Chapter 20.3 (1/2)

Chapter 20.3 – Blessings in the Simple Things (3)

She did not so much as mention what happened on that night. It was as if she had not seen anything.

However, she used much of her free time in her interns.h.i.+p job to search for various types of tutorials on emergency first aid, medicinal and herbal foods, and other such information and worked hard to gradually learn these things.

Gu Pingsheng had never tried to hide from her anything regarding his physical condition, and during every monthly medical examination, he would bring her along. Therefore, she was not worried that he would neglect his own health, but it was still necessary to prepare for the future.

One time, the big sister-like court clerk who was mentoring her saw what she was doing and found it puzzling. “Do you have someone in your family who is critically ill?”

“No.” She minimized the webpage and gave an arbitrary response to brush over the topic. “There will always be a use to reading stuff like this.”

“Kid, you are so amusing.”

The big sister court clerk patted her on the head and left with a grin.

Previously, apart from going home, Gu Pingsheng only needed to travel back and forth between his office and the university.

Now, due to Grandfather’s health issues, he would every day have fixed periods that he spent at the hospital. Tong Yan knew that now was not an appropriate time for her presence there, and the only thing she could do was prepare some nutritious things for him to bring every time he went to the hospital.

Perhaps due to the long times spent at the hospital, he would occasionally tell her some things about his former interns.h.i.+p term in Beijing.

He mentioned that one time, when he was resuscitating a patient, there had been no time to do the systematic physical checks before the patient was wheeled into the operating room, and only the next day was it discovered from tests that the person was an AIDS patient.

When he told her this, she was peeling a boiled egg for him, and her eyes instantly widened. “What could you do? What if, some time during the surgical procedure, you were infected, what could you do?”

She brought the egg up to his mouth. He took a bite of the egg white but did not eat the yolk. Tong Yan pressed her lips together but ate the yolk herself and then placed the remainder of the egg white into his plain rice porridge.

“Those types of situations were not uncommon. Usually, we would see a few every month.” Gu Pingsheng gave a faint smile, the corner of his lips curving only slightly upwards. “Every profession has its own risks. It’s unavoidable.”

Tong Yan nodded her head, then nodded again, lost in thought as she watched him eat his rice porridge.

A white porcelain spoon in his hand, Gu Pingsheng ate two mouthfuls before he finally detected her gaze. Raising his head, he looked smilingly at her. “What are you thinking? Or are you still not fully awake?”

“I’m thinking you must have been a really picky eater when you were a kid.” A mysterious grin touched Tong Yan’s face. “You don’t even eat egg yolk.”

Gu Pingsheng smiled, “I was indeed a very picky eater when I was young.”

“You still are now.”

Tong Yan added this sentence and then continued to peel another boiled egg for him.

His face had always tended to be on the lean side, which highlighted the angles of his face. Now, though, he looked a little too thin. Tong Yan’s eyes swept from his fingers up his arm, and with her pinky finger, she poked him. He lifted his eyes to meet her gaze.

“You’ve lost weight,” Tong Yan remarked, not without tones of regret. “To the feeder and keeper of a household, this is such a heartbreaking trend.”

“I’ve really lost weight?” Gu Pingsheng tilted one side of his lips up and made a somewhat childish expression. “I want to eat braised chicken with chestnuts.”

栗子烧鸡 Braised chicken with chestnuts. The braising liquid is soy sauce-based. (Image credit)

Tong Yan nodded in delight. “Will you be home for dinner this evening? Once I leave the courthouse, I’ll head straight to the supermarket to buy the ingredients.”

“I’ll be home tomorrow evening.” Seeing that it was about time, he swiftly finished eating the rest of his rice porridge. “I’ll be at the hospital in the afternoon. Grandfather has a very important consultation with the specialist, and I may not be home until after dinner.”

Every time he had an eight o’clock morning cla.s.s, he would leave home a little earlier than her.

But the time he arrived home would also be much later than her.

This was not something she could allow herself to dwell too much upon, nor dwell too deeply upon. There was not a single day that pa.s.sed where she would not long to graduate, long to start truly working, to share the pressures that he was bearing. Yet, she could only patiently wait.

Worried that the supermarket would not have chestnuts, she purposely went to the market that was a little farther away to buy the ingredients to bring home.

As she was afraid of watching the chicken being butchered, after she had specially selected one, she ran to a far off spot to watch from a distance until the stallkeeper had completely taken care of it. Only then did she step forward again to pay and take the b.l.o.o.d.y plastic bag.

“Little girl, are you scared of blood?” the stallkeeper asked her in amus.e.m.e.nt.

“I’m actually not too scared of the blood.” Tong Yan thickened her skin and honestly admitted, “I am particularly scared of seeing something that’s alive getting killed, so a lot of the time, I’ll buy the frozen ones from the supermarket …”

“The ones at the supermarket are no good. They’re not as good as the ones that are butchered on the spot.” The stallkeeper grabbed a bunch of scallions from his own vegetable stall and handed it to her. “Here, it’s for you to calm your nerves.”

Owing to this bunch of scallions, Tong Yan broke out into an amused smile, and after saying her thanks, she took it from him.

The location of the market was very strange. There were no buses that she could take, and if she walked, it would take more than twenty minutes. Despite it still being winter, she still managed to break out into a sweat as she walked back to the community compound.

It was past six o’clock, and the sky was already completely dark. The lights in the community had long since turned on, and the briskly moving people near and far around her were all rus.h.i.+ng home.

Since it was not dinnertime yet, her pace was actually not hurried, and leisurely, she strolled toward the building of her home. However, while she was pa.s.sing the greens.p.a.ce that was downstairs of the building, she saw two people standing not far away.