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Snow Falls Silently
墨書 Inktalez
“Is this the parent of Hu Xiaoqi? Hurry to the City Center Hospital's emergency center, Qiqi is in trouble!”
I felt a buzzing in my head, and my phone almost slipped from my grasp. I couldn’t process what the child's homeroom teacher was saying.
I don’t know how many red lights I ran through on the way, or how many near misses I had with other cars. The police sirens wailed behind me all the way to the hospital.
“Doctor, how is my son?”
I grabbed hold of a doctor who had just come out of the Emergency Room, my voice trembling with urgency.
“He’s still being resuscitated!”
I leaned weakly against the wall, feeling dizzy and disoriented.
My son, Qiqi, is not yet 13 years old and attends the most prestigious private school in the city, where he is in seventh grade. He has always excelled academically and plays the violin beautifully. After his mother passed away from cancer, it has just been the two of us relying on each other. He is my pride and my hope.
Every day, I wake up early and work tirelessly at a tobacco and alcohol store, barely earning enough to cover his tuition and support our lives.
Qiqi is very understanding; he knows how hard I work. After finishing his homework, he helps me watch the store, never giving me any trouble with his personal life or studies.
I can’t understand how something could have happened to such a good child out of nowhere. My anxiety was so intense that I could almost hear my own heartbeat and breathing.
The red light outside the Emergency Room kept flashing, glaring at me like a monster's eye.
Every minute felt like an eternity.
I crouched in a corner, unable to hold back my tears as I buried my head in my hands.
I don’t know how long it was before the door to the Emergency Room finally opened.
The doctor stepped out, looking exhausted.
“Doctor, my son…”
I sprang up from the ground, but after crouching for so long, my legs gave way and I nearly fell again.
“He has been stabilized, but…” The doctor removed his mask and glanced at me with a sigh, pausing to choose his words carefully.
A sense of foreboding pressed down on me, making me bend over slightly. “But what?” I asked urgently.
"The child has sustained a brain injury, and the situation is not optimistic... He may not be able to take care of himself in the future and will need someone to look after him."
Every word from the doctor felt like a heavy hammer, striking my heart with force.
I felt a sharp pain in my chest, and my vision blurred; I nearly fainted.
"Moreover, due to the head injury, the subsequent treatment costs will be extremely high. You need to be mentally prepared for that."
I stood there in a daze, my mind blank.
How could this be possible?
How could this happen!
My son, who was so exceptional and so understanding, how could he end up like this?
"Hu Xiaoqi's family, Hu Xiaoqi's family!"
A young nurse called out to me.
I stumbled into the ward.
My son lay quietly on the hospital bed, his head wrapped in thick bandages, his face pale, and his eyes tightly shut.
"Xiaoqi, Xiaoqi!"
I grasped his hand and called out softly.
But he lay there still, unresponsive, without any reaction.
The young nurse looked at me with deep sympathy as I stood there, filled with sorrow and helplessness beside my son.
" Teacher Li, what exactly happened? How did Xiaoqi end up like this?"
I turned to face the homeroom teacher, Teacher Li, who was standing at the door, and asked angrily.
Teacher Li avoided my gaze, stammering, "Uh... well... Xiaoqi fell while playing with classmates, and unexpectedly... it triggered a seizure..."
"A fall while playing? A seizure?"
Xiaoqi had always passed all his health check-ups since birth; he had never shown any symptoms of seizures.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.
" Teacher Li, I hope you can tell me the truth. How exactly did Xiaoqi get injured?"
I stared into Teacher Li's eyes, gritting my teeth as I asked each word slowly. Teacher Li's gaze flickered.
"No... no, Xiaoqi has always been very well-behaved at school. The classmates all like him; he really did just fall by himself..."
Could a simple fall really lead to "cerebral injury, subarachnoid hemorrhage; multiple soft tissue injuries?"
Could it cause "traumatic epilepsy, stress-related mental disorders?"
The more terrifying diagnosis results nearly suffocated me: traumatic closed head injury leading to severe mental impairment, requiring assistance for daily living classified as level two disability; the resulting traumatic delayed epilepsy (severe) classified as level four disability. The care dependency level for this injury was complete care dependency (requiring two caregivers). This brain injury had resulted in severe traumatic delayed epilepsy and severe mental impairment.
—He had basically become a semi-vegetative state.
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