“Are you okay?”
Yang Zhao held Chen Mingsheng’s arm. The latter’s arm muscles were stretched taut.
Chen Mingsheng blanched, steadying himself.
“Thanks.”
The sweat on his head made Yang Zhao frown. “Are you feeling unwell?” she asked.
Chen Mingsheng shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Yang Zhao bent her head and studied him. Chen Mingsheng’s right hip was trembling slightly. She lifted her head, only to find Chen Mingsheng’s face mere inches away. Yang Zhao backed up a bit. “This cannot go on,” she told Chen Mingsheng. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Chen Mingsheng stared at her in astonishment, surprised at the lengths she was willing to go. He rejected her offer anyway.
“I’m fine, really. Save yourself the trouble.”
Yang Zhao looked at him. “Can you still walk in your current state?”
Yang Zhao had slender eyes. She rarely glared, and her eyes reflected calm as always. Chen Mingsheng looked appraisingly into her eyes, searching for any malicious intent. Eventually, averting his eyes, he said, “I can.”
Yang Zhao spun around, reached for her coat by the door, then turned back towards Chen Mingsheng. “I’ll take you to the hospital,” she said.
Chen Mingsheng inhaled deeply, while Yang Zhao wordlessly watched on. Unable to discern any ripple of emotion in her eyes, and disinclined to speak, Chen Mingsheng nodded.
“I’m going downstairs to get my car,” said Yang Zhao. “Will you be fine making your way down alone?”
Another nod.
After Yang Zhao opened the door and left, Chen Mingsheng stared at the direction she headed towards for no less than half a minute before taking action.
He hitched up the leg of his pants and peered down. As expected, his leg had become infected. Chen Mingsheng sighed. He swivelled his body, removed the prosthetic leg with his hand, and headed out.
Good thing there are lifts in this condominium… Chen Mingsheng thought as he leaned against the lift’s interior.
Yang Zhao had parked her car at the entrance. After Chen Mingsheng deposited the prosthetic leg onto the backseat, he was going to sit down when Yang Zhao bent over and opened the door to the front passenger seat.
Chen Mingsheng took the offered seat. He placed the crutch in the backseat.
The car revved up…but remained stationary. Chen Mingsheng was perplexed. Just then, Yang Zhao turned her head to look at him.
“Put on your seatbelt.”
“…” Even though Chen Mingsheng was not accustomed to putting on his seatbelt, he nodded and strapped himself in.
Yang Zhao drove towards the neighborhood. “Shall we go to Sanyuan?” she asked while driving. “Sanyuan’s the closest.”
“Ah….” he began, when a thought occurred to him. “Skip the hospital,” he said to Yang Zhao, “Please send me to the city’s rehab center. “
“Rehab center?” The car jerked a little. Yang Zhao looked askance to Chen Mingsheng. “Where’s the rehab center?”
“At Shisanwei Road’s junction,” said Chen Mingsheng.
Yang Zhao parked the car by the roadside and started to punch in the directions into her car’s navigation system. Chen Mingsheng silently observed as she made repeated attempts to input the directions without success. Eventually, he spoke up: ”Shisanwei Road’s right beside Qishan Road, just twenty minutes’ drive away. I can show you the way.”
Yang Zhao sat back down. “Lead on.”
Inside the car, silence reigned— Neither one of them spoke very much, Yang Zhao did not have the habit of listening to the radio or music, and Chen Mingsheng only gave out directions at important junctions. As it turned out, all she needed to do was to turn a corner and drive straight till the end. Yang Zhao never knew that she lived so close to a rehabilitation center.
They arrived at their destination after some twenty minutes.
Yang Zhao glanced up at the building from inside her car. The building looked like it was recently built. It had four floors—all looking very new— and a row of cars lined the lots before the building entrance. Yang Zhao parked the car in a vacant lot. Chen Mingsheng unbuckled his seatbelt and said to Yang Zhao: “Thanks. I can handle the rest.”
Yang Zhao pulled out her car keys. “I’ve got nothing on today,” she said. “I’ll leave after seeing the doctor with you.”
Chen Mingsheng: ”…” He got off the car, and standing on one leg, opened the car boot. Yang Zhao had parked very close to another car, making the car door hard to open. When Yang Zhao saw this, she told him: “Hold on, I’ll get it for you.”
As Yang Zhao rounded the other side of the car to retrieve his crutch, she caught sight of the prosthetic limb in the backseat, paused, and took out only the crutch.
“Let’s get going. Do we need to take a queue number here?”
With his crutch as support, Chen Mingsheng came over to Yang Zhao’s side.
