Chapter 5: The Stranger in the Mirror

At nine o’clock in the morning, I carried two bowls of porridge from the cafeteria back to the ward door. When I looked inside through the glass, I almost spilled the porridge.

My mother stood by the bed, looking down at the hospital gown, examining it from all angles. The pants were too long, the cuffs bunching up at her ankles; the top was even worse. She was already a little shorter than yesterday, and having returned to a normal weight after being extremely thin, the oversized gown was now in a state of complete collapse—it couldn’t hold it up properly at all. The fabric around her waist and abdomen hung loosely, bunching up in wrinkles, but the fabric at her chest was stretched taut, the gap between the two drawstrings widening to reveal large areas of pale skin. With every movement, those two bulging breasts swayed slightly, not by much, but because they were so heavy, the curves created by the stretching of the fabric were very obvious.

She didn’t seem to care at all. She squatted down and rolled up her trouser legs, and as she squatted and stood up, her neckline dropped down, revealing the curve of her chest and the shadow of her cleavage from my angle at the doorway—it was dazzlingly white.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

”Mom, porridge.”

She straightened up and casually tugged at her collar, but it was pointless; it still stretched out where it needed to. I placed the porridge on the bedside table, my gaze fixed on the bowl, not glancing down once.

”Baby, I can’t wear this anymore.” She patted her chest, her face showing no embarrassment, just the expression of a middle-aged woman complaining about ill-fitting clothes. “It’s so tight at the top, and so loose at the bottom. Find me something that fits.”

“…I’m going to get discharged first.” I handed her the spoon and turned my face away. “Stay in the ward and don’t go out. Don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll come back and take you away.”

Why didn’t you let Mom come along?

“If you go out with this face, the nurses won’t recognize you. Your file photo from yesterday still shows you…the same as before.” I paused, carefully choosing my words, “It would be troublesome if someone stopped you and asked you all sorts of questions. I’ll handle the paperwork myself and just say you’ve been transferred to another hospital. You can just stay here and have some porridge.”

She was reluctant, her lips twitching slightly, but she didn’t insist any further. She picked up the bowl, took a sip of the porridge, and frowned. “This porridge is too watery, too little rice. The cafeteria is really trying to save money…”

I closed the door and stood with my back to the door of 502 for two seconds. I let out a long sigh.

This size of breast… when I was in my forties I was too thin to tell at all. Now that I’m back to my peak twenties, they’ve all popped out. I’m at least an E cup, maybe even an F. I could wear a hospital gown, or even a flour sack and it would stretch out of shape.

I rubbed my face vigorously. Okay, stop thinking about it. Discharge papers, hurry back.

I walked from the ward to the inpatient department’s payment hall, waiting in line for twenty minutes. I told the window clerk that Su Qingqing from bed 502 needed to be discharged. The clerk checked the system and asked about my family relationship. I said nephew. She asked if the patient wasn’t coming. I said the patient was too weak to come down, so I would handle it for her. She rolled her eyes, made me sign a bunch of forms, and settled yesterday’s examination and bed fees, totaling 1,300 yuan.

1300. My bank card balance dropped to 2100.

I stood in the corner of the payment hall, holding the payment slip, rubbing my thumb against the edge of the paper.

My fingers feel a little numb. It’s not from the cold; it’s the kind of exhaustion you get from skipping breakfast, low blood sugar, and not sleeping for two days straight.

There was an older woman next to me making a phone call. She was speaking very loudly in her hometown dialect, and it was making my ears ring.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes for a while.

Go quickly and come back soon. She’ll worry if she’s alone in the ward.

Twenty minutes later, I returned to 502 and went inside.

My mom was standing in front of the sink.

She took off the top of her hospital gown, leaving only her thin cotton undershirt, and looked at herself in the mirror. Not with the blank stare of yesterday, but with… a discerning look, as if flipping through a long-unopened photo album.

She ran her right hand over her left arm, gliding it from her shoulder to her wrist, feeling the texture of her skin. Her arm was fair and smooth, without a single age spot, and fine beads of sweat trickled down the bluish veins on the inside of her forearm. Then she looked down at her chest.

