My Idol Turns Out To Be My Ex-Girlfriend - Chapter 13

They arrived at the hospital.

Even after inhaling a bag of oxygen, Lin Sanyuan’s condition didn’t improve, and her face remained a terrifying shade of white.

At this hour, the emergency room was packed. There were people with perforated stomachs from drinking, others with cerebral hemorrhages, and many who, like Lin Sanyuan, showed signs of sudden cardiac arrest from staying up too late. Some were in even worse shape than her, already foaming at the mouth with their pupils beginning to dilate.

The emergency room is the place closest to death. Qiao Lian felt her hands and feet go cold as she stood aimlessly amidst the rushing crowds, feeling utterly lost.

The ER was truly frantic every day. It seemed as though, for a moment, no one could spare a hand to look after Lin Sanyuan.

In a rare moment of panic, Qiao Lian didn’t react until a doctor passed right in front of her. She grabbed his arm and said with a trembling voice, “Doctor, please, could you check on my friend? She’s in a lot of pain right now.”

The doctor seemed long accustomed to such scenes. He said calmly, “Xiao Zhao, get her an ECG first.”

Xiao Zhao was the female nurse who had come with the ambulance. Before she could speak, a young man jumped forward.

He was also wearing a nurse’s uniform. He glanced at Lin Sanyuan on the gurney, then at Qiao Lian, and preemptively said, “Xiao Zhao, you go to bed seventeen. The patient there vomited, go clean it up.”

Xiao Zhao frowned, “Xiao Chen, this patient is a woman.”

“In front of a doctor, there is no gender. They’re already in the trauma room, why be so conservative now? Go where I told you. If the patient in bed seventeen chokes on their vomit and something happens, are you going to take responsibility?”

Xiao Zhao really wanted to snap back at him. If you saw it, why didn’t you go yourself? Why act like a doctor here when you’re just an intern from a technical school who got in through connections?

But she remembered they were in the emergency room where time was life. Getting into a fight with a colleague here would likely lead to a disciplinary write-up.

She couldn’t say much and could only leave.

Lin Sanyuan was pushed into a small side room where the ECG equipment was kept.

This male nurse had semi-long hair and seemed to have a bad temper.

Lin Sanyuan’s mind was a mess, but she had overheard the exchange. In the past, during her company’s annual physicals, she had done ECGs before, but it had always been female nurses.

That bit of “pointless” sensitivity flared up again. Groaning, she pulled off her oxygen mask, gasping for air as she braced her arms to sit up.

Seeing this, Qiao Lian grabbed her hand, “Don’t get up.”

Lin Sanyuan was in distress, “Can we please switch to a female nurse?”

The intern named Xiao Chen was extremely impatient, “If you don’t want to do it, then leave. Don’t take up space and waste everyone’s time.”

His harshness left Lin Sanyuan even more dazed and helpless.

Qiao Lian remembered seeing several female nurses on duty in the hallway who didn’t look too busy. She had originally intended to communicate with him to see if they could swap.

Looking at his face full of impatience, it was clear he wouldn’t be easy to talk to.

She squeezed Lin Sanyuan’s hand tightly, calmed her emotions, and said, “Could you please step out for a moment? I will perform the ECG for her.”

The young man’s brows furrowed, clearly displeased, “Do you think the hospital is some playground?”

“I have clinical nursing experience,” Qiao Lian said with a serious expression. “We don’t want to increase the hospital’s workload. If you insist on staying here and treating a patient with this attitude, as a family member, I have the right to file a complaint.”

Xiao Chen’s brow twitched. Interns feared complaints the most, and he was clearly the type to bully the weak but fear the strong.

Seeing Qiao Lian’s firm stance, he didn’t dare say more.

After Xiao Chen left, Lin Sanyuan squeezed Qiao Lian’s hand, feeling terrible, “I feel like, I’m causing trouble for the doctors here.”

Qiao Lian let go of her hand, reached down to lift her cotton pajamas, and reached behind her to unhook her bra, saying softly, “You’re not causing trouble. You paid for the ambulance and the emergency fees, so the doctors naturally have an obligation to carry out their work. Besides, an ECG is simple. There are plenty of female nurses in the hall, and that male nurse just now, never mind you, even I felt uncomfortable looking at him.”

His motives were too obvious.

Her movements as she attached the electrodes were steady, professional, and very gentle.

Qiao Lian touched Lin Sanyuan’s cold cheek and smiled softly, “And, in times like these, we have the right to say no.”

Since it was just the two of them in the room, Lin Sanyuan stopped feeling nervous, but she felt embarrassed. Tonight, she had truly caused Qiao Lian so much trouble.

The ECG results came out quickly, and the situation wasn’t healthy.

She had an irregular heart rhythm, the ST segment was below the baseline indicating myocardial ischemia, and there were signs of atrial premature beats.

The doctor seemed used to these “sudden death” symptoms caused by staying up late and suggested staying for observation.

Qiao Lian’s small brows hadn’t unknotted all night, her expression very grave.

The hospital wasn’t too crowded. Lin Sanyuan was settled into a private ward and put on an IV drip. She was hooked up to a continuous heart monitor and an oxygen machine, making everything look rather dramatic.

