Chapter 33

The half-grown kid who’d charged out swinging was completely limp now.
A few sturdier farm men who’d rushed over pinned him to the ground.
“Isn’t that Shuisheng? What’s he doing here? If it hadn’t been for him, that Qin widow would probably be gone.”
The villagers crowding around chattered nonstop. Something like this hadn’t happened in the village in ages. The last time it got this ugly was that water-rights fight with the neighboring village.
Wang Shuisheng’s uncle, who had been waiting at home forever for his nephew, heard there was a huge brawl between the Qin and Wu families in the private plots and that half the village had gone to watch. He rushed over, and of course, the first person he saw was the nephew who’d never shown up.
Just before the New Year, he’d run into his older sister at the town supply and marketing co-op. She’d said that after the holiday she’d send her son Shuisheng over with some meat.
He hadn’t expected this “visit” to turn into such a disaster.
“Shuisheng! What happened?! How’d your arm lose such a big piece of meat?!”
Heartbroken, his uncle rushed up and planted two heavy blows on the boy with the hoe, punching him so hard he staggered.
Wang Shuisheng?
The name rang a faint bell for Bai Xinmei.
“Your name is Wang Shuisheng?”
She wiped her tears, forced herself to steady, and raised her voice. “Team Leader, Wang Shuisheng’s arm is seriously hurt. We have to stop the bleeding and get him treated right away!”
Her shout jerked the team leader back from the tug-of-war he’d been having over who was right and who was wrong. Up till then he’d been grilling both the Qin and Wu families, and both insisted they were in the clear. Now that someone was almost killed, the Wu family was even less willing to admit fault.
If they did, who’d pay for Shuisheng’s medical bills? And if it came to it, who’d go down to the police station?
Qi Lianshan pinched the bridge of his nose. Should he just call the police and be done with it? But everyone here was from the same village. If he really did that, what was he supposed to do after? There were plenty of people in the village with the surname Wu; they’d all back each other up. How was he supposed to keep being team leader?
But if he didn’t call, Shuisheng was from Shizi Gou, the next village over, and a worker at the meat plant besides. He’d have to give the Wang family an explanation. Otherwise, they weren’t going to let this go.
“Ay, Xinmei, you take him to Doctor Ma first.”
With an injury like that, Doctor Ma, the barefoot doctor, wouldn’t be enough. The sanitation station in the village was primitive, and with such a big wound, if it got infected and festered, someone could still die.
Bai Xinmei hurriedly explained, “Team Leader, we have to go to the town hospital. The station isn’t enough, and Doctor Ma isn’t even here right now!”
The team leader blanched, then shouted for his son to hurry and drive over the commune tractor so they could rush him to the hospital.
Once Bai Xinmei and Wang Shuisheng had left, the team leader turned back to the mess in front of him.
Now a third household was involved, which made everything even trickier. By the time Song Jinping arrived, Qi Lianshan had already pieced together what had happened.
Wu’s family lived closer to the private plots, but they hadn’t been allocated as much land as the Qins. At first they’d tried to negotiate: the Wus were willing to swap their more fertile vegetable patch on the back hill for a bit of the Qin family’s private plot by the yard.
But the Qins weren’t stupid. Even if the back-hill land was more fertile, it was much farther away. They didn’t want it.
The Wus came to talk several times, and the Qins refused every time. So the Wus started scheming. They secretly pushed the boundary ditch forward.
That’s how the whole fight had started. At first, the Wus wouldn’t admit it, they were afraid they’d be stuck with all of Shuisheng’s medical bills.
In the end, when the team leader said they’d re-measure the plots, the Wus panicked and confessed.
When Song Jinping got there and saw the pool of blood on the ground, he grabbed the nearest person and demanded details. Only then did the stone in his heart finally drop.
It hadn’t been her. It wasn’t her.
In the crowd, Ming Xiaoxiao also happened to catch the brief moment when his composure cracked. Although he quickly got himself under control, that first flash of panic and desperation had been real, not an act.
She narrowed her eyes and began to think.
Was Song Jinping really that close to these families?
Half the educated youths who’d come were only there to watch the show; the other half had been dragged along. As for actually feeling rooted in the countryside? Almost none of them did. They all saw themselves as wayfarers forced into exile.
Those who’d come down full of grand ambitions, to revitalize the countryside, to shine and burn for the people, had slowly gone numb after endless farm work, harsh conditions, and back-breaking labor with no visible progress.
So she definitely didn’t think Song Jinping was the type to throw himself into solving village disputes out of pure enthusiasm.
So what was he so rattled about? He looked like a man terrified for someone he cared about…
A cold, furious guess took shape in Ming Xiaoxiao’s mind.
Was it because of that widow named Bai Xinmei, the woman most often discussed by the young men and educated youths of Lotus Village?
Just because of her face? Because she knew how to flirt?
So Song Jinping was that shallow too?
She thought of how he’d humiliated her, not sparing her even a shred of face, and that others had overheard. Lately, wherever she went, she felt like there were whispers behind her back, snickering at her.
Her teeth ground together so hard they clicked.
At the town hospital, the doctor examined the wound and said that yes, it looked serious, but the bone wasn’t damaged. As long as the bleeding was stopped and he got a tetanus shot to prevent infection, he’d be fine.
