Undesirable Marriage - CH 6.2

Nine hours later, Dai Xingren walked out of the operating room exhausted. Although the operation had been a success, the patient was still not completely out of danger and was sent to intensive care for close observation. He instructed the interns to observe the critical points, and then called the emergency room apprehensive, to ensure that his wife had a successful operation, was safe and sound, and was resting in the first-class ward.

When he arrived at the ward, he was greeted by a closed door with a ‘no visitors’ sign on it and a specially arranged nurse was assigned at the door to prevent him from entering.

“Miss Mo says she doesn’t want to see anyone.” She whispered apologetically.

“Not even me?” He asked in a husky voice.

“Yes.” The nurse looked at him with a sympathetic look in her eyes.

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Dai Xingren had no choice but to sit down in a chair in the corridor and wait. Although he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, and his eyes were bloodshot, he did not feel sleepy at all. A few hours later, a nurse brought breakfast, and ten minutes later, she came back out with a tray of untouched food.

“Is she refusing to eat?” Dai Xingren asked anxiously.

“Yes, she says she doesn’t have an appetite.”

Tl takvvle bkp vllvb ycawrvzu yde vssj vbl vayu. “R’zz rlapwyel bla vs lyv.”

“Jwv usw nyd’v ts kd vblal, Pa. Pyk!”

“R’x bla bwpcyde, sq nswapl R nyd ts kd!” Tl rwpble vbl essa srld yde pvlrrle kdvs vbl assx, elprkvl vbl dwapl’p alpkpvydnl. Ys Ubwyd Zy oyp pvyakdt swv sq vbl okdeso, yde obld pbl vwadle yaswde yde pyo kv oyp bkx, pbl ryzle.

“Qlv swv!” Fbl saelale kd y pvlad hsknl, bla qynl byttyae yde bla zkrp ryzl.

Tl qlzv y jdsv qsaxkdt kd bkp nblpv qszzsole cu y ewzz ynbl, yde kv oyp sdzu yqvla y zsdt xsxldv vbyv bl aykple bkp bsyapl hsknl. “Ubwyd Zy, usw xwpv lyv psxlvbkdt!”

“R vsze usw vs tlv swv!” G tzypp oyp vbasod ytykdpv vbl oyzz clbkde bkx, pldekdt pbyaep lhlauoblal, fwpv zkjl bla casjld blyav. “Qlv swv, R esd’v oydv vs pll usw!” Fbl rasvlpvle okvb y pbweela, bla caktbv lulp pzktbvzu ale.

Tl jdlo vbyv pbl oyp bszekdt cynj bla pscp, yde kv bwav bkx lhld xsal. “R jdso usw esd’v oydv vs pll xl aktbv dso, cwv rasxkpl xl usw’zz yv zlypv lyv psxlvbkdt, sj? Zsw’hl fwpv bye yd srlayvksd yde usw dlle dswakpbxldv vs alnshla.”

“Fkdnl obld es usw nyal?” Fbl pweeldzu pdllale.

He froze.

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“If you really cared about me, you wouldn’t have taken it upon yourself to sign the consent form for the surgery without regards to what I thought… Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are to make arbitrary decisions?” Her gaze was sharp, burning with hatred.

He couldn’t breathe for an instant.

“That’s because you were at risk of having a heart failure. You should have told me you had a heart operation as a child—”

“So what? After that operation, I’m no different from a normal person.”

“But you still have to take extra care while you’re pregnant, especially when you’ve taken a fall and hurt yourself. This time you almost risked miscarrying!”

“I’d get through it!” Mo Chuan Ya interrupted him sharply. “I told the doctors I would make it, that they should have given me more time for observation, but you signed the consent form and forced me to have the operation… Why didn’t you come and see me? I would have convinced you if you would have come to see me! Why didn’t you even give me just a few minutes?”

“I was in surgery at the time—”

“Yes! You were in surgery, you were busy! You were always so busy that you couldn’t even come with me to my maternity check-ups. I admit it, I never blamed you, but why did you… decide to give up the baby so ruthlessly? You did it on purpose, didn’t you? From the beginning to the end, you didn’t want the baby at all, and now you just got the chance!” She wailed harshly, and every word was like a razor that cut into his heart.

