It was the weekend.
When Su Jianan worked at the police station, what she had expected the most was that.
Only on weekends could she sleep in Lu Boyan’s arms until 11 o’clock, and see him by her side when she woke up.
However, that weekend was tough for her.
She vomited more severely than the previous day and couldn’t swallow any water. She had been given a drip infusion in the early morning, only through this could she and her babies sustain themselves.
Lu Boyan had been scheduled to deal with his work that day. However, he was worried about Su Jianan, so he asked Shen Yuechuan to handle it when he couldn’t do so remotely.
Shen Yuechuan had been looking forward to the weekend and vacationing at leisure. Realizing that his vacation plan went up in smoke, he cried out on the phone, “After my niece is born, I’ll take a long leave! A long leave!”
Lu Boyan didn’t want to waste his time talking with Shen Yuechuan, so he promised him.
At that moment, Lu Boyan didn’t know that he would regret the hasty promise he had made.
After dealing with some urgent work, Lu Boyan returned to the room.
In the big and quiet room, Su Jianan was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. Because of weakness, her bright face looked pale and diaphanous, which made her long eyelashes blacker and slenderer.
If it were not for her slight breaths, at first sight, she looked like a lifeless delicate porcelain.
Lu Boyan sat down by the bed, then stretched out his hand under the quilt, then lightly held Su Jianan’s cold hand.
Su Jianan wasn’t asleep, and she felt Lu Boyan. She opened her eyes just then and forced a smile to him.
Lu Boyan stroke the base of her thumb and said, “Don’t speak.” From the previous day on, speaking had been very hard for Su Jianan.
Su Jianan closed her eyes to show that she had gotten his point. Lu Boyan moved the hair on her cheeks away, then filled a glass with warm water and moistened her lips with a Q-tip.
At that time, Su Jianan could only drink water that way, because even a sip would lead to her heavy vomiting.
In a little while, Su Jianan shook her head to show that she had enough. Lu Boyan threw the Q-tip in the wastebasket, then drew the covers for her and said, “Just sleep.”
“…What about you?” Su Jianan asked in a low voice, which sounded like a faint breath but struck Lu Boyan’s heart.
Lu Boyan gently held Su Jianan’s hand and said with deep love, “I’m here with you.”
Su Jianan gave him a happy face and closed her eyes with a light heart.
With an empty stomach that made her sick, she couldn’t fall asleep at all and had been half-awake. She could feel secure only if Lu Boyan was with her.
It was Xu Youning that was suffering.
She insisted that she wouldn’t take the painkillers until she went to bed, while during the day she was in so much pain that she would rather lose her injured left leg. Both Ah Guang and the caregiver wondered why she tortured herself that way.
Ah Guang seriously asked her, “Youning, are you fond of torturing yourself? Mr. Mu said that it’s a kind of mental disease. You must see a clinical psychologist.”
Xu Youning just said, “Nonsense!”
She couldn’t tell them that she was doing that to survive.
When she followed Kang Ruicheng’s order to work undercover in Mu Sijue’s company, she had never thought that she would end like that.
Her path forward, which she could almost foresee, would be full of dangers.
If she couldn’t survive the pains, she wouldn’t be able to make it once she was sniffed out, and she would either be shot dead by Mu Sijue or be finished off by Kang Ruicheng.
Four or five days later, as her injuries healed, Xu Youning wasn’t as pained anymore.
What gratified Xu Youning the most was that Ah Guang had been with her those days. He had visited her at 8 a.m. and left at 8 p.m., which was even more punctual than the alarm clock.
To begin with, Xu Youning had played cards and chess with Ah Guang and enjoyed her time. After a few days, however, she became a bit embarrassed, so she gave him a tourist guide booklet and said, “It shows the must-visit tourist attractions in City A. Since you have been busy working for Mr. Mu and you’re here now, why don’t you seize the chance to have fun?”
Ah Guang said without even looking at the guide, “I don’t think it interesting. Playing cards with you is good fun!”
Not only Ah Guang refused to leave the ward, but also the night duty caregiver didn’t go home. No matter how soundly Xu Youning slept after she took the painkillers, she was there to look after her. What’s more, the nurse rounds were on time every three hours.
Except for having a meal or going to the bathroom, Xu Youning had company.
About all that, Xu Youning didn’t realize anything unusual, because she had focused her mind on something—
Since the hasty and irresistible kiss that night, Mu Sijue had never visited her.
Every time she heard the door open, Xu Youning would look toward it, but was disappointed.
She couldn’t help thinking that maybe the kiss was nothing to Mu Sijue, that he just unexpectedly lost control of himself in the darkness, and that he must have realized what he had done after he left.
“His absence is enough to tell everything,” She thought.
To avoid suspicion, Xu Youning didn’t ask Ah Guang about Mu Sijue’s schedule. She had always been simple, and she had never dared to have any illusions about Mu Sijue. After four or five days, she had swept it from her mind.
On the sixth day, Ah Guang went out for dinner and returned with an insulated lunch box, in which was some fragrant and delicious broth.
Xu Youning said, “Wow! Ah Guang, you’re such a skilled cook!”