A nurse disinfected the wound on Wang Shuisheng’s arm and wrapped it in thick layers of gauze.
“Nurse, he’s going to be all right, isn’t he? He lost such a big piece of flesh…”
Sitting on a chair in the corridor, Bai Xinmei shot to her feet the moment the nurse stepped out, anxiety written all over her face.
The young nurse ran her gaze up and down the pair, one pretty young married woman, one injured young man inside, and instantly assumed they were husband and wife. She pushed her medicine cart along as she comforted her,
“The doctor said your man just looks badly hurt. It’s nothing serious. Give it ten days to half a month of rest and he’ll be fine. After that, feed him more nourishing food to build him back up. Oh, and don’t forget to go to the cashier and pay the bill.”
With that, she popped her pen into her pocket and trundled off with her cart.
“He’s not my-”
Inside, Wang Shuisheng had heard the nurse’s choice of words as well, and his ears flushed red. The handsome, honest face of his went faintly pink.
Luckily his skin was wheat-colored to begin with, so it wasn’t that obvious.
Bai Xinmei had meant to explain, but the nurse was already gone. She sighed and talked herself down. It wasn’t like they came to the hospital often, and none of these people knew her. A misunderstanding was just a misunderstanding.
Remembering he was still inside on an IV drip, she went back in to let him know. “Um… Brother Wang, I’m going to go pay the bill first. After that I’ll come back and take care of you. Really… thank you for today.”
“Wait, what’s your name?” Wang Shuisheng called after her as she was about to leave. “I don’t think I ever asked…”
“My name is Bai Xinmei,” she said. “Xin, as in ‘appreciate,’ and Mei as in ‘plum blossom.’”
She hadn’t expected to be completely humiliated at the cashier. She’d rushed out so quickly she hadn’t grabbed much money at all.
Broke and mortified, she went to the young man who’d come along with them to ask if she could borrow some.
He’d been outside kicking pebbles, but when he saw Bai Xinmei coming to ask him for money, he stammered so badly his tongue tied itself in knots. She was the prettiest woman in the village. Back when she’d just been widowed, he’d even thought about asking someone to arrange a match, but she hadn’t been interested.
“N-no problem. Y-you’re asking me? I have money, I do, I do.”
Between the two of them, though, they still couldn’t scrape together enough for the hospital bill.
So Bai Xinmei had to bite the bullet and go back to Wang Shuisheng. “Brother Wang, did you bring any money with you? I rushed out and didn’t bring enough. But don’t worry, I’ll definitely take responsibility for you.”
She’ll take responsibility for me…
For a second, Wang Shuisheng just stared, dazed, before blurting, “Yes, yes, I brought some.”
“You’re the one who got dragged into this for no reason. Wu’s family should be the ones paying my medical bills. The team leader will sort that part out.”
Seeing the little furrow between her brows, he tried to soothe her. This wasn’t her fault.
The IV drip took a long time. After several hours in the town hospital, a fierce urge to pee hit him. But with only Bai Xinmei there to look after him, he’d been holding it in as best he could.
In the end he really couldn’t bear it any longer. “Could you… call the nurse for me? I need to go to the toilet.”
Bai Xinmei hurried off to call the nurse.
There were a lot of patients today. In times like these, unless you were seriously ill, people generally wouldn’t come to the hospital. So the nurse was swamped, and after the earlier misunderstanding, she didn’t even lift her eyelids.
“You hold his IV up for him. He can take it out himself and go.”
Huh? Wh–what? Bai Xinmei just about died of embarrassment. How was she supposed to hold Wang Shuisheng’s IV, was she supposed to follow him into the men’s toilet? Wouldn’t she end up seeing his… uh… that?
“Nurse, but I need to use the toilet too. Isn’t that… not very convenient?”
“Of course you have to go with him. If you don’t go, who’s holding the IV? There are stalls in the bathroom, what’s so inconvenient about that?”
The nurse was getting impatient. There were several other people hovering around her, and she honestly didn’t know who to deal with first. Compared to everyone else’s problems, what Bai Xinmei was asking was the simplest kind of question, she had no idea what there was to fuss about.
“But we’re not… what you think we are.”
“Then why did you admit it earlier? Comrade, there are a lot of patients in the hospital. They can’t afford delays.”
In the end, the young man waiting outside went in and helped, so Wang Shuisheng could finally go relieve himself.
That night, when everyone made it back, the team leader had basically gotten things sorted.
The Wu family would pay the medical expenses and compensate with five big unity notes. That was no small amount, almost half a year of Wang Shuisheng’s wages.
At first, the Wus hadn’t wanted to pay. They kept trying to weasel out of it, insisting that the boy’s eyes had been “blinded by an idiot,” and that he’d been aiming at a tree stump.
But Shuisheng’s uncle still couldn’t swallow it. He went back to Shizi Gou to find his older sister and brother-in-law, and Wang Shuisheng’s father came over carrying his hunting rifle. Red-eyed, he pressed the barrel right against the Wu family head’s forehead and scared the man so badly he nearly wet himself on the spot.
“Brother!!!”
From far off, Wang Lanhua spotted her older brother. When the tractor rumbled up to the village entrance, she could finally make out the two people riding beside him, one of them was that shameless widow who’d pissed her off so much in her last life she’d nearly coughed up blood, Bai the Widow.
“Brother, why is she with you?!”