My Chongxi Husband Is Faking His Coma novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Page Six

The husband has been awake for seven weeks and heard every word of the nine nights; Lin Zhi dies of embarrassment, sets three terms, and the night nurse's key turns in the lock.

Lin Zhi got his wrist back by falling off the bed.

He landed on the floor on his elbow, kicked over the visitor's chair, and sat there looking up.

His husband had opened his eyes.

They were dark and deep-set, and they were looking straight at him.

"Don't scream," said Xie Zhaoran. His voice cracked in the middle. "The door is soundproof. I've timed the nurses. You have until the next round."

"You're awake," said Lin Zhi.

"For seven weeks."

"You're awake," Lin Zhi said again, because his brain had stopped at that word.

"Water," said Zhaoran.

Lin Zhi got up, poured a glass, and held it to the man's mouth with one hand under his head.

Zhaoran drank half of it slowly.

A drop ran down his chin, and Lin Zhi wiped it with his thumb before he thought about it.

Then he stood very still.

"How much did you hear?" he asked.

"All of it."

"The first night?" asked Lin Zhi.

"All of it."

"The part about the surgeons' hands?"

"Lin Zhi," said Zhaoran. "I heard nine nights."

Lin Zhi sat down on the visitor's chair and put his face in both hands.

"I told you about my mother's soup," he said, into his palms.

"I told you what I'd do with three million yuan. I told you your jaw was ridiculous."

"You did," said Zhaoran.

"I called your family a nest of hyenas, in your own bed."

"The hyenas are accurate," said Zhaoran.

Lin Zhi looked up.

The man on the pillow was not smiling, exactly, but something at the corner of his mouth had shifted.

"I'm going to die," said Lin Zhi. "Right here. You can tell the nurse it was embarrassment."

"Sit up. We don't have long, and you have questions."

Lin Zhi did have questions.

"Why are you faking?" was the first.

"Because my uncle is waiting for me to stay asleep," said Zhaoran.

"In thirty days the board votes on whether I'm fit to run my own company. He needs me still."

"That's the clause," Lin Zhi said slowly. "The rider. He wanted the spouse out of the way."

"He wanted a spouse who would sign anything."

"Then why pick me?" said Lin Zhi. "I'm the worst candidate in Hangzhou. I'm broke, and I argue."

"My grandmother held the interviews here, at my bedside," said Zhaoran.

"Ten people. Nine of them cried on my sheets, or asked the fee, or touched my face and said I was handsome."

"You are handsome."

"Candidate seven read the contract in front of me," said Zhaoran.

"He asked the nurse whether anyone turned my heels, so I wouldn't get sores."

"Then he asked my grandmother what happens to the spouse if the patient dies."

"I wanted to know if I'd be thrown out," said Lin Zhi.

"I know. It was the only question anyone asked that had me in the room."

Zhaoran's eyes closed for a moment, then opened.

"I wanted someone who thought about the person in the bed."

Lin Zhi didn't know what to say.

So he said, "Fine. Then I have terms."

"Of course you do," said Zhaoran.

"One. Your eyes are open only when the door is locked. If you forget, I'll sit on you."

"Understood," said Zhaoran.

"Two. You pay me for a husband in a bed. Hands to yourself."

"I can barely lift a spoon," said Zhaoran. "But understood."

"Three. In a year and a day, either of us can annul this, and I keep the money."

For one second Zhaoran said nothing.

"Understood," he said, and his face did not change at all.

"What's yours?" asked Lin Zhi.

"You keep talking."

"No," said Lin Zhi.

"Lin Zhi. For nineteen months I listened to the night nurse's television."

"Then for nine nights someone told me about soup." The dry voice went lower. "I'm not asking for secrets. I'm asking for soup."

Lin Zhi looked at him for a long moment.

"Fine," he said. "But you tell me when I say something stupid."

"I'll keep a list."

"Now. Page six."

Zhaoran told him where the contract copy was, in his bag under the sofa, and Lin Zhi dug it out.

Article six was forty lines of small type.

Halfway down, it said the spouse agreed to consult the family board on any decision about the patient's property.

"Consult," said Lin Zhi. "That's a nice word for it. It means whatever they decide, I'm cc'd."

"Cross it out."

"I already did one of these tonight," said Lin Zhi.

"Then you're good at it."

Lin Zhi drew a line through the article and wrote his initials, and then paused.

"It needs yours too, doesn't it? You're a party."

Zhaoran lifted his right hand off the sheet.

It shook, and Lin Zhi took it, and folded his own hand around it, and put the pen between the pale fingers.

Together they wrote three crooked letters.

Neither of them said a word about how warm the other's skin was.

Then the keypad beeped outside the door.

It was a small, ordinary sound, a code being typed.

Lin Zhi looked down.

In the space of a breath his husband had stopped being a man.

The face went slack, the eyes closed, and the hand in his went limp.

Lin Zhi grabbed the contract, shoved it under the cushion, and sat down with cold hands as the lock turned.

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