Chapter 16: The Wife

The clinic lay behind a pine hedge in the hills west of the city, and it had no sign on the gate.

Wenxin walked through the front door in the black dress she had worn to her mother's funeral.

She had not planned it. It was simply what hung in the back of Anqi's wardrobe, where she had gone to change.

She had not slept, and she had not answered Haoran's messages.

The woman at the desk looked up.

"I'm Mrs. Lu," Wenxin said. "I understand my husband was admitted this morning."

"Mr. Lu's family has asked that he receive no visitors."

"I am his family."

She took the red certificate out of her bag and laid it on the desk.

Madam had made it, and now it would work for her.

The woman read it. Her eyes went to the groom's signature, then the stamp, and she picked up the phone.

"Please wait."

Wenxin waited. She did not sit.

Across the lobby a man in a white coat appeared, and behind him two of the dark-jacketed men from the villa.

"Mrs. Lu," said the doctor. "Madam has made all the decisions for her son."

"Madam is his mother," Wenxin said. "I am his wife."

She raised her voice a little, so the lobby could hear.

"The law puts a wife before a mother. Tell me I'm wrong in front of these people, and I'll call the district office from this desk."

A nurse stopped on the stairs. A man in a dressing gown lowered his newspaper.

The doctor opened his mouth, and shut it.

"I want to see him," she said. "Now. Alone."

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