Chapter 17: Treat
1877 Words
They had an appointment with a specialist. After sitting down for only a few minutes, the doctor asked Emma to get an X-ray.
The elderly professor was a “family friend” on Benjamin's mother's side, an old acquaintance of Benjamin's grandfather. They had seen each other often in the past, but with Benjamin living abroad for years, it had been a long time since their last meeting.
Putting on his reading glasses, he glanced again at the brief medical notes his assistant had just typed into the computer, then wrote out a form. “Benjamin, take your girlfriend for a chest CT.”
They were wearing matching smoky gray clothes, and at first glance, they looked like a handsome couple.
Emma was still dizzy from the fever, and her left chest felt increasingly uncomfortable. Hearing the professor's words, she frowned slightly, about to explain, when Benjamin, who had been sitting on a wooden chair behind her, stood up and walked over.
He took the form the professor handed him, frowned as he glanced at it, then gently took Emma's right arm and helped her to her feet. “Why do we need a scan? Is something wrong?”
The professor took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It feels like pleurisy.”
Putting his glasses back on, he turned to Emma. “Have you felt short of breath? Like you can't inhale fully at night?”
Emma thought for a moment and nodded.
The doctor gestured toward the door. “Go get the scan first. If there's fluid in your chest, we'll need to drain it.”
Benjamin frowned. “Will she need to be hospitalized for the drainage?”
“Yes,” the doctor nodded. “We'll drain all the fluid and give you antibiotics. It'll take about a week.”
There was another well-regarded private hospital in Jingnan District, in which the Brown family held shares. The hospital reserved an entire floor of the inpatient department for the Brown family, but public tertiary hospitals still required waiting in line.
They waited outside the CT room for twenty minutes before Emma's turn.
Hearing the nurse call her name, Benjamin stood up from the plastic chair in the corridor and led Emma over, holding her hand.
She hadn't taken any medicine that morning, and her fever had returned. Dizzy and nauseous, she could barely focus on anything else.
As Benjamin led her to the CT room door, the nurse told Emma to take off her coat and give it to him. “Ask your boyfriend to hold it for you. You can't wear clothes with metal zippers inside.”
Neither of them corrected the nurse's assumption. Benjamin released her hand, turned slightly to help her unzip her coat. Emma took it off and handed it to him, her voice faint with dizziness as she called him: “Brother.”
The young nurse standing beside her, who had just spoken, looked up in surprise at the address. She had assumed they were a couple, given how they'd held hands when they arrived.
After Emma came out of the CT room, they waited less than an hour for the results.
The professor who had seen them that afternoon had already finished his shift, but he stayed in his office to wait for Benjamin and Emma.
The situation was indeed serious, acute tuberculous pleurisy. Though it was extrapulmonary tuberculosis and mostly non-infectious, further tests were still needed to confirm there was no risk of transmission.
There was several centimeters of fluid in Emma's left chest, which would require a catheter to drain.
Emma didn't want her family to know, so Benjamin didn't arrange for her to stay at the nearby private hospital owned by the Brown family. Instead, he admitted her directly to the affiliated hospital.
He got her a private room. When he returned after completing the admission procedures, Emma was lying on the bed, watching a nurse insert an IV into her arm.
The catheter insertion procedure was scheduled for the next morning. It wasn't a full surgery, just a local anesthetic and a needle, taking only ten minutes.
Still, until the inflammation subsided, her fever would likely linger for a few more days.
After the nurse left, Benjamin pulled up a chair and sat beside her bed. Frowning, he flipped through her medical records. The CT report included a note mentioning she had old pulmonary tuberculosis.
This case of pleurisy was most likely related to that previous lung condition. Her weakened immune system had allowed the tuberculosis bacteria in her body to spread, triggering the chest inflammation.
They had been close since her senior year of high school, and he couldn't remember her ever having such an illness. Tuberculosis usually required at least two to three months of isolation and over six months of treatment.
Emma still had a low-grade fever. She hadn't eaten much in two days, and she looked noticeably thinner.
Lifting her free hand to brush the ends of her hair, she stared up at the IV drip, as if recalling something. “It was during my sophomore year of college.”
They had already been together by then.
Benjamin's brows furrowed deeper. Thinking for a moment, he asked: “The second semester of your sophomore year?”
That was when she had said she was busy and hadn't visited him for half a year.
