sinovels Chapter 1424 Good News
Chapter 1424 Good News
Chapter 1424 Good News
The newly formed sensory border on Chen Jianguo's upper abdomen remained unchanged for the next two weeks. Every morning, Mainstein ran a cotton swab down the skin, and the border always stopped precisely in the same spot, about two centimeters above the xiphoid process and navel. From the fourth to the sixth week after surgery, a full fourteen days, it didn't advance even a millimeter.
Those two centimeters seemed frozen in time. Every morning, the first thing Chen Jianguo did upon waking was to look down at his stomach. Of course, he couldn't see anything with his eyes; he felt the boundary wasn't a real line, not drawn with ink, but it was more real than any line he had ever seen. It was there, lying beneath his skin, like an invisible dam, sharply separating the land above that had regained its senses from the still-sleeping Dead Sea below.
Chen Jianguo began to feel uneasy.
He didn't say it, but Mainstein could tell. A person's eyes can't hide anything. Every time Chen Jianguo saw Mainstein enter the ward, his eyes were filled with expectation; after the examination, finding the boundary unchanged, his eyes showed disappointment; when Mainstein said, "Come again tomorrow," his eyes were filled with expectation again. This cycle repeated once a day, like a clock that would never stop ticking. Sometimes Mainstein would deliberately arrive half an hour late, and Chen Jianguo would constantly look at the ward door, his anxiety impossible to conceal. When he finally arrived, the examination was finished, and the result was the same, Chen Jianguo would feign nonchalance and say, "It's okay, no rush."
“Jianguo, stop staring at that border.” Sister Li couldn’t help but say one day.
"Does it disappear if I don't look at it?"
"It's not there, but even if you look at it, it won't move any faster."
"How do you know? Maybe when I look at it, it knows someone is waiting for it, so it walks faster."
Sister Li was amused by his words: "A nerve isn't a person, it doesn't know someone is waiting for it. Even if you look at it eight hundred times a day, it will still walk as fast as it wants."
“Then I want to see it too.” Chen Jianguo said this in a stubborn tone, like a disobedient child.
Sister Li didn't try to persuade him anymore. She put the towel in the basin, wrung it out, and continued to wipe his legs.
On the third day of the sixth week after surgery, Mannstein brought both good news and bad news.
The good news was that the electromyography (EMG) showed a change. Clara attached electrodes to Chen Jianguo's upper abdominal muscles and asked him to try to contract his abdominal muscles. Chen Jianguo tried several times but couldn't feel anything, yet a weak, irregular signal appeared on the EMG screen. It wasn't a normal voluntary movement signal, but something called a "neonatal potential," with a wide waveform, small amplitude, and long duration. Clara magnified the waveform again and again; the winding lines on the screen resembled a newly awakened river, flowing slowly and clumsily.
“Mr. Chen, look at this.” Mainstein pointed to the waveform on the screen.
Chen Jianguo couldn't understand the winding lines, but he saw the expression on Mainstein's face—a restrained satisfaction.
"What does it mean?"
"This means that some nerves have been repaired and preliminary neuromuscular connections have formed. These connections are still weak and immature, not strong enough to make your abdominal muscles actually contract. But they are there; all that's left is time."
"And the bad news?"
Mannstein paused. He rarely paused. As a neuroscientist, he was used to describing everything with precise language, including bad news. But this time, he paused.
"The bad news is that getting abs is just the first step; the real challenge is yet to come."
Chen Jianguo said:
“Professor Mainstein, this is not bad news, this is what I know. You told me on day one that it would take a long time, and it’s only been a month and a half now, I’m not in a hurry.”
Mainstein looked at him without speaking. He knew Chen Jianguo was lying. Chen Jianguo was anxious, extremely anxious. How could someone who had been lying in a hospital bed for six weeks, staring at his stomach every day to see if it had moved, not be anxious? But he didn't expose him. Sometimes, a person needs to lie to make themselves feel better, so don't deprive them of that right. Mainstein had seen too many patients and knew all too well the weight of such lies. It wasn't self-deception; it was a survival instinct.
Eight weeks after the surgery, Chen Jianguo was discharged from the hospital.
It wasn't that he was cured, but rather that hospitalization was no longer of much use. All acute treatment had been completed, the surgical wound had healed, the risk of infection had passed, and all that remained was to wait—to wait for the nerves to grow, millimeter by millimeter each day. Doing this in a hospital was no different than doing it in a hotel. Mainstein arranged an apartment for him near the research institute, a ten-minute walk from the lab. He came to the institute daily for rehabilitation training and returned to his apartment to rest in the evenings.
