Chapter 20 Gratitude of an Ungrateful Female Lead 20: Matters of Life and Death, She’ll Shoulder Them

Xie Lingge was sick.

Cancer.

The kind that could kill.

She had only just turned twenty this year.

She had not even graduated from college yet, still at the age of blooming youth.

After hearing the news, Zhou He felt her legs go weak.

On the way here, she had imagined all sorts of possibilities, including how to deal with them, but not this.

She had hoped this was one of Xie Lingge’s pranks, but regrettably, it was not. She personally went to consult the doctor about the illness, and the doctor, with a calm expression, delivered the verdict with certainty.

Something involving life and death was more than she could bear.

Xie Lingge was now like a rabbit scared half to death, sitting motionless on a bench in the hospital corridor. She had cried several times, and her eyes were still red. She barely reacted to the outside world.

But Zhou He could not afford to be as unresponsive as she was.

She called Xie Qingjia. Afraid he might lose focus while driving, she did not say what had happened, only told him to come to the hospital and pick her up. She planned to tell him face-to-face.

While waiting for Xie Qingjia,

Zhou He asked one of the patients’ family members to keep an eye on Xie Lingge. She forced herself to stay calm, calmer still. Then, with her big belly, she went to handle the rest as steadily as she could.

She paid the fees, arranged the hospitalization, went to the little shop outside the hospital to buy some daily necessities for the room, picked up the blanket and bedding the nurse gave her, and made the bed…

The only hitch was that she put the duvet cover on inside out once and had to do it all over again.

After settling Xie Lingge into the ward, she even still remembered to go to the hospital cafeteria to get food for both of them.

On her way back with the food, she happened to run into Xie Qingjia in the lobby.

Seeing him hurrying over, Zhou He wanted to cry. But she held it back. At a time like this, she could not let Xie Qingjia spend more time and energy comforting her.

They were husband and wife, partners meant to support each other. With the Xie Family in trouble, what she needed from Xie Qingjia was someone to lean on, not for him to be distracted by her weakness.

She pulled Xie Qingjia aside and explained what had happened as briefly and clearly as she could.

Xie Lingge had interviewed for a winter break internship, and the company required a physical exam before onboarding. But the results from the basic pre-employment exam came back abnormal. Xie Lingge had not thought much of it at first. She had heard from a classmate that once, after pulling an all-nighter, that classmate’s checkup also showed abnormalities, but after a reexamination, it turned out to be nothing at all.

What college student doesn’t stay up late?

So Xie Lingge did not take the abnormal indicators on her report seriously either and came to the hospital alone to register for a follow-up examination. She had originally planned to use that physical exam report to complete her onboarding, but who would have thought what awaited her would be devastating bad news.

Zhou He tried to keep her tone light. “Don’t look so grim. If your sister sees that later, it’ll only put more pressure on her. Right now, maybe we can’t make her happy, but at least we have to keep things from feeling so heavy. I’ve already asked the doctor. It’s still early stage, it can be treated. As long as the patient stays positive and we actively cooperate with treatment, the cure rate is still very high.”

Xie Qingjia’s eyes reddened, and he tightened his grip on his wife’s hand. “You’ve worked hard.”

Zhou He gave the hand he was holding a little shake.

“Come on, let’s go see her. I might not have explained it clearly enough, and if you want, you can talk to the doctor again. I looked it up just now, and for this kind of illness, Xiping Hospital is one of the top authorities in the province, so I went ahead and arranged the hospitalization. And we still need to notify Mom and Dad…”

Xie Qingjia stroked Zhou He’s face. Only after listening to her ramble through everything did he respond, “Okay. I’ll handle it. You get some rest.”

But with something this serious happening, how could she possibly rest with a clear conscience? Besides, her mind would not stop turning. At most, she could only find a place to sit and recover a little.

Father Xie and Mother Xie rushed to the hospital that very night.

Zhou He went to the entrance to meet them and saw that the two elders seemed to have aged all at once.

Not long ago, at the wedding, they had still looked radiant and full of energy.

Behind Xie Lingge’s back, Mother Xie secretly wiped away tears and asked Zhou He, “Why did this happen? She’s still so young. Her life hasn’t even begun. Her father and I have spent decades doing good, treating losses as blessings, never doing even half a thing against our conscience. So why would Xiaoge get this kind of illness? If anyone should be sick, it should be my old body, not hers.”

As she spoke, she broke down sobbing.

At a moment like this, Zhou He was clumsy with words and could barely say anything.

Yes, why was it that just when everything was getting better, suffering had to fall on the honest and kind people of the Xie Family?

