Chapter 22 – Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (2)

It was midnight by the time she made it home. Afraid of waking Shen Fei up, she lit the incense as she usually did, hoping the scent would deepen his sleep.

There was a bottle of ointment in the drawer. She removed it carefully and set about applying it to her multitude of injuries.

Ping An was waiting outside, and he wasn’t inclined to be patient. He opened the door, trying to wedge himself inside. He was obviously too big and got stuck trying to squeeze through. The door frame rattled, threatening to bring the whole place down. Zhao Xi rushed over and began to push him out before he tore the whole door frame off.

In the yard, she tended to the bear’s wounds, washing them with warm water and bandaging them. When it was done, she sent the bear back to his cave to rest.

It was already so late, and she had to go down to the mountain tomorrow. Zhao Xi took a bath and changed her clothes, then went to catch a few hours of sleep.

She was up early the next morning and began preparing meals for the day. She brought the pot and stove into the room. The stove was already filled with coal, enough for it to burn all day. Shen Fei would only have to feed it new coal when the fire was about to die.

When the water in the pot was hot enough to boil, she put two steamers on top, with buns, dishes, and the medicine inside. It would smell strange, with the food and medicine steaming together, but she didn’t really care about that.

The idea had come to her last night. Every morning, she would prepare everything needed for the day. It would be better if she could get her hands on a wheelchair. Then Shen Fei could wheel himself around and he wouldn’t have to rely on her for everything.

There was a urinal under the bed, and he could use the frame she’d built him to get to the toilet. If he could make it to the eaves by himself, he could definitely handle getting to the toilet.

The wheelchair was still necessary, though. It would make everything more convenient for him and give him a strength and sense of purpose that would be beneficial to his recovery.

Zhao Xi took two buns and some vegetables before she left, planning to eat them on the way down to the village. Ping An escorted her to the valley exit and sat there, watching her leave.

Her days were incredibly busy now. One day she would treat patients to earn the money for the wheelchair, and the next she would go hunting with Ping An. As a doctor, she lived rather like a man. Going hunting with a bear wasn’t exactly ladylike.

She’d been hesitant about hunting with Ping An at first, but it turned out to be more manageable than she expected. The first year had been a learning curve, when Ping An woke a few times during his hibernation to hunt, but they gradually adapted to it together.

Although her back and legs were still injured from the fight with the boar yesterday, she insisted on going down to visit her clinic in the village. Besides earning money for the wheelchair, she wanted to avoid Shen Fei. It worried her that her presence would only irritate him. She knew that in his eyes, she was somewhat a shameless, despicable person. She needed to be aware of that.

She could only hope that keeping out of his way would reduce the amount of distrust and dislike he had for her.

*

For the second day in a row, Shen Fei slept until nine o’clock in the morning. The exotic lingered over the room again, so he opened the window to air the cottage out and get rid of the smell.

As he looked around the room, he found that Zhao Xi’s preparations were even more thorough today. The stove was right beside his bed, with a stool close by so he only needed to move a short distance to get to it.

He washed his hands, then took out the dishes with some effort, leaving only a small bowl of vegetables and a steamed bun in the steamer. He drank down the medicine.

There were some candied fruits in the drawer, but those weren’t what caught Shen Fei’s attention. The ointment bottle that usually sat by the candied fruits had been moved. Zhao Xi prepared that ointment for his wounds, and he was usually the only one that used it. Yesterday, while she was gone, he had applied it himself and put the bottle away in the corner of the drawer. Now it sat in the middle, and the lid wasn’t completely shut.

Only he, Zhao Xi, and Ping An were in this valley. It couldn’t be Ping An, and Shen Fei himself hadn’t moved it, so it had to have been Zhao Xi.

Was she injured?

He carefully picked up a piece of coal and threw it into the stove. Zhao Xi had prepared the stove in such a way that it would keep burning and putting out heat all day long. She’d also made up three bowls of medicine for him, which meant she planned to be back that evening.

*

The day slipped away easily.

As the sky began to dark, Shen Fei raised his arm and let the sleeves slide down, revealing the entire limb. He had beautiful hands and arms. They were long, slender, and white, glowing faintly like a jade. He stared at it for a while, then pulled his arm back.

He settled back into bed, looking out of the window. I haven’t had a bath for two days, he thought.