The Sickly Double Doesn't Want to Be Spoiled - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Beep— Beep—

In the deep of the night, the monitor emitted a rhythmic, reassuring ticking sound.

The nurse, having recorded Meng Yuan’s vital signs, looked at the boy on the bed who had his head tilted to the side and seemed unable to muster much energy; a helpless smile appeared in her eyes.

“You absolutely cannot eat strawberries again next time,” she persuaded gently. “You can’t touch them even a little bit, do you understand?”

Meng Yuan turned his head and stared blankly at the nurse for a good while before finally appearing to snap out of it, nodding slowly.

“I understand…”

Ever since learning that this body had a severe strawberry allergy, Meng Yuan had been sad for half an hour.

After a lifetime of being stingy and scraping by, he had finally transmigrated into a book and thought he could achieve “strawberry freedom” without pain. In the end, he had only taken a few bites before ending up in the hospital and being ordered never to touch them again—anyone would be emo.

He unconsciously smacked his lips, tasting the lingering flavor of strawberries. Although it had long been completely replaced by the bitterness of medicine, he could still recall the taste of that first bite of strawberry.

It really was quite delicious, lots and lots of sweetness and a tiny bit of sourness, full of juice, sweet yet refreshing.

However, on second thought, Meng Yuan wondered if this was perhaps a kind of price?

Because he had obtained a second life out of thin air, it couldn’t be perfect and needed a bit of regret?

Just like how the shelf life of this life was only two years; if he were allowed to experience it for too long, it would inevitably be a bit extravagant.

If he thought about this too deeply, it would be too sorrowful, so Meng Yuan stopped right there.

The nurse noticed Meng Yuan’s regretful expression and smiled to comfort him: “Alright, don’t be sad. If you really like eating strawberries, wait until your body is a bit better and eat some strawberry-flavored things as a substitute?”

She thought for a moment, “Like when we want to eat rice while dieting but can’t, and we get some meal replacement shakes?” She made an eating gesture with her hand and winked playfully at Meng Yuan.

Meng Yuan was also amused and looked seriously at the nurse: “Thank you.”

He was currently in the exhausted phase after the adrenaline from the rescue had faded. His laughter tugged at his chest, bringing a slight palpitation.

His vision blurred for an instant, and Meng Yuan suddenly thought of Lu Cong, reflexively feeling a wave of lingering fear.

Their first meeting really couldn’t be considered pleasant, to the point that Meng Yuan felt somewhat afraid just reminiscing about it now.

He hadn’t met many big figures; the highest-ranking officials he had seen in his previous life were the leaders who occasionally came to inspect the construction site.

Those leaders were all smiles when they waved greetings from afar.

Lu Cong was different from all of them; at their first meeting, he had looked as if he wished he could choke him to death.

Meng Yuan’s head had been dizzy at the time, and his thoughts hadn’t been very coherent. He didn’t remember Lu Cong’s expression, nor could he clearly hear his voice.

But he clearly remembered Lu Cong’s hand.

It was very large, with knuckles as hard as metal, carrying a dry warmth. When it clasped his throat, even if it hadn’t used force, it felt like a snake’s flickering tongue licking past, making one’s scalp tingle and skin crawl.

Why would someone so compassionate as to adopt stray kittens be so fierce specifically to him?

Meng Yuan shuddered, waking up from his memories.

A spasm hit his throat. He coughed once, frowned, and then a heart-wrenching fit of choking coughs erupted.

In his flickering vision, he saw the nurse who had been smiling just now suddenly change her expression.

…

On the other side, in the group headquarters building, Song Zhen stood straight before the office desk, reporting in a low voice: “The person has woken up; the situation is stable for the time being.”

Lu Cong’s elbows propped up his weight on the massive, deep black metal desktop. He was focused on browsing the emails before him, the cold light of the screen reflecting on his expressionless face.

After a good while, he spoke: “Understood. You can head off work first.”

“Understood,” Song Zhen nodded.

He had only turned and taken a few steps before he was called back by Lu Cong.

Lu Cong turned off the computer screen, leaned back into the chair, and loosely turned his wristwatch with his thumb, seemingly deep in thought:

“What illness does he have?”

Song Zhen hadn’t expected his superior to suddenly ask this. He opened his mouth, his brain short-circuiting for an instant, and hurriedly pulled out his phone.

“MDS,” he said. “Myelodysplastic Syndrome.”

He quietly breathed a sigh of relief; the name was truly a bit hard to remember.

Clearly, Lu Cong had zero expertise in this area either, as he raised his eyebrows: “Is it a type of leukemia?”

