Once she finished speaking in one breath, Wudong finally had a chance to open her mouth. "Alright, shut up! I was just overly nervous. Now the enemy is in the open while we're in the dark. The advantage is ours."
【The person you just passed was Wudong from the Covenant of the Scales. So it was an acquaintance after all. Their trio actually split up, so they probably aren't on a mission. Look at that, just look at how much psychological trauma you caused her. Tsk.】
A9's performance was over the top after regaining its energy. Ever since its outer physical form was beaten into a meat paste, it had grown even noisier staying inside her subconscious. It was obvious that enough psychological trauma had been inflicted on Wudong, but not quite enough on A9 itself.
On her first day of work, Lin Mo walked around the vicinity a couple of times, getting generally familiar with the routes throughout the nursing home and the functions of each area.
On the second day, the person in charge called over a caregiver to help her get to know the residents' daily routines, preferably memorizing everyone's names, and urged her to show some warmth and affinity.
"They just love lively young girls. If those old men and women like you, they'll be more than happy to cooperate with your work later on. Be a bit sweeter with your words—they won't mind you calling them Grandma or Grandpa. It's only because their children have little free time that they were sent here."
She waved her hand, as if pushing a duck onto a perch. "Alright, go on!"
...
The light blue uniform was very plain, with cinched cuffs and ankles for ease of movement. The caregiver urged her to get dressed and follow her.
The caregiver was around forty years old, short, not particularly attentive, and impatient. She walked rapidly ahead, her local dialect heavily mixing into her voice as she introduced things.
Lin Mo couldn't understand it. "Hello."
She was ignored.
She raised her voice. "Hello, I'm not from around here! Could I trouble you to walk a bit slower?"
"Huh?" The caregiver, who seemed to be in a hurry as if competing in a race-walking match, finally stopped. She looked at Lin Mo, who was lagging far behind, and seemed to find it a bit troublesome. Pursing her dry lips, she said in clumsy Mandarin, "You should have said so earlier, little sister."
She waited for a moment before awkwardly translating her dialect. "Don't tell me you didn't understand a single word of what I just said?"
"Forget it, I'll say it again. You can't call the old lady in 405 'Grandma'; call her Teacher Zhang. She used to teach math and has a bit of dementia. Old people's bones are very fragile nowadays, so it's best to support them when they walk around. Don't organize any activities that are too stimulating either—it'll just tire you out and exhaust everyone else."
"Also, in those few rooms I pointed to earlier, the residents are quite old and have trouble swallowing. Don't give them random things to eat."
As she spoke, the caregiver's pace habitually quickened again. Lin Mo fell behind once more, listening to her cadence echoing from far ahead.
She looked down at her leg, confirming that it hadn't re-dislocated. If she still couldn't walk normally now, was it a neurological issue?
She looked up to shift her attention, her eyes landing on the room doors along the corridor. Occasional muffled voices of elderly residents drifted from inside—a few close friends gathered to chat, the background hum of a television, or people playing casual games to pass the time.
The caregiver asked, "What are you standing there dazed for?"
She stopped walking.
Lin Mo slowly caught up.
"Young lady." Walking into a familiar room, the old lady in 412 called out that address again. Today her granddaughter hadn't come; she was sitting alone by the bedside, leaning on her cane and trying to stand up.
"Wait here for a moment." The caregiver thought the old lady was calling her and turned toward her.
"Are you feeling any better? How do you feel?" She walked toward the bedside. "It's good to stand up and walk around anyway. Getting up to move a bit is good."
Zhou Peilan on the bed lifted her heavy eyelids and instead asked Lin Mo into the room, her voice airy. "Oh, you came to see me."
The caregiver glanced at Lin Mo, guessing that either the two knew each other or the old lady was starting to talk nonsensically.
"I... I'm about to get up and walk down to check on the vegetables I planted a while ago. Wait... let me find my tools first." The old lady stopped halfway, seemingly having forgotten where her tools were placed.
The old lady said, "Give me a hand. With these old bones of mine, without someone to lift me, I really can't stand up."
"If you know you're at such an advanced age, don't fuss around. We'll have someone else turn the soil for you later," the caregiver said, deftly clearing the clutter on the table. "I'll keep an eye on you the whole time. Your daughter told me—I can watch you, but don't let you work."
Lin Mo reached out to support her. The old lady stood up very slowly, while Lin Mo's eyes automatically tracked the faster-moving organism in the room. After quickly clearing away the clutter, the caregiver walked over to the medicine cabinet.
The cabinet was half open. With her back turned to Lin Mo, the bright glass reflected the caregiver's actions. The woman's hand shuffled through the medicine compartments; while the movements were not large, the rustling sounded clearly in the extremely silent room.
The caregiver's shoulders hunched slightly. The clattering of medicines and bottles made the pills inside rustle. A small white medicine bottle flashed across the reflection before being pushed into a blind spot out of the glass's reflective angle.
"It hurts, it hurts! What are you doing?!"
Someone had silently arrived behind the caregiver. Her fingers were suddenly seized and pulled backward with terrifying force, as if her finger bones were trapped in a hydraulic clamp. She cried out in pain as her hand was twisted, forcing her to turn around.
Only after turning her around did Lin Mo notice that she was pinching a freshly dispensed small pill in her other hand. The cap of the medicine bottle inside the cabinet was not yet replaced, and the other selected medications had been placed on a small light-blue plastic tray.
One drawer of the medicine cabinet was half open, containing a medication logbook with names and times densely written on the paper.
"What are you trying to do?! Are you trying to hit me?!" the caregiver screamed.
Lin Mo skimmed the sheet at ten lines at a glance, checking the doctor's name, the person in charge, the drug names, and doses. Then she quickly scanned the medicine on the cabinet. Every drug name matched; no extra medications were found.
The caregiver was just sorting out medications.
She let go and apologized sincerely. "I'm sorry, I didn't know it hurt you that much. I'm really sorry. I just wanted to help—is there anything I can do?"
Clutching her finger, the caregiver gasped from the pain. She gritted her teeth, forcing out every word. "Fine, fine, fine! No need for this kind of help! This kind of work doesn't need you to do it!"
"I..." She felt dizzy with rage and wanted to curse and scream, but the pain in her hand stopped her. Cold sweat kept pouring from her forehead. She said, "You get back right now! Tell someone else to guide you! I can't deal with you anymore!"
Lin Mo was kicked out.
Rate on N.U.
