Chapter 73: Sleeping Beauty
Chapter 73: Sleeping Beauty
“Are you going to call that a pretense? I didn’t think so.”
Lu Chenzhou even looked a little proud of his speech, opening his eyes to observe Cheng Xi.
Cheng Xi responded, “At least it’s not just me who hasn’t noticed. I think that your grandparents haven’t either because they’ve always believed that you’re an intelligent, capable, righteous, and kind child. Your friends haven’t noticed. Baldy is very protective of you. Because he thinks that you’re loyal and always willing to help, he treats you as his best friend. If so many people haven’t noticed, then how do you know that that’s not the real you? Perhaps those words are the actual lies. Perhaps in reality, you really are intelligent, handsome, and sympathetic and passionate…… It’s just that you haven’t noticed.”
As Lu Chenzhou listened, the pride in his face transformed into doubt, almost as if he were asking himself, Could that really be the case?
Cheng Xi smiled, and reached out to grasp his hand. “Alright. You can think about this problem yourself later. Now, let’s look at your condition, okay?” Her finger lightly pressed down on where she had seen scratch marks. With a sigh, she asked, “You’ve scratched away all the skin in this region. Does it hurt?”
“Yes, it hurts.”
“Does it itch?”
“Yes, it itches.”
“It hurts and itches? How uncomfortable that must be! Shall we call the doctor in to take a look at you?”
He stared at her. “Aren’t you a doctor?”
“This isn’t my specialty, and you’ve been sick for quite a while. Thus, you need a holistic checkup.” She went on, asking, “You’re tired, aren’t you? If you’re tired, then you should go to sleep for a while. The checkup will be very quick.”
Lu Chenzhou frowned and he adamantly refused. “No!”
“Why not? It’s just a cold. Many people go to a doctor for this.”
“You too?”
“Me too.”
“You are a failure of a doctor.”
“……”
His tone was so serious that Cheng Xi almost accepted it as a fact. But then, Lu Chenzhou yawned and simply said, “I’m tired,” before falling forward and landing in her lap.
She had seen what had happened last time he was tired, so Cheng Xi wasn’t surprised when it happened again. She steadily propped him up until he was comfortably resting against her body with one hand clutching hers and the other unrestrainedly reaching into her clothes and pinching her waist as he sighed, “How comfortable.”
“……”
Once he was sound asleep, Cheng Xi carefully extricated herself from Lu Chenzhou and went outside to call for Dr. Xie. “Let’s just have Dr. Xie enter, it’s better to have as few people inside as possible so that he doesn’t wake up.” She looked toward Lu Chenzhou’s anxious grandparents. “Would the two of you mind waiting awhile?”
Despite their worry, they didn’t object. Dr. Xie followed her in. He first put a hand to Lu Chenzhou’s forehead, before taking out a thermometer from his medicine box and giving it to Cheng Xi. “Take his temperature.”
Cheng Xi took it and carefully maneuvered his hand around before putting the thermometer in his armpit from his collar. The cold sensation shocked him awake, and Lu Chenzhou opened his eyes.
Cheng Xi explained, “You have a fever. I need to take your temperature.”
He didn’t respond, and merely looked at her, but he didn’t object either. After a while, he took her hand and used it to prop his head up like a pillow.
Cheng Xi was speechless, as now she was forced into a half-kneeling position to serve as his human pillow. Their postures were embarrassingly intimate, but Dr. Xie ignored them. He put on his stethoscope and very seriously moved it about Lu Chenzhou’s body for some time before asking Cheng Xi, “Can you have him stick his tongue out for me?”
This was a highly difficult request, and Cheng Xi wasn’t sure if she could accomplish it. The key was that she didn’t know what would happen if she woke him up, so after a moment’s thought, Cheng Xi said, “Can you look at something else first? He’s still suffering from an allergic reaction.”
The old doctor nodded and removed Lu Chenzhou’s clothes, but the resulting sight caused both of them to suck in a breath.