“Not exactly,” Song Zhen recalled the information he had learned earlier. “In essence, it is a malignant hematologic tumor; in the later stages, it has the potential to progress into Acute Myeloid Leukemia.”

“That serious,” Lu Cong murmured. “Then what treatment is he receiving now?”

He looked at Song Zhen curiously, as if he were merely intrigued by a brand-new field and trying to absorb new knowledge.

Song Zhen felt a faint sense of strangeness.

He quickly suppressed his thoughts; experience told him that over-analyzing the boss’s intentions was not necessarily a good thing.

“Young Master Meng’s current condition is not yet very severe,” he said factually. “Currently, he is receiving some basic supportive therapy.”

He added: “But to completely cure this disease, he still has to rely on a bone marrow transplant.”

Bone marrow transplant.

Lu Cong’s finger lightly tapped the desktop. This, at least, was not unfamiliar; modern medical bone marrow transplant technology was already very mature.

Song Zhen still had something to say. He thought about it and finally decided to tell Lu Cong what he had heard.

He took two steps forward to Lu Cong’s side and leaned down slightly: “The information I received here is that the Meng family is unwilling to treat him anymore.”

Lu Cong looked up.

This time, he was truly surprised.

A bone marrow transplant might be a difficult hurdle for an ordinary family. Money could crush them, and the long wait and search for a donor could destroy the willpower of an entire family.

But it shouldn’t be so for the Meng family.

They didn’t lack money, resources, or connections. Treating a pitiful youngest son with a serious illness should be as simple as saving a stray cat or dog.

The corner of Lu Cong’s mouth hooked into a mocking arc; it seemed that after the surprise, he felt it wasn’t strange after all.

“Is there any special reason?”

Song Zhen’s eyes moved. He was about to speak when he was interrupted by a ringtone.

It was a call from the hospital.

Under his superior’s silent consent, he answered the phone. The next second, his eyes suddenly widened.

…

Lu Cong came to the hospital for the second time on the same day.

In his thirty years of life, there had never been a day where he had run here so frequently.

Less than five hours after entering the rescue room for a severe allergy, Meng Yuan was undergoing a second rescue.

The doctor, covered in sweat, stood beside Lu Cong, panting heavily with lingering fear.

“It’s pneumonia,” the doctor said.

“The patient is an MDS sufferer; his immune system is very fragile to begin with. The severe allergy caused his blood counts to plummet, which in turn triggered an infection. Fortunately, the rescue was timely,” he said quickly. “There is no longer any danger to his life now.”

However, Lu Cong’s expression did not soften much because of this supplementary sentence.

Across the airtight glass barrier, he looked at the boy inside, who was covered in tubes and even more strictly protected; the worry in his heart grew even deeper.

It had to be said that in just one day, this Meng Yuan had truly shown him the fragility of life.

Was establishing a routine commercial marriage with such a fragile life form, one that could not withstand any setbacks, truly a wise move?

Lu Cong performed an invisible weighing of options in his heart.

“If possible, please find a donor for Young Master Meng as soon as possible,” the doctor cautiously reminded Lu Cong. “Although the condition is stable now, we really cannot guarantee when it might suddenly spiral out of control.”

“After all, his blood type is special; it’s best to transplant as early as possible—”

“What?” Lu Cong suddenly interrupted.

The doctor froze for a moment: “I said early transplant…”

“What blood type?”

“…Rh-negative Type A.” The doctor sighed. “The transplant difficulty is very high. Finding a donor who is both an HLA high-match and Rh-negative is simply harder than finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Not a single person in the Meng family could successfully match with him,” Song Zhen said.

Lu Cong gave him a look, gesturing for him to continue.

Song Zhen finally found the opportunity to complete the words he hadn’t had time to say in the office.

“The internal relationships of the Meng family are chaotic,” he said. “Manager Meng has had four wives in total and fathered six children. Young Master Meng’s mother was the fourth wife, who passed away from illness three years ago.”

“The current Mrs. Meng is Manager Meng’s first wife and mother to the eldest son of the Meng family; the two of them got back together thirty years after their divorce.”

“The young master’s blood type was inherited from his biological mother. No one in the Meng family, including President Meng, has the same blood type as him.”

A flash of understanding crossed Lu Cong’s eyes.

So that was why the Meng family was unwilling to treat him?

A child without a mother’s protection, unloved at home, with distant family ties.

The Meng family did not lack a youngest son to show filial piety. Perhaps his older brothers and sisters even felt that one less Meng Yuan meant one less person to divide the family assets why not be happy to let it happen?

Lu Cong’s gaze looked toward the hospital bed in the monitoring room; for a moment, his expression became somewhat complex.

“Do you… want to go in and see him?” To the side, the doctor asked in a small voice.

