Killing Marriage [ABO] - Chapter 16
Chapter 16; A Change of Heart
When Zhang Qingyuan arrived at the hospital, he saw Ren Zhong in a hospital gown, sitting in a communal wheelchair.
The pregnant woman had been taken to the hospital half-lying on Ren Zhong’s lap, and his clothes and the electric wheelchair were soaked with amniotic fluid and bl00d, essentially “totaled.”
The emergency doctor was briefing Ren Zhong on the situation.
“The patient is having some difficulty with a natural birth. The kidnapped woman, because she was held captive, never had any prenatal check-ups. We have to take it one step at a time; anything could happen during labor. We will do our best.”
Since Ren Zhong was just a Good Samaritan, he couldn’t sign anything or take responsibility. The doctor simply gave him a quick rundown before rushing off to the medical administration office to handle the necessary paperwork.
Ren Zhong turned his wheelchair and saw Zhang Qingyuan’s face.
“You’re here.”
He wasn’t surprised, greeting him with a neutral tone.
“Captain.” Zhang Qingyuan naturally took hold of the handles on the back of the wheelchair. “Let’s go home.”
Ren Zhong shook his head. “No rush. Let’s wait. I want to see with my own eyes that the mother and child are safe.”
Pregnancy is a long process, but Ren Zhong was determined to wait, no matter if it took until midnight or the next morning.
Zhang Qingyuan knew this person was as stubborn as a mule and could only try to placate him. “Alright, then we’ll wait until she’s delivered before we go home. But, labor takes several hours, and you must be hungry, Captain. You’ve been through so much. Aren’t you hungry?”
Now that he mentioned it, Ren Zhong suddenly felt an unpleasant pang of hunger. Upon reflection, he had gone through rehab and a dramatic arrest that morning, and had only managed to have a couple of bites of fried chicken. Of course he was hungry.
They had been together for a while, and Zhang Qingyuan could see that Ren Zhong’s attitude had softened. He continued to persuade him, “The hospital hallway isn’t a place to eat. Let’s go to a restaurant nearby to grab a bite. You eat fast, so with the travel time, it’ll only take twenty or thirty minutes.”
Ren Zhong didn’t hesitate for long and decided to get something to eat first.
Surprisingly, the hospital was not filled with the moans of patients or the wails of families. People hurried back and forth, holding medical reports or medicine, their expressions neither happy nor sad, as they navigated the different floors. The noise and the smell of disinfectant enveloped everyone in the hospital.
Zhang Qingyuan pushed Ren Zhong’s wheelchair forward in silence, passing countless unseen pains, yet remaining a part of them.
“Captain,” he initiated a conversation. “How’s your rehabilitation going?”
Ren Zhong belatedly remembered that the person in front of him had not fully recovered from his shoulder injury. “Your shoulder isn’t fully healed. You don’t have to push me.”
“It’s fine, it’s almost better,” Zhang Qingyuan insisted on holding the handles.
They walked in silence for a while.
As they exited the hospital’s ground-floor lobby, Ren Zhong suddenly spoke.
“I sat in the maternity ward for a long time.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I’ve seen a lot of horrifying ‘deaths’ on the border. But I never imagined ‘birth’ could be so terrifying.”
The woman Ren Zhong had rescued was in a large room with many other women in labor.
“No matter your gender, whether you’re an Omega male or a Beta female, everyone in that room becomes a ‘maternity patient.’ Unfamiliar doctors, nurses, anyone who walks into the room can lift your clothes to examine you at any time.”
Zhang Qingyuan pursed his lips. “Public hospitals have limited resources, and the situation of maternity patients is special; it’s unavoidable. Many hospitals do lack in humanistic care.”
“You, with your neutral stance, are so detached.” Ren Zhong snorted. “Don’t forget, you said you were preparing to get pregnant. I don’t believe that when you’re lying in that room with your legs spread, you wouldn’t feel like your dignity was being trampled.”
The wheelchair suddenly stopped.
Ren Zhong craned his neck to look at Zhang Qingyuan’s face.
Sure enough, it wasn’t a good look.
“You’re right.” Zhang Qingyuan avoided Ren Zhong’s gaze and continued to push the wheelchair.
The sun was hot and glaring, causing Ren Zhong to squint.
A patch of shade fell over his head. It was Zhang Qingyuan holding an umbrella for him, and he also thoughtfully handed him a pair of sunglasses.
With his hands full holding the umbrella, Zhang Qingyuan couldn’t push the wheelchair, so Ren Zhong moved it himself.
He continued, “Just on the bed next to us, there was an Omega boy with an amniotic fluid embolism. In the blink of an eye, his electrocardiogram went flat. A large team of doctors and nurses rushed in with equipment. There was no time to go to the operating room, so they started CPR and a C-section right there on the hospital bed.”
There was no time to draw a curtain. A critical, high-difficulty emergency surgery was performed in the waiting room.
“In less than five minutes, the baby was out, and the patient’s EKG stabilized. But his reproductive cavity kept bleeding. The suction buckets on both sides were full, and the white gauze turned red in a few seconds.”
Zhang Qingyuan felt a pang in his heart and couldn’t help but ask for a spoiler. “Was the Omega boy saved?”
“He was saved and is now in the ICU, but his reproductive cavity wouldn’t stop bleeding, so they had to remove it.” Ren Zhong took a deep breath. “If his husband hadn’t been so reluctant to agree to its removal, he wouldn’t have lost so much bl00d.”