He had been abroad at the time, in the middle of a difficult period for his startup. Once, when he finally had some free time, he bought a plane ticket back to England. As soon as he landed at the airport, he called her, only to hear surprise in her voice at his return. After a moment of silence, she told him she'd gone on a trip to another city with friends and hadn't come back yet.
He hadn't thought much of it, attributing her silence to guilt over lying, she had told him she was still at school just the night before.
With the startup in its early stages, he had too much work waiting for him abroad. He'd stayed in her city for three days, but when she still didn't return from her “trip,” he'd had to fly back.
Benjamin closed the medical records and looked up at her. His voice was calm, but there was a hint of gravity in it. “So you lied to me back then. You weren't traveling, you were in the hospital.”
It had been too long ago to hide the truth now. Emma stared at the IV drip and nodded.
Benjamin thought back to that time, tossing the medical records onto the bedside table. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Emma didn't answer. He watched her and asked again: “Did you tell the family?”
From her expression, he could guess the answer. Sure enough, after a few seconds, she shook her head.
Benjamin stared at her, and a brief silence fell between them. He was about to speak when someone pushed the door open.
Emma hadn't told her family she needed to be hospitalized, but she had told Jack Smith.
Earlier, when Benjamin had been arranging the hospital room, Jack had called. Emma had mentioned it in passing.
Jack was holding a bouquet of flowers. He walked over quickly, glanced at the hospital gown Emma was wearing, and exaggerated: “How did you get so sick you need to be hospitalized?”
Jack's arrival broke the tense atmosphere between Emma and Benjamin. Benjamin picked up a magazine from the bedside table, while Emma looked up at him.
Jack set the flowers on the other bedside table, took off his coat casually, and hung it on the coat rack by the door. “Catheter insertion tomorrow?”
Emma glanced at Benjamin instinctively, then looked back at Jack and nodded.
Jack asked again: “What did you tell the family?”
Benjamin leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Without looking up, he answered for her: “Said she's going on a business trip with me.”
Jack dragged another chair over from the wall and sat beside Emma's bed. “How long do you have to stay here?”
“About a week,” Emma replied.
Jack had watched Emma grow up and was close to her. “Should I find you two caregivers? You'll need someone to look after you…”
“No need. I'll come after work,” Benjamin said, still flipping through the magazine in his hand.
Jack looked at him in surprise. “How will you manage? You're swamped every day.”
He was surprised that Benjamin had even taken the time to bring Emma to the hospital and hide it from her family.
He had never thought Benjamin and Emma were this close, and with Benjamin just back from abroad, they shouldn't have seen each other in a long time.
Still, he didn't ask further. Turning to Emma, he brought up another topic: “You broke things off with the White boy, right?”
Emma glanced at him, her gaze flicking past Benjamin before she answered: “Yeah.”
Jack lifted his hand, a look of disdain on his face. “Good riddance. I never thought that White guy was good enough for you.”
Then, his eyes lit up as an idea struck him. “Why don't I set you up with someone? You could even marry into the Smith family, I have a cousin…”
Benjamin tossed the magazine in his hand at Jack. “Can you shut up for a minute? This is a hospital.”
Jack was stunned by the sudden action. He gathered the magazine Benjamin had thrown at him and said slowly: “I was just trying to help.”
Benjamin replied coldly: “We don't need your help with this.”
Jack was left speechless. He sat in silence for a while, then his phone rang.
It was a friend from their circle. They chatted briefly about work, then the topic turned to gossip. The friend mentioned having seen Ethan at a restaurant earlier.
“He seemed to be with a young woman. His aunt walked in on them, apparently? His family's been pushing him to get engaged, but he's still fooling around outside.”
“His aunt saw him dining with someone again and got really mad. She embarrassed the girl badly, said she even slapped her.”
Jack knew Ethan's character well and wasn't surprised by this. He hummed in response.
“The girl supposedly works in management at one of the Brown family's advertising companies, some kind of small supervisor…”
The ward was quiet, and the person on the other end of the line hadn't bothered to lower their voice. Besides Jack, the other two people in the room heard every word.
Emma glanced at Benjamin, her brows furrowing slightly. She couldn't help but think the woman Ethan had been dining with might be Charlotte.
Ethan had asked her out several times, and Charlotte had always refused. If she'd agreed this time, it was probably only because she was tired of his pestering and wanted to end it once and for all.
- Writer
