The Girl In The Louvre - Chapter 37 Time

After her first inappropriate comment to her doctor, Zhi Rou kept drifting in and out of consciousness. Unlike her first brief moment of lucidness, Zhi Rou’s mind was a mess for the rest of the week.

Like a broken record, her thoughts were all scrambled. The doctors tried to understand what was wrong with her, but without any results, they soon gave up and could only conclude with, “she has suffered great trauma and will need to get used to the fact that she lost two years of her life.”

In short, she needed a psychiatrist.

While Zhi Rou tried to piece together her memory, the doctors started the intensive physio routine with her. After two years of inactivity, her muscles should have deteriorated to an extreme extent. However, Zhang Wie had hired someone to come by twice a day and exercise her body for several hours so that they stayed operational.

Still, even with someone helping exercise her muscles when she was unconscious, simple actions like raising her arm were strenuous and painful for Zhi Rou.

The first days was the hardest for Zhi Rou, and every physio session ended with sweat pouring down her body. The combination of the intense and painful exercises and her spiralling mind were slowly pushing her to edge. The worst moment was when she tried to walk for the first time since that accident.

With her hands clenched tightly to the walker, she dragged her week legs forward, one step at a time. The doctor had only asked her to take a couple of steps before sitting down, but Zhi Rou continued to shove forward. Her eyes looked forward with conviction as her breath grew unstable and shallow. Her heart started to beat erratically, pumping blood to her exhausted brain and her eyelids started to droop, covering her determined gaze.

She almost reached the door before her body finally gave out beneath her. Frail from the comma, her fragile collapsed on the walker as the doctors rushed forward to catch her.

As her body lay atop the walker, Zhi Rou’s last bit of consciousness faded from her as she smiled softly. In her exhausted state, she looked like she had just been relieved of a great burden, but if you looked close, you could see the spark of madness in the corner of her eye.

‘Yes, this is the feeling. The feeling that I was missing. The feeling of nothing.’

Zhi Rou’s body was pushed beyond her limits, and her mind was strained from overuse, but she finally felt peaceful. The voices and memories that had been crowding her brain were gone, replaced by nothing. Even her body was too tired to complain. Like all it wanted to do was shut down and sleep.

Even before she had hit the mattress her body had pulled her into a deep sleep. Something that she had not had for a long time.

***

Lurking quietly by the window, a shadowy figure stared at the body sleeping peacefully through the glass. His heart clenched for some unknown reason when he thought of what he heard from the doctor earlier.

‘There is no need for her to work so hard. Those years that she missed, I will somehow make it up to her.’

Thinking of the events that day, Zhang Wie could not help but want to slap himself. If he had not stayed at home to see his parents and miss his appointment with Zhi Rou, maybe she would never have been hurt.

‘After all, it was me who asked her to meet me that day.’

Even now he could not understand why he asked her out, or whether he liked her. But she us indisputably an important person to him.

Gazing away from her small figure wrapped in blankets, Zhang Wie turned to leave the hospital when he saw a stunning man just down the hallway.

Zhang Wie had confidence in his own looks, but the cold, imperial grace that the man exuded as he casually strolled down the hall made him feel inferior.

With a pale face and gleaming green eyes, his chiselled features were so perfect that it looked like he could have been the mould that god used when creating humans. Everyone else was just an inferior imitation, fading out of existence wherever he passed.

Realizing that he was staring for too long, Zhang Wie quickly turned his head and walked towards the exit opposite that man. For some reason, he felt a chill on his back as he walked away. Like a savage beast was eyeing him from afar. It was only when he walked around the corner that the feeling faded.

Getting into his car, he tried to think of ways to help Zhi Rou recover. He did not notice it at first, but today he could see it in her eyes. She had changed since the last time that he saw her, and that scared him. She had only been with him for two weeks before her accident, but that time had left a deep imprint on his heart.

Taking a deep breath he pushed is unease down into the bottom of his stomach. The weather was still cold and wet, giving the city a depressing feeling. But as he drove through the streets he could not stop a warm feeling spread through his body.

Humming the lyrics to an old love song, he felt relaxed for the first time in two and a half years. His fingers tapped the wheel and he smiled to himself.

‘it seems that she means more to me than I give her credit for. But I need to make sure before doing anything stupid.’

As his warm car weaved through the wet streets, he thought for the first time in a while of his neighbour. The thought of her still hurt, but now he was starting to heal. It took a long time, but at last, it seems that the scar that she made was beginning to fade.

Time, it seems, can bring an end to anything, even heartbreak.