That cotton bra was one she wore when she was hospitalized. It was a loose, old style, washed countless times, and the fabric was so thin it was almost transparent. It couldn’t hold her breasts in place at all. Her breasts spilled out from the edges of the bra, the full curve of the upper edge stretching the fabric into an exaggerated crescent shape, creating a deep cleavage. The angle at which she looked down made that cleavage even deeper, and from where I was standing, I could see a large area of ​​white flesh and the soft folds of flesh squeezed out by the bra.

She stared at her chest in the mirror, her expression neither shy nor surprised, but rather… nostalgic.

“Exactly the same as when I was young.” She muttered, her voice not loud, but in such a small ward, I heard her clearly. “Twenty years ago, I thought it was in the way, and I couldn’t find a suitable bra even after searching half the city. When your dad was still alive, he always laughed at me…” She paused here and didn’t continue.

I was still clutching the payment receipt in my hand, standing at the door, caught in a dilemma. If I went in, I felt something was off about her dressed like that; if I went out, the door was already open, and I’d already made a sound.

She saw me in the mirror.

”You’re back?” Her tone was as flat as if nothing had happened. She turned to face me, and the weight of her breasts beneath her cotton bra swayed violently with her turn. She made no attempt to cover herself, bending down to get her coat from the bed. The extent of her bend caused the fabric of her bra neckline to completely surrender, and my gaze reflexively met a whole expanse of white, wavy, soft flesh and the bottomless cleavage in the middle.

I abruptly turned my head to the right and stared at the fire hydrant information sign on the wall.

”Mom. Put on your clothes.”

”What’s the rush? We’re not strangers. You used to nurse on your mother’s lap when you were little.” She straightened up and slowly put her hospital gown back on, fastening the drawstrings. “Have you finished the discharge procedures?”

”It’s all taken care of. I’ll go to the rental apartment to drop off my things in a bit, and I’ll pick you up this afternoon.” My eyes were still fixed on the fire hydrant instruction sign, and I silently recited the “Instructions for Using Dry Powder Fire Extinguishers” three times. “Pack your things. I brought you some clothes.”

I pulled an old T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants from my bag that I’d found yesterday while rummaging through my drawers and handed them to her. The T-shirt was mine, a men’s size L. I figured she could fit a watermelon around her waist, but the chest area would probably… barely fit.

She took it, unfolded it, glanced at it, and wrinkled her nose in disgust: “This grayish-brown color is so ugly.”

”I’ll just have to make do with this.” I tossed my backpack onto the chair, sat down, and started eating the now-cold porridge. My hands trembled slightly, and the spoon scraped against the bowl with a sizzling sound. I hadn’t eaten anything proper for two days, and my stomach was protesting.

She glanced at me. I knew that look all too well; whether she was forty or twenty, that “Mom knows everything, stop pretending” look would never change.

What time did you go to sleep?

”12 o’clock.”

”Liar. Your dark circles are even worse than yesterday.” She walked over, reached out and touched the back of my neck, her fingers were cool. “You’re all sweaty, your clothes are soaked. Did you not sleep all night again?”

I didn’t say anything. The porridge was too cold; it made my stomach cramp after I drank it.

She sat down beside me, sighed—that long, drawn-out sigh typical of middle-aged women, reverberating from her nose to her throat to her chest. Then she reached out and took the spoon from my hand.

”Go lie down over there for a while.” She pointed to the hospital bed. “Mom will stay with you and wake you up in an hour.”

”No need, I…”

”Shen Qi.” The full name and surname were used.

I shut my mouth. I obediently moved to the hospital bed and lay down on my side. The pillow smelled of disinfectant, mixed with the faint scent of my mother’s face cream. She sat on the stool by the bed and began tidying up the clutter in the bedside table, muttering, “The toothbrush bristles in this hospital are so stiff… Mom can take the towel home to use as a rag…”

My eyelids were so heavy I couldn’t lift them. The last thing I heard before my consciousness faded was the sound of her zipping up her jacket, and a very soft voice saying, “Sleep well, baby, Mom’s here