“Nope,” he said. “I texted my doctor. We can just collect the medicine directly.”
“Oh.”
A sloping road led up to the entrance of the rehab center. Upon entering, Yang Zhao spotted a few wheelchairs placed by the lobby entrance. “It’s for public usage,” Yang Zhao said to Chen Mingsheng. “Do you want to take a seat?”
Chen Mingsheng did not answer. Yang Zhao pushed one over.
“You might as well sit, you know, conserve your energy.”
She had a point. Standing had taken its toll on Chen Mingsheng. He had no love for wheelchairs, but this was not the time to be acting tough, so he let Yang Zhao take his crutch while he sat in the wheelchair. He wheeled himself forward.
“Which floor?” asked Yang Zhao.
Chen Mingsheng wheeled himself toward the lift, navigating the place with practised ease.
“The third.”
Trailing behind him, Yang Zhao stepped into the building. The entire place was fitted with handicap accessible facilities, ramps, tactile paving, and handles. It was the first time Yang Zhao was in such close proximity with the world of the handicapped. She followed Chen Mingsheng closely behind.
When they reached the third floor, Yang Zhao saw the sign hanging over the entrance as soon as the elevator door opened. The words “Limb Rehabilitation” were plastered across it. The corridor was very quiet, flanked by rooms on both sides. Yang Zhao passed by an open room. There were several handlebars inside, and in the center of the room, a doctor was showing a patient how to walk.
Chen Mingsheng made a beeline for the innermost office and knocked on the door. The door opened within moments.
It was an elderly doctor with a friendly face. He smiled genially upon seeing Chen Mingsheng.
“Oh it’s you, Xiao-Chen, come on in. Saw your text. How did your leg get infected?”
Chen Mingsheng and Yang Zhao entered the office together. The interior was very large, and there was no one else besides the old doctor. Inside, the decor consisted of a desk and a handful of potted plants and flowers by the corner.
The old doctor pulled out a long bench and patted it.
“C’mere. Sit down and I’ll have a look.”
“Zhang Shifu…” Chen Mingsheng slid from the wheelchair to the bench, propping his right leg up stiffly. Doctor Zhang frowned. “My goodness, it’s swollen. How’d that happen?”
“An accident,” murmured Chen Mingsheng.
Standing in the corner, Yang Zhao felt a range of complicated emotions.
That has to be the result of yesterday’s rain, she thought. If he hadn’t sent her home, his leg might have been fine. When Yang Zhao was supporting him earlier, the wetness of Chen Mingsheng’s clothes hadn’t escaped her notice. Considering that he’d spent a night in damp clothes, it was no wonder that something went wrong.
Yang Zhao thought back to yesterday’s events. She had, using Chen Mingsheng’s disability as leverage, threatened him into taking shelter at her home. Despite that fact that she had resorted to underhanded means, she believed it was the practical decision to make, given the available options. The alternative was to spend a night drenched in the autumn rain, a situation that would have surely exacerbated his condition.
Doctor Zhang brought out an alcohol swab and sat facing Chen Mingsheng.
“Come, roll it up and show me.”
“…” Chen Mingsheng gripped his pants. He looked up at Yang Zhao, hesitating visibly.
Doctor Zhang followed his line of sight, looked thoughtful, and asked Yang Zhao: ”And you are…?”
This question had the two completely stumped.
What should they say?
Friends? It was obvious they were not.
Acquaintance? That did not seem right either.
That left them with a debtor and debtee relationship, but the words wouldn’t come.
Chen Mingsheng made to speak, but Yang Zhao beat him to the punch: “I’m his neighbor.”
Chen Mingsheng eyed her, shutting his mouth.
“Ah, neighbors,” said Doctor Zhang unsuspectingly. Clipping an alcohol swab with his forceps, he said to Chen Mingsheng: ”Come, I’ll check it out first.“
Chen Mingsheng shot Yang Zhao another look in the hope that she’d excuse herself. She did not get the message. Chen Mingsheng sighed and released his grip.
Doctor Zhang raised Chen Mingsheng’s leg while Yang Zhao steeled herself as best as she could.
She’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t shaken in the least.
Chen Mingsheng’s leg… no, to Yang Zhao, this could no longer be considered a leg; all that was left was a short tailbone. Red and swollen fat from edema, some of the muscles at the base of the leg had atrophied.
A great long scar ran across what remained of his leg, and it seemed to Yang Zhao that this wound had not fully healed— In fact, she felt that someone with such a purulent wound had no business going anywhere besides the hospital.