All she could do was offer the same repeated comfort to Mother Xie. “It’ll get better. We have to have faith in her. She’s young, and she’s in good physical condition. She’ll definitely recover.”

Those thin, feeble words were exactly the kind of reassurance Xu Meijuan needed at that moment. She wiped her tears. “Right, right, right. She’ll definitely recover. How often do you even hear of someone so young getting cancer?”

With the whole family there, Xie Lingge finally had something to hold on to, and her emotions stabilized a lot.

From that day on, Xiping Hospital became the Xie Family’s base of operations, and they spent very little time at home.

Xie Lingge was young, after all. Once she got through the first stage of panic and confusion, she quickly regained some vitality, actively cooperated with the doctors’ treatment, and firmly believed she would defeat the illness.

She even made friends with other patients from the same city and encouraged them too.

But after several days of IV drips, the young girl had become swollen all over, and it was heartbreaking to see.

No matter how worried or exhausted they felt inside, whenever everyone entered the ward, they never brought those emotions in with them. They all did their best to act relaxed.

Especially Xie Chonghu. After getting off work, he would come to the ward and clown around.

He had not gone home for winter break either. He had found himself an internship and was working.

That day, Xie Chonghu was in the ward telling terrible jokes when a man in an ill-fitting suit, carrying an old briefcase, knocked and walked in.

“Do you need a loan? Low interest, no collateral, and bad credit isn’t a problem. Our company can help take care of that.”

There were three beds in this ward, and all of them were occupied. Xie Lingge’s bed was the one by the window at the very back.

A family member of the patient in the middle bed asked, “How’s the interest calculated? How do you get the loan?”

The man in the suit walked in. “The process is very simple. You don’t need to worry about a thing. Just sign an authorization form, and our company will handle everything for you.”

As he walked, he took materials out of his briefcase. He handed them first to the family member who had spoken to him.

He also gave a copy to each of the other two beds’ families. “You can look it over first, just in case you ever need it.”

The man went back to the middle bed and started explaining the procedures and terms to that family member. “What you’re most concerned about is the interest, right? Let me explain. Don’t worry, we’re a legitimate platform. The daily interest rate is…”

Xu Meijuan held the flyer in her hand and stared at the man in the suit as he explained, listening intently without blinking.

Zhou He knew she was tempted.

Everyone kept saying they had to treat it, that it could definitely be cured.

But behind that simple sentence was the steady depletion of a family’s savings built up over many years.

And it was disappearing fast.

A hospital was like a two-faced Buddha¹. One face was a merciful bodhisattva² that gave people hope, and the other was a money-devouring demon.

Forget cancer. Even for something as simple as an appendectomy, hospitalization alone would still cost two or three thousand a day.

Ever since Xie Lingge had been admitted, their expenses had basically been over ten thousand a day. That did not even include living expenses, only the hospital bill itself.

Father Xie and Mother Xie had spent their whole lives running small businesses, so they did have some savings. But their expenses were high too, and with Zhou He included, the family had three children to support in total. What little they had left for retirement, even after adding in the gift money from Xie Qingjia’s wedding, had nearly all been spent during this period.

Father Xie had gone back two days ago. Officially, he said there was no point in both old folks staying here, and that it was better for the new mother to stay while he went back to keep an eye on the convenience store and earn a little money. But Zhou He guessed he had probably gone back to borrow money.

The two elders hadn’t asked Zhou He or Xie Qingjia for help, probably because they assumed the young couple had just bought a home and had no money to spare, especially with a mortgage to pay and a baby on the way.

Xie Qingjia really was flat broke.

His savings had gone into buying a car, buying a house, and investing in the studio. Whatever he earned each month went right back into the mortgage and daily expenses.

But Zhou He wasn’t as poor as they imagined.

Xie Qingjia covered their everyday living expenses, so most of Zhou He’s salary had been saved.

At the wedding, the cash gifts from her and Xie Qingjia’s friends and classmates had all been opened by the two elders, who then handed that portion over to the couple to keep themselves. That money was with Zhou He too.

Then there was the subscription income Zhou He made from writing. At this moment, she felt incredibly lucky that she’d split one book into two parts, upper and lower, because once the first half was completed, it met all the requirements for a full withdrawal.

When she got home that night, Zhou He logged into the Little Green Website’s author backend and submitted withdrawal requests for every bit of money she could cash out.

It was a very considerable sum, though the tax deduction hurt badly.

Adding all those amounts together, Zhou He did the math and came up with a total of a little over three hundred thousand.

Just like Xie Qingjia had joked while teasing the baby.

His bandit husband really was broke. All the money was with her, the Mountain King³.

