Chapter 2164: Chapter 1424: Good News (2)
"You can wear it if you want."
"I’m not asking if I can put it on, I’m asking if I can wear it to work."
Sister Li put the neatly folded clothes into the wardrobe, then turned around to look at him. Something flickered in her eyes, but she held it back.
"Jianguo, you need to stand up first, then we’ll discuss going back to work. We’re not in a rush, we’ll take it step by step."
Chen Jianguo didn’t ask further. He turned his head and continued staring at the photographs. The young man in uniform was smiling at him, so confidently, so effortlessly. He never imagined he would one day envy his own self.
The days after discharge were more unbearable than those in the hospital. In the hospital, each day was filled with doctor visits, nurse injections, rehabilitation training, the schedule packed tightly. Temperature checks at six in the morning, blood drawn at seven, breakfast at eight, rehab training at nine, therapy at eleven, doctor rounds at two in the afternoon, another round of rehab at three, dinner at five, family visitations ending at seven, lights out at nine. Every hour filled with something to do, someone coming to see him. After discharge, most of the time it was just him and Sister Li. When she went grocery shopping, he would sit alone on the bed, stare out the window at the sky, counting the days.
A millimeter per day; if he had x-ray vision, he should be able to see those nerve axons finer than a strand of hair, extending bit by bit, like the tendrils of climbing plants, slow but determined. They groped their way through the dark, seeking out muscle fibers that had been waiting for them for eleven years. If one axon got lost, another would take its place; if one encountered an obstacle, it would weave around it. They didn’t rest, complain, or doubt themselves. They just kept moving forward, a millimeter per day.
But he didn’t have x-ray vision. All he could see was his own belly. The two centimeters above his navel, the sensation had recovered, but in the last four weeks there had been no progress. The boundary was still the same boundary, the position still the same position. Each morning when Mainshtan’s cotton swab swept across the skin asking "any sensation," he hesitated before answering. Not because he couldn’t feel it, but because what he felt was exactly the same as yesterday. No extension, no progress.
He began to doubt.
Not doubting Professor Mainshtan, not doubting Professor Yang Ping, but doubting himself. Doubting if his body was good enough, doubting if his willpower was strong enough, doubting if that 0.1 microvolt signal was due to a machine malfunction, doubting if the two centimeters of sensation recovery was just psychological.
One night, when Sister Li went out grocery shopping, he lay on the bed alone, placed a hand on his abdomen, closed his eyes, and thought hard. He wished the boundary would move down, wished to use the power of thought to propel those nerve axons forward. He thought so intensely that sweat surfaced on his forehead. When he opened his eyes and scratched a line above his navel with his nail, there was no sensation. The boundary hadn’t moved. The nerves hadn’t sped up. Willpower, in the face of physiological rules, was worthless.
When Sister Li returned, she saw him lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, his complexion bad. She didn’t ask what was wrong. She simply put the groceries in the fridge and then walked over, sat by the bed, and placed her hand on the back of his hand.
"Jianguo, do you remember when you used to work on cases and sometimes there would be no leads for months?"
"...I remember."
"Were you anxious back then?"
"I was anxious, but I couldn’t rush it. Cases aren’t solved by rushing, they’re solved by waiting."
"Then what are you anxious about now?"
Chen Jianguo didn’t speak, his eyes turned red.
Sister Li didn’t continue speaking, she just held his hand a bit tighter. Her hands were rough, from too much housework, the joints slightly deformed. But when those hands held him, he never had to doubt anything.
—She didn’t believe in any scientific laws, she only believed in him.
In the twelfth week after surgery, change appeared again.
That afternoon, Chen Jianguo was doing breathing exercises in the rehabilitation room. Hans had taught him a method of deep breathing: inhale deeply through the nose, then slowly exhale through the mouth, until he couldn’t exhale anymore, then forcefully contract the abdomen to squeeze out the last breath. He had done this motion hundreds of times, each time feeling like he was exerting effort into the air. His abdominal muscles had never worked in the past eleven years; he was used to completing breathing using the diaphragm and intercostal muscles. Abdominal muscles? Those were someone else’s muscles, not his.
But this time was different.
He inhaled deeply, slowly exhaled, exhaled until he couldn’t anymore, then forcefully contracted his abdomen just as Hans had taught. Then, he felt something.
Not pain, not numbness, but a deep, subtle tugging sensation. Like a fine, fine thread passing through the chest cavity, across the abdominal wall, reaching the vicinity of the navel. That thread was so weak, weak enough that he could almost certainly dismiss it as his own illusion, but it was there. It felt like a spider’s silk, ready to break at a gust of wind, but there it was.
He didn’t tell anyone, afraid that saying it out loud would snap that thread. Afraid that it was just his hallucination, that his brain had fabricated it due to craving a signal too much. Afraid that Mainshtan would listen and look at him with that calm, emotionless gaze, then note in the notebook "complaint of abnormal sensation, cause unknown." More afraid that Sister Li would get excited for nothing, only to be disappointed again.
