Chapter 7.2✿

“By the way, Professor, let me introduce you. This is Miss Zhu Xiang Lin, an anesthesiologist.” Dai Xingren introduced her to his mentor. “We have worked together many times. This operation requires precise postoperative anaesthesia, so I asked her to come and help.”

“I know, I’ve heard about it.” Xiong Jianming greeted Zhu Xiang Lin with a smile. “Miss Zhu, your father is now practising in New York, right? We are old classmates, we used to practise at the same hospital together!”

“Really?” Zhu Xiang Lin was surprised. “Why didn’t Dad tell me about this?” 

“He is a busy man, how can he have time to pay attention to such trivial matters? Wait for you to help me get through the phone and remind him later.” Xiong Jianming joked, and after a pause, he turned to his protégé again. “You must be very tired after getting off the plane, would you like to go back and rest first?”

“No, I’m not tired at all.” Dai Xingren politely declined the kindness of his mentor. He scanned his surroundings with deep eyes but couldn’t find the person he cared about the most, and his eyes dimmed instantly. 

“Is Chuan Ya… at the hospital?”

“Do you mean the chairman?” At the mention of Mo Chuan Ya, Xiong Jianming looked around alertly, fearing that there were ears on the walls, and quietly pulled his protégé aside. “She’s probably in the ward with her grandmother right now. What? Have you not been in touch with her?”

Dai Xingren didn’t answer, just crunched his lips bitterly.

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Two days later, the surgery team assessed Mo Fang Shiqi’s physical condition and decided to operate on her. The operation team was nominally led by Xiong Jianming, but this time the doctor in charge of the operation would be Dai Xingren. 

The long-awaited collaboration between master and disciple set off animated debates in the hospital. The observation room above the operating room was packed full with doctors who had come to observe the difficult operation and some of the less senior doctors who were not able to secure a good place could only watch the simultaneous relay from their offices. 

Mo Chuan Ya had also come to the observation room, both as the chairman of the board  and as the patient’s family. The dean specially reserved for her the centre seat in the first row, with a clear view.

“It’s time to start.”

When Dai Xingren signalled the nurse to hand over the scalpel, a wave of excited whispers resounded in the observation room, like a wave breaking on the shore, shaking Mo Chuan Ya’s heart.

She ordered herself to keep her face expressionless, but her eyes couldn’t help but follow her husband’s every move.

He neatly sliced open her grandmother’s chest and used a heart wall fixator to intermittently interrupt the flow of blood through the coronary arteries to perform a non-stop heartbeat. This new opening method allowed the patient to recover more quickly after the surgery than traditional bypass surgery, but it also required more precise judgement from the surgeon in charge and special care from the anesthesiologist. The clock was ticking on the wall. This was a race against time, with no room for error, and Dai Xingren was decisive enough to accurately reconstruct the coronary artery stoma.

“Amazing! How can he move so fast?” The physicians on the sidelines sighed in admiration as he wounded two or three arteries in the time it took others to wind one. “No wonder Dr. Zhu Xiang Lin said that watching him perform surgery is like appreciating art.” 

Zhu Xiang Lin.

At the sound of her name, Mo Chuan Ya’s mind was suddenly shaken and she unconsciously looked at the anaesthetist who had been standing quietly and carefully observing the patient’s condition.

During surgery, the patient would inevitably bleed and it was her job to keep the patient’s body temperature normal and maintain haemodynamic stability.

Sometimes, when Dai Xingren needed special support, he would glance in her direction, and she would promptly comprehend, and the two would make eye contact, and it would be understood without words.

There was indeed a tacit understanding.

Mo Chuan Ya had been in deep thoughts when a spell of dizziness inexplicably took over her. She forced open her sore eyes and watched the whole operation calmly. The operation was successfully completed to the applause of the crowd and Dai Xingren stood in the middle of the operating room, receiving the applause of the team members with a calm and relaxed demeanour. He had really become a great doctor.

Mo Chuan Ya stared at him, her heartstrings tightened and her chest ached slightly. She rose to her feet and was about to leave when Dai Xingren suddenly looked up and their eyes met and they were stunned at the same time.

These past two days, just as the two were about to meet, things would suddenly happen and they were unable to see each other in the end. Now, the first time they met again, they were actually at the scene of surgery, gazing at each other from a distance in the operating room.

All the noise and laughter, all the amazement and appreciation, but at that moment, was silence. Neither of them could not hear nor see a thing else. The only thing in their eyes was each other, the only pillow-talk partner whom they had been apart from for five years.

In these past five years, has the other one ever missed them? Had they cared about each other as much as they had?

They both had doubts, they were uncertain, and even though they had not seen each other’s eyes, they both felt an indescribable shudder.

It was Mo Chuan Ya who looked away first, because she saw Zhu Xiang Lin walking towards him, giving him an American-style hug and congratulating him on the success of his operation.

She should have congratulated him too, or at least thanked him for saving her grandmother’s life and allowing her children and grandchildren to still be with her.

She should be thanking him. It was a good reason, a reason good enough that would not be out of place even if she were to summon him to her office. At the thought of it, Mo Chuan Ya could not help but bitterly smile to herself. Since when did a wife need a reason to see her husband? Why on earth had their marriage come to this point?

Was it all her own fault?

But she did not regret her decision to drive away her husband back then. She did not regret it at all.

It didn’t matter that her family reproached her for being too stubborn or that her friends felt sorry for her, she still did what she wanted to do. Over the years, she would rather taste loneliness than to be weak.

She really had no regrets…

Mo Chuan Ya walked leisurely towards the intensive care ward. When she passed a glass door, she stopped to examine her own figure.

Her figure was still as slender and graceful as it was five years ago, her face had not changed, except for her long, flowing hair, which had been cut short and now hanged freshly at the back of her neck, emphasising a lustrous, delicate neck.

Was she still beautiful? Did she mature? Did she become a little charming and feminine?

Could she still catch his eye, as she had five years ago? Would his eyes follow her with longing? Or would he rather look at another woman? Mo Chuan Ya hated herself for being so apprehensive. She was the daughter of the Mo family, she was supposed to be proud and confident. How could she be so restless over a man? But it was clear that even though she was five years older, she was still, at times, the same young girl who was infatuated with love.

She laughed at herself as she quietly made her way to the ICU to visit her grandmother, who had just undergone surgery.

Mo Fang Shiqi was lying in the hospital bed with serene brows, while a female doctor closely observed her physiological condition and took notes on her medical record.

The doctor was none other than Zhu Xiang Lin.

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Edited by: TsumiHokiro