“If I were, I should have made it for you,” Ah Guang scratched in his hair and said, “The servant of the Lu Family gave it to me. They said that Mrs. Lu had asked the cook to make it for you. That auntie was in a hurry to bring Mrs. Lu’s meals, so she didn’t come here herself.”
“Bringing meals?” Xu Youning instantly smelled something unusual and asked, “Why did she bring Jianan meals?”
“Ah, Youning, don’t you know about that?” Ah Guang said, “Mrs. Lu is in the hospital.”
Xu Youning suddenly looked away from the broth. She held Ah Guang’s hand and asked, “Why is she in hospital?”
She still remembered that Kang Ruicheng would find a chance to hurt Su Jianan, which she had disagreed; so Kang Ruicheng must have come up with another method.
She was afraid, that if Kang Ruicheng did it, Su Jianan couldn’t be able to bear the pain of losing her baby.
“Youning, you have stronger hands than I thought!” Ah Guang said with an innocent look on his face, “Mrs. Lu is in the hospital to prevent a miscarriage because of her serious vomiting. You’re holding my hand too tightly…”
“To prevent miscarriage means that she and her babies are safe,” Xu Youning thought.
Xu Youning breathed a sigh of relief and released Ah Guang. She forced a smile to hide her anxiety and said, “I want to visit Jianan, please take me to the OBGYN.”
In fact, Su Jianan was in a suite on the top floor instead of the OBGYN.
After the previous weekend, she was still not feeling well. Dr. Han worried that there would be some emergencies and advised her to live in the hospital, which he thought would be convenient to deal with any problems.
In the beginning, she declined it because she had a bad impression of hospitals. Later, after Tang Yulan and Lu Boyan took turns to persuade her, she couldn’t resist anymore and agreed to stay there.
Worrying that the smell of disinfectant in the hospital might make her sick, coupled with her resistance to the hospital environment, Dr. Han suggested that Lu Boyan make the ward more homelike.
It only took half a day for Lu Boyan to decorate the ward with a style that Su Jianan liked. The fresh flowers were replaced with fresher, different ones every day. When Su Jianan lived in it, she almost forgot that she was in a ward and gradually accepted it.
While Lu Boyan didn’t want to shuttle between his company, the hospital and his house, so he had his belongings sent to the ward.
He was unwilling to sleep in the nursing room, and the sickbed wasn’t as big as the one at home, so he had to be careful not to bump into Su Jianan. Besides, to take care of her, he had to wake up from time to time. As a result, he didn’t sleep well.
After a few days, looking at his tired face, Su Jianan felt sad and said, “You should go home to sleep tonight.”
Lu Boyan looked away from the documents and glanced Su Jianan. Then he said, “I will be where you are.”
Su Jianan thought for a while and said, “Then you should sleep in the nursing room. The caregiver will take care of me.”
Lu Boyan closed the documents and walked to the bed. He narrowed his deep eyes, stared at Su Jianan and asked, “Do you disdain me?”
Having not seen his intentionally unhappy face for a long time, Su Jianan cherished it. She crooked her forefinger—
Then Lu Boyan bent down and Su Jianan kissed him on the cheek. She said, “I don’t want you to be more tired during the day than at night.”
Lu Boyan raised his eyebrow, and with a meaningful smile he said, “Mrs. Lu, I’d rather be more tired for you at night than during the day.”
After more than one year of marriage, being Mrs. Lu for a long time, Su Jianan knew well what Lu Boyan really meant. However, his ambiguous hint could still make her blush. She looked away and said, “I’m serious! A machine can’t work 24 hours a day, let alone a human being like you.”
Lu Boyan then said seriously, “Are you blaming me? Shouldn’t I take care of you?”
Su Jianan blinked and said, “Uh, from now on I won’t blame you anymore.”
Lu Boyan burst into a smile, then he focused his deep eyes on Su Jianan and said, “Jianan, now, for me, nothing could match you.” Even if it was work.
Therefore, having worked for a day couldn’t be the excuse for him to ask others to look after Su Jianan. He had decided not to have more children since he didn’t want her to suffer twice.
“…” Su Jianan felt warm within her heart, as if someone had pasted a piece of exothermic padding there.
She didn’t think she was able to persuade Lu Boyan, and she could only try to recover as soon as possible or to survive it—Dr. Han said that most pregnant women would stop vomiting in the nineteenth week of their pregnancies, so her symptoms would be relieved.
Lu Boyan was about to make a phone call on the balcony when the telephone beside the bed rang, and there came the nurse’s voice. “Mrs. Lu, Miss Xu would like to visit you. She’s a patient in the orthopedics department of our hospital.”
Su Jianan guessed it was Xu Youning and said, “Let her in.”
Lu Boyan also guessed who it was, then he calmly withdrew from the balcony.
Mu Sijue had told him that, after the police said the collapse of Fanting Garden had been caused deliberately, Kang Ruicheng had visited Xu Youning and tortured her, so Xu Youning had acted on her own and handed over the evidence.
Lu Boyan was grateful to Xu Youning, but it didn’t mean that he began to trust her.
He thought, “Kang Ruicheng must have a design on Su Jianan. Xu Youning is the only one working for Kang Ruicheng that can easily get close to Su Jianan.” Lu Boyan would never let Xu Youning stay alone with Su Jianan.
