Chapter 486 — Feng Xiaoxiao and Her Father
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"?" Tang Zhi was briefly taken aback, but then she seemed to grasp her mother's meaning, and her brow furrowed at once. "Mom, you aren't thinking of having me go be somebody's mistress, are you? If that's it, then say no more. I couldn't bring myself to do something so shameful!"
Seeing her daughter's resolve, Mother Tang found she had nothing more to say; she could only pat the girl on the shoulder. "There, there, Yun, don't cry. Who knows — maybe one day Wei Zhao will come around?"
"Who wants him to come around? I'm through with him!" Tang Zhi stamped her foot and spoke with finality. "I'm going to study. I was too foolish before, trusting him. Never again!"
With that, Tang Zhi ran into her room. Having poured out her heart to her mother, she felt considerably better, no longer so pent-up and wronged as before.
Mother Tang watched her daughter's retreating figure and shook her head with a sigh, thinking to herself: Yun, you still don't know how hard life can be. When you're as old as your mother, you'll understand what agony it is to have no money.
She thought of her old classmates — many of them had not been half so pretty as she in their youth, yet now they had money, and every one of them kept herself so fresh and dewy. She herself had been the belle of the school in her day, and now her face was etched with the weariness of the years!
It was rare to find a man her daughter liked who liked her daughter in return — even as a mistress, what was so shameful about it? At a class reunion once, a divorced woman had become the kept woman of some big boss and would not stop boasting and bragging to everyone. Far from despising her, they had all been thoroughly envious, and when they left they had made a point of sitting in her BMW for a taste of the good life!
Laugh at poverty, never at vice — the saying was ugly, but it reflected, obliquely, the helplessness of reality.
Feng Xiaoxiao submitted numbly to the blood draw, then was sent off for fluoroscopy and every manner of examination besides. It was the same every time, and the results always came to nothing.
Feng Xiaoxiao yawned and lay listlessly on the hospital bed. Feng Tianlong came in and looked at his daughter with concern. "Xiaoxiao, what would you like to eat tonight? I'll take you out. I've taken a few days off work — I want to spend some proper time with you!"
"No need. Go do what you have to do..." Feng Xiaoxiao shook her head, gazing emptily at the traffic coming and going in the street below the window. "Are the results out yet? When can I go home?" she asked faintly.
The fact that Feng Xiaoxiao asked only whether the results were out and when she could go home made it plain that she held no hope whatsoever for a cure — she wanted only to leave the moment the examinations were done!
Otherwise, if there were any chance of treatment, she would surely have stayed on in the hospital.
"Not yet. But Dr. Zheng is an expert in hereditary diseases — he should have some way," Feng Tianlong said consolingly.
"Don't try to comfort me. Mother's disease — even Lin Dongfang, the great physician of his generation, could do nothing about it. How could anyone else?" Feng Xiaoxiao curled her lip. She had essentially given up hope; she wanted only, in the final stage of her life, to do a few things just as she pleased, and so leave without regret.
"Even the divine physician Lin said at the time that it wasn't that he couldn't cure it, but that certain conditions were lacking—" Feng Tianlong broke off with a helpless note in his voice. "Physician Lin said that if he were given five years, he might find a solution. But your mother couldn't wait five years..."
"Isn't that just making excuses for his own incompetence?" Feng Xiaoxiao snorted. "Who knows whether he could actually cure it, or whether he was just afraid of ruining his reputation?"