Entrust the rest of my life to you (余生，请多指教)

Phone Call

MARCH 1, 2009

I buried myself on a desk with books and data, got a headache while calculated out the progressive returns on stock points.

The desk vibrated, I flipped over the phone out of a pile of the draft papers, my mother calls.

"Your father's examination results have come out. About two-third of his stomach has to be removed."

I stopped writing and thought, "Our Accounting Professor who suffered stomach cancer just needed to cut one-half, Teacher Lin, who only suffered from gastric ulcer need to cut two-thirds?" Although my brain had been messed up by large numbers, I remained  highly sensitive to this newly mentioned number.

"The surgery is scheduled for Monday. You come home tomorrow. I will tell you what things to bring here in a moment. On Monday morning, you father's office will send a car to pick you up."

Then in my hesitant , I answered  "oh". Mother simply hung up the call.

At that time, I was like any other senior university student who was revising their graduation thesis, wrapped in a down-filled jacket, with grief and blankly expression.

Teacher Lin, was my father, a senior political expert. He was a person who took things philosophically. He had a stomach disease history for 25 years. During the Spring Festival,  he suffered from Anorexia and only ate a little food. My mother  and I escorted  him to the X city to do an examination.  In the previous examination, I got the information that  he has a gastric ulcer  erosion,  accompanied by  gastric perforation.

People always had intuition and instinct for bad things. For example, "two-thirds" resembled the  needle and the stitch . In a short while, it will cut open and all kinds of previous unusual memory for my parents.

(two-thirds  {三分之二}{er fen zhi er} = the pinyin literary  stitches of a  needle on cloth.)

 MARCH 2,2009

When the car stopped in front of the cancer hospital, I started to feel like my head was covered tightly by the glass cover. Seven years ago, after the high school entrance examination, I was also sent here, that time because of the grandmother's end stage nasopharyngeal cancer.

Father's younger brother came to pick us up, he put his hand on my shoulder, "The operation started at 8 o'clock. Your mother -- wanted to keep it from you, I didn't agree. You have to know about this. If you feel sad, you can cry it out now. But don't let your mother see it later."

I bowed my head, quickly wiped away the tears on my face.

 My mother was sitting in the last row in the family waiting area.

I cleared my throat and put down my backpack, "Comrade, you did very well in keeping this secret from me. How long have you kept it from me?" I sat down and took out a slice of bread from my bag.

 (Comrade {同志}{tóng zhì} = literally meaning ; people with the same spirit or ambition.  Why her father and she are calling her Comrade, was yet to be explained.)

"What are you doing?"  She apparently couldn't accept my calm response.

"I haven't finished my breakfast yet." My nerves  and heart had been hardened for many years due to the ups and downs in my life. Now I'm more stronger and calmer than before. " Do you want some?"

My mother observed my facial expressions  from the side, " You already know about everything!"

"If the car would've stopped at the military academy, maybe you could've lied a little more."

My mother sighed, her eyes had started to turn red.

I reached out  and touched her back. "What did teacher Lin say?" Female Comrade's heart quality isn't generally good if she runs into this kind of situation, she'll easily panic.

She turned around and looked at me. "You don't know.  Your father is taking a knife on his stomach, he must be hurting so much."

I handed over a chocolate bar. "You gave birth to me with C-Section, you also took a knife to your stomach. but now, you look all fine."

I haven't finished eating the two pieces of bread yet, I heard someone shouting, "Stomach surgery on bed 39, Lin XX." I rushed there. 

At the corridor entrance, there was the row of operating rooms, a doctor in surgical gown was holding a stainless steel bowl in his hand. "This is the part we cut out."

Then my mother came to see the thing in the bowl. She was surprised, closed her eyes and turned around.

I stepped forward and carefully looked at the bowl of red and white flesh, as big as my palm, freshly cut out from teacher Lin's stomach. I suddenly felt inexplicably sad. I came forward, close enough to smell that thing in the bowl, there was no blood smell as in my imagination, only a very light smell of disinfectant.

"The tumor's infected area was relatively high, the dissection part is higher than expected, leaving around only 20% of his stomach."

I nodded. The party turned around and went in.

That was my first ever meeting with the doctor. Forgive me for not remembering it clearly- as he was covered up tightly with the surgical mask.

At 12 o'clock, teacher Lin was shifted back to the ward. When we were about to lift him up and move to the other bed  in the ward, the nurse stopped us. "Let the male comrades lift him,  the two of you won't be able to do it."

 My mother and I looked at each other, we were only two female comrades here. Father's younger brother already rushed back as something happened in the company. Where can we find two men?

The nurse looked at us helplessly and said, I'll help you, you can find another one. You can look at the other patient room next door, maybe they've a son. I had no choice but to go out and ask for help.

At that time, the doctor had just returned from the operating room. He  hasn't even taken off his surgical mask yet and had planned to have a shower then go to eat. He bumped into me when he was passing through the door of the room, looked at the ward room number and asked, " Bed 39, what happened?"

I said, "Doctor, could you do me a favor?"

The doctor answered .......

Right there at that exact moment, an ill fated relationship, everything began from here.

Special Dialog : 

Doctor :  When you tried to recall your memory, you sniffed it? I almost thought you were goung to poke it with your hands

(In fact, there such a plan in the beginning.....)