Liang Yi was afraid that staying in the room would annoy Tan Linyuan, so he said he'd go out for a smoke and let Tan Linyuan be alone for a while.
Tan Linyuan lay on the hospital bed. He raised his hand to rub his temples, but there was a tube in his arm.
He turned his head to look out of the window. The snow had started to fall heavily.
The snowflakes, fluttering like pieces of paper, fell densely on the window and condensed into patches of frost flowers.
The room temperature was quite high. They didn't stay on the window for long before they had to melt away.
Tan Linyuan lowered his head and looked at his palm, sighing that in the face of fate, human strength was so weak.
Everything was beyond one's control.
Tan Linyuan hung his head, and the pain welled up from the bottom of his heart again, like ten thousand swords piercing his heart.
If he had made a decision earlier, perhaps the Buddha would have left him a glimmer of hope.
The current situation was all his own doing.
He slumped back, his whole body losing strength, as if he was on the verge of falling into the abyss.
So at this moment, he made one last wish to the gods: as long as Nan Yu could be safe, he would never have any other desires.
From then on, he would be alone and never have any more longings.
...
Nan Yu didn't completely lose consciousness.
Blood loss and pain made her fall into a coma, but her instinctive desire to survive still kept a string taut in her heart.
This string supported her until she reached the hospital.
During the operation, she could vaguely hear the conversations of the doctors around her.
She heard the doctor say that she was suffering from severe hemorrhage and had to have a cesarean section. They also said that she was more than a month ahead of her due date, and the risks of premature birth were extremely high.
She opened her mouth to say something, but the pain made her unable to utter a single word.
The pain in her body made her faint, but the nerves in her brain were still tense, constantly making her pay attention to the outside environment.
Finally, she heard the doctor say joyfully, "It's out! It's a boy!"
She let out a sigh of relief and finally fell into a deep sleep.
In the last second before she lost consciousness, she heard a panicked voice say, "The baby has no heartbeat and can't breathe. Hurry up with the respirator..."
She didn't know what happened next. She had no way of knowing.
She only felt pain all over her body.
The pain was so intense that it felt like she had died once.
As a result, she slept for a very long time. There were all kinds of people in her dreams.
As she dreamed on, she forgot what she had dreamed at the beginning.
She only remembered that in the end, she walked to a bridge. Her parents were standing on the other side of the bridge.
She was overjoyed and wanted to run over and hug them, but the bridge suddenly broke.
Her parents stood on the other side, shaking their heads and saying to her, "It's not your time to come yet."
If it wasn't the time now, then when would it be?
Nan Yu was confused. She shifted her gaze downward and saw that her mother was holding a child's hand.
The child smiled at her, his mouth opening and closing, but she couldn't hear what he was saying.
Nan Yu tried hard to listen clearly, but the wind was too loud. She couldn't hear a single word.
She wanted to get closer, but then she found herself standing on the edge of a cliff.
Small stones fell from the edge of her feet. She immediately took two steps back. When she looked up again to see the other side, the figures were gone.
Suddenly, she heard a soft call of "Mommy".
Nan Yu opened her eyes in an instant.
What came into view was a white ceiling.
The childish "Mommy" still echoed in her mind, so real that she couldn't tell whether it was a dream or reality.
She turned her head and suddenly saw Tan Linyuan sitting beside her.
He had been looking at her for a long time.
Seeing her wake up, he moved his lips, and finally said hoarsely, "Are you okay?"
The moment Nan Yu saw him, she started to cry.
She couldn't control herself. Tears kept streaming down from the corners of her eyes. She didn't say a word for a long time.
After calming down, she finally asked, "Where's the baby?"
She remembered that the baby had been safely delivered by cesarean section.
But why did Tan Linyuan look so sad? There was not a trace of joy on his face.
So she tugged at the corner of her lips. Blood oozed from her dry lips as she said, "You're a father now. Are you happy?"
In her dream, the baby was still calling her Mommy.
Tan Linyuan said nothing. His eyes were expressionless as he just stared at her.
After a moment, he said his second sentence, "I'm glad you woke up."
Nan Yu didn't understand what he meant.
So she stubbornly asked again, "You're a father now. Are you happy?"
This time, she clearly saw a layer of pain in Tan Linyuan's eyes.
He said softly, "In the future, you'll have another child."
Nan Yu frowned.
She had just been in a car accident. Why couldn't she understand what people were saying?
It must be because she had slept for too long and her mind was still a bit muddled.
So she asked, "How many days have I been sleeping?"
Tan Linyuan said, "A week."
Nan Yu asked again, "Where's the baby? I want to see the baby."
After a week, even if the premature baby needed nursing, it should be able to be held out by now.
Even if not, they should at least show her some pictures.
But Tan Linyuan still remained silent. Looking into her hopeful eyes, he finally said after a moment, "The fetus was deprived of oxygen in the womb for too long. It had stopped breathing when it was born."
Simply put, it had died of suffocation.
"But you're still young. You'll have another chance. The baby will come back, and everything will be okay again, Yuyu..."
Nan Yu couldn't hear what Tan Linyuan said after that at all.
Her ears had gone deaf the moment Tan Linyuan said "stopped breathing".
Actually, she had had a premonition.
That dream had been a very obvious sign.
Her parents standing on the other side of the bridge meant, in a sense, that it was a bridge between the living and the dead.
The reason they said "it's not your time to come yet" was that her lifespan hadn't ended, so she naturally couldn't cross over.
But the child who called her "Mommy" was also standing on that side.
She had been woken up by that dream.
When she opened her eyes and saw Tan Linyuan's solemn face, she still held on to the fantasy that he was just worried about her.
But now, the truth was right in front of her. She couldn't deceive herself anymore.
She felt pain.
This pain was no longer the pain of the injury or the pain of childbirth.
It was the pain that came from the bottom of her heart, so sharp that she wanted to curl up her body.
Cold. It was so cold.
Even though she was in a warm hospital ward, she felt as if she was in the heavy snow outside the window.
This snow had been falling intermittently for seven days.
The outside was all white, almost blinding her eyes.
Nan Yu stiffly raised her hand, enduring the pain in her arm, and stroked her belly.
This was where she had been connected to the baby.
She had felt his heartbeat, his fetal movement, his vitality...
But now, it was as flat as could be.
It was as if the baby had never been there.
Her tears flowed even more profusely than before, almost blurring her vision. She could only see a human figure.
"Yuyu, hate me," Tan Linyuan endured for a long time, but his voice still remained cold. "Hating me will make you feel better."