Pei Yan spent the night in emergency intensive care. Treatment and medication came quickly, and he soon regained consciousness. By the next morning, they had already transferred him to a regular ward. He was young and sturdy after all. There was nothing seriously wrong.
He opened his eyes to find Johnny Wu’s big face looming over him, almost pressed against his own as the man studied him. “Back from the dead, baby? You’re okay?”
Pei Yan rolled his eyes and flashed a wildly carefree grin. “What are you doing… Did I die?”
Uncle Johnny nodded. “It was terrifying on set. You were convulsing all over, totally unconscious, shaking like a sieve.”
“Everybody saw?” Pei Yan looked annoyed. “Nobody crowded around snapping pictures and threw them online, right? How embarrassing…”
Johnny Wu said, “I stopped them. Nobody got any secret shots of you. They flew you straight to the hospital by helicopter!”
“Fuck…” Pei Yan’s expression changed on the spot. “If somebody makes another composite picture and puts it online, saying I passed out shooting an action scene, with something like ‘Zhuang Xiao heroically rescues the beauty on set, cradling so-and-so’s frail unconscious body’… If Zhang Huan dares post another one of those, I’ll fucking chop him to pieces! Just try me!”
Johnny Wu: “…”
Johnny Wu looked ready to climb right onto the hospital bed and inspect him from head to toe. At last he hummed in satisfaction. “The way you’re talking, I can relax. Your brain didn’t get cooked, you didn’t get burned stupid. You’re still just as obnoxiously cocky and irritating as ever.”
Pei Yan immediately pouted. “You dare find me irritating? I ruined your weekend date plans with your big architect, so now you’re sick of me?”
Johnny Wu turned, handed him a cup with a straw, and plugged his mouth with water. “Pee whenever you need to. You’ve got a catheter in. The doctor says you need to flush the toxins out as much as possible.”
Pei Yan lifted an arm over his face and dragged a groan from his throat.
Halfway through, the attending physician came in, pulled Mr. Pei’s blanket aside, checked his heart and lungs, pressed on his lower abdomen, and asked if anything hurt. Pei Yan said every joint in his fucking body hurt, like he had fallen apart last night and been reassembled this morning and now needed to be broken in again…
“I’m debating whether I should tell you the truth.” After the doctor left, Johnny Wu gazed at him with such sentimental eyes that his hair nearly brushed Pei Yan’s face and made it itch. Johnny said, “When you first got to the hospital, there were spots of blood on your forehead and neck, and on your clothes too. The doctors stripped you and checked you for ages. There wasn’t a single cut anywhere on your body.”
“Whose blood?” Pei Yan abruptly pulled the arm away from his face, exposing his eyes.
“Who do you think, baby?” Johnny Wu asked back.
“…”
“Where’s that shirt?!” Pei Yan demanded at once.
“Uh, they cut it to pieces in the ER. You still want that ruined shirt?” Uncle Johnny spread his hands.
“They cut it up? Why didn’t you save it for me!” Pei Yan glared at him.
“…” Johnny Wu glared right back. “Next time you’re being resuscitated, should I first ask whether we’re saving you or saving your clothes? Did your brain get fever-fried after all?”
Pei Yan’s brain had not been fried at all. He stared blankly, his gaze softening and drifting. Suddenly he could barely breathe again, as if he were hanging more than thirty meters in the air, mountains and birds flashing across his vision until everything finally froze on that one figure…
“Go dig through the trash and see if you can still find it. At least help me test the blood type,” he muttered quietly.
*
Director Wang Yuanling also called to check on him. When she heard he would need at least a week of observation and treatment at the local hospital, she immediately said she was buying a plane ticket to come see him.
On the video call, Pei Yan said, “Don’t come. Why make such a huge production out of it? I’m fine.”
Wang Yuanling said, “You’ll need at least a month to recover. Every work arrangement has to be pushed back and several productions will be delayed. You call that fine?”
Pei Yan smiled. “Push them back, then. Sorry to trouble you, jie.”