His chest was bleeding silently, trembling as he stepped forward and tried to take his wife’s delicate hand, but she flung his hand away. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want you to touch me…” Mo Chuan Ya held back a sob and tears welled up under her eyes. The pain of losing her child prevented her from seeing her husband’s distressed expression, for she could only see the hard, cold lines of his face.

“Actually, I always knew that you didn’t love me that much. I was the one who proposed for us to date and even the one to ask for marriage, and that you… were just in the mood to be with me, the same way you dated those girls when you were in school.”

“It’s not like that!” Dai Xingren hurriedly denied. Why did she have such a misunderstanding? “They can’t compare to you at all!”

“Is that so?” She looked at him with teary eyes, and her almost desperate rhetorical question tore at his heart. “Maybe you’re more devoted to me than to them, but in the end, I’m no different from them, and you’d kick me out so long I was in the way of your career as a doctor. You’re the one who… forced me to have an abortion, and I know you don’t even want the baby because you think it’d get in your way, right?”

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Dai Xingren shuddered suddenly, and could not help but remember the thoughts that had tumbled through his mind when he looked at the ultrasound picture of the baby earlier. He looked at his wife and spat out the words with difficulty. “I admit I’m not mentally ready to be a father yet. I don’t feel the same love for my baby as you do, but!”

“Stop it! I don’t want to hear it!” Mo Chuan Ya hissed in horror, staring at him in disbelief. “How dare you… admit to my face that you don’t love the baby? He’s your child too!”

“I know he’s my child, but…” Why was she looking at him like that? Did she think he was a cold-blooded beast like the rest of them?

Dai Xingren was anxious and panicked. It didn’t matter who misunderstood him, he didn’t care, but he had hoped she would understand. “Why do we have to have a baby now? Chuan Ya, can’t we have another one in a few years? You don’t have to feel bad, even if you have a miscarriage this time, there will be another time—”

“How can you say that so easily?!” she retorted hysterically. “Even if the baby is just a foetus, it’s still a life! You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Don’t you know how precious life is?”

He was shaken, and his once melting heart slowly froze again. “Of course I know that life is precious…”

“Then you shouldn’t have said that to me!” She looked at him sadly with tears in her eyes. “Do you know how much I was looking forward to having this baby? Every day, I loved him more than the day before. I talked to him, read him story books, listened to music with him, and I wondered if he would look like you. I had hoped he would have had your eyes, your nose, but he had to love to smile more than you do. I wanted him to live a happy life and didn’t want him to suffer even a little… I thought that even if you were busy working these years, at least I would not feel lonely if I had the baby to keep me company.”

“You… lonely?” He repeated in a daze. This was the first time that she took off her forced smile and confessed her loneliness in front of him.

She knew he hadn’t known it so she covered her eyes despondently. “I’m tired, get out.”

“Chuan Ya…”

“Get out, I don’t want to see you.”

____________

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After she was discharged from the hospital, Mo Chuan Ya went straight back to her mother’s house and hid in her room all day, refusing to step out.

Dai Xingren came to visit her a few times, but every time she kept her door closed to him. She was determined to not see him, and refused to listen to anyone’s advice. He could not help but to leave silently. Seeing his desolate and lonely figure, Mo Li Yi couldn’t bear it any longer. She decided that she should speak up for her son-in-law and resolutely walked into her daughter’s room.

“Chuan Ya, would you like to talk to your mother?” She raised her voice in a lighthearted way, a smile on her lips.

Mo Chuan Ya was sitting on the windowsill with a book spread out on her lap. Mo Li Yi glanced at it and saw that it was a book on baby care with a foetal ultrasound picture clipped to it and she understood.

“If Mom wants to persuade me to see Xingren, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see him.” Mo Chuan Ya replied coldly, not moving a muscle, not even turning around to look at her mother.

Mo Li Yi secretly sighed. “Don’t worry, I won’t force you to see him, and he’s already left. He has an operation tomorrow morning with Chief Xiong and has to go back early to prepare for the operation.”

“Is that so?” Mo Chuan Ya hugged her knees indifferently, lost in thought as she stared out the window and her watery eyes blurred.

Mo Li Yi faced her daughter and sat down on the other side of the windowsill. “Are you still sad?”

The soft voice brushed against Mo Chuan Ya’s ear, shaking her slightly, and she was finally willing to look back. “I feel… like a part of myself has been lost along with it.” She whispered powerlessly, her voice faint and weary, like a wandering spirit that could not be caught.

Mo Li Yi held her daughter’s hand distressingly.