Jiang Yanchu rushed up to the Nurses' Station, where the nurse on duty had just sneaked half an egg-yolk pastry into her mouth. His shout nearly scared her into choking.
"Where's the patient in room 703?!"
The nurse thumped her chest and gulped down two mouthfuls of water. "Shen Wangjing, right? He was discharged this morning."
Jiang Yanchu's brain crashed on the spot.
Discharged? Someone whose leg was still in a cast, who was still at risk of delayed brain injury, who needed crutches and had to stop for breath after two steps, had been discharged?
He braced himself against the counter at the Nurses' Station and took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice from shaking too badly. "What about the boy staying with him? The really pretty one who stayed there every day-"
"He left with him," the nurse said matter-of-factly. "Of course his caregiver left when the patient was discharged."
Jiang Yanchu stood rooted to the spot, his pupils quaking.
He pulled out his phone and frantically dialed Jiang Xun's number. A mechanical female voice repeated, "The number you have dialed is switched off," over and over, every word like a wooden temple block being struck on the crown of his head.
In the empty corridor, Jiang Yanchu's mind raced like a stray dog off its leash toward a conclusion that sent his blood pressure soaring-that poor brat hadn't run off with his little brother, had he?!
The moment that terrifying possibility surfaced, Jiang Yanchu's mind went completely off the rails of reality and plunged headlong into a tragic blockbuster of his own making-
On a dark, windy night, beneath the plane tree by the back entrance of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Shen Wangjing leaned against the trunk on his crutches, silent as iron, yet