When Shen Zhiyuan was twelve years old, his teacher arranged to stay with Fu Yunzheng on the grounds that "he is not in good health and should take more care of him." She took care of him for seventeen years. He suffers from a congenital heart defect and cannot run or jump. He is more afraid of the cold in winter than anyone else. She fought for him, learned taekwondo for him, and applied for medical school as a college entrance examination. He said nothing, just drew her back over and over in his sketchbook.
Later they got married and lived in an old house by Shicha Sea. He was painting in the yard, and she brought him sugar-roasted chestnuts when she came back from get off work at the hospital. He drew hundreds of wild ducks and said it was remarkable that these little gray creatures could survive the winter. She said you too. When he died of illness at the age of twenty-nine, she put his leftover gray-blue paint in her bookshelf, along with the old sketchbooks and parenting encyclopedias.
Many years later, in early winter, she was already the attending physician in cardiac surgery. The pot of succulents he left on the window sill was divided into pots after pots, and there were more wild ducks in Shichahai every year. She passes by the Fuchengmen alley every day. The chestnut stall is still there, and the scarf is still the one he gave her. When one person is gone, the other person continues to live with that part of him - cooking with less salt, repotting succulents every spring, not pausing when writing his name in the medical record. Some companionships are very short, as short as only twenty-nine years; some companionships are very long, lasting longer than a lifetime.
