WHF Ch 69 – Kidney Function

At first, Yu Tianbai thought he was mistaken.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear. How could such a coincidence happen in the world?

But it was just that coincidental. On the entire street, no one was more conspicuous, more recognizable than Xiu Ma. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else.

The streetlights had already come on, illuminating Xiu Ma’s hair, like a moon rising and falling, flickering in and out of sight. Yu Tianbai’s hand rested on the concrete platform by the window. His first thought was that he had to follow him.

But he had to face the reality that he was on the twelfth floor of an abandoned building, with no windows, no glass, and certainly no elevator.

The fastest he could run down was five minutes, but as soon as he lost sight of his target, he would surely disappear into the winding streets of the small city. So the optimal solution was to jump down directly.

Fortunately, Yu Tianbai’s reason was still intact. He knew that humans could not overcome gravity.

The flickering moon was still running below. Yu Tianbai just stood there and watched—five minutes later, he realized that his trip to Songyuan had not been in vain, because the young master’s destination was at the end of the road, which was the People’s Hospital at the intersection.

To confirm he wasn’t mistaken, Yu Tianbai raised the binoculars again. The bright red sign of the People’s Hospital was lit up, like a sun in the night sky, and Yu Tianbai’s little moon had stopped. His navy blue sweatshirt had become a dark dot. Then, the little moon ducked into the outpatient hall.

To the left was the emergency room, to the right was the emergency department. Again, binoculars were not X-ray vision. Yu Tianbai couldn’t see which way Xiu Ma had gone.

He put down the binoculars. The direction of the People’s Hospital had become a combination of red and other bright lights. Yu Tianbai realized his eyes were dry from the wind, and even his vision was blurry.

So what was he doing at the hospital?

Yu Tianbai’s first thought was that the young master had a chronic illness that required treatment, like amnesia, multiple personalities, or schizophrenia. But this wasn’t a Korean drama; there had to be a scientific basis. Two months ago, when the young master first met him in the car, the last three pages of the resume he had handed over were a paper copy of a physical examination report. The report covered everything from height, weight, and blood tests to liver and kidney function, just short of including his measurements.

It was a winter afternoon before spring had arrived. Yu Tianbai had only realized after a moment that he had been lingering on the kidney function page. Just then, the young master had returned to the car. Yu Tianbai immediately threw the report into the back seat.

Amidst the rustling of the falling papers, he understood that he couldn’t read the kidney function indicators, and that the young master was very healthy—a standard healthy baby of the era.

So the young master couldn’t be at the hospital for these reasons. That left another possibility: he was there to visit someone.

Qin Hua.

The woman in the wheelchair who smiled as sweetly as a young girl. She might have really been sweet once, but everything she had ever been had expanded, then collapsed, and finally returned to her body, leaving her unable to sit up straight in her wheelchair.

If someone had seen this blossoming and withering with their own eyes, it would be understandable if they couldn’t accept it.

Although Yu Tianbai had thought before that her strange temper was probably due to an illness, he had never thought about what kind of illness it was, or when it would act up.

The night was indeed cold. The north wind blew through the floors of the abandoned building. Yu Tianbai’s hair was blown back and forth by the wind, and his head ached. He suddenly felt that the young master was very strong, strong enough. If Yu Tianbai were in this situation, his only choice might be to go crazy.

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At 7 p.m., Yu Tianbai also arrived at the hospital entrance.

In fact, before he came here, he had done a lot of mental preparation. Mainly in the alley behind the hospital, walking and standing, and even in the middle of his preparation, he had bought an egg-filled pancake with two extra eggs from a snack cart on the side, gnawing on it while looking into the entrance.

When his preparation was nearing its end, the snack stall owner couldn’t stand it anymore. The stall owner was an honest man and spoke directly to Yu Tianbai, “Man, you’re a good man. Your wife’s suffering in there, right? Eating by yourself outside, come on, I’ll add a sausage for you!”

Yu Tianbai looked up. The location of the back alley was the obstetrics and gynecology outpatient clinic. If he wasn’t mistaken, the few nurses who had just pushed out large bags of medical waste were probably from the delivery room.

Although the birth of a new life was a joyous occasion, Yu Tianbai still stopped chewing. After a moment of feeling queasy, he turned and accepted the loving sausage from the stall owner.

It would be a waste not to take it.

