The corridor outside the intensive care unit was so quiet that she could hear the buzzing of her own blood flowing.
The smell of disinfectant in the air was strong enough to sting the nose, mixed with the peculiar scent of high-end private hospitals that tried to mask death with fragrance yet failed.
Behind the nurse's station, the clock's second hand ticked.
Each movement was like a heavy hammer striking Zong Yi's taut nerves.
The attending physician came out.
She was a woman in her fifties, with a serious face and an immaculate white coat.
She removed her mask and looked at Zong Yi.
"You are Ms. Yan's…?"
"Subordinate. Colleague." Zong Yi stepped forward, her voice dry. "Doctor, how is her condition?"
The female doctor studied her briefly, her sharp gaze seeming to assess whether she could bear the truth.
"Ms. Yan was transferred to our hospital in an emergency last night. Severe autonomic nervous dysfunction triggered an acute cardiac event, accompanied by stubborn ventricular arrhythmia. Her vital signs are currently extremely unstable and are being maintained by medication and equipment."
Her tone was professional and cold.
"Her underlying condition is complicated, and she has been under long-term high-pressure exhaustion. This episode was extremely dangerous. We are doing everything to stabilize her, but… the risk is very high."
Every word drilled into Zong Yi's ears like ice picks.
Cardiac event… arrhythmia… very high risk…
"Can I… go in and see her?" she heard herself ask with difficulty.
The doctor hesitated.
"According to regulations, non-immediate family members cannot visit at the moment. And the patient needs absolute quiet."
She paused, looking at Zong Yi's suddenly bloodless face, her tone softening slightly.
"However… when Ms. Yan was admitted, during brief moments when her consciousness was occasionally clear, she vaguely mentioned a name and instructed that if 'Zong Yi' came, tell her… to wait."
Zong Yi's heart suddenly contracted, as if an invisible hand had gripped it tightly, almost suffocating her.
"When her condition stabilizes a little, if she wakes up and agrees, we can arrange a short visit," the doctor added in a businesslike tone.
"For now, wait outside. If there are any changes, the nurses will notify you."
The doctor turned and returned to the ICU area.
The heavy automatic door slid open and closed silently, sealing off the battlefield between life and death once again.
Zong Yi stood where she was.
Her hands and feet were icy cold.
The nurse gestured that she could wait in the family rest area nearby.
It was arranged like a small reception room.
Soft sofas. Potted plants. Even a few outdated financial magazines.
Sunlight filtered through the blinds, cutting bright and dark stripes across the carpet—warm in a way that felt almost artificial.
She did not sit.
She walked to the window.
Outside was a carefully maintained garden.
Even in winter, cold-resistant plants dotted the green landscape.
Several people wearing hospital gowns or family members of patients were walking slowly, their expressions indistinct.
Everything seemed so peaceful.
So… normal.
Except for that tightly closed automatic door behind which a brutal struggle for life was taking place.
Except for the heavy string of Buddhist beads on her wrist that seemed to have absorbed all of her body temperature yet remained cold.
Zong Yi lowered her head and looked at her left wrist.
The dark brown wooden beads rested against her pale skin.
Because of the indoor heating, the surface of the beads seemed to carry a faint warmth belonging to her body.
She remembered Yan Hanxie abandoning the beads in the dust of the storage room.
She remembered sitting under the light late at night, wiping each bead clean and restringing them.
She remembered Yan Hanxie saying on the phone, "Wear them. They're more useful with you than with me."
Now the beads were with her.
And their owner was just beyond a single door, her life hanging by a thread.
"More useful with you than with me"… what did that mean?
Was it sarcasm?
Self-mockery?
Or… some kind of meaning she had not wanted to examine at the time, but now could no longer avoid… a kind of entrustment?
She did not understand.
Just as she did not understand why, in the panic when her father was dying, she had instinctively sent Yan Hanxie a message.
Why, when she saw that dusk photograph, an empty loneliness had passed through her chest.
Why, standing here now, her heart hurt as if struck repeatedly by a blunt weapon—sharper and more helpless than facing any crisis at the company or bearing any pressure.
