Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When the tip of the pen touched the “Consent” column, Song Wantang’s hand shook so violently she could barely hold it steady.

The nurse took the document and turned to run back inside.

Silence fell over the corridor once more.

Standing to the side, Gu Yanxi seemed finally unable to hold herself together. She slowly crouched down, covered her face, and burst into tears.

“He wouldn’t let me tell you,” she said, her voice hoarse. “He said your life has been hard enough already, and he didn’t want to drag you into this.”

Song Wantang looked down at her. “How long has he been sick?”

“The first definitive diagnosis was six months ago. But it started even earlier. On the day your shop opened, he suffered an arrhythmia while speaking on stage. Later, he fainted twice-once in his office and once in the surgical demonstration room. The hospital originally wanted him to stop operating, but he refused. He kept pushing until he simply couldn’t hold on any longer.”

Song Wantang froze.

During that period, she had been working on her autumn main show, spending over a dozen hours a day in the studio. Yuan Shiyu had been coming home later and later; she had simply assumed he was avoiding her on purpose.

“What about the child?”

Gu Yanxi wiped away her tears. “Xingxing’s mother was declared brain-dead a month ago. She met the criteria for donation and had signed a letter of intent before she passed. The elderly members of her family couldn’t handle the logistics, so Director Yuan helped coordinate many of the follow-up procedures. The transfers and the house you saw-those were all part of the settlement for the donor’s family.”

Song Wantang closed her eyes, her chest tightening with a dull ache.

She remembered that day in the rain, the way he had leaned down to tie the child’s shoelaces. That hadn’t been the tenderness of a lover; it was the instinctive compassion of a doctor facing a child who had lost their mother.

And yet, standing in the rain, she had interpreted that scene as a final judgment.

“Why didn’t he say anything?” she murmured. “Why didn’t he say a single word?”

Gu Yanxi gave a bitter smile. “He wouldn’t even let me mail his medical records to the house, terrified that you’d find out. We all tried to persuade him, telling him you had a right to know. He said that you had already stayed by his side through his poorest days and the period after you lost your child-that it was enough. For this final stretch, he didn’t want to make you keep watch again.”

Just then, the sound of high heels echoed from the end of the corridor.

Zhou Lan walked toward them, handbag in tow. Her face showed little panic; instead, she looked more like someone forced to clean up a mess.

She shot a cold glance at Song Wantang. “You actually have the nerve to be sitting here.”

Song Wantang slowly stood up.

“Why shouldn’t I be sitting here?”

“If you hadn’t been constantly fighting him for a divorce, would he have delayed his hospitalization until it reached this point?”

Gu Yanxi frowned. “Dean Zhou, now is not the time for this.”

Zhou Lan ignored her, her eyes fixed solely on Song Wantang.

“He should never have married you in the first place. Aside from distracting him and making him weak, what have you ever given him?”

Looking at her, Song Wantang suddenly felt exhausted. She finally understood just how difficult Yuan Shiyu’s life had been, caught in the middle all these years.

She didn’t endure it in silence as she had in the past.

“What have I given him?” she said, enunciating every word. “At the very least, I gave him someone willing to stay with him through life and death. He’s the one who didn’t dare to take it.”

Zhou Lan’s expression faltered.

At that moment, the light above the operating room suddenly flickered.

Everyone looked up at the same time.

The red light was still on.

But that brief flicker felt like a precarious omen of things to come.