The kind “angel in white” had eyes full of compassion. After hearing Song Zhen’s words, he felt even more heartache for the young, beautiful, yet unloved youth inside.

With almost no thought, he interpreted the complex look in Lu Cong’s eyes as he watched Meng Yuan as the heartache of a lover.

This wasn’t a bad thing for Lu Cong.

After all, in the eyes of outsiders, he and Meng Yuan were in a relationship that was about to be married.

He didn’t refuse, going with the flow: “If it’s possible.”

“Of course!” The doctor smiled with relief.

Ten minutes later.

After a strict disinfection procedure, Lu Cong put on sterile clothes, a mask, a hat, and gloves, and walked into the monitoring room.

The surroundings were very quiet.

It was an environment so quiet it easily prompted one’s thoughts to wander.

Thus, the slight ticking of the equipment became exceptionally obvious.

Thus, under the oxygen mask, the sound of Meng Yuan’s evenly sprayed breaths also reached Lu Cong’s ears without missing a beat.

Lu Cong walked a bit closer and saw that Meng Yuan was sleeping soundly or rather, he was unconscious.

The infection had caused his body temperature to rise, and the skin beneath his eyes showed tiny red spots from slight capillary ruptures.

He had no consciousness at all.

Lu Cong was able to observe him even more unscrupulously.

He took special note of the boy’s neck and saw that the shallow red marks there had almost completely disappeared, confirming that he hadn’t been mentally deranged and actually tried to kill him back then.

“Too strange…” Lu Cong said as if talking to himself.

He still felt it was too strange.

He remembered the way Meng Yuan looked a few hours ago on the hospital bed, with red eyes, saying “I really want to live” word by word.

That was an extremely scorching, longing, and even irrationally burgeoning desire to survive that surpassed common sense; even his tears were burning hot.

Such a gaze could absolutely not be faked.

However, the actions he took were diametrically opposed to his words.

How could someone who wanted to live so badly voluntarily eat so many strawberries—enough to kill himself?

Regardless, in fact, Meng Yuan’s behavior had made his already weak physical condition even more precarious.

Lu Cong could not understand this situation.

Starting from a few days ago, he had constantly felt this kind of unnamable strangeness, causing him to fall into anxiety from time to time.

But he didn’t have much interest in trying to fathom Meng Yuan’s state of mind, much less any intention to peer into the logic behind his actions.

He only needed Meng Yuan to be an easy partner for the marriage alliance.

He took a few steps forward, bent over, and propped his left hand by Meng Yuan’s pillow.

“This time, I believe you,” he said softly.

“No matter what you’re thinking, at least for now, you must live well.”

Life is such a precious thing; how could it be given up so easily?

He also absolutely could not let Meng Yuan die by his side just a few days after being brought over.

At the thought of how much trouble that would be, Lu Cong couldn’t help but frown.

Suddenly, the tips of his right fingers felt hot. Lu Cong instinctively looked down and then froze.

Meng Yuan had grabbed his hand.

He still had a pulse oximeter clip on his index finger, but he used his remaining fingers to tightly and unconsciously grasp Lu Cong’s hand.

Lu Cong’s brow twitched, and the expression on his face was very strange and somewhat unfamiliar.

Several clouds of white mist puffed out inside Meng Yuan’s oxygen mask, as if he were speaking.

His face was very peaceful; even with tubes inserted all over his body, he looked as if he were having a beautiful dream, his features relaxed.

Lu Cong hesitated for a few seconds and leaned down.

“Warm…”

Meng Yuan’s voice was so low it was almost inaudible.

“So warm…”

He pulled Lu Cong’s hand, murmuring unconsciously as if praying for warmth.

He even seemed afraid that this warmth would disappear, trying hard to press closer to Lu Cong’s arm which also moved the equipment on his body.

Beep beep!

Lu Cong was suddenly startled awake. He pulled back his hand as if he had been burned and pressed down on Meng Yuan’s shoulder to keep him from moving around.

He stood where he was, a bit alarmed and a bit blank.

There was a tumultuous sea in his heart as he stared blankly at his palm.

Was it warm?

In fact, because of the high fever, Meng Yuan’s whole body was at a burning temperature; Lu Cong’s hand wasn’t warm at all in comparison.

So what warmth was he searching for?

Lu Cong didn’t know.

The boy on the bed was oblivious, having no idea of his arrival at all.

Having lost the heat source he wanted, he curled himself up slightly, his eyelashes fluttering twice in a wronged and pitiful manner before falling back into a deep sleep.

Creatures that are naturally sensitive and lack the ability to protect themselves can always easily gain people’s compassion.

Lu Cong’s heart beat loudly; he hated this feeling to the extreme.