GTRSV – Chapter 59

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Long after Tan Mo left, Qiao Lan sat up on the sofa, wrapped in a thin quilt that she didn’t have before going to bed last night.

Qiao Lan didn’t know why Tan Mo needed to go to the US and what he would be doing there, but she seemed to be able to feel that Tan Mo had a decisive and determined belief. Whether or not this was an illusion was unsure. 

The holidays passed quickly, and Tan Mo still did not come to school after the reopening.

The students were surprised at the beginning of the last semester as to why Tan Mo hadn’t come. But when the new semester started and they still didn’t see Tan Mo, they began to get used to it.

Qiao Lan’s tablemate changed to someone else, a boy who was not very close to Qiao Lan, and whose grades were very high.

This boy was a bit similar to Pei Ning. Not in looks, but in personality and grades. His personality was introverted, and when he was sitting at the same table with Qiao Lan, he was even a little shy.

Similar to Pei Ning his science scores were top-notch, but his English was lagging behind. So the head teacher who liked this student very much, put him next to Qiao Lan, probably because he wanted Qiao Lan to help him supplement his English.

Qiao Lan had gotten accustomed to the days when Tan Mo was sitting next to her. Sometimes when she could not do a particular problem, she would turn her head to ask Tan Mo, but when she looked at the unfamiliar face of her deskmate, she remembered that Tan Mo was no longer sitting next to her.

Her new table mate was very nice, but Qiao Lan still couldn’t help but miss the times she spent with Tan Mo. They listened to songs with shared headphones and exchanged small notes together.

Qiao Lan worked harder than before, studying so hard that even Bai Yu was scared. But seeing her work so hard all the other students in the dormitory around Qiao Lan, somehow also started to work harder than before

Without Tan Mo present, after several exams, Qiao Lan had secured her place as first in the grade. No one could shake her position. Several friends who were close to her would say that Qiao Lan’s first-class scholarship this year was once again guaranteed.

Someone then smiled and said, but Tan Mo was not here.

Tan Mo had been away for a long time. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the insults that had been piled onto him and Qiao Lan. Now, whenever the students mentioned Tan Mo, most of them only sighed and reminisced that they had known such a genius.

Someone from another class onced asked what it was like to have a genius classmate, and it somehow ended up on school forums. But instead of the cruel remarks from before all their words were now full of praise.

In their spare time, everyone would chat here and there, sometimes about things such as graduation, and university.

Hao Ying once asked Qiao Lan what university she wanted to go to in the future.

She had once rejected him, and he understood the meaning behind her words, but he did not fully give up.

Having had the opportunity to meet such a beautiful and outstanding girl, it was hard for him to move on. But he doesn’t blame Qiao Lan. Having experienced rejection for the first time in his life, he finally learned how to look at the past with a more unbiased view.

Hao Ying has changed a lot, his studies have improved by a lot, and his personality has also changed by a lot.

He wanted to keep a distance with her and only be friends, but Qiao Lan didn’t agree.

Qiao Lan casually mentioned the most prestigious school in the country, because she needed a lot of money, so she must go there.

After hearing this, her friends didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Qiao Lan was the first in grade. She was fully qualified to say this. Hao Ying rubbed his face with a sad expression. Although his grades have improved by a lot, it was still not possible for him to get into such a school.

“Then what major do you want to study?” Someone else asked this time.

“Finance,” Qiao Lan said while writing her paper. She didn’t think about it at all. When that person had asked, she just answered the major that she had studied before. After answering though, Qiao Lan suddenly stopped writing.

In fact, she thought about another major once before, because of Tan Mo.

But it was just casual thinking, after all, it’s still a long time before the college entrance examination.

Finance was no longer the major she wanted to study most, but Qiao Lan didn’t explain this to everyone else. After the day was over, she laid in bed, and picked up her mobile phone before sending Tan Mo a good night message as usual.

Like always, Tan Mo did not reply immediately. Ever since he left he would reply to her messages at three or four in the morning, which is three or four in the afternoon in New York.

______

Tan Mo finished his day of rehabilitation, and his whole body felt as if he had been fished out of the water. He was exhausted to the point where he had no strength to raise his hand.

It was painful.

When Tan Mo had a car accident, he thought that the pain of breaking his legs was the greatest pain in his life. It wasn’t until the beginning of his rehabilitation that Tan Mo knew that the pain of his legs breaking was nothing.