Wang Yuanling said, “Look at how weak you are. One trip through Hollywood didn’t plate you in gold, it wore you thin instead, like somebody peeled off a layer of skin and shaved away a layer of flesh. What a bad deal! If I’d known, I wouldn’t have let you go. It hurts your jie just looking at you.”
Weak as he was, Pei Yan gave a soft laugh. “At least somebody still loves me.”
Wang Yuanling said, “With that personality of yours, just give your jie a little peace!”
Pei Yan reminded the old auntie again, “Don’t put out any random news about me. Don’t mention the embarrassing stuff about getting sick and being hospitalized. It’s not good news… I don’t want it talked about.”
“You cursed Zhang Huan out on the phone yesterday, didn’t you? And said some pretty ugly things?” Wang Yuanling lectured him. “Stop being like that all the time. You do your job, he does his. When somebody needs offending, your jie will step forward and offend them for you. Stop getting worked up every day and baring your claws at everyone! You’re in your twenties now. Learn some self-control!”
Zhang Huan had actually run to the director and complained?
I haven’t even reported him yet.
Pei Yan silently mouthed at the video: Depends who I’m talking to. What the hell do I need self-control for?
The director-auntie’s phone lecture finally ended. A middle-aged nurse came in to do the routine checks, taking his temperature and blood pressure and giving him medicine, and then someone began delivering breakfast to each room from a cart outside.
Johnny Wu happened to be away. The hospital-room door opened, and Zhuang Xiao took Pei Yan’s breakfast from the meal cart.
Pei Yan spotted him from the corner of his eye and immediately became clear-headed. He pushed himself a little higher under the blankets with both hands, trying to look more handsome and less like some frail invalid clinging to life.
Zhuang Xiao had deliberately waited until the second day to visit so he would not disturb the patient’s rest. He carried the tray one-handed, set it on the bed first, then unfolded the over-bed table and placed the tray on it. He did everything with his left hand.
“You’re here?” Pei Yan said. “Sorry to make you come all this way.”
“You’re this polite now?” Zhuang Xiao opened the lid of his tray and laid out the knife and fork, never wasting words while he worked.
“…” Pei Yan stared at Zhuang Xiao’s obviously badly injured right hand, wrapped up like a rice dumpling, and suddenly said what was on his mind. “I was conscious at the time.”
Zhuang Xiao found a chair and sat down, looking at him. “Conscious, but your muscles stopped obeying you, right? Those convulsions were pretty frightening.”
Pei Yan said, “I was hanging up there and I was still awake. I could see you. I wanted to grab you, hold on to your leg so I wouldn’t slide down, but I couldn’t grip anything and couldn’t speak.
“My neck was stiff, my whole body was cramping, I couldn’t move. I saw you reach for the wire. If I’d been able to talk, I would’ve screamed at you, ‘Don’t grab the wire!’
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Zhuang. Will your hand have any lasting damage?”
“…”
Across all the days before and after this, and in front of all sorts of people, Pei Yan was rarely this polite and sincere with anyone. In front of Zhuang Xiao, his arrogance somehow subsided on its own. He behaved so obediently he had apologized more than once already. What was the point of putting on a big show of swagger now?
“No broken bones. It’ll heal. Don’t worry about it.”
Zhuang Xiao told him.
“If I’d known beforehand it would hurt this much, fuck, I might really have hesitated!”
When Zhuang Xiao mocked himself, half a dimple appeared again.
Face-to-face, that expression was now temptation and torture for Pei Yan. Sometimes the urge struck him so hard he wanted to lean closer, catch Zhuang Xiao by the chin, and kiss him…
“Didn’t you know grabbing it would hurt your hand? You’re not supposed to touch a wire line. With that much force, it’s the same as taking a steel blade to your palm,” Pei Yan said.
“I’d never grabbed one before. Who’d think to?” Zhuang Xiao looked helpless.
Warmth surged through Pei Yan’s chest again. He immediately spat at himself in his head. Stop glowing and heating yourself up like a hand warmer. Quit flattering yourself.
Zhuang Xiao complained, “You’re pretty damn heavy too.”
