Chapter 19: He Stands

Xie Zhaoran stood up.

He did it slowly, with both hands on the arms of the chair, and the blanket slid to the floor.

He was thinner than the man in the family photographs, and his coat hung loose on his shoulders.

But he stood at his full height, a head above the nearest guest, and he looked down the hall at his uncle.

Nobody in the hall moved.

Someone at a back table dropped a glass.

"Lin Zhi," said Zhaoran, quietly. "Your arm."

Lin Zhi gave it.

He walked beside his husband down the long aisle between the round tables, one step at a time.

Zhaoran's hand rested on his sleeve with a weight that would leave a bruise.

Nobody spoke.

The only sound in the hall was the tap of two feet on polished stone.

Xie Guangping had not moved.

His smile was still on his face, a little crooked now, held up by habit alone.

"Zhaoran," he said. "My boy. A miracle."

"Good evening, Uncle," said Zhaoran.

His voice was rough and low, and it carried.

"You said I'd sleep well."

The smile stopped.

Zhaoran reached the head table, and the little stage beside it with the microphone on its stand.

He stepped up, without help, and took it in one hand.

"I have been awake for nine weeks," he said, to the three hundred.

"I would like to thank my grandmother for her patience. I would like to thank my husband for everything else."

A sound went through the room, half a laugh and half a sob.

"And I would like my uncle to explain why a nurse came at three in the morning with a double dose," he said.

"Why a camera was put in my ceiling."

"Why a forged signature moved me to a clinic where I was kept sedated until I bit through my own tongue."

"Lies," said Xie Guangping. He had found his voice, thin and sharp.

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