Ava's surgery lasted seven hours, and Chiba sat outside the operating room waiting anxiously.
It's a bad sign that the surgery is seriously overdue - it usually only takes one to two hours, and not finishing on time means something went wrong.
The longer you delay, the slimmer your chances of survival.
Chiba kept rubbing his palms while staring motionlessly at the "Under Surgery" indicator light in front of him.
At nearly ten o'clock at night, the exhausted doctor walked out of the operating room and announced the results to Chiba in a low voice.
Chiba didn't react much and accepted it calmly.
To be fair, this result was completely within Chiba's expectation - Ava is seventy-two years old. In her decades-long career with mercury needles, Ava has never had to replace any organs or prosthetic limbs. She has always been A person who is aging completely.
Having missed the window of youth, her aging body can no longer accept the most effective and radical treatments - and even if her physical condition permits, Ava will refuse any modification to her body.
Whether it's prosthetics, artificial organs, or chips... Ava hates anything that blurs the boundaries between machines and humans.
"Where is she now?" Qianye asked in a low voice, "I... want to see her again."
"In the ward."
Late at night, Chiba returned to Ava's ward alone.
After leaving the operating room, Ava lay in the sterile cabin. The transparent sterile cabin was like a coffin prepared in advance, glowing with bright green light.
There were no lights on in the ward, so Chiba sat down next to Ava.
Doctors said Ava fell into a coma, but she looked like she was asleep - she was still wearing a light blue surgical cap, her thin cheeks were sunken, and her eyes were always closed.
Ava in the sterile cabin was quieter than ever before. Chiba could see some faint ups and downs in her chest. On the monitor next to her, Ava's electrocardiogram was beating regularly and weakly.
Across the sterile cabin, Chiba stared at the old man's eyelashes.
In those countless days and nights that have passed, there were many afternoons when Chiba sneaked into Ava's office while she was taking a nap, and then quietly squatted next to the sleeping Ava, observing the old man. s face.
When Ava is asleep, she is quiet and not as fierce as when she is awake. Sometimes, her eyelashes will tremble slightly - Valenti said this phenomenon usually means that people are dreaming.
Qianye stretched out her five fingers and placed them closest to Ava's hand. Tonight, she expected to see Ava's eyelashes tremble again, but nothing happened.
…
On the third day, Ava's housekeeper Aya appeared in front of Chiba.
Aya's eyes were already swollen. She took out a manuscript and handed it to Qianye, which contained Ava's arrangements for her posthumous affairs. Qianye flipped through it and saw Ava writing on a certain page, she He refused to be buried in a cemetery after his death, and only wanted to be cremated as soon as possible and have his ashes scattered into the sea.
"Very good, let's arrange it this way...Why do you want to show it to me?"
"Because there is no point in delaying it any longer," Aya whispered, "I have asked the doctor, and you must sign."
"...What to sign?"
"The ventilator," Aya looked at her, "stop it."
Chiba didn't react.
"Ava's lungs are still shrinking, and the infection caused by the surgery has not stopped... Do we really want to let her suffer like this until she dies?" Aya opened a page in the manuscript again, "Look here. , Ava is strongly opposed to excessive medical treatment, and she would not want us to keep her by force like this."
Chiba's eyes focused again along Aya's fingers, and then looked at the sterile cabin again, the last bit of blood on his face gradually fading away.
…
At night, Chiba got on the train back to Tan Yi.
There has been no news from Valenti, but no news is the best news. After getting off the train, Chiba returned to the reserve base.
After arriving, she did not immediately take the elevator to the ward where Hestad was located, but went to the woods behind the base apartment alone.
The forest path was deserted late at night, with only the moonlight shining through the rugged branches. She had walked this path countless times, with Valenti, Ava, and others... Those days had passed through her fingers like quicksand, and she could never return.
Chiba stopped in front of a bench somewhere. She vaguely remembered that the only photo of herself and Ava was probably taken near here. Not long after she was dropped into the third area, she had no idea what was going on here. All have strong hostility.
Chiba sat down alone.
It was also here that she and Ava had a violent argument.
She was very impressed by the content of that argument, because Ava rarely got so angry—it was the second time she encountered aberrants in non-extremely dangerous operations. This sudden change directly caused the command post to order the mission to be advanced. When it ends, all mercury needles immediately retreat.
Chiba was reluctant to part with this once-in-a-lifetime fighting opportunity. At that time, she had just put on a new bionic prosthetic leg and was lacking a comparable opponent, so she pretended that the signal failed and did not receive the order, and tracked the aberrant deep into the wilderness alone.
That operation was fraught with danger, but fortunately there were no casualties in the end.
Chiye raised her head. She was sitting here, and Ava stood opposite her, pointing at her nose angrily:
"You don't care about your own life that much!?"
Chiba frowned, what the hell did he say at that time? She thought about it carefully for a while, but she really couldn't recall it, but it was probably just some nonsense like "I was caught by chelation, I'm happy" and "I don't need you to worry about me if I die alone".
Ava was really angry. Chiba still remembers her trembling hands waving in the air——
"The more real the freedom you feel from the prosthetic limb, the more complete your imprisonment is. Do you understand? What is it about this kind of freedom that is worth cherishing!?"
The night wind blew from far away, blowing Qianye from one memory to another. She slowly lowered her head and covered her face with both hands.
When signing the contract in the morning, the doctor said that after being removed from the ventilator, Ava would completely lose her vital signs within ten minutes.
She and Aya sat next to Ava and waited quietly.
Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour, one hour...
Ava's heart rate remained at a weak value, refusing to fall toward death.
The two waited for a total of five hours and forty-nine minutes. During this time, Aya kept crying, but Chiba did not.
…
A dead leaf swirled and fell at Qianye's feet. She leaned down, pinched the stem and picked up the leaf. Then, she heard a few hot tears hitting the leaf, making a short and weak sound.
On a midwinter night, Chiba was alone, crying silently on the avenue.
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