Lying in bed, Pei Yan pressed his palms together in front of his lips. “A life-saving debt. I have no way to repay it.”
Pei Yan ate the bland hospital food meant for patients. The two casually talked about filming and about the mess they had left behind on set.
Pei Yan said, “There were only one or two shots left. I’ll still have to go back and pick them up later.”
Zhuang Xiao said, “Pick up what? My team went back to work first thing this morning. They’re using doubles for everything.”
“Huh?” Pei Yan immediately became unwilling again. “I only had two fucking shots left. Now my perfect record is ruined right at the finish line!”
“My shots have doubles too. Xiao-Sa is doubling mine. The guy on our team who’s about your size is doing the shot where you tumble down,” Zhuang Xiao said.
“Nobody told me. Nobody asked for my opinion,” Pei Yan complained.
“That shot is literally you rolling off a cliff with your face covered in mud so nobody can see what you look like, and then I fall to my death. How exactly do you still want to shoot it?” Zhuang Xiao looked at him mockingly.
Not being able to bring their shared scenes to a perfect close left Pei Yan genuinely dissatisfied and a little regretful.
Zhuang Xiao said meaningfully, “If you’re working in the stunt world, leave other people some chances to show their faces too. Don’t eat every bite of the meal yourself. How are other people supposed to make a living? Rest when you should rest. Watch other people perform too. Don’t push yourself that hard.”
Doing everything yourself meant taking everyone else’s rice bowl and dumping it into your own, taking all the money for yourself. Work too hard and you offended people too. That was what Zhuang Xiao was politely telling him.
More fucking chicken soup for my soul.
Pei Yan answered with equal meaning, “Fine. I’ll wait for our next collaboration.”
Talking too much exposed how exhausted he still was after the high fever. He was tired, his muscles ached, and his spirits were low. Zhuang Xiao passed him water twice without thinking, then glanced around. “Need to relieve yourself? Is there a urinal in here?”
Pei Yan immediately said, “No.”
Zhuang Xiao bent down with practiced ease and rummaged through the odds and ends hanging from the foot of the bed. “You’ve got a urine bag…? Need a fresh one?”
This time Pei Yan was genuinely mortified. Neither the IV nor the aching in every crack between his bones could stop him from shooting upright in bed. “Not you, don’t touch it! You… I’ll call a nurse.”
Only then did he regret not keeping his old godfather around. Johnny Wu had actually wandered back a while ago, opened the door a crack, spotted Zhuang Xiao inside, and, being the experienced gay man that he was, whipped his head right back out and smoothly vanished… What the hell.
“The nurses here are clumsy. They’ll turn the back of your hand into a lotus seedpod just putting in an IV. I’m honestly quicker than they are,” Zhuang Xiao said with a faint smile, occasionally this easygoing and casual in daily life.
*
The production finished all filming and wrapped. The only pity was that both leads of Chinese descent were absent on the final day, so they never got to spray Big Daddy in the face with a huge bottle of champagne in proper celebratory fashion.
Wave after wave of people from the crew came to the hospital to visit Mr. Pei and express their sincere concern. Americans paid close attention to etiquette like this and never came empty-handed. The room filled up with beautifully packaged gifts, flowers, and potted plants.
Fat Charles, that old man whose ambitions had never died, wrapped Mr. Pei in a firm embrace beside the bed and gave him a hard squeeze. “Kid, I haven’t forgotten the project your daddy here promised you. You don’t forget it either. I’ll work with you again. Definitely.”
With one sentence from the old man, Pei Yan felt this whole bout of illness had been worth it.
His team arranged the schedule. After a few days under observation at the hospital in San Diego, they would load him onto a plane and ship him back home rather than leave him wasting time in a strange place where he knew nobody.
Zhuang Xiao stayed in San Diego only one extra day and would soon return to Los Angeles. He promised to stop by one more time before leaving to see the wounded young master. The two of them had gotten a little addicted to shooting the breeze together. Whatever else they were, they could count as friends now, couldn’t they?
Carrying a stack of takeout boxes filled with food Mr. Pei liked, Zhuang Xiao walked out of the elevator and into the hospital corridor.
