A Bad-Hearted Doctor is Unbearably Beautiful - Chapter 55

In the distance, the red and blue flashes of reinforcement sirens pierced through the darkness. On the horizon, the sky was already beginning to bleed a pale, ashen grey.

“How is it… at Jinhu Square?” Lu Xiao asked, his voice thick with unease.

An officer replied, “Rest easy, Captain. The device has been dismantled. We’ve brought the child back to the station and settled him in properly.”

“Good… that’s good.” Lu Xiao let out a long, shuddering breath of relief.

“Captain Lu, you need to lie down immediately!” A nurse looked at the blood soaking Lu Xiao’s chest, her eyes filled with worry.

Lu Xiao waved her off, his voice raspy. “I had a vest on… the wound isn’t deep. Cough… It’s fine. Take care of Doctor Shen first.”

Shen Zhao was slumped against Lu Xiao’s lap, his breathing shallow. His face was a mask of grit and dirt from his tumble onto the road, and his body temperature was terrifyingly low. He appeared completely unconscious; his arms hung limp, and his head lolled uncontrollably to one side.

“Shen Zhao, can you hear me?”

Lu Xiao leaned down to call his name, patting his cheek. Whether it was the jolting of the vehicle or a flicker of consciousness, Shen Zhao’s eyelashes fluttered slightly, though his body remained unresponsive.

“How did Doctor Shen sustain such severe injuries?” The nurse used a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff to monitor his vitals.

“He cut his own wrist… and he jumped from a moving car.” Lu Xiao’s own consciousness was beginning to drift; every rise and fall of his chest brought a stabbing pain from his wound. He closed his eyes, pausing before adding, “While he was held captive, he was injected with two or three unknown drugs. We don’t know what they were…”

The nurse hissed in a breath. Noticing an abnormal amount of blood on Shen Zhao’s thigh, she cut an opening in his trousers. She found a sharp puncture wound—it was still bleeding, the blood matting the fabric to his skin.

“Captain Lu… what is this?”

Lu Xiao’s cracked lips let out a thin breath. He looked down, and his eyes widened as his heart twisted in his chest.

This is…

He knew for a fact that Shen Zhao had no leg injury before the kidnappers took him. This guy.

Shen Zhao, you really are ruthless to yourself.

Lu Xiao’s voice was low, laced with a desperate edge. “You… you’d better hang on for me.”

Two police cars sped ahead, sirens blaring to clear the way, with the ambulance following close behind at its absolute limit. The moment they arrived, emergency personnel were waiting with two stretchers.

The nurse shouted as they sprinted with the gurney: “Patient has suffered massive blood loss! Severe hypothermia! Blood pressure is unstable and dropping fast!”

“Quick! All of you, follow me into Trauma Room One!”

Shen Zhao was rushed inside. In a daze, Lu Xiao felt himself being lifted onto a stretcher as well.

“Wait…” Lu Xiao gripped the doorframe of the emergency room, his breathing heavy and ragged. “I need to make sure Shen Zhao is okay… cough…”

His voice was barely a murmur, his face deathly pale, yet his brow was furrowed in stubborn defiance. The hand gripping the doorframe white-knuckled as he tried to pull himself back toward the room.

The doctor sighed and tried to soothe him. “The situation is critical, but his heart is still beating. We’re resuscitating him now—he won’t slip away that easily.”

Only then did the tension bleed out of Lu Xiao’s muscles. His frayed nerves finally snapped; his body went limp, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.

“Oxygen levels are dropping! Get him on a ventilator, now!”

The lights of two operating theaters flickered on simultaneously. Every injury on the two men was a gruesome testament to the harrowing twenty hours they had just endured.

“He was injected with unknown substances. Draw samples for toxicology immediately!”

Inside the OR, everyone was racing against the Grim Reaper.

“Stabilize his breathing and blood pressure! Doctor Shen needs an immediate transfusion!”

Shen Zhao’s body shook slightly, the ventilator forcing a steady rhythm into his chest.

Meanwhile, in Lu Xiao’s operating room:

“GSW to the shoulder! The stab wound near the heart is deep; we need to operate immediately!”

As the anesthesiologist prepared the syringe, Lu Xiao’s body suddenly convulsed, his breathing turning rapid and shallow.

“Respiration and heart rate are abnormal!”

“Get the epinephrine ready!”

Consciousness sank beneath the surface of an arctic sea. The freezing water saturated his body, and all was dark. The only image that remained was the look in Shen Zhao’s eyes as he glanced back while jumping from the car.

It’s so hot…

Shen Zhao felt a searing heat at his feet. Looking down, he saw that flames had already engulfed his entire pant leg.

Where am I?

The burning sensation seeped through his skin and into his marrow. His lungs filled with the scent of rolling, thick smoke. The fire grew larger, dancing against a dark sky, its tongues of flame licking at his body. The world was consumed by smoke, fire, and a howling wind.

A sense of suffocation wrapped around him, bringing with it a tidal wave of terror. That terror was tossed into the sky, propped up by the licking flames, swelling until it became a balloon on the verge of bursting. The moment it popped, he plummeted into an abyss.

Next, he saw words flickering amidst the fire.

—Angel Welfare Home—

This fire… this was the fire he had set with his own hands.

He stood in a corridor engulfed in a roaring inferno, screaming out names.

“Xiao Wu! Nine! Teacher! … Where are you? Where is everyone?”

From behind him came the piercing, shrill sounds of screaming, the thud of running feet, the wailing, and the cries for help. The flames stood before him like demons, ready to swallow everything beautiful.

It shouldn’t be like this!

The fire… it wasn’t supposed to be this big…

That night, the teachers and the Director were celebrating the Winter Solstice, cooking steaming pots of dumplings. Shen Zhao had drugged the food. He had learned that from Wen Yu—how to cause a brief loss of consciousness.

While the teachers were clinking glasses, he had been curled up on his bed, bed number thirteen, clutching a tin of kerosene. His heart had thundered like a drum.

Every day since he had first escaped, he had dreamed of returning to the orphanage to take everyone away—especially Nine. He didn’t know how much Nine had suffered while he was gone.

They had to get out! Every child “adopted” from the welfare home had long since become an anonymous corpse—discarded test subjects…

Come with me, Nine.

With trembling hands, he had lit the kindling he prepared. A tiny spark flickered in the wind; to him, that light was warm. It was the hope of life.

The guard at the main gate had lost his mind when he saw the flames licking the roof, immediately sounding the alarm and rushing inside.

Nine… didn’t we agree to work together to get everyone out?

Where are you??

The fire… how did it get so big so fast?