This feeling was unfamiliar.
And dangerous.
It went beyond concern for a superior.
Beyond responsibility for an "entrustment."
Even beyond her barren understanding of the concept of "friend."
What exactly… was this?
Time flowed thickly in waiting.
Every minute stretched and compressed, filled with uncertain anxiety.
She tried to deal with the pile of work emails on her phone, but could not read a single word.
She thought about getting up to pour herself a glass of water, but realized her legs felt too heavy to move.
Images flashed uncontrollably through her mind—
Yan Hanxie calmly giving orders in the conference room.
Yan Hanxie approaching under the dim bar lights with drunkenness in her eyes.
Yan Hanxie pale and fragile in the equipment room as the Buddhist beads rolled into the dust.
Yan Hanxie's hoarse voice on the phone saying "Take care."
And that photograph of dusk with nothing but a vast sky and a lonely sea…
These fragments intertwined and collided, and finally froze on the doctor's cold sentence: "The risk is very high."
The risk is very high.
She might die.
This realization was like a red-hot iron spike, suddenly piercing through all the calm and order she had been trying to maintain.
A huge, icy panic seized her, rushing from the soles of her feet straight to the top of her head, making her shiver uncontrollably.
She gripped her left wrist hard, the prayer beads deeply embedding into her flesh, bringing a clear pain, as if only like this could she confirm that she was still standing here instead of falling into some cold abyss.
She did not know how much time had passed, perhaps only half an hour, perhaps several hours.
The call light at the nurses' station flickered once, and a nurse hurried out. It was not the previous one.
"Miss Zong?" The nurse's gaze found her. "Ms. Yan just woke up briefly a moment ago. Her consciousness is relatively clear. She agreed to let you go in for a five-minute visit. Please come with me, put on the isolation gown, and keep quiet. Do not stimu-late the patient's emotions."
Zong Yi suddenly stood up. Because she moved too quickly, her vision went dark for a moment.
She steadied herself and followed the nurse toward that heavy door.
Changing clothes, disinfecting, passing through one access door after another.
Inside the ICU the lighting was soft, but the indicator lights of various machines flickered, emitting regular or hurried buzzing and ticking sounds. The air was filled with a stronger smell of medicine and a tense atmosphere of life being precisely monitored.
Bed number three was farther inside, half surrounded by a pale blue curtain.
The nurse gently pulled open a corner of the curtain.
Zong Yi saw Yan Hanxie.
She lay on the white hospital bed, covered with a thin quilt, only her head and neck and one hand with an indwelling needle placed outside the blanket exposed.
Her hair was scattered on the pillow, freed from any bun, soft in a way that looked fragile.
There was no makeup on her face. It was pale to the point of near transparency, the faint bluish veins beneath her skin clearly visible.
Her eyes were closed, long eyelashes casting a small shadow beneath them. Her brows were slightly furrowed, as if even in sleep she was still enduring some discomfort.
An oxygen mask covered her mouth and nose. With each breath, fine white mist condensed on the inside of the mask.
Beside the bed, curved lines and constantly changing numbers jumped across the monitor screen. The infusion pump silently pushed medicine into her body. A lead wire extended from beneath the blanket, connecting to some unseen monitoring point.
She looked so small, so thin, as if she might at any moment be swallowed by these cold instruments and tubes, or… like a wisp of smoke, quietly dissipating into the air.
Completely different from any Yan Hanxie Zong Yi had ever seen in her memory.
No sharpness. No control. None of that aggressive beauty or icy sense of distance.
Only the most genuine, completely defenseless fragility remained.
Zong Yi's breathing stopped.
She stood there, a few steps away, as if nailed to the ground, unable to move forward and unable to shift her gaze.
Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, slamming so hard her eardrums hurt, her throat feeling as if something had tightly choked it.
The nurse gently touched her arm, signaling that she could move closer. Time was limited.
She came back to her senses as if from a dream, stiffly stepping forward two steps and stopping beside the bed.
Her gaze lingered greedily, yet fearfully, over Yan Hanxie's face.