By sheer coincidence, familiar people came up in the elevator beside his. Johnny Wu had just arrived at the hospital too, bringing two people who had made the trip especially to visit the patient.
Johnny Wu’s eyes immediately locked onto the takeout in Zhuang Xiao’s hands. A spark flashed in his head. He absolutely was not going to let Zhuang Xiao off. With exaggerated seriousness, he called out loudly, “Aiya, Mr. Zhuang, you even came personally to bring him food? Aiya, Old Pei said you’d be coming today…”
Zhuang Xiao had already sensed something when his gaze swept over the two people behind Johnny. People from the same family inevitably shared something in their manner, appearance, and build.
Both were indeed very attractive, striking in a crowd, and dressed with understated refinement.
Johnny Wu enthusiastically introduced the two sides.
Zhuang Xiao gave them a polite nod. His uninjured left hand was carrying an armful of food containers, leaving him no free hand to extend for a handshake.
Standing in front of him were Pei Yan’s parents.
Of course, the most shocked person was Young Master Pei, reclining in bed and waiting for his three-item Cantonese roast platter.
Pei Yan reacted even more violently than he had the day before when Zhuang Xiao went poking around the urine bag under his bed. He bounced upright with a bang. “You two… What are you doing here?”
Ms. Xu Qishang strode straight to the bed, bent over as if she had not seen him in years, and slowly stroked his face. “What are we doing here? We came to see you. Ai…”
Pei Yan said, “I’m going home soon anyway. Why did you come all this way? Flying back and forth around the Pacific. You two have too much time on your hands?”
“Hey, what kind of way is that to talk?” Xu Qishang said. “We were worried! We heard it was encephalitis. Do you even know how serious that is? If treatment fails, it can leave lasting damage. Your brain could’ve been burned out… We care about you. We’ll go home with you, baby!”
That word, “baby,” broke everyone in the room.
Pei Yan’s own ears burned. His body temperature threatened to rise all over again because Zhuang Xiao was right there, standing not far away and enjoying this warm family drama of loving parents visiting their sick son. A deep expression had clearly appeared along Zhuang Xiao’s face. He was definitely laughing at him…
“Baby, what do you want to eat?” Ms. Xu suddenly remembered the “delivery guy” holding all those boxes and turned to rummage through the plastic bags in Zhuang Xiao’s hands, searching for the tastiest one. “Your friend brought you food. These look like your favorite custard buns and Cantonese roast meats. Shall we give you those?”
Pei Yan was about to lose his mind.
Xu Qishang was not normally like this. Even at home she did not call him “baby” every other sentence. Usually it was “son” or “monkey,” with hardly a polite word between them. What lunacy had possessed her today? Had his sudden illness scared her so badly she had transformed into the Holy Mother and switched character settings, loving him this much all at once…
Smiling, Zhuang Xiao brought the takeout over, opened a box of molten custard buns, and shoved the entire thing into his hands. Go on, eat, glutton.
Zhuang Xiao teased him. “Nice having your own mother fuss over you.”
Pei Yan snorted. “Yeah. Somebody loves me. You people keep coming in wave after wave to visit. Even being hospitalized isn’t lonely.”
Zhuang Xiao laughed at him under his breath. “Still getting called ‘baby.’ You haven’t even been weaned, have you?”
Pei Yan rolled his eyes. “Your own mother never called you baby? Nobody loved you?”
Zhuang Xiao: “…”
The instant the words left his mouth, Pei Yan realized he had said the wrong thing. His mouth was too fast and had no gate on it. He wanted to cut out his own tongue.
Zhuang Xiao stopped bantering with him. He turned his face away and quietly drifted into an unobtrusive corner of the room, leaving the central stage to the family so they could continue their tender mother-and-beloved-son opera.
Ms. Xu Qishang sat by her son’s bed fussing over him and carefully asked him again about the entire well-known sequence of his illness and accident. Mr. Pei Zhixun stood steadily beside her, occasionally inserting one or two short questions and reminding his wife not to be quite so long-winded in front of outsiders.