Sister Li kept the apartment very clean. There was a rehabilitation bed in the living room with armrests, and a plastic chair in the bathroom. She pasted photos she brought from home above the bed: a young photo of Chen Jianguo in his police uniform, their wedding photo, and a family photo of the three of them when their child turned one month old. The photos were carefully arranged in an arc, like a small family shrine.
Chen Jianguo sat on the bed, looking at the photos for a long time.
Do you think I can still wear that police uniform?
Sister Li was packing her luggage when she heard the question and paused for a moment.
"You can wear it if you want."
"I'm not asking if I can wear it, I'm asking if I can wear it to work."
Sister Li put the neatly folded clothes into the wardrobe, then turned to look at him. Something flickered in her eyes, but she held it back.
“Jianguo, stand up first, then we can talk about going to work. We’re not in a rush, we’ll take it one step at a time.”
Chen Jianguo didn't ask any more questions. He turned his head and continued looking at the photos. The young man in the police uniform was smiling at him, a smile so confident, so matter-of-fact. He had never imagined that one day he would envy him.
The days after being discharged from the hospital were even harder than when he was hospitalized. During his hospitalization, his schedule was packed with doctors making rounds, nurses giving injections, and rehabilitation therapists providing training. His temperature was taken at 6 AM, blood was drawn at 7 AM, breakfast was at 8 AM, rehabilitation training began at 9 AM, physical therapy at 11 AM, doctors made rounds at 2 PM, another round of rehabilitation at 3 PM, dinner at 5 PM, family visits ended at 7 PM, and lights out at 9 PM. Every hour was filled with tasks, and every hour someone came to see him. After being discharged, most of the time it was just him and Sister Li. When Sister Li went to buy groceries, he would sit alone on the bed, looking out the window at the sky, counting down the days.
One millimeter a day. If he had X-ray vision, he could see those nerve axons, thinner than a human hair, slowly but surely extending downwards, like the tendrils of a climbing vine. They grope their way forward in the dark, searching for the muscle fibers that have been waiting for eleven years. If one axon gets lost, another fills the gap; if one encounters an obstacle, it goes around it. They don't rest, they don't complain, they don't doubt themselves. They just move forward, one millimeter a day.
But he didn't have X-ray vision. All he could see was his own stomach. The sensation in the two centimeters above his navel had returned, but there had been no progress in the past four weeks. The boundary was still the same boundary, the location was still the same location. Every morning when Mainstein's cotton swab ran across that area of skin, he hesitated before answering the question, "Can you feel anything?" Not because he couldn't feel anything, but because what he felt was exactly the same as yesterday. No expansion, no progress.
He began to have doubts.
It's not about doubting Professor Mannstein, nor about doubting Professor Yang Ping; it's about doubting myself. I doubt whether my body is good enough, whether my willpower is strong enough, whether that 0.1 microvolt signal is a machine malfunction, and whether the restoration of that two-centimeter sensation is merely psychological.
One evening, while Sister Li went out to buy groceries, he lay alone in bed, placed his hand on his abdomen, closed his eyes, and strained to think. He wanted that boundary to move downwards; he wanted to use the power of his will to push those nerve axons forward. He thought for a long time, until sweat beaded on his forehead. When he opened his eyes, he drew a line above his navel with his fingernail, but felt nothing. The boundary hadn't moved. The nerves hadn't moved any faster. Willpower is worthless before the laws of physiology.
When Sister Li returned, she saw him lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, looking very unwell. She didn't ask what was wrong. She simply put the groceries she had bought into the refrigerator, then came over, sat on the edge of the bed, and placed her hand on the back of his hand. "Jianguo, do you remember when you were handling cases before, sometimes you wouldn't have a single lead for months?"
"……Remember."
Were you in a hurry back then?
"It's urgent, but we can't rush it. Cases aren't rushed; they're made by waiting."
"Then what are you in such a hurry for?"
Chen Jianguo didn't speak; his eyes were red.
Sister Li didn't say anything more; she gripped his hand tighter. Her hands were rough, worn from doing too much housework, the joints somewhat deformed. But when those hands held his, he never needed to doubt anything.
She doesn't believe in scientific laws; she only believes in him.
Twelve weeks after the surgery, changes reappeared.
