Wang Meixia was seething with anger and didn't hold back, firing right back: "So my daughter's a bit tough—so what? Isn't she a hundred times better than your daughter? Your daughter lies around at home all day, eating and waiting to die, and that son of yours, he's in his twenties and hasn't worked a single day. Lazy is what you'd call it if you were being kind; if you didn't know better, you'd think those two siblings were home incubating eggs."
With that, Wang Meixia closed her eyes and said no more. What was there left to say? She'd picked her man herself. At least she'd listened to her mother when she was young. Now she truly regretted having this child. The scars from the episiotomy and the C-section still ached, the baby was still in the observation room, and whether it would survive was anyone's guess. And if it needed to be kept alive with medication later on, what then? Where would she find that kind of money? Zheng Chao wasn't as handsome as Xiao Jingping, wasn't as well-off as Xiao Jingping—the only thing he had over Xiao Jingping was a silver tongue, good at sweet-talking her. Looking back now, even if she'd followed the Xiao family into the countryside re-education back then, Xiao Jingping would have looked after her every step of the way. It would probably have been better than this.
Zheng Chao's face stiffened at the retort, his heart skipping a beat. He hadn't expected Wang Meixia to snap like that, and with such harsh words. His eyes darkened. If it weren't for the money, there was no way he'd have stayed tangled up with this woman all these years. And if it weren't for her, his own wife wouldn't have gone into difficult labor—she'd found out about their affair right before giving birth and had a complete emotional collapse. To be honest, he did love his wife—pure as ice, clean as jade, and from a good family. Wang Meixia was nothing more than a plaything to him, but he couldn't afford a falling-out right now.
The gloom on Zheng Chao's face instantly gave way to fawning flattery: "Meixia, what's got you angry now? You can't be angry during postpartum confinement—it's my fault. It's just that, in my memory, I thought those two kids would turn out like you when you were young—cultured and sensible. Look, the moment you get upset, my heart clenches. I just care about you. If I said something wrong, hit me a couple of times, but don't ruin your health over it." As he spoke, he grabbed Wang Meixia's hand and guided it toward his own face.
Hearing Zheng Chao's words, Wang Meixia's tears streamed down her cheeks...
Meanwhile, Xiao Mandong, storming out of the hospital, hadn't even reached the exit when Director Qi called her back: "Done cursing people out? You think you can just walk off without getting back to work?"
Xiao Mandong, red-eyed, wiped her tears and looked at Director Qi with hurt in her eyes.
All she wanted was to do her job well and wait quietly with her sister for the Xiao family to be exonerated. Why was that so hard? Why did people always have to pick fights?
"What are you looking at? Your job was arranged by the military. Who has the authority to fire you?"
Before Xiao Mandong could say a word, the head nurse from Internal Medicine came running over in a panic:
"Director Qi, the GE electrocardiograph machine is broken! What do we do? The screen's all gibberish in some foreign language, and it won't respond no matter what I press!"
"What about the equipment team?"
Director Qi turned and headed back, and Xiao Mandong hurried to follow.
In the Internal Medicine consultation room, Master Wang from the equipment team was crouched beside the machine, screwdriver in hand, sweat soaking his hair. He was one of the better repairmen at the hospital; complicated circuit issues were no problem for him. But today, this American-made GE electrocardiograph had him completely stumped.
"How's it looking, Old Wang?" Director Qi was genuinely anxious. The machine had been bought less than a year ago, and the manufacturer had already sent someone to repair it once. Nobody knew exactly what was wrong. The American expert hadn't even swapped a single part—he'd just pressed a bunch of buttons. In plain words, he fiddled with it a bit, and the machine worked again.
For that bit of fiddling, the hospital had coughed up a full two thousand yuan. Two thousand yuan! That was enough to pay the entire hospital staff's wages for two whole months. And they'd had to wait on that expert hand and foot, feeding him and putting him up like he was royalty.
And now, this precious, high-maintenance beast had broken down again. If they had to call another expert in, where on earth were they going to scrape up the money?
Staring at the foreign characters on the screen, Director Qi's eyes went red with pain. This thing was nothing but a bottomless money pit.
Master Wang tossed his tools aside and slumped onto the floor, yanking at his hair in frustration: "Director Qi, I really can't fix this foreign machine. I checked the circuits—nothing's broken or burned out. All these squiggles on the screen, I can't read a single one. How am I supposed to fix it? We're going to have to call in an expert."
"Call an expert? With what money?" Dean Cao rushed in, chest heaving, breathless: "Last time, I wore my legs out trying to scrape together those two thousand yuan, nearly wore down the threshold at the Finance Bureau. I caught an earful about wasting state assets before I finally got the funds together."
Master Wang picked himself up off the floor: "Dean Cao, I honestly don't know how to fix it."
Xiao Mandong pushed her way past the people crowded around the machine, and her eyes landed on the screen immediately. Those jumping red English letters—"Calibration Error"—made the knot in her chest come undone.
Ever since she was little, her grandfather had hired private English tutors for her. In her previous life, she'd kept learning alongside the children, and she regularly read English medical literature and journals, so she had more than a passing familiarity with these technical terms.
This wasn't a broken machine—it was a drift in the internal calibration parameters. In plain terms, the machine had forgotten what it was supposed to do.
"I can give it a try." Xiao Mandong's voice was quiet, but it silenced the entire room.
Director Qi froze. Dean Cao quickly asked: "Xiao, you... you can read this foreign writing?"
Xiao Mandong nodded. "I've studied a bit."
"Good, good, go ahead and try."
Xiao Mandong was just about to step forward when someone stopped her—Zhang Chenghui.
"Dean Cao, this machine is far too expensive to be touched by some young girl with a bad class background. Isn't that a bit reckless?"
"What if it only needed a slight adjustment, but she damages the internal components instead?"
Dean Cao suddenly came back to his senses too. Right—if it just needed a little calibration, two thousand yuan might settle it. But if a part had to be replaced, that wouldn't be a two-thousand-yuan matter. The cheapest replacement part would run at least eight hundred to a thousand.
But they didn't even have two thousand yuan right now. If it really couldn't be fixed, this machine would probably end up like that X-ray machine—gathering dust in storage.
And since they couldn't afford to fix it anyway, it would end up in the storeroom regardless. So why not let Xiao Mandong try? Treat it as trying a dead horse as if it were alive. He gritted his teeth: "Go ahead and try. If you can't fix it, it's not on you."
Zhang Chenghui, hearing Dean Cao's decision, grew frantic: "That's not acceptable, Dean Cao! This machine cost over twenty thousand—it was bought with the hospital's special equipment fund! If she breaks it, how are you going to answer to the Health Bureau?"
Zhang Chenghui had a gut feeling that Xiao Mandong would manage to fix this machine. He couldn't let her score another achievement. If she stayed at the hospital, he'd never be able to work in peace. Every time he saw her talking to Director Qi, he was terrified she'd spill his secret. And to keep Qi Yuqing from having too much contact with her, he hadn't let Qi Yuqing come by for lunch these past few days.
