Faced with Li Li and Huanhuan's enthusiastic requests, Lin Zhe felt too awkward to keep turning them down.
So Dan Teng drove them all to Rao City People's No. 1 Hospital.
At the supermarket downstairs from the hospital, the four of them spent nearly three thousand yuan on a huge pile of food, drinks, and everyday necessities.
With a dozen bags and boxes of all sizes, there was no way the four of them could carry everything.
The owner of the little supermarket knew how to keep his customers happy. He lent them a shopping cart, which they loaded to the brim.
The hospital elevators weren't particularly busy that afternoon, and one arrived after only a short wait.
Ding!
The elevator doors opened onto the eighth-floor orthopedics ward, and Lin Zhe and the others wheeled their fully loaded shopping cart out.
The patients' relatives smoking near the elevator stared at the spectacle, some looking surprised and others puzzled.
Good grief, were they here to visit a patient or sell products in the ward?
Now they'd seen everything. In all their years, this was the first time they'd ever seen someone wheel a shopping cart into a hospital!
There were three patients in Room 822.
Besides Lin Zhe's parents, Lin Guodong and Han Li, there was an older woman who looked to be in her sixties.
Her name was Hong Jinhua. She was dark-skinned, stout, and brawny.
Her face bore something of a resemblance to Nanny Rong from My Fair Princess.
In her residential complex, Hong Jinhua was notorious for being a shrew and extremely difficult to get along with.
She had been hospitalized after fighting with another older woman over a dance partner one evening.
She had slapped the other woman, only to fracture her own wrist in the process.
On her first day in the ward, Hong Jinhua ignored the rules and smoked inside.
Lin Guodong had merely reminded her quietly not to smoke in the ward, since neither he nor his wife, Han Li, could tolerate the smoke.
That had been enough to send her into a furious tirade.
The two families had been at odds ever since.
After that argument, Hong Jinhua would periodically toss out sarcastic, spiteful remarks that infuriated Lin Guodong.
If Han Li hadn't held him back, even someone as famously good-tempered as Lin Guodong would have wanted to give Hong Jinhua a beating.
"Sweetheart, didn't I tell you not to buy so much? Look at this mountain of food. How could I possibly eat it all by myself?"
"All this meat and fish will have other people drooling themselves to death!"
As Hong Jinhua spoke to her daughter, Hong Jingjing, she glanced repeatedly at Lin Guodong and Han Li, clearly directing her words at the couple.
Lin Guodong still owed the bank more than two hundred thousand yuan, with monthly repayments of over ten thousand.
On top of that, the medical bills for him and Han Li were another considerable expense.
The couple therefore lived very frugally during their hospital stay.
They rarely bought any dishes to go with their three daily meals, usually making do with rice or steamed buns and a few pickles.
They hadn't brought themselves to spend a single cent of the money Lin Zhe had transferred to them. They were saving it all for the loan repayments.
Even so, they still didn't have enough for the payment coming due that month.
Over the past two days, Lin Guodong and Han Li had been trying to figure out where they could borrow some money to tide them over.
"Oh, Mom, the doctor said you need to eat good, nutritious food with an injury like this. You'll only recover quickly if you build yourself up."
"If you eat nothing but steamed buns and watery porridge every day, forget getting discharged-you'll waste away completely."
"Just eat as much as you like. Whatever you can't finish, take downstairs and throw in the trash. Stray cats and dogs will dig it out and eat it, so it won't go to waste."
As the saying went, birds of a feather flocked together. Hong Jinhua's daughter, Hong Jingjing, was no angel either.
After hearing about her mother's conflict with Lin Guodong and his wife, Hong Jingjing had made no attempt to mediate. Instead, she often came to the ward and joined her mother in their little double act.
Pleased with her daughter's cooperation, Hong Jinhua chuckled. "That's true!
"Better to give it to stray cats and dogs than certain paupers. Their very existence is a waste of air!"
After saying that, Hong Jinhua looked smugly at Lin Guodong through her ugly, aging eyes, openly provoking him.
"You..."
"That's enough, Guodong. Let her say whatever she wants. We'll just pretend we didn't hear."
Seeing her husband on the verge of losing his temper, Han Li quickly caught his arm and tried to calm him down.
When you encountered someone that vile in real life, hitting her wasn't an option. Strike her once, and she could extort you until you lost everything.
You couldn't outcurse her either. Her insults would be nastier and filthier than anything you could come up with!
The most infuriating part was that people like her picked on easy targets, bullying the weak and fearing the strong.
If someone had more power, influence, or money than she did, she would fawn over them every way she could.
But around ordinary people with less power or money, she became unbearably arrogant, looking down her nose at them.
Lin Guodong and Han Li scrimped on food and clothing and clearly weren't rich, so Hong Jinhua naturally thought nothing of them.
"By the way, sweetheart, didn't you say you got another raise? How much do you make a month now? Twenty thousand yet?"
"It hasn't gone up this month. I only just got promoted to supervisor, so the raise won't kick in until next month. After insurance deductions, my take-home pay should be about that much."
"My, my. Between your salary and the rent from our properties, saving four hundred thousand or so a year will be a piece of cake."
"Some people could work like beasts their whole lives and still never earn that much!"
After finishing, Hong Jinhua glanced toward Lin Guodong and his wife again, her old, fishlike eyes brimming with smugness.
Her last remark had clearly been meant for Lin Guodong and Han Li.
Although it angered Lin Guodong, he couldn't be bothered to argue with her.
At its most profitable, his family's inn had brought in five hundred thousand yuan a year-one hundred thousand more than this old woman.
Still, there was no point boasting about past glories. That was all in the past, and talking about it now wouldn't help.
Besides, there was no need to compare incomes with some old woman. What was there to compete over?
Did earning more make you superior, and earning less make me inferior?
If he competed with her over that, wouldn't he be turning into the same kind of person?
Wasn't there a saying online?
Never argue with a fool.
They'll drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
The best way to handle someone like her was to ignore her and treat it as a dog barking.
Just as Hong Jinhua finished speaking, footsteps and the sound of cheerful conversation came from the hallway.
Lin Guodong and Han Li recognized their son's voice among the laughter, and their gloomy mood immediately brightened.
They were always telling Lin Zhe to focus more on the inn and not worry about them at the hospital.
But his weekly visits were the happiest moments of their week.
Click!
The ward door swung open, and Lin Zhe and the others wheeled their cart, piled high with supplies, into the room.
Hong Jinhua and Hong Jingjing's eyes widened at the group and all the things they had brought.
But that cartload of goods wasn't what surprised Hong Jingjing most.
When she saw Dan Teng enter behind Lin Zhe, her eyes nearly bulged enough to pop out her contact lenses!
Before going to the Three Pure Ones Palace to become a Taoist priest, Dan Teng had spent a month working at Feiteng-or rather, slacking off there.
The department he had joined happened to be Hong Jingjing's.
After learning who Dan Teng was, Hong Jingjing had done plenty of fawning over him.
But neither her figure nor her looks suited his tastes.
No matter how blatantly she hinted or how much she fawned, Dan Teng had never paid her any attention.
Running into him at the hospital now, Hong Jingjing naturally recognized at once the man she had once wanted but couldn't have.
Dan Teng, however, had long since forgotten that such an utterly unremarkable woman had ever appeared in his life.
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