Race the Rain, Chase the Sunset / Yizhan

Chapter 1

Race the Rain, Chase the Sunset

Riding a bike is like an art.
Something you do because you feel something inside.

- Valentino Rossi

Chapter 1

It’s one of those days. The hectic ones. The ones that seem to fly by in the blink of an eye but leave you utterly exhausted by the time your head hits the pillow at night. They are the best days and the worst. No time to over think your decisions. No time for regrets.

There are many days like these in the emergency room Xiao Zhan works in - at Jinzhan Hospital in the east of Beijing, not far from the airport. Relaxed days are a creature of myth. They never happen. His days are either busy or downright exhausting. Today is the latter.

It’s with a tired sigh that Xiao Zhan opens the door to the examination room his next patient is waiting in. He puts on his most convincing smile and finds himself again grateful for the concealer Yang Zi has given him for his last birthday. To cover up the dark circles after a twenty-four hour shift. It helps. Or so Xiao Zhan tells himself.

“Hello, what do we have here?”, he asks, clipboard tucked against his chest, looking at his small patient. It’s a boy around the age of eight or nine years. He’s sitting on the bed, eyes and cheeks red and puffy from crying but chin raised in defiance.

Brave little man. His mother is by his side. A worried looking young woman in her late twenties. A little too thin for her height, Xiao Zhan notices, but otherwise looking healthy, albeit a little pale. Probably due to her son’s injury.

It doesn’t take a genius to know what’s going on here. The little man has a broken leg. He has his left leg stretched out in front of him, his pants are torn and give sight to the bare skin underneath that is already starting to turn green and blue. The bruising will be even worse by tomorrow. But what strikes the most is the awkward angle the bone is in. It hasn’t broken the skin, but the fracture is still obvious.

“Xiao yisheng , here are the x-rays”, a soft voice to Xiao Zhan’s right announces. He turns his head and sees a pair of soft, big brown eyes and a tender smile. The only good thing about today is that Xiao Zhan’s shares a shift with Xuan Lu, one of his best friends and a nurse in the emergency room. She’s a lifesaver. Patient and kind and understanding even when she’s being worked to the bone. Xiao Zhan admires her.

He takes the x-rays of the boy’s leg from her and returns the smile. “Thank you, Xuan huishi ”, he replies, addressing her by her formal title as they are still at work and have to be professional around their patients. “So, what do we have here?”, Xiao Zhan continues holding the x-ray against the dazzling neon lights of the room to get a better impression of the fracture itself. The boy is lucky, it’s a smooth cut without bone splinters embedded in the surrounding tissue.

Xiao Zhan lowers the x-ray and walks up to the waiting mother and child who have watched him in silence so far. “Good afternoon”, he greets them, smiling at them both. “My name is Xiao yisheng . I take it you are...”, he throws a quick glance at this clipboard. “Hu Bowen, right?”

The boy on the bed briefly looks at his mum, as if he needs her permission, before he finally speaks in a high, whiny voice. “Yes, I am”. His round, slightly chubby face is tear strained and he’s shaking slightly. Xiao Zhan looks at the clipboard again. Painkillers were given a bit over fifteen minutes ago. They probably haven’t kicked in yet.

Smiling again, Xiao Zhan moves across the room, takes one of the wheeled stools and places it in front of the examination bed, before sitting down so he’s on eye level with his young patient. “Okay, A’Wen, tell me on a scale from one to ten, how bad is the pain?”, he says patiently.