Doctor Zhang clicked his tongue disapprovingly and cleaned the area surrounding his wound with the alcohol swab. Painful as it looked to Yang Zhao, Chen Mingsheng bowed his head without uttering a sound.
“You! Always sabotaging yourself!“ Doctor Zhang castigated fiercely, “You bailed on your physiotherapy halfway through, then neglected to take care of yourself after going back. Your condition will only worsen if you keep this up!”
It was unclear if Chen Mingsheng was unable to speak due to the pain, or that Doctor Zhang’s words had rendered him incapable of a retort. In any case, he sat passively against the wall, silent.
“Stay in the center. It is already infected,” Doctor Zhang said conclusively.
“No need,” Cheng Mingsheng finally spoke up. “I’ll just rest up when I go back.”
“Don’t take your health for granted just because you’re young!” Doctor Zhang barked, anger rising. “When you refused physiotherapy back then, you said that you would take care of yourself, but what happened? You lack even the basics of self-care! I’m telling you, if you keep this up, you’ll be losing more leg than you already have!
Chen Mingsheng became mute.
Perhaps realizing that he had been rather harsh, Doctor Zhang’s tone softened: “Stay in the center and get yourself fully healed. Slapping on medication like this is not the answer.” At this, Doctor Zhang abruptly turned towards Yang Zhao. “You too, talk some sense into him! His stubbornness is doing him no favors!”
Jolting at being suddenly pulled into the conversation, Yang Zhao took one look at Doctor Zhang’s round glaring eyes, nodded, and chimed in cooperatively: “Ah…yes, do stay, recovery is faster with professional care.”
“See how sensible this lady is,” said Doctor Zhang. Bolstered by this new found comrade, he launched another counterattack, “It doesn’t have to be a long stay, just a month or so is plenty enough. This is your body. The one who’ll have to suffer is you.”
Chen Mingsheng remained tight lipped. When he eventually spoke, his voice was a whisper, “I’ll pass. Please, just give me a prescription.”
Doctor Zhang slapped his thigh and sighed. As if resigned, he rest his case. “I’ll go get your medicine. Wait right here.”
Yang Zhao stood where she was while Doctor Zhang left. As she watched Chen Mingsheng endure the pain with his head bowed, it suddenly occurred to her that this cab driver was somehow different from a regular person.
“Are you okay?”
Yang Zhao held Chen Mingsheng’s arm. The latter’s arm muscles were stretched taut.
Chen Mingsheng blanched, steadying himself.
“Thanks.”
The sweat on his head made Yang Zhao frown. “Are you feeling unwell?” she asked.
Chen Mingsheng shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Yang Zhao bent her head and studied him. Chen Mingsheng’s right hip was trembling slightly. She lifted her head, only to find Chen Mingsheng’s face mere inches away. Yang Zhao backed up a bit. “This cannot go on,” she told Chen Mingsheng. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Chen Mingsheng stared at her in astonishment, surprised at the lengths she was willing to go. He rejected her offer anyway.
“I’m fine, really. Save yourself the trouble.”
Yang Zhao looked at him. “Can you still walk in your current state?”
Yang Zhao had slender eyes. She rarely glared, and her eyes reflected calm as always. Chen Mingsheng looked appraisingly into her eyes, searching for any malicious intent. Eventually, averting his eyes, he said, “I can.”
Yang Zhao spun around, reached for her coat by the door, then turned back towards Chen Mingsheng. “I’ll take you to the hospital,” she said.
Chen Mingsheng inhaled deeply, while Yang Zhao wordlessly watched on. Unable to discern any ripple of emotion in her eyes, and disinclined to speak, Chen Mingsheng nodded.
“I’m going downstairs to get my car,” said Yang Zhao. “Will you be fine making your way down alone?”
Another nod.
After Yang Zhao opened the door and left, Chen Mingsheng stared at the direction she headed towards for no less than half a minute before taking action.
He hitched up the leg of his pants and peered down. As expected, his leg had become infected. Chen Mingsheng sighed. He swivelled his body, removed the prosthetic leg with his hand, and headed out.
Good thing there are lifts in this condominium… Chen Mingsheng thought as he leaned against the lift’s interior.
Yang Zhao had parked her car at the entrance. After Chen Mingsheng deposited the prosthetic leg onto the backseat, he was going to sit down when Yang Zhao bent over and opened the door to the front passenger seat.
Chen Mingsheng took the offered seat. He placed the crutch in the backseat.
The car revved up…but remained stationary. Chen Mingsheng was perplexed. Just then, Yang Zhao turned her head to look at him.