The environment wasn’t great, the wall tiles showed obvious signs of aging. Perhaps the IV had a sedative effect, because Lin Sanyuan fell asleep quickly.

Qiao Lian was still worried and decided to consult the private doctor who used to handle her mother’s condition.

After all the commotion, it was already 4:00 AM.

Qiao Lian pinched the bridge of her nose to soothe the throbbing ache. When she looked at her phone screen, her vision was blurry.

But luckily, to make it easier to find the private doctor in emergencies, she had added an “A” to the beginning of the doctor’s contact name.

The contact was at the very top of her WeChat list, which was convenient.

She dialed a voice call directly.

As the unique WeChat ringtone began, Qiao Lian realized it was already 4:00 AM. Making this call was quite rude, and the person might not even answer.

The music played for about two seconds before the call was connected.

The speed was so fast that she couldn’t help but wonder if Dr. Ye was staying up late again working on a thesis.

“Dr. Ye, I am so sorry to disturb you this late. It’s like this, I have a friend, a very important friend, who was hospitalized tonight with signs of sudden cardiac arrest. The ECG showed arrhythmia, myocardial ischemia, and premature beats. Her condition isn’t great, she has a history of encephalitis, and she took antidepressants for a while. I’m very worried about her and don’t know what to do, so I can only turn to you for help,” Qiao Lian said urgently, her words tumbling out quickly.

There was no reply from the other end, only the sound of slightly noticeable breathing.

This made Qiao Lian pause, unsure of what to do. Just as she was about to speak again, a woman’s voice came through the phone.

“…You have the wrong number.” It felt as if a wind had brushed past her, and the beeping of the hospital equipment suddenly seemed very distant.

The woman’s voice was clear, with no trace of sleepiness. The tone was as clean and crisp as thin frost, pleasant to the ear.

Qiao Lian froze.

The call wasn’t disconnected, so she looked closely.

She had taken the wrong phone, this was Lin Sanyuan’s phone.

Lin Sanyuan was very careless and usually didn’t set a passcode on her phone.

Her blurred vision cleared, and the WeChat name glowing on the screen was ‘A September Watches My Vow’.

The moment she saw that name, Qiao Lian felt as though her heart had been lightly pinched, and a strange, unidentifiable emotion bloomed in the silence.

She rubbed the pad of her index finger with her thumb.

Qiao Lian instinctively glanced at Lin Sanyuan on the bed and then whispered an apology.

The woman on the phone gave a faint “Mm” in response.

She didn’t say much, and it seemed as though she and Lin Sanyuan weren’t very close at all. Regarding a friend being hospitalized, she didn’t even offer basic social pleasantries or ask about the situation.

Qiao Lian didn’t know what to say for a moment.

She didn’t hang up.

Strangely, the person on the other side didn’t seem to want to hang up either.

In the long silence, both of them seemed to have fallen into a tacit, wordless tug-of-war.

The one to break the silence was Lin Sanyuan on the bed.

Through the oxygen mask, she let out a muffled groan and muttered a low syllable. Her eyes remained closed, she hadn’t woken up, it seemed she was dreaming. Her brows were knitted tight, and her eyelashes were damp.

She was crying again.

Qiao Lian quickly stood up to touch her forehead. Looking at her tightly scrunched nose, for some reason, Qiao Lian felt both sad and amused.

“How old are you, Lin Sanyuan? You clearly don’t like sweets, so why do you always cry for candy in your sleep?”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she suddenly realized the phone was still connected.

The glowing screen still showed the call interface.

This made Qiao Lian realize that her tone, which she thought was normal, sounded quite strange when spoken to a sleeping person in the dead of night.

She spoke to the other end of the line again, “I… can I hang up now?”

“Okay,” the woman replied, truly sparing with her words.

But Qiao Lian had an intuition that within that brief response, there seemed to be a thousand things left unsaid.

After the call ended, Qiao Lian let out a long, slow breath of relief. She didn’t call Dr. Ye after all.

After this little interlude, she felt she had indeed been panicking and acting irrationally.

She hesitated for a moment, and a sudden impulse surged in her mind.

Qiao Lian tapped the profile picture of ‘A September Watches My Vow’.

She discovered that the actual WeChat name was ‘September Watches My Vow’.

The ‘A’ at the front had been added as a note by the owner of this phone.

She scrolled through the WeChat contact list and found that Lin Sanyuan didn’t have any other contacts starting with ‘A’.

All those people who did multi-level marketing had been deleted by her.

Qiao Lian didn’t think the woman from just now was a salesperson.

But she had an ‘A’, she was the only ‘A’ in the contact list.

The ‘A’ that would be seen in the very first line the moment WeChat was opened.

As the rhythmic beeping of the medical equipment continued through the night, Qiao Lian had no desire to sleep. She sat quietly in the guest chair, head bowed, her finger sliding slowly across the phone screen.

After a long time, she found herself in a middle position on the contact list.

‘Lian Lian See.’

That was her WeChat name.

As expected, Lin Sanyuan didn’t have the habit of changing people’s contact notes.

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