Lady By The Pillow - Chapter 47

Chapter 47: Horses (Two)

“I fractured my lumbar vertebrae before.”

At the Single East Horse Ranch, the film set for Empress.

During a horse riding scene, a horse’s hoof accidentally stepped into a mole hole in the grass, causing the horse to stumble. Shi Qing was thrown from its back.

“Ah Qing!”

“Oh my God!”

“Shi-laoshi fell off!”

“What are you standing there for! Go check on her!”

Wei Jiuzhen was the first to run to her, followed by her assistant Dong Ya and a group of crew members.

Shi Qing rolled several times on the grass before finally coming to a stop, lying on her back. Her beautiful, distant-mountain eyebrows were tightly furrowed, the veins on her temples were throbbing with pain, and her pale face, caked in thick foundation, took on a grayish, earthy tone.

“Ah Qing! Ah Qing!”

Wei Jiuzhen was the first to reach her. Seeing her biting her lip from the pain, her heart twisted into a knot. Her hands raised and fell again, afraid to touch any part of her body.

“Where does it hurt? Where did you fall? Where does it hurt, Ah Qing!”

Shi Qing was in so much pain she could barely breathe. Her gentle eyes were squeezed shut, creating deep wrinkles on her eyelids. After a few seconds, her bleeding lips parted with great effort, and she said a single word, a word that sent Wei Jiuzhen to hell.

“My back…”

Shi Qing’s back had an old injury from when she was a dancer years ago. When Wei Jiuzhen found out, she was heartbroken, but Shi Qing just smiled lightly and said it was normal for classical dancers to have some kind of back injury.

Every time it was the rainy season, Shi Qing’s back would hurt. Wei Jiuzhen would give her a hot compress, cooling down boiled water in a basin before wringing out a hot towel and placing it squarely on her spine. At those moments, Shi Qing would let out a soft moan from the back of her throat and look at her with gentle eyes, saying, “My little cat, it’s so good to have you.”

But now, her “little cat” had just watched her fall from a horse, hitting the ground like a moth scorched by fire. The first word she could utter was to answer the cat’s question about where it hurt.

She said, “My back.”

Why her back?

Why, of all places, her back?

“Ah Qing…”

“Sister Qing, are you okay?!”

Dong Ya was the second to arrive. Though she usually had zero athletic ability, she had run ahead of the entire crew, throwing herself in front of Shi Qing and bursting into tears.

“You, you, where did you fall? Can you move, sis? Don’t scare me!”

The rest of the crew rushed over, surrounding them.

“Shi-laoshi, can you hear us?”

“Don’t be scared! I’ve already called 911! They’re on their way!”

“Don’t touch her! You absolutely can’t touch her right now!”

A cacophony of voices filled her ears, overwhelming her like a flood. The intense pain in her spine stripped her of all other senses. She struggled to open her eyes just a crack, only to see a blur of white. Her body felt like it was on the edge of a cliff; a single move would send her into an abyss from which there was no return.

She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be pushed off a cliff like this. She didn’t want her hard-won career to be destroyed. She raised her hand, trying to grab a vine from the cliffside, even a single straw, anything to prevent her from becoming a body at the bottom of the abyss.

But she was so tired, she had no strength left. She used all her might just to lift her wrist a few centimeters. But who would care about a few centimeters of such a weak attempt at survival?

No one would.

This world belongs to the strong. If you can’t climb your way to the top after all that struggle, don’t blame the world for eliminating you.

Shi Qing, you’ve worked so hard for so many years, but you still couldn’t break free from the chains of mediocrity. You’re destined to be eliminated.

A chaotic wind passed through her fingers, and her body felt like it was turning into quicksand, rapidly slipping away. She let the worms crawling up from the ground devour her. Her hand fell back, giving up, but just as it did, it was caught by a warm hand.

“Ah Qing, I’m here. I’m right here.”

Sometimes, the vine you desperately reach for but can’t grasp becomes the wings that lift you, carrying you out of the inescapable abyss.

#ShiQingFallsFromHorse#

#WeiJiuzhen’sNewFilmCrewAccident#

As soon as Shi Qing was taken to the operating room, the trending topics exploded on the internet. The video from the scene showed the horse’s hooves collapsing, and Shi Qing flying off like a petal, rolling several times due to inertia. In the half-minute before the crew rushed over, Wei Jiuzhen, with a single hand, pulled on the reins and jumped off the horse before it had even fully stopped.

Amidst the chaos of startled cries and shouts, one high-pitched, sharp voice cut through the crowd, picked up by the camera’s microphone:

“Ah Qing!”

[@LeopardCatWhenAreYouGettingMarried: OH MY GODDD! Did you hear that? At 1:11, did you hear what the little dog called her sister?!]

[@97TimeEldestDaughter: I heard! My ears heard every bit of it! She called her Ah Qing, Ah Qing, oh my god, the significance!]

[@IfINotCrazyTodayThenTomorrow: I don’t need to say what their private relationship is, do I? They’ve only been filming for two months and they’re already together. That’s a little fast!]

