“Shen! Fang! Yu!”
Jiang Xu shot to his feet, the chair behind him clattering loudly to the floor.
Yu Sang cautiously helped the chair upright again. Almost everyone who had been chatting fell silent, glancing between Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu.
Oh no, not another fight today… Who was the genius who seated them face-to-face? Someone was definitely going to have to pay for the collective trauma.
Wu Rui glared at Shen Fangyu. He had known Shen Fangyu’s foul mouth would cause trouble sooner or later. Patting Jiang Xu’s back, he tried to mediate. “Calm down, calm down,” he soothed. “Blame me, junior brother. I was just talking to Fangyu about my wife’s pregnancy symptoms, and he was only teasing you.”
But Jiang Xu, who had been glaring daggers at Shen Fangyu, suddenly trembled slightly at those words.
Wu Rui’s four simple words—“pregnancy symptoms”—slammed into his brain, quickly overwhelming his thoughts.
Dizziness, fatigue, aversion to greasy food, nausea, vomiting… Those were textbook pregnancy symptoms. And as an obstetrician himself, no one knew them better than he did. He just… had never considered applying them to himself.
Wu Rui was fully prepared to step in and break up a fight, but to his utter surprise, after his explanation, Jiang Xu… sat down quietly.
Although his face was a little pale, the storm had somehow passed. Wu Rui stared at him in disbelief, then muttered under his breath, “Wait, am I actually that good at talking people down? Should I quit and join the police as a mediator?”
“Yes, the next Nobel Peace Prize is yours, Brother Wu,” Shen Fangyu said with exaggerated cooperation. Even he was a little baffled; Jiang Xu was being unusually compliant today.
But then Jiang Xu suddenly stood up again.
Everyone braced themselves, was he about to throw a punch after all? But instead, Jiang Xu merely patted Yu Sang on the shoulder and walked out of the lounge.
Yu Sang blinked in confusion, then looked around for help. All he saw were his colleagues staring back at him with looks of encouragement and expectation, their gazes practically shouting: Go on, you can prevent a war.
Resolving himself, Yu Sang’s uncertain expression firmed into determination. He straightened his back, raised his chin, and followed Jiang Xu out with the air of a national hero.
Then he saw Jiang Xu leaning against the wall in the hallway, one foot propped against it while the other remained flat on the ground. His head was lowered, one hand pressing against the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted. Under the harsh white lights of the corridor, Yu Sang noticed for the first time how much weight Jiang Xu had lost lately; even his shirt seemed to hang loose on his frame.
When Jiang Xu noticed him, he beckoned him over. Once Yu Sang approached, Jiang Xu lowered his voice and asked, “If a patient had sex two months ago and is now experiencing nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, fatigue, and dizziness, what would you say is the cause?”
Yu Sang was used to Jiang Xu quizzing him with random medical questions, though this one seemed unusually basic. Still, he answered reflexively, “Pregnancy.”
Jiang Xu inhaled sharply, as if suppressing an overwhelming urge, and pressed further. “And if that patient is a man?”
“…” This question was… beyond the syllabus.
“Maybe…” Yu Sang hesitated before suggesting, “you could… run an HCG test?”
“?” Jiang Xu looked at him incredulously.
Yu Sang was certain that, the moment he said it, Jiang Xu’s expression screamed: I’m about to throw you into the ocean and feed you to the sharks. So he backpedaled at lightning speed. “I-I’m just saying. Maybe it’s a gastrointestinal problem or something.”
Jiang Xu pinched the bridge of his nose and waved him off. “Go tell them I’m not feeling well. I’m heading home.”
“Oh…” Yu Sang stared after him in confusion.
He’d followed Jiang Xu for years but had never once seen him look like this. Watching his senior’s thin, solitary figure retreat down the hallway, so light it seemed like a breeze could carry him away, Yu Sang suddenly had the urge to tell him to eat more and stop working himself to death.
But obstetricians, like surgeons, were always rushing around because of their heavy surgical workload, walking so fast it was as if they were racing to reincarnate. By the time Yu Sang opened his mouth, Jiang Xu had already disappeared from sight.
With a sigh, Yu Sang turned back toward the lounge.
Everyone else was still at the dinner gathering, and the office was empty. Jiang Xu stared blankly at the medical literature on his computer screen. After ten minutes, he was still stuck on the first line. Irritated, he shut down the computer and got ready to leave work.
Outside, the night was deep, and when he looked up, he could still see the moon.
There was a very tall camphor tree outside the department. Deep within its branches was a bird’s nest, and the mother bird had just given birth to a brood of chicks. She was feeding them now, their chirping filling the air with noisy liveliness.
Jiang Xu’s gaze lingered briefly on the nest, then shifted to the hospital building behind the tree.
After a long pause, he stopped in his tracks, turned back, and sat down in his office again. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if steeling himself, and then dialed a number. “Is this the laboratory duty room?”
His voice was soft, like the night breeze.
A voice on the other end hummed in response. “What’s up?”
“Are you guys busy right now?”
“Not really.”
Jiang Xu twirled his work badge in his fingers, his eyes falling on the photo of himself. “I’m bringing up a urine sample. Could you run an HCG test for me? Put it on my personal tab, this is Jiang Xu from OB-GYN.”
Among doctors in the same hospital, cutting corners to bring in a sample for themselves or their family without going through all the usual formalities was quite common, usually just to save time and money.
Colleagues from different departments tended to turn a blind eye. Such tests were usually done without asking for names or recording patient information. The result would simply be handed directly to the doctor who brought it in.
Although it was a little odd that Dr. Jiang wanted to pay out of pocket, the lab doctor on duty didn’t question it. He simply gave him a clear answer, “The result might be out late. Don’t wait up, check it tomorrow morning.”
“Alright,” Jiang Xu replied.
But that night, for once, Jiang Xu didn’t fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He didn’t want to admit it, but the reason he was still awake was because he was waiting for the lab result.
He couldn’t explain why. He knew it was absurd. He was a man, no matter how similar his symptoms were to early pregnancy, it was impossible for him to be pregnant. And yet… he couldn’t sleep at all.
The marker he’d asked the lab to test was called human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG, a common indicator used in early pregnancy tests. But even if it was elevated, it didn’t necessarily mean pregnancy. It could also point to pituitary dysfunction or several types of malignant tumors.
Jiang Xu even seriously considered which would be worse, cancer or pregnancy.
Shen Fangyu’s face kept flashing in his mind over and over, and even many details of that night, long buried, slowly crept back into his memory.
As he waited for the result in growing frustration, he felt utterly ridiculous.
A professional obstetrician, lying awake in the middle of the night, actually wondering if a man could be pregnant, if this ever got out, his colleagues would laugh themselves sick.
And yet, when his phone chimed with a notification, he grabbed it immediately, unlocking it in a rush to open the file sent by the lab doctor.
On the fresh test report, in stark black and white, there was only one indicator.
Jiang Xu stared at it so hard it was as if his gaze could burn a hole through the page. He fixated on that familiar marker and the soaring number beside it, and the conclusion was inescapable:
Either the machine was broken… or the world had gone mad.
He all but leapt out of bed in the middle of the night and immediately called Tang Ke.