Wanting to see every detail clearly, yet afraid of seeing too clearly.
Perhaps sensing the gaze, or perhaps because of a change in the machine's sounds, Yan Hanxie's eyelashes trembled a few times. Extremely slowly, she opened her eyes.
They were a pair of eyes that had lost all brilliance.
Her pupils were slightly unfocused, her gaze without a focal point, blankly facing the ceiling. After quite a while, as if with effort, a faint glimmer of light finally gathered, slowly turning toward Zong Yi standing beside the bed.
Their eyes met.
Zong Yi saw that in those hollow eyes, with difficulty, little by little, her own reflection appeared.
Then, within that gaze, there seemed to flash a trace of extremely faint emotion—was it surprise? recognition? or something else?
Under the oxygen mask, Yan Hanxie's lips moved very slightly.
No sound came out.
Zong Yi subconsciously bent down, leaning a little closer.
"…You…" Yan Hanxie's voice was so weak it was almost inaudible. Her breath passed through the mask with a hoarse rasp. "You… came…"
Zong Yi's nose suddenly stung.
She bit down hard on her lower lip before the surging sourness could spill out.
She nodded, wanting to say something, but discovered that her throat was choked and no syllable could come out.
Yan Hanxie's gaze moved downward extremely slowly, falling onto Zong Yi's left hand hanging at her side, the one wearing the prayer beads.
Her eyes paused on that string of beads for a few seconds.
Then she struggled, extremely difficultly, to lift her own hand that did not have the IV. The movement only completed halfway before it dropped weakly again, her fingertips slightly curled.
Zong Yi understood.
She hesitated for a moment, then reached out and gently held Yan Hanxie's cold, powerless hand, the one covered with needle marks.
The moment their skin touched, both of them seemed to trem-ble slightly.
Yan Hanxie's hand was very cold, almost without warmth. Zong Yi's palm, however, was damp with sweat from tension and inexplicable emotion.
She held it carefully, not daring to use force, as if what she was holding was an extremely fragile piece of crystal.
Yan Hanxie's fingers twitched slightly in her palm in a spasmodic curl, as if confirming the reality of this touch.
Then she closed her eyes, as if even the strength to keep them open had already been exhausted.
Only the hand held by Zong Yi remained, its fingertip imperceptibly and gently hooking onto one of Zong Yi's fingers.
The strength was so weak it was almost impossible to feel, yet it was like a faint electric current that instantly shot through Zong Yi's limbs and bones.
On the monitor, a number representing heart rate seemed to jump irregularly for a brief moment before quickly returning to its previous rhythm.
The nurse softly reminded from the side, "Time's up."
Zong Yi came back to her senses as if waking from a dream.
She looked at Yan Hanxie's tightly closed eyes and pale face, looked at their clasped hands—one cold and powerless, one damp and trembling.
She slowly let go.
Yan Hanxie's fingers slipped softly back onto the bed sheet.
Zong Yi straightened up and looked deeply at Yan Hanxie one last time, as if wanting to carve this moment of her into her mind.
Then she turned around and followed the nurse, step by step, leaving the bed surrounded by machines and the shadow of death.
Passing again through one door after another, removing the isolation gown, disinfecting.
She walked out of the ICU area. The automatic door closed behind her, separating that fragile world inside.
She stood in the corridor. Sunlight still streamed in through the blinds.
In the garden outside, people were still strolling unhurriedly.
Everything was as usual.
Only she seemed to have just returned from another space and time, her soul still lingering in front of that pale hospital bed, lingering in that faint, almost imperceptible hook of fingertips.
She slowly raised her left hand. The prayer beads on her wrist glowed with a calm, warm luster under the sunlight coming through the window.
On her fingertip, it seemed that the cold touch of another hand still remained, along with that faint, almost illusory hooking strength.
She clenched her fist, trapping that remaining touch tightly in her palm.
In the empty, noisy, unknown and dangerous territory deep in her heart, something was now irreversibly, slowly breaking through the soil.
And she still did not know what it was.
—
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