She kept several tens of thousands aside for the delivery, then directly deposited the other three hundred thousand into the hospital account.

–

Xu Meijuan couldn’t sleep, night after night, and it wasn’t only because the conditions for staying overnight at the hospital were poor.

There was also her son’s uncertain career, her daughter’s life hanging in the balance, and her daughter-in-law, heavily pregnant, still running back and forth between home and the hospital…

And every morning, right on time, the nurse would bring over the previous day’s expense statement. It was covered in dense, ant-sized print over several full pages, and the total at the end was even more shocking.

Once, after looking at the bill, her husband blurted out, “Once you get into a hospital, money burns away almost as fast as offerings on Qingming.”

Xu Meijuan ignored him for the entire day, thinking his words were inauspicious. But in her heart, she knew he was worried.

Every time he went out to eat and came back, he would always remark on how delicious the spare rib rice or pig’s trotter rice had been that day…

But once, when Xu Meijuan went downstairs to buy a few small things, she saw her husband sitting on the edge of a flowerbed in the hospital courtyard, holding a disposable paper bowl and noisily slurping plain congee, with two steamed buns in his hand.

She didn’t go over. She turned around and went straight back upstairs.

When her husband came back, he brought stir-fried dishes and rice for her and Xiaoge: shredded pork with wood ear mushrooms and scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

As Xu Meijuan busied herself getting her daughter settled to eat, she asked her husband, “What did you have?”

Her husband froze for a moment, then slicked back his hair with one hand and said, “Braised pork. I figured Xiaoge would definitely get cravings if I brought it back, so I just finished the whole thing at the restaurant.” As he spoke, he patted his stomach and smacked his lips in satisfaction. “That place is pretty good. I’ll go there again next time.”

Her daughter believed him and was even a little unhappy.

“Dad, then you should’ve brought some back for me to taste too. The doctor said I can’t eat much, but one or two pieces should’ve been fine.”

Her husband burst out laughing. “Alright, I’ll bring you some next time. I’ve raised a little glutton for a daughter.”

Seeing him act like that, Xu Meijuan felt a lump in her chest. She truly couldn’t swallow the food in her mouth.

A meal of buns and congee only cost a few yuan, but a regular meal started at over twenty. Even if the money saved this way was only a drop in the bucket compared to her daughter’s medical expenses, she understood what her husband was thinking. If they could save even a little, that was still something. Because she thought the same way herself.

When she saw that her daughter had stopped eating, Xu Meijuan also put down her chopsticks.

“You’re done after eating that little? You two really are wasteful,” he said, though he casually took Xu Meijuan’s rice box and chopsticks and continued eating. “If I’d known you two would eat so little, I wouldn’t have eaten at the restaurant.”

Then he polished off all the remaining food. Her husband was tall and broad to begin with, and he had always eaten a lot. How could one bowl of congee possibly be enough for him?

That night, Xu Meijuan discussed it with her husband and told him to go back to town.

There was no need for two people to take care of their daughter. If he went back, he could keep watch over the shop and earn a little more. More importantly, there was a vegetable plot at home, so food and drink wouldn’t cost anything.

At the very least, it would let the man protecting both mother and daughter have enough to eat, even in the corners she couldn’t see.

Her husband agreed as well. “Alright. Zhonghu’s dad said he’d help put together a little money. I’ll transfer it over when I get back. I’ll also see if I can borrow some from relatives and friends.”

Xu Meijuan said, “Don’t ask Xiao Jia and the others. Those two kids are under enough pressure already.”

“As if you needed to tell me that?” her husband said with a bitter smile. “Never thought I’d end up in debt in my old age. Meijuan, looks like you’ll have to suffer along with me.”

Xu Meijuan turned her back to him and couldn’t help crying.

Sighing, her husband patted her back from behind to comfort her.

After her husband went back, one morning the nurse brought over the expense statement as usual.

Xu Meijuan picked it up and looked it over. The amount spent was about the same as the previous two days.

Then her eyes landed on one spot, and she couldn’t help widening them.

Remaining balance: 354,329.70.

Afraid her eyes were playing tricks on her, she closed them and opened them again, counting the digits over and over several times. That was right. There were still more than three hundred thousand left.

It felt like a dream.

Xu Meijuan dug out yesterday morning’s bill and compared it to today’s. She quickly calculated the result: yesterday, someone had deposited three hundred thousand into her daughter’s account.

Yesterday…

Hospital account payments had to be made in person, so it couldn’t possibly have been money her husband had scraped together.

And yesterday, her son had been working overtime.

The only person who had come to the hospital was her daughter-in-law, Zhou He, who had brought them food and fruit.

Translator’s Notes