. She slammed on the brakes, and Jiang Chuan's forehead slammed into the side window, but he only frowned slightly and showed no signs of waking up.
Fortunately, the rain subsided, and his home wasn't too far from the hospital. Lin Yu crawled along at a snail's pace of 30 miles per hour, barely managing to keep up with the few cars on the road, nervously peeking out to look around every now and then, which doubled the time it would take to get home.
The driver of the van in the next lane deliberately slowed down, rolled down his window as he passed Lin Yu, and angrily shouted, "Do you have a national leader in your car? Driving so slowly, do you want me to get out and help you push?"
As Lin Yu overtook him across the solid line, he quietly noted down his license plate number and silently reviewed the reporting process in his mind.
As the car entered the gate of Jiang Chuan's residential compound, Lin Yu nervously held his breath. He watched as the security guard in his crisp uniform, with a well-trained smile on his face, mechanically raised his arm to salute the resident as the car passed.
As the car entered the underground parking garage, the wide sensor lights on both sides lit up one after another. Lin Yu drove along, finding a parking space that was relatively spacious on both sides. The tires struggled repeatedly with the parking lines, and after turning the steering wheel in and out at least twenty times, he finally managed to bring the car to a stop, albeit shakily.
She let out a long sigh and realized that her back was soaked with sweat, and the leather stitching on the steering wheel had left deep red marks on her palms.
Lin Yu turned off the car and turned to look at Jiang Chuan in the passenger seat. His collar was open, and his collarbone rose and fell gently with his breathing. She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and woke him from his slumber.
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