Chapter 14 Take a Shower

• "You live here?" Vincy asked as she looked around her.
• "Yes. The conditions are horrible, aren't they? But it's better than you think. To people like us who come from another state, we are happy enough to have a roof over our heads. Do come in and have a seat. I need to shower because I stink, and I don't want to dirty your car. It'll be quick – a few minutes will be enough." After inviting her into his place, he walked out with a towel and some clothes.
• "Do you have to go outside to take a shower?"
• "Yeah. This is an old building from the seventies with public bathrooms. Just give me a moment. I'll be right back." With that, he walked out, leaving her standing awkwardly in his impoverished little apartment because she didn't know where to sit. Taking advantage of his absence, she appraised the entire unit carefully. It was basically a storage unit, as it was filled with different equipment for making skewers. In the corner of the room was a double-decker bed; the top was full of his clothes. The only furniture was a small table with a few bowls and new instant noodles placed on top. She wanted to find a spot to sit, but there was no chair. She could not imagine how he could have been living here, but at this moment, she believed that he was poor.
• Finally, she could no longer stand being there and went back to wait in her car.
• Sure enough, Ben only took a few minutes to finish his shower; he hastily came out after changing into fresh clothes. Then, he hopped into Vincy's car. "Let's go."
• She started driving in the direction of the hospital.
• "Do you usually work until this hour?"
• "Yeah. The stalls usually close up around this hour. If I end the business earlier, I can't earn a lot."
• "Why are you doing this? You are so young, so why don't you find a stable job?"
• "Stable job? Nothing like that exists. To us normal people, anything that allows us to make a living is a stable job." He smiled self-deprecatingly.
• Vincy shot him a glance but remained silent.
• "What's wrong with your daughter? Why did she suddenly get a fever?" he asked.
• "Having a fever means her condition is getting worse. Because of her disease, she often had fevers, and the more frequent it happened, the more serious it became. We can only lower her temperature using medicines."
• "Is there no solution for her? No hope at all?"
• "It's hereditary leukemia. There are no other solutions besides having a bone marrow transplant."
• "Why don't you go ahead with that? You don't seem like you lack money."
• "If possible, I would rather use my life to exchange for hers, let alone money, but it doesn't work like that. We have to find a suitable bone marrow donor, and none of the donors match hers. There's no way to carry out the operation. All her relatives, including me, have already been tested at the hospital. None of our bone marrow is compatible with hers. We couldn't do anything apart from watching her condition deteriorate." Tears welled up in her eyes again when she thought about this.
• It was a tragic story, and Vincy was the damsel in distress. At the same time, she was also a very strong woman.
• They arrived at the ward at three in the morning. Annie was sobbing, asking to see daddy, causing her nanny to be at wits' end.
• "Annie darling, Daddy is here. See? He's right here," Vincy said with reddened eyes.
• "Daddy, Daddy!" She immediately stopped crying as soon as she saw Ben and asked him to carry her.
• With her in his arms and listening to her calling him 'Daddy', he felt genuine love and care from her. He suddenly felt an extra layer of responsibility on his shoulders, and a lump formed in his throat.
• As soon as she saw him, she immediately behaved and took the injection from the nurse, cooperating with their treatment. However, the condition was that he must hold her in his arms. Even though the fever made her slightly dazed, she held on tightly to him, worried that he might disappear.
• Throughout the entire time, he had been hugging her on the bed. Finally exhausted, she fell asleep with the IV in her hand.
• "Place her back in bed. It's late, and you've been busy the entire day. I'll send you home," Vincy said apologetically upon seeing how tired he looked.
• "Will she be okay with that?" he asked, looking at her hands that were still grabbing his collar tightly even though she was asleep.
• "It'll be fine. She's asleep anyway. You can leave her in bed."
• "Okay." He turned around to put her to bed, but as soon as he wanted to loosen her grip, she started crying.
• "Daddy, don't go! Don't leave me here!"
• "Alright, alright. I'll be here, and I won't leave tonight. I'll stay with you, okay?"
• After holding her closer to him, only did she fall asleep peacefully again.
• Silence fell in the ward again, and Ben hugged her on the bed while Vincy sat in a chair next to them. Annie's nanny already fell asleep in the ward next to them.
• "This kid is really…" Vincy was embarrassed about this. After all, it was almost four in the morning.
• "Don't worry about it. I'll stay here until the next morning. I can take the public bus back later, so the timing is perfect." He smiled at her. Though he kept reassuring Vincy, he could not help yawning.
• "But you've been working for so long before this, and you haven't even rested. Just forget this and go back. If she cries, just let her be. I'm sure she will be fine after some crying." Vincy felt bad about this.
• "If she would be fine after some crying, you wouldn't have come to me in the middle of the night. Don't worry. I'll catch some sleep after I go back. I don't have much to do during the day anyway."
• "In that case… thanks for taking the trouble." Vincy was apologetic yet touched at the same time.
• "She misses her dad a lot."
• "Yeah, she hasn't met her father since she was born. Ever since she could understand how things work, she kept asking me why she didn't have a father like the other children do. Their dads always accompany them, yet she hasn't even seen her dad. She would burst into tears whenever she saw other children sitting on their dads' shoulders. She longed for a father, and… it's me who let her down. I couldn't give her a complete family, and I didn't even give her a healthy body." She could not stop sobbing as she continued speaking. "Because she wanted a father so badly, she thinks of you as her daddy. She's so reliant on you because she's finally found her lost daddy. And because she cares too much about you, she feels insecure, worried that you might abandon her," Vincy explained, knowing her daughter better than anyone else.