That afternoon, Chen Jianguo was doing breathing exercises in the rehabilitation room. Hans had taught him a deep breathing method: inhale deeply through the nose, then slowly exhale through the mouth, until you can't exhale any more, then forcefully contract your abdomen to expel the last breath. He had done this hundreds of times, each time feeling like he was straining against the air. His abdominal muscles hadn't been used in the past eleven years; he was long accustomed to breathing using his diaphragm and intercostal muscles. Abdominal muscles? Those were someone else's muscles, not his.
But this time, it's different.
He took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and when he couldn't exhale any more, he forcefully contracted his abdomen as Hans had taught him. Then, he felt something.
It wasn't pain, nor numbness, but a deep, subtle pulling sensation. Like a very thin thread, passing through his chest cavity, down to near his navel. The thread was so faint, so faint, that he was almost certain it was his imagination, but it was there. It was like a spider's web, which would break with a gust of wind, but it was definitely there.
He didn't make a sound, afraid that if he spoke out, the connection would snap. He feared it was just his hallucination, something his brain fabricated because it craved a signal. He feared that Mainstein would look at him with that calm, emotionless gaze and write in his notebook, "Complaint: Abnormal sensations, cause to be investigated." He was even more afraid that Sister Li would be overjoyed and then disappointed.
The same feeling returned the next day. It was a little clearer than the day before, just a little. He asked Sister Li to place her hands on his abdomen, and then he performed the same breathing movements.
"Did you feel anything?" he asked.
Sister Li placed her hand on his abdomen, carefully feeling it. Her palm was pressed against his skin, her eyes fixed on her fingers, her expression as focused as if she were listening to a very faint heartbeat.
"No, there's nothing there."
Chen Jianguo wasn't surprised. The thread was so thin that only he could feel it. He wasn't even sure if the thread was real, or if his finger was deceiving his brain. But he didn't dare to find out. What if the slight tug he felt today was just a memory of yesterday's sensation? What if he couldn't feel it at all for the next few days?
On the third day, he told Mainstein about it.
After listening to his description, Mainstein remained expressionless, simply taking notes in his notebook. Then he had Chen Jianguo lie on the treatment bed and attached an electrode to Chen Jianguo's rectus abdominis muscle.
"Now, take a deep breath, inhale...exhale...and at the end, forcefully contract your abdomen."
Chen Jianguo did as instructed.
A series of waveforms appeared on the electromyography (EMG) machine. Not the neonatal potential waveforms we'd seen before, but a waveform closer to normal voluntary movement. Although the amplitude was small and the duration short, the shape was correct. It flickered on the screen briefly, then settled down. But that brief moment was enough for everyone to see.
Mainstein stared at the waveform for a long time in silence. He repeatedly replayed the recording, zooming in and zooming in again, comparing it with the previous waveforms to confirm that it was not interference or an artifact.
"Mr. Chen, your rectus abdominis muscles are starting to work."
Chen Jianguo lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Rectus abdominis!” he repeated the word. For eleven years, he hadn’t heard those three words come out of anyone’s mouth and then be used on himself.
"Yes! It's the middle part of your abs, the muscle you use when you do sit-ups while watching TV."
Chen Jianguo asked, "Professor, how long has it been since my rectus abdominis muscles have been used?"
"Eleven years."
"It rested for eleven years."
"It didn't rest; it just wasn't receiving a signal. Like a telephone that no one was making calls to. Now, someone's starting to dial."
Chen Jianguo placed his hand on his abdomen, feeling the muscle that hadn't been used for eleven years. It was soft, flat, and devoid of any strength. But it had received a signal. Like a sleeping person finally hearing an alarm clock. It wasn't fully awake yet; it was still groggily turning over, but it had heard it. That thin, spiderweb-like signal had pierced through eleven years of silence and found it.
Sister Li stood to the side, one hand covering her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
"Jianguo, your belly is moving."
"No, it's just an electrical signal. The muscle isn't actually contracting, or the contraction is so weak that you can't feel it."
"Electrical signals are also moving. This is the first time in eleven years that we've had an electrical signal."
Chen Jianguo didn't speak. He turned to look at his wife's face. She was crying, yet she was also smiling. It was the most contradictory and genuine expression he had ever seen. Her tears and smile mingled together, like someone who had waited eleven years to finally receive a letter. Regardless of what was written in the letter, the mere fact that "a letter had arrived" was enough to make her cry.
In the fourteenth week after surgery, the borders finally began to move.