grandfather's daughter-in-law

They say to watch for 24 hours.

There is also a bend in the ICU, darker, colder, and stuffed with equipment.Two nurses were standing there.Yu Minxiu's hospital bed is the last one in the corner.I watched them lift her up.She didn't move.Only the hiss of the respirator proved she was alive.

I stood there for a long time, it was broad daylight, and the bright sunlight came in through the windows to dispel some of the haze.Two female nurses started chatting about nail polish, the younger one with a topknot that tilted the nurse's hat to one side.Then they chatted about the person who died yesterday in the critically ill area. It is said that half of his skull was crushed in a car accident, and he went there after a few hours.Then they spoke ominously about the legend of the hospital mortuary.Probably for the convenience of mortuary, the morgue is not very far from the critically ill area.The older one spoke excitedly about the last time the medical students came to visit and were so scared by the mortuary staff that they wet their pants.When she was talking, her small eyes glanced at me intentionally or unintentionally, full of gloating.My head was heavy, my eyelids were heavy, and then I fell asleep in a daze.

When I awoke, it was dark again.Yu Minxiu has not woken up yet, and there is still a long time before 24 hours.She was still lying on the bed quietly, motionless.The oxygen in the respirator hissed.When I walked outside the hospital, the sky was very heavy, as if a spring rain was brewing.I gave ten yuan to an old beggar under the overpass, and walked back to the hospital.I was hungry, but I couldn't eat anything.

A few hours later, Yu Minxiu finally survived, her blood-losing face was as pale as paper, her lips were chapped, but after all, she took away the despair in her heart and diluted the sadness in her soul.They pushed her to the general ward.She smiled at me silently, without speaking.

She has changed, often alone for a long time in a daze, never talking, laughing, crying or fussing, and never spoke to me again.She seemed to have lost a lot of weight overnight, with a sallow complexion, prominent cheekbones, and deep-set eyes.After giving birth, she did not breastfeed again, which made her breasts swell and squeeze out bloody milk.But these are nothing compared to the grief in her heart.It's just that every time my breasts are sore and the clothes on my chest are wet with milk, I see a faint sense of loss on that expressionless face.

I know it, I know it deeply, they are looking for her all over the world, anxious like ants on a hot pan.The children are lying on the other side of the hospital, in the Obstetrics and Baby Department, they lie quietly in the incubator.The body has watered down, no breastfeeding, looks thin and small, motionless when asleep, as if dead.I want to fulfill my promise in the past, make amends, and do good deeds every day.When I went to see them, Wang Yugui asked me tearfully if I had found her. My throat seemed to be stuck with transparent glue, and I couldn't make a sound.

On the fifth day, she finally spoke. She said, "Ah Feng, I want to see my child."

"Have you figured it out yet?" I asked.

She lowered her head, stared at the diamond ring on her ring finger for a long, long time, and then said silently: "I have thought about a lot of things these days. I remembered that when I was a child, my father was also in the Gezai opera, and my mother was in the same troupe with him. At that time Acting is even harder than it is now, with no fixed place to live and no telephone contact. Every day after school, my elder brother took Aying and me to look for opera troupes in various villages and towns with our schoolbags on their backs. This is how my elder brother has this ability. Find them accurately, almost never miss. Only one time, when we arrived at the village, the theater troupe had left. It was completely dark and we didn't know where else to look for them. Big brother decided to be in that village One night, I lived under someone else's roof and slept in a pile of hay. As a result, I fell ill the next day, but I managed to go to school. By the time I found my parents after school, I was already burned My mouth is full of nonsense. Of course, my eldest brother can’t escape the blame. I also stayed in the hospital for a few days because of this, and almost exhausted all the savings of my parents. Because of this incident, my father realized that acting in Gezai Opera is not only hard work, but also abandons the family and travels around. In the end, he may not even have enough money for a minor illness, so he changed his career to become a tailor. We have been together for so many years, whether rich or not. The five of us have always lived happily."

She stopped, as if stuck in that distant childhood memory.

"I know acting is very hard, and there may be no way out after hard work, but I have never regretted taking this path. I worked so hard not only because of my father's entrustment, but also because this is my own life. I know There is no shortcut in life, and it will not always be smooth, but I didn't expect..."

Her voice choked, and tears welled up in her eyes.I held her hand, those cold hands, the cold wedding ring on the ring finger of my left hand hurt me so much.Her voice choked, "I didn't expect..."

"Many hardships and tribulations are inevitable in life. I think this is an opportunity given by God to let us recognize who is real and who is not. Some things are not necessarily better to know later than earlier." I said.

She shook her head, "I just don't understand why it's wrong to pursue my own happiness, and I don't understand why everything should be done before others."

"Maybe what you are after is someone else's fate. Since you are wrong, since God gave you a second chance, why don't you take a closer look?"

She looked at me with teary eyes.Those bright and clear eyes, those eyes that looked at me condescendingly that night, shining like morning stars, those eyes that once playfully winked at me and coaxed me to eat that sour carambola, now Covered with tears.My heart was terribly quiet, without the anxious waiting, without the anxiety of losing, without the persistence of being together, it was terribly quiet.

"People always think that the love that has to be pursued with all its strength is vigorous and true love, and the more readily available, the closer to the person in front of us, the easier it is for us to ignore and not be cherished. Sometimes true love is clearly It was already in our hands, but we accidentally discarded it."

I wiped away her tears.We didn't speak again for a long time.The sky after the rain was vast, clear and transparent, and the sultry sun was baking the earth.

After a long time, she said again: "I was sitting by the river that day, and I kept thinking why I was so unlucky, why I had to endure so much pain when others could live happily, and why the two sisters who were also first-class compatriots, She can be cared for but I have to be abandoned? Why do I have to study and act hard every day, but she can spend time with my lover? I don’t want to suffer such a misfortune anymore, I don’t want such a miserable life anymore. I think of my two newborn daughters. They are so small, wrinkled, red, always crying, as if they were born with inherent pain. If it was a wrong union, but It wasn’t them who were wrong! It was me who was wrong, I brought them into this world selfishly, and then abandoned them selfishly, I, who is covered in sins, have no face to live in this world. So I walked into In the river, I want the flowing river to take me away from this painful life. The cold river makes my stomach hurt."

"But that monk woke me up. He said that if you are not afraid of death, there is no reason why you can't live strong. If you don't forgive others, you are suffering yourself. If you think you have nothing wrong, why bother to punish yourself for others' mistakes If we ever made a mistake, we should spend the rest of our lives making it up. I thought about my two daughters. They just came out of my stomach not long ago. I thought about them lying alone in the incubator, waiting for me to go back They have no father's love since they were born. If I selfishly abandon them again, how pitiful they will be. My poor children, thinking that they will be scolded by others as bastards with mothers but no fathers in the future , I felt what an unforgivable mistake I had made. The mistakes of the past have already been made and are irreversible, so how can I selfishly allow this mistake to harm the next generation?"

She looked at me, let go of my hand, and slowly turned the wedding ring on her ring finger, "When he got married, he said he would love me forever. In his eyes, I am the most beautiful woman. He likes to look at me He said that my eyes can speak, like a book with rich content, he will spend his whole life reading it. I believe it all.” She smiled self-deprecatingly, “Love is so stupid.”

She took off the ring and threw it far into the grass.I smelled a faint salty smell of sea water, the unique smell of spring in Taiwan.