Underneath the clothes, Lu Chenzhou’s back was all but covered with lacerations; the key point wasn’t just the wounds, but the fact that the edges of those wounds were turning white from infection—a few places even showed signs of serious ulceration.
No wonder Lu Chenzhou had been sleeping on his front when Cheng Xi had entered. Even now, he wasn’t in a normal sleeping posture.
Dr. Xie looked at him severely. “Did he scratch himself with a blade and then dunk himself in water? How could it get so bad? I can’t treat this; with the way he is now, he has to go to the hospital and receive specialized treatment for infection. We can’t delay this any further, or he’ll really lose his life.”
When he was finished with his diagnosis, he peeled back Lu Chenzhou’s eyelids to check on his pupils, took his pulse, and then went out with a serious expression, saying nothing more.
Cheng Xi also wanted to go out, but Lu Chenzhou was holding her hand so tightly that she couldn’t move.
The door outside wasn’t shut completely, so she could hear snatches of the conversation going on. Lu Chenzhou’s grandfather seemed to be calling his son, Lu Chenzhou’s father. “Your son’s so ill that he’s about to die. Even if you can’t come back right now, can’t you think of a solution? He has to go to the hospital now, but the way he is, who can send him there?”
Not long after the call, she heard Dr. Xie angrily shout, “What’s the purpose of having all these people come over? In his condition, he needs a perfectly germ-free environment to recuperate in, and he also needs a fair number of examinations to ascertain how deep the infection is… To think of building a germ-free environment here and to even bring the diagnostic machines over? You guys are really…”
Silly but rich. Cheng Xi finished Dr. Xie’s evaluation that he couldn’t say out loud in her head before looking at Lu Chenzhou and smiling. All of you are so similar, just waving money around to get your way.
Lu Chenzhou slept quietly. It was the first time that Cheng Xi had ever been this close to him. Only now did she realize that the man in front of her was really a beautiful man; his skin was white and delicate and his facial features exquisite, cool, and grave. After meeting his father, Cheng Xi felt that his mother either had to be a peerless beauty or Lu Chenzhou had inherited the best features of his parents.
The way he slept very much made him look like a sleeping beauty.
Cheng Xi sighed, thinking that even if she couldn’t be a prince, then she could at least be a manly enough woman to wake up a sleeping beauty—as a doctor, she very much understood Dr. Xie’s exasperation when the Lu family had proposed bringing a whole hospital’s worth of equipment to the Lu estate. If Lu Chenzhou still refused to cooperate, she was prepared to punch him in the face again and forcefully bring him to the hospital while he was dazed.
He was different from Chen Jiaman, so… being a bit rougher wouldn’t matter.
Lu Chenzhou didn’t sleep deeply; his illness had made his whole personality a bit dazed, sometimes clear-headed and sometimes not. When he saw her after waking up again, he frowned as he repeated, “What are you doing here?”
Probably thinking that she was too close to him, he even pushed her away.
Cheng Xi didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point, but at least she didn’t have to serve as his pillow anymore. Before he could get angry again, she quickly poured him a glass of water. “Have some water. Your lips are parched.”
Lu Chenzhou was really quite thirsty, and he took a big gulp of water from the glass in her hands. After taking in some fluids, he seemed to become more clear-headed, and he even leaned up and sat upright as he rubbed his forehead. “Why are you here?”
Cheng Xi ignored his muddle-headedness and sincerely said, “You’re seriously ill. You have to go to the hospital.
After hearing this, he put his hands down, looking at her.
She also looked back at him, her eyes completely devoid of hesitation. “Under normal circumstances, you should already be lying in a hospital bed, so let’s go there now, alright?”
Because he always had a specific sequence that he did things in from start to end, Cheng Xi wanted to implant in his mind the need to go to the hospital when he was sick.
She wasn’t sure of her chances of success, so she could only look at him anxiously.