The baby had been saved by the pediatric department and was crying healthily. But the Alpha husband of the Omega boy despised that the child was an Alpha girl and wanted the Omega to give birth to another Alpha boy, so he adamantly refused to agree to the removal of the reproductive cavity.
The bl00d bank sent bag after bag of bl00d. The Omega lay on the hospital bed, his abdomen cut open, but his husband refused to sign.
“He said that a female Alpha is just a fake man, and he wanted genuine lineage,” Ren Zhong said, pointing at a sleazy-looking, pig-faced man smoking in the shade of a tree outside the hospital. “That’s him.”
A bulging belly, thinning hair, sloppy clothes, and a cloud of smoke.
Zhang Qingyuan felt his eyes were dirtied just by looking at him and snorted, “That man’s inside and outside are truly one and the same. He’s a perfect example of ‘what you see is what you get.'”
“Pfft!” Ren Zhong couldn’t help but laugh. “Well said. ‘What you see is what you get’ is a good phrase. It’s a genuine compliment and a genuine insult.”
The man was swearing and on the phone, the content of which was complaining that the ICU was too expensive and that he wanted to abandon his wife and child and run away, planning to get a divorce and match with a young and beautiful Omega to have a child that would satisfy him.
Ren Zhong’s wheelchair stopped for a moment, and he looked back in the man’s direction.
But what could he do?
Helpless, he gave up and continued to move his wheelchair forward.
He suddenly said, “I’ve thought about it. If I can’t find a way to delay this marriage’s reproductive mandate within three years, will I…”
“Captain, you won’t.” Zhang Qingyuan smiled. He pulled on the back of the wheelchair, leaned over, and whispered in Ren Zhong’s ear, “On the contrary, I ask you to please agree to all possible surgeries to save my life, including invasive rescue procedures.”
Ren Zhong raised an eyebrow. “You sound very serious.”
“Of course. How could a promise I make to you, Captain, be fake?” Zhang Qingyuan put his hand on Ren Zhong’s shoulder. “I believe in ‘the Captain,’ and in your mission, faith, and dignity as a soldier.”
The subtext was a clear case of “moral blackmail.”
Zhang Qingyuan’s eyes smiled like crescent moons. “It is your duty to protect the lives and property of the people, Captain.”
This time, it wasn’t just a hint; it was confirmed.
“If that day ever comes, I will respect your wishes.” Ren Zhong’s expression was hidden behind his sunglasses, so Zhang Qingyuan couldn’t see it clearly.
He continued, “I’ve read through all the marriage laws and many case files. I’ve seen the distribution of property and the giving up of the right to life. It’s like a death contract, or a bill of sale.”
Zhang Qingyuan wasn’t surprised. “Exactly. From the current forced-matching system and judicial precedents, marriage only guarantees that every Alpha and Beta male will be assigned a slave.”
“Maybe it’s not just now.” Ren Zhong continued to push his wheelchair forward. “Maybe love and marriage have always been two different things.”
Zhang Qingyuan followed him with the umbrella. “Captain, if we were to assume the worst, is it possible that… a lot of people’s ‘love’ is just a giant lie?”
His eyes flickered as he said, “It’s like a hot dog with rat poison, or crushed bones in an animal trap—just bait for a trap. It’s to trick people into willingly walking into an abyss from which there is no return.”
Ren Zhong gave him a sideways glance.
“Don’t look at me like that, Captain,” Zhang Qingyuan said candidly. “No one teaches Alphas to pursue genuine and perfect love. That’s not how we were raised.”
He said meaningfully, “The people who are told that ‘seeking love and giving love’ is an inevitable part of life—that’s not us.”
Ren Zhong froze. He stopped his wheelchair and thought for a long time.
“Captain, hold the umbrella.”
Before he could finish, the handle of the umbrella fell into Ren Zhong’s hand.
Zhang Qingyuan suddenly took a quick step forward, grabbed a camera lens from a corner, and, like pulling a turnip out of the mud, yanked out a person who looked like a paparazzo.
“My dear journalist friend, we need to rest now. Please forgive us for not being able to accept any interviews.”
The paparazzo was so surprised by Zhang Qingyuan’s swiftness that he was completely dumbfounded.
“Just give us the data card as a souvenir.” Zhang Qingyuan expertly took out the memory card from the camera. “Thank you for helping me and the Captain take a picture together. But this is where it ends.”
After saying that, he re-opened the umbrella, leaving the paparazzo with only his tall silhouette under the shade.
Zhang Qingyuan secretly let out a sigh of relief. The dark cloud of self-doubt that had been hanging over him for the past few days, thanks to Ren Zhong’s “guidance,” finally began to lift.
It turned out that his years of self-discipline and training were not useless; he hadn’t become a weakling. He had just mistakenly used an unconventional person like Ren Zhong as his reference point.
A small crisis like this was something he could handle with ease.
That evening, the kidnapped woman gave birth to a Beta baby girl, and both mother and daughter were safe.
A series of photos and a video titled “Wheelchair Hero Rescues Kidnapped Woman, Then Has a Sweet Date with His New Husband” went viral across various social media marketing accounts.
The photos and videos that were released by these accounts were much clearer than the ones Zhang Qingyuan had confiscated from the paparazzo.