The female doctor stared blankly, showing no reaction to his words.
"Do you remember the man who stood beside you in the group photo at Seventeenth Hospital?"
"Besides the other four young male doctors, there should have been another man around your age. He was a doctor too. You did a lot for him, and you may have been in a relationship, but he abandoned you and disappeared."
Liao Xu frowned at Xu Huo. "Mr. Xu, I'm very grateful you came to see my mother, but she really doesn't remember anything from before."
Xu Huo's expression didn't change. He simply said, "People don't delete their memories. What they've forgotten is still in their brains; they just can't recall it for the moment."
"You're right, but my mother is sick. Her brain has changed. If she can't remember something, then she can't remember it." Liao Xu moved to stop him and ask him to leave, but just then, the female doctor suddenly stirred. She returned to her bed, took a tiny heart-shaped vanity mirror from the cabinet, and smiled as she tidied her hair. Then she put the mirror back where it had been.
Xu Huo picked up the mirror and tapped it lightly. A folded portrait painting fell out along with the mirror's pane. The man in it had no eyes.
Liao Xu was surprised. "My mother drew that a few years ago, when she was learning to sketch. She drew lots of identical ones back then."
"None of them had eyes?" Xu Huo snapped a photo of the painting, then put it back in its original place.
"No. She said that as she kept drawing, she'd forget what the model looked like."
Xu Huo looked at the female doctor. This incomplete beginner's sketch was the only clue he had