From a distance, Zhuang Xiao nodded once to Pei Yan. “Going out for a cigarette. You talk. I’ll head off first.”
One look at Pei Yan’s family told you they were well-off and respectable. Pei Yan himself was obviously someone raised with his parents holding him in their palms and spoiling him from childhood, his whole body radiating an irrepressible sense of privilege and pride. Zhuang Xiao could instinctively feel that his own presence did not fit this warm, emotional, embarrassingly affectionate family tableau. He spoiled the composition, so he knowingly stepped out of the frame.
Pei Yan felt melancholy. He wanted to say, If you want a cigarette, just stand in front of me and smoke it.
His parents had picked the worst possible time to show up. Now he could not say anything. This was terrible…
“Make sure you contact me when you’re going back home!
“We’ll have a meal together.”
All he could do was throw those two lines after Zhuang Xiao’s quickly retreating back…
Ms. Xu did not think there was anything wrong with the way she spoke. Her son was twenty-three, barely older than a recent university graduate. He was basically still a child. Filming was hard work, injuries were routine, and whose son was not a “baby” his family doted on?
Being ill had not damaged Pei Yan’s appetite. He polished off a whole box of molten custard buns in a few bites, chewing on the lingering taste of Mr. Zhuang in his mind. Then he flung himself back onto the pillow and covered his face with his arm. “Ai… Mom…”
“What are you calling me for?” Xu Qishang looked at him.
“Nothing. You’re very considerate.” Pei Yan did not even have the strength to complain.
“Who was that man?” Xu Qishang leaned closer and asked inquisitively.
“Nobody,” Pei Yan said.
“If he’s somebody, just tell me!” Xu Qishang put on the gentle, understanding expression of a loving mother.
“He’s not anybody!” Pei Yan turned his head away, refusing to cooperate.
“…”
The halo of loving motherhood around Ms. Xu immediately collapsed. Her entire characterization shattered. She snorted. “Won’t tell your mother the truth? Little monkey, just you wait…” She stopped asking, tugged Old Mr. Pei along, and followed him out, leaving Pei Yan alone in the room, so depressed he wrapped his head in the blanket.
Zhuang Xiao had only just stepped into the elevator and vanished behind the closing doors when sharp-eyed, quick-handed Ms. Xu Qishang hit the button. Unfortunately, she failed to catch the same car, so she hurried into the other elevator and chased him downstairs.
Pei Zhixun frowned and lowered his voice. “What are you doing now?”
Xu Qishang said, “Nothing. I just want to take a look at this one.”
Pei Zhixun: “Look at who? Do you even know which one it is?”
Xu Qishang said, “I looked at him twice just now. He seems pretty good… quite handsome.”
“No.” Pei Zhixun shook his head. “He’s an actor, and a major star himself. You thought he was really some assistant from our son’s company carrying bags…? It can’t be him.”
“Then he came all the way to visit him and bring food? That attentive?” Xu Qishang said.
“It’s not like nobody has ever brought this or that to a film set before…” Pei Zhixun’s face darkened. He did not particularly want to keep talking about it. Being able to calmly “accept” something was one thing. Having his wife spend all day turning it over in her head, wanting to play a pair when she did not even have cards in her hand, was another.
When they left the elevator, all Ms. Xu could see in the distance was Zhuang Xiao striding out of the hospital entrance, putting a cigarette in his mouth as he hurried away.
The couple stood at the hospital entrance for a long time, gazing after him from afar.
“Ai. Anyway, whichever one it is, he won’t tell us. I’ll just look at this one first… Does he seem reliable?” Xu Qishang sighed softly, full of that universal parental worry that tied the heart into knots.
“Whether he’s reliable is something our son can judge for himself. You think he’ll listen to the two of us? When has he listened to you?” Pei Zhixun shook his head.
“It’s just the hairstyle that’s a little… unconventional… His hair is awfully long,” Ms. Xu evaluated.
“Ours shaves his head bald. Isn’t that distinctive enough? One wears a braid, one is bald. Heh. Sounds perfect to me,” Old Mr. Pei concluded.
*