The smell of disinfectant was spreading.
Drip bags ticked away, and the figures moving through the corridor appeared like ghosts, their outlines blurring before my eyes.
In the spacious ward, there were voices deliberately hushed.
As the door opened, Su Ming'an raised his head to see a stack of illegible papers in his blurred vision.
Even though the words were not clear and everything was hazy, he just knew—this was a critical condition notice.
Beside his ear, community staff accompanying him murmured softly:
"...how did it come to this, leaving behind a child, what are we to do..."
Su Ming'an reached out to take the paper, but a community staffer's hand intercepted his, and the pen's tip "swooshed" as it signed the name.
Su Ming'an lowered his hand, and in the moment his gaze fell upon his own palm, in the moment he saw that small hand, he suddenly realized—this was a child's hand.