The Healing Sunshine (一厘米的阳光)

Chapter 23.3 - Time's Length (3)

A few days after Jì Chengyang was admitted into the hospital, Jǐ Yi's internship term officially came to an end. Based on the career objective that she had filled in previously as well as an internal review and assessment, she officially became part of the integrated team in the International News and Editing Department and, like all other employees, began working according to scheduled shifts.

Morning shift was from 8:00 to 13:30, afternoon shift from 13:30 to 19:30, and evening shift from 19:30 to 24:00, with no weekends off. This was much busier than before. Due to the unique nature of the international news department, there was more work to do during the evening shift.

With this, the amount of time in which she could go see Jì Chengyang was immediately reduced.

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On this night, in the last ten minutes of her evening shift, she was still checking over an internship student's translation of a news story by a foreign news agency, which consisted of content concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The frontline journalist still had not sent in a draft write-up yet, so she could only reference and cite from the reports of several different foreign news agencies to compile a news article: ... Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agree to re-open the peace talk process...

Her hand paused for a moment. A picture from her memory seemed to superimpose with the present.

Near the year-end of 2000, approximately eight years ago, she by chance saw him on the late-night news program: Deep in the night, in the torrential downpour, he had been wearing a black raincoat stained with muddy water. His back had been towards some ruins after a bomb attack, and facing the camera, he had been giving a live description of the site... She still very distinctly remembered, at the time, after she heard "bomb attack," she had immediately dashed up to the television in a fluster and carefully looked him over to see if he was hurt.

Back then, he had been on scene in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; now, she was compiling a news story on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As a result of this coincidence, this news story seemed to her to carry some warmth in it...

The clocks on the wall each pointed to a different time: Tokyo, New York, Paris... The hands on the clock for Beijing time had already passed midnight. Shutting down her computer, she swiftly left her office. As she jogged by the staircase, several foreigner employees coincidentally were getting off work as well and were conversing about something. When Jǐ Yi passed them to go downstairs, her footsteps noticeably quickened, such that it did not seem as if she was wearily getting off work, and rather that something urgent had occurred, causing these several foreigner colleagues to all cast surprised glances at her.

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The ward that Jì Chengyang was in was a special one, with very few people in it, and hence it was exceptionally quiet.

Each time she finished an evening shift and came here, she needed to pass through the hushed corridor, and then after checking in with the on-duty nurse, she would be allowed to head directly into his hospital room. Today, she had not told him ahead of time that she would be coming, and therefore supposed that he was likely asleep already. To her surprise, the nurse informed her that Jì Chengyang was not in his room.

"Mr. Jì said he was going out for some fresh air. He should be back soon."

From the nurse's tone, this should not be his first time doing this.