The hospital in New York told him that his legs could be cured, but it would be very, very hard.

His patellas (kneecap) were broken and the operation to repair it had to be done. While his previously healed but crooked muscles and bones were split again before the operation. After coming out of the operating room, the anesthesia gradually receded, and Tan Mo’s legs that he had not felt for over a year and a half had begun to ache. Whether it was his bones, nerves, or muscles, there was no place that didn’t hurt.

He didn’t dare to move his legs. After the operation, his legs were severely stiff, and his knees were severely fragile from the surgery, and the wound was fierce and painful. He applied ice packs every day to relieve the pain and swelling, and felt as if the wound was tearing itself open again and again.

Because of his AS, Tan Mo was far more sensitive to pain than ordinary people. Sometimes when the pain suddenly struck him, it didn’t help at all to take medicine, and so eventually he would reach a point where he could no longer handle it and faint.

After waking up, Tan Mo looked at the stars outside the window and felt that he had been taken back from hell.

Tan Mo laid on the hospital bed for nearly two months after the operation. Two months later, he finally tried to touch the ground. When his leg touched the ground for the first time, one leg instantly turned black and purple, as if it had been run over by a wheel again and again. Tan Mo grunted and grabbed Uncle Chen’s hand. On the other hand, Uncle Chen felt as if his hand was about to be crushed by the sheer force of Tan Mo’s grip.

Pain could sometimes make people lose their minds, but despite this, whenever he woke up, Tan Mo’s heart was filled with unprecedented joy.

Yes, it hurt. 

But this was the first time he has stood on the ground with his own two feet in nearly 2 years.

He wanted to try to take a few steps, but was ordered to stop by the doctor who told him to take it step by step.

So that’s what he did, step by step, he began his period of rehabilitation.

In the beginning he couldn’t bend his legs at all. But slowly as he began to practice and train his legs all over again they began to bend little by little. Starting from a little bend from a leg cushion, to creating an angle, and then to a full fold where the sole of his foot could touch his thigh.

Every day he repeated the same routine, day by day. 

Because it was too strenuous on the body in addition to being painful, rehabilitation experts agree that too much exercise will cause the patient to go into shock again or at the very least their carefully grown muscles would be torn again.

So early in the morning, Tan Mo would always start with his legs covered with wires from various testing machines, and then he would begin to stretch his legs and bend them. Everytime he did this, Tan Mo felt as if his joints were being dislocated. Every day, he felt as if he was disassembling and reassembling his bones. While his muscles felt as if they were continuously stretching and ripping apart before coming back together.

Tan Mo lived in a single person ward, and in the ward next door was a young man in his twenties who was also sent to the hospital because of a car accident.

He was sent in immediately after the car accident, and so he was much more relaxed than Tan Mo, but every day at the beginning of rehabilitation, across the relatively thick walls, everyone could still hear his painful and heart-piercing cry.

Even a man in his twenties felt that rehabilitation was incredibly painful, but Tan Mo who had it much harder than him, from the beginning to the end never cried due to the pain.

He would always clench his teeth or hold onto the bed sheet, occasionally he would let out a groan when the pain was too extreme, but other than that there was no other sound.

But despite not making a sound everyday, after his daily rehabilitation, his teeth had been so clenched that it was painful for him to eat. The sheets that he had held onto with his hands had long been torn, and his whole body was soaked in cold sweat over and over again. There was no one in the whole centre that didn’t know how much effort he put in.

After a night’s rest, the same thing would be repeated the next day.

Some people in the hospital couldn’t stand the pain of rehabilitation and finally chose to give up. Tan Mo came to the hospital first, and watched as people left one after another, but he stayed till the end.

After two months of post-operative rest, and 80 days of rehabilitation, Tan Mo continued to clench his teeth and persisted. When his legs could finally be bent at a 30 degree angle, some patients who could not hold on asked him why he continued to hold on.

Tan Mo was silent for a while before he answered, “Because someone is waiting for me to stand up again.”

 “Is it someone important?”

“The most important person.”

The young man was pale, and by the end of the daily rehabilitation he had already been very tired, but he still practiced walking on crutches.

When he first came, the doctor said that he was too weak to bear the pain and exhaustion of rehabilitation, but he gritted his teeth and kept enduring.

Finally, at the end of his path, he saw the dawn he had been wishing for.

GTRSV – Chapter 60