But then again, this was only the first floor of the hospital. The layout was so complex, finding the young master would surely be no easy task. But let’s not talk about that for now. Let’s go in first.

Yu Tianbai finished the sausage the owner had given him in a few bites, turned to thank him, then put his hands in his pockets and made a grand entrance like the master of the house.

Walking in the wind, he felt like he was walking on the Bund in Shanghai, and he himself was Xu Wenqiang, just a version who was looking for someone in a hospital all night.

But fate is never on one’s side. The moment he stepped into the hospital, he looked up and saw Xiu Ma.

Xiu Ma was sitting on a bench at the end of the corridor, just like the night in Jiamusi before they left. But this time, he was alone, the only passerby on the bench.

A hospital is a very magical place. The people in it can be swords, they can be shields, or they can be waiting anxiously for a result, or just thinking about leaving as soon as possible—but a bystander can see everything clearly. But today, Yu Tianbai stood here, yet he couldn’t see anything clearly. Xiu Ma was less than five meters away from him, holding something small and round in his hand, his eyes fixed on it, his expression simple, peaceful and calm.

At this moment, Yu Tianbai suddenly felt that his disguise was superfluous. Not that it was completely superfluous; at least a minute ago, he had thought it was effective, and had even thought about finding a room to hide in in the straightforward layout of the hospital ward.

But between the entrance and the bench where Xiu Ma was sitting, there was only the brightly lit men’s restroom on the left, and the women’s restroom on the right, with its ceiling light still intact. Yu Tianbai certainly couldn’t go into the women’s restroom, and this time he didn’t want to go into the men’s restroom either.

This whole journey had been inseparable from restrooms. Hiding from people in restrooms, or clearing his mind in restrooms. Yu Tianbai felt that he had spent more time in Zen meditation on a toilet in a men’s room than in any previous year. At one point, he even suspected that the great discoveries in human history, the great odes in literary history, and even the birth of life, the explosion of the universe, the expansion and distortion of human nature, could all be found in this one-meter-long, two-meter-high space where you could see the next stall by standing on your toes.

But not this time. Again, he was standing less than five meters away from Xiu Ma, a ten-step walk, yet he couldn’t read what the young master was thinking.

Forget it. Never mind.

The initial disguise had lost its appeal. He just wanted to walk over and have someone by the young master’s side.

But what to say to start?

Hello, my friend thinks you’re very handsome and asked me to get your number—sorry, I think I already have your number.

Handsome, I’m worried you’ll get kidnapped. You don’t mind if I stand next to you, do you?

Didn’t expect this, did you? I’ve been following you the whole way. I didn’t say it directly because I wanted to save face, and to give you some face too—hey, you kid, don’t kick me!

Yu Tianbai stopped the imaginary scenarios that had never been heard in the five minutes he had been standing in the corridor. He took a deep breath and decided to leave everything to intuition.

But as he took the first step forward, the elevator to the front left of the corridor suddenly stopped. The doors opened, and two people came out, one vertical and one horizontal—the vertical one was a doctor, or maybe a nurse, pulling a hospital bed with one hand. The person on the bed was lying down.

Normally, it was common to transport patients in a hospital. But this was the first time he had seen a mobile partition screen being transported along with the patient. Was the person on the bed very particular about their privacy?

In the spirit of respecting others’ privacy, Yu Tianbai didn’t look down at the patient on the bed, even though he was practically face to face with them at this point.

About two minutes later, Yu Tianbai gradually realized that something was wrong.

First, there were only two possible outcomes for pushing the hospital bed this way: into the men’s or women’s restroom, which was definitely not where a patient should be transported. Second, after the partition screen was in front of him, the hospital bed didn’t move again. The doctor, the patient, and him formed a tripartite standoff.

The wind blew the plastic door curtain behind him, making a pattering sound like a small round of applause. A strange chill spread.

Yu Tianbai tried to back away as inconspicuously as possible, but the next second, the person lying on the hospital bed sat up and looked him in the eye.

Well now, it was an acquaintance.

Tu Laowu sat on the hospital bed, holding a Type 81 rifle. His eyes were bloodshot. He slowly opened his mouth.

“You’re coming with us.”

Very clever. The gun wasn’t pointed at him, but at the other side of the screen—in Xiu Ma’s direction.

Yu Tianbai bit his lower lip, the corner of his mouth twitching into a stiff smile. Then he looked at the “doctor” pushing the bed.

Excellent. This was the second acquaintance.