“Put on your seatbelt.”
“…” Even though Chen Mingsheng was not accustomed to putting on his seatbelt, he nodded and strapped himself in.
Yang Zhao drove towards the neighborhood. “Shall we go to Sanyuan?” she asked while driving. “Sanyuan’s the closest.”
“Ah….” he began, when a thought occurred to him. “Skip the hospital,” he said to Yang Zhao, “Please send me to the city’s rehab center. “
“Rehab center?” The car jerked a little. Yang Zhao looked askance to Chen Mingsheng. “Where’s the rehab center?”
“At Shisanwei Road’s junction,” said Chen Mingsheng.
Yang Zhao parked the car by the roadside and started to punch in the directions into her car’s navigation system. Chen Mingsheng silently observed as she made repeated attempts to input the directions without success. Eventually, he spoke up: ”Shisanwei Road’s right beside Qishan Road, just twenty minutes’ drive away. I can show you the way.”
Yang Zhao sat back down. “Lead on.”
Inside the car, silence reigned— Neither one of them spoke very much, Yang Zhao did not have the habit of listening to the radio or music, and Chen Mingsheng only gave out directions at important junctions. As it turned out, all she needed to do was to turn a corner and drive straight till the end. Yang Zhao never knew that she lived so close to a rehabilitation center.
They arrived at their destination after some twenty minutes.
Yang Zhao glanced up at the building from inside her car. The building looked like it was recently built. It had four floors—all looking very new— and a row of cars lined the lots before the building entrance. Yang Zhao parked the car in a vacant lot. Chen Mingsheng unbuckled his seatbelt and said to Yang Zhao: “Thanks. I can handle the rest.”
Yang Zhao pulled out her car keys. “I’ve got nothing on today,” she said. “I’ll leave after seeing the doctor with you.”
Chen Mingsheng: ”…” He got off the car, and standing on one leg, opened the car boot. Yang Zhao had parked very close to another car, making the car door hard to open. When Yang Zhao saw this, she told him: “Hold on, I’ll get it for you.”
As Yang Zhao rounded the other side of the car to retrieve his crutch, she caught sight of the prosthetic limb in the backseat, paused, and took out only the crutch.
“Let’s get going. Do we need to take a queue number here?”
With his crutch as support, Chen Mingsheng came over to Yang Zhao’s side.
“Nope,” he said. “I texted my doctor. We can just collect the medicine directly.”
“Oh.”
A sloping road led up to the entrance of the rehab center. Upon entering, Yang Zhao spotted a few wheelchairs placed by the lobby entrance. “It’s for public usage,” Yang Zhao said to Chen Mingsheng. “Do you want to take a seat?”
Chen Mingsheng did not answer. Yang Zhao pushed one over.
“You might as well sit, you know, conserve your energy.”
She had a point. Standing had taken its toll on Chen Mingsheng. He had no love for wheelchairs, but this was not the time to be acting tough, so he let Yang Zhao take his crutch while he sat in the wheelchair. He wheeled himself forward.
“Which floor?” asked Yang Zhao.
Chen Mingsheng wheeled himself toward the lift, navigating the place with practised ease.
“The third.”
Trailing behind him, Yang Zhao stepped into the building. The entire place was fitted with handicap accessible facilities, ramps, tactile paving, and handles. It was the first time Yang Zhao was in such close proximity with the world of the handicapped. She followed Chen Mingsheng closely behind.
When they reached the third floor, Yang Zhao saw the sign hanging over the entrance as soon as the elevator door opened. The words “Limb Rehabilitation” were plastered across it. The corridor was very quiet, flanked by rooms on both sides. Yang Zhao passed by an open room. There were several handlebars inside, and in the center of the room, a doctor was showing a patient how to walk.
Chen Mingsheng made a beeline for the innermost office and knocked on the door. The door opened within moments.
It was an elderly doctor with a friendly face. He smiled genially upon seeing Chen Mingsheng.
“Oh it’s you, Xiao-Chen, come on in. Saw your text. How did your leg get infected?”
Chen Mingsheng and Yang Zhao entered the office together. The interior was very large, and there was no one else besides the old doctor. Inside, the decor consisted of a desk and a handful of potted plants and flowers by the corner.
The old doctor pulled out a long bench and patted it.
“C’mere. Sit down and I’ll have a look.”
“Zhang Shifu…” Chen Mingsheng slid from the wheelchair to the bench, propping his right leg up stiffly. Doctor Zhang frowned. “My goodness, it’s swollen. How’d that happen?”
“An accident,” murmured Chen Mingsheng.