[@LikesToCreateDrama: I’m new here. What’s the progress? Have they gone all the way yet?]

[@WaterFloodsTheGreenHills: How could they?! They’re not that casual!]

[@No1LoveCatcher: How can the fanfic writer above be so sure? It’s like you live with them. I say they’ve already done it, and they did it big time.]

[@QiQiLovesQingQing: Oh my god, I think I’m stanning a real couple. I hope my little cat is okay. I’m waiting for you two to get it on, please, please!]

[@97TimeClassRep: I hope my little cat can be discharged today. I’m just a little girl who hopes my little cat recovers, I don’t mean anything else (Remember to go back to the little dog’s room tonight please).]

The virtual world of the internet floated high above, but when it tried to reach the mortal world, the clouds were thick, and the fog was deep. Layer after layer was filtered out, and what reached the world below was meager at best.

The cold air of the hospital was like tape over her mouth and nose—light and thin, yet it suffocated her.

The operating room light was blinding. The words “In Operation” seared a bloody hole into the pale wall, as if bl00d would spray out at any second.

Wei Jiuzhen sat on a bench outside the door. Dong Ya, Zhang Yulan, and two other crew members were with her. No one said a word.

She leaned back, her head against the tiles. The cold air unique to hospitals seeped through her scalp and broke the bones in her neck. The thin costume she was wearing felt inexplicably heavy, as if filled with lead, weighing her down. Her straight spine sagged, and her whole body felt like it was about to fall apart.

Beep.

The operating room light turned green, and Wei Jiuzhen shot up. The attending doctor came out, still wearing his surgical cap and mask.

“Where is Shi Qing’s family?”

Wei Jiuzhen quickly said, “I am.”

The doctor was stunned for a moment, looking at her and then at the few people who had followed behind.

Dong Ya said, “We’re all Shi Qing’s colleagues, Doctor. How is she?”

The doctor explained Shi Qing’s condition. “She fractured her lumbar vertebrae before. This fall caused a recurrence of the old injury. There was a slight fissure in the original fracture site, and it also caused a herniated disc in the adjacent vertebra. We’ve performed a vertebroplasty and a minimally invasive discectomy. The surgery was very successful. We can move her to the inpatient ward.”

Wei Jiuzhen asked, “When will she be able to recover?”

The doctor replied, “She can wear a back brace and get out of bed to walk 24 hours after the surgery. We’ll observe her for a few days, and I’ll give her a physical therapy and rehabilitation plan later. For now, the situation is relatively optimistic. It won’t affect her life too much.”

The weight on her heart finally lifted. The bl00d that had been stagnant now flowed through her veins to every part of her body. Wei Jiuzhen took a deep breath and gave the doctor a solemn bow.

“Thank you, thank you so much!”

Dong Ya cried tears of joy and also bowed several times. “Thank you, Doctor! That’s wonderful, it’s great that she’s okay!”

Zhang Yulan wasn’t as emotionally invested in Shi Qing, but seeing how emotional Wei Jiuzhen and Dong Ya were, she also bowed belatedly. She was already there, after all.

Shi Qing was soon wheeled out of the operating room. The general anesthesia hadn’t worn off yet. Her beautiful eyes were closed, the cold sweat on her forehead had dried, and her hair rested softly on her forehead, just as it had looked when she was asleep hundreds of days and nights before.

Dong Ya quickly called the company to report that everything was okay. The crew members also rushed back to inform Fan Erhua of the situation. Zhang Yulan was called away by her manager.

In an instant, only Wei Jiuzhen was left in the room.

She sat on a chair by the hospital bed. The machine on the wall emitted a “beep” every second, its rhythm echoing in her heart. She gazed at the bloodless face on the hospital bed, her heart pounding against her cracked ribs.

The doctor’s words kept replaying in her mind. Besides the injury from the fall, there was also the phrase, “fractured her lumbar vertebrae before.”

Not a sprain, not a contusion, but a fracture.

Shi Qing’s back had always ached, especially on rainy days. Whenever she asked, Shi Qing would just smile faintly and tell her, “Every dancer has some kind of injury. It’s normal.”

Who fractures their back just from normal dance practice?

On a deeper level, with Shi Qing’s diligent personality, she would fill her time with learning after work. When she was in dance school, she must have been a top student. How could she have ended up with nowhere to go after graduation, forced to start from scratch as an actress?

Ah Qing, how much are you still hiding from me?

A tear fell with a plop, splashing on the back of her hand. Wei Jiuzhen closed her eyes in agony. The thousands of words she wanted to say turned into a stone in her throat, its sharp edges tearing a bloody wound in her vocal cords.

She stood up and walked to the window, facing outward, letting the light calm her emotions.

The clock hands turned round and round. The person on the bed moved a finger, and her eyes moved twice under her thin eyelids before slowly opening.

People are drawn to light when they first wake up. She looked towards the light from the window and saw a straight back silhouetted there. The familiar smell of hospital disinfectant and the numbness from the surgery brought back a distant memory. The figure in her memory overlapped with the one in front of her.

“Little Jun…”

Have you come back, or have I already died?