Standing in the corner, Yang Zhao felt a range of complicated emotions.
That has to be the result of yesterday’s rain, she thought. If he hadn’t sent her home, his leg might have been fine. When Yang Zhao was supporting him earlier, the wetness of Chen Mingsheng’s clothes hadn’t escaped her notice. Considering that he’d spent a night in damp clothes, it was no wonder that something went wrong.
Yang Zhao thought back to yesterday’s events. She had, using Chen Mingsheng’s disability as leverage, threatened him into taking shelter at her home. Despite that fact that she had resorted to underhanded means, she believed it was the practical decision to make, given the available options. The alternative was to spend a night drenched in the autumn rain, a situation that would have surely exacerbated his condition.
Doctor Zhang brought out an alcohol swab and sat facing Chen Mingsheng.
“Come, roll it up and show me.”
“…” Chen Mingsheng gripped his pants. He looked up at Yang Zhao, hesitating visibly.
Doctor Zhang followed his line of sight, looked thoughtful, and asked Yang Zhao: ”And you are…?”
This question had the two completely stumped.
What should they say?
Friends? It was obvious they were not.
Acquaintance? That did not seem right either.
That left them with a debtor and debtee relationship, but the words wouldn’t come.
Chen Mingsheng made to speak, but Yang Zhao beat him to the punch: “I’m his neighbor.”
Chen Mingsheng eyed her, shutting his mouth.
“Ah, neighbors,” said Doctor Zhang unsuspectingly. Clipping an alcohol swab with his forceps, he said to Chen Mingsheng: ”Come, I’ll check it out first.“
Chen Mingsheng shot Yang Zhao another look in the hope that she’d excuse herself. She did not get the message. Chen Mingsheng sighed and released his grip.
Doctor Zhang raised Chen Mingsheng’s leg while Yang Zhao steeled herself as best as she could.
She’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t shaken in the least.
Chen Mingsheng’s leg… no, to Yang Zhao, this could no longer be considered a leg; all that was left was a short tailbone. Red and swollen fat from edema, some of the muscles at the base of the leg had atrophied.
A great long scar ran across what remained of his leg, and it seemed to Yang Zhao that this wound had not fully healed— In fact, she felt that someone with such a purulent wound had no business going anywhere besides the hospital.
Doctor Zhang clicked his tongue disapprovingly and cleaned the area surrounding his wound with the alcohol swab. Painful as it looked to Yang Zhao, Chen Mingsheng bowed his head without uttering a sound.
“You! Always sabotaging yourself!“ Doctor Zhang castigated fiercely, “You bailed on your physiotherapy halfway through, then neglected to take care of yourself after going back. Your condition will only worsen if you keep this up!”
It was unclear if Chen Mingsheng was unable to speak due to the pain, or that Doctor Zhang’s words had rendered him incapable of a retort. In any case, he sat passively against the wall, silent.
“Stay in the center. It is already infected,” Doctor Zhang said conclusively.
“No need,” Cheng Mingsheng finally spoke up. “I’ll just rest up when I go back.”
“Don’t take your health for granted just because you’re young!” Doctor Zhang barked, anger rising. “When you refused physiotherapy back then, you said that you would take care of yourself, but what happened? You lack even the basics of self-care! I’m telling you, if you keep this up, you’ll be losing more leg than you already have!
Chen Mingsheng became mute.
Perhaps realizing that he had been rather harsh, Doctor Zhang’s tone softened: “Stay in the center and get yourself fully healed. Slapping on medication like this is not the answer.” At this, Doctor Zhang abruptly turned towards Yang Zhao. “You too, talk some sense into him! His stubbornness is doing him no favors!”
Jolting at being suddenly pulled into the conversation, Yang Zhao took one look at Doctor Zhang’s round glaring eyes, nodded, and chimed in cooperatively: “Ah…yes, do stay, recovery is faster with professional care.”
“See how sensible this lady is,” said Doctor Zhang. Bolstered by this new found comrade, he launched another counterattack, “It doesn’t have to be a long stay, just a month or so is plenty enough. This is your body. The one who’ll have to suffer is you.”
Chen Mingsheng remained tight lipped. When he eventually spoke, his voice was a whisper, “I’ll pass. Please, just give me a prescription.”
Doctor Zhang slapped his thigh and sighed. As if resigned, he rest his case. “I’ll go get your medicine. Wait right here.”
Yang Zhao stood where she was while Doctor Zhang left. As she watched Chen Mingsheng endure the pain with his head bowed, it suddenly occurred to her that this cab driver was somehow different from a regular person.
