Chapter 16 second quarter

I was in a world of endless, total darkness.There is silence here, no sound can be heard, and my heart has fallen into a boundless loneliness.Even if there are other people around, as long as they don’t touch my skin, it is no different from non-existence, and my wife comes to accompany me in this state every day. She kept writing on the inside of my right hand, letting me know all kinds of news from the outside world in the dark.When I was not used to it at first, even if I concentrated on feeling her movements, it was still difficult to tell what words she wrote.Whenever I didn't figure out what she wrote, I waved my index finger twice to express negative, and then she would rewrite what she had written.Gradually, my ability to distinguish words became stronger and stronger. Later, I could even understand her meaning immediately while she was writing.

If what she wrote on my hand is to be believed, I am in a hospital ward.There are white walls on all sides, and there is a window on the right side of the bed, and she is sitting on a chair between the window and the bed. While I was waiting for a green light at an intersection, a dozing driver drove a truck and hit me. I was seriously injured, with multiple fractures in my body, severe damage to my internal organs, and brain dysfunction, which caused me to lose vision, hearing, Smell, taste, and touch beyond the right forearm.Even if the fracture healed, there was no hope of returning those feelings.

After learning about my condition, I moved my index finger.No matter how deep despair is in my heart, I don't even have the ability to cry at this moment.The only way to communicate my mournful cries to her is to wag my fingers.But can she see my sorrow?From her point of view, I was lying on the hospital bed expressionlessly like a Noh mask, but I just moved my fingers. I cannot greet the morning with my eyes.But when I feel the warmth of the sun enveloping the skin of my right hand, I know the night is over.The numbness I felt when I first woke up in the dark gradually disappeared, and the feeling of my skin returned to its previous state.

Soon after the morning comes, I will suddenly feel tired of my wife's hand, so I know that she has come to see me in the ward again today.She first wrote "Good Morning" on my right hand, and I responded with a wave of my index finger. When it was time to go home at night, she would write "good night" on my hand, and then her hand would disappear into the darkness.At times like this I wonder if I have been abandoned and if my wife will never come again.As the night passed without knowing whether I was asleep or awake, I felt truly at ease when my right hand touched hers again in the warmth of the sun.

She writes on the skin of my hands all day, telling me everything from the weather to how my daughter is doing.She said that she has received insurance money and compensation from the freight company, and there is no problem in her current life. I had no choice but to wait for my wife to give me various news.I want to know the time, but there is no way to let her know my needs.However, every morning when she came to see me in the ward, she would write the date of the day on my right hand. "Today is the fourth of August." One morning the wife wrote this.Three months had passed since the accident, and during the daytime, a guest came to the ward.

My wife's hand suddenly left my right wrist, and I was left alone in a dark and silent world.Not long after, my right hand came into contact with a small warm object, which was moist and hot like sweat, and I soon knew it was my daughter's little hand.My wife wrote on my right arm with her fingertips, telling me that her parents brought their daughter to see me.The hand of my one-year-old daughter probably came from my wife who put it on my right hand. I wave my index finger up and down to say hello to my father-in-law, mother-in-law, and daughter, who have visited me several times.Hands different from those of my wife touched my right hand in turn, which was the way my father-in-law and mother-in-law greeted me.The tactile sensations left by them when they touched my right hand have their own characteristics. First, I can feel the softness and roughness of each hand. From the area and speed of touching the skin, I can feel the fear in their hearts.

From my daughter's touch, I can't feel her fear.The way she touches seems to be testing an unknown object in front of her eyes.In my daughter's eyes, I am probably not a person, but just a lying, motionless object!This hit me hard. The daughter went back with her grandfather and grandmother.It hurts my heart to think of how she felt when she touched me.The daughter I remember couldn't speak, and she hadn't even called me "Daddy" before the accident.But before I knew what kind of voice my daughter used, I lost my hearing forever, never saw her toddler, never smelled when I put my nose to her head.

Only the surface of the right hand is sentient. I feel as if I have become a right hand. The hand was amputated in an accident, and the body and the right hand were separated. For some reason, "I", the thinking subject, lived in the severed right hand. in the right hand.Although I was lying on a hospital bed, it was no different from lying on a hospital bed with a broken arm.Seeing me like this, how could my daughter recognize me as her father? My wife slid her fingertips across my right hand and asked if I was grieving for not being able to see my daughter grow.I moved my index finger and told her yes.

"Is it painful?" The wife wrote so.I answer in the affirmative. "Want to die?" I chose the yes answer without hesitation.According to the information provided by my wife, I rely on artificial respirators and drips to maintain my life.As long as she reaches out and turns off the switch of the artificial respirator, I can get relief from the pain. My wife's hand was removed from my right hand and I was left in darkness.I don't know what she's going to do, but I picture her getting up from her chair and walking around the bed to the respirator. But, I was wrong, my wife's hand suddenly appeared in my only consciousness again, she didn't seem to get up from the chair, but kept sitting beside me.

Judging from the shape of the contact surface, it seems that my wife's left palm is placed on my arm, but the feeling is a little different from usual.Usually when she touched my arm with her palm, the cold feeling brought by the ring disappeared, and she seemed to have taken off the ring.Before I could think about why, I felt something tap my arm. The knocking thing seems to be a finger.It is said to be tapping, but the force is not as strong as patting with the palm of your hand, it seems that only one finger is used to gently tap on my skin.Her fingers tapped on the same place several times, as if hesitating for something, or doing warm-up exercises for something.

At first I thought my wife wanted to say something to me, but she tapped her fingers continuously, as if she didn't want to wait for my response. The tapping finger was one at first, and soon increased to two, as if tapping with the index finger and middle finger alternately.The pressure on the skin was getting stronger and stronger, and I felt her start to bounce hard. The number of fingers gradually increased, and the knocks that were separated at first gradually became a series. Finally, ten fingers jumped together on my arm, feeling like small bombs exploding continuously on my arm.Then, her strength weakened, and the raindrops hit my arm one by one.I understood that she was playing with my arm as if it were a piano keyboard. The part close to the elbow joint is the low key, and the part close to the wrist is the high key. I followed this rule to feel her percussion, and found that her percussion can indeed play out the melody of music.The sensation of a finger tapping on the skin is just a point, but when they connect, it seems to form waves on the arm. It was as if my right forearm had become a wide ice rink.The touch brought by his wife's fingers had just slid smoothly from the elbow joint to the wrist, and suddenly jumped back to the position of the elbow joint like walking down the stairs quickly.Sometimes she let her fingers jump wildly on my forearm, and the ground seemed to shake because of it; sometimes she let ten fingers slide gently across my hand like a curtain fluttering in the breeze. Since that day, every time my wife came to see me in the ward, she would play something on my right hand, and the time spent on writing became music lessons.Before and after she played, she would write the title and author of that piece on my hand.I memorized them quickly, and when I came across a tune I liked, I moved my index finger.I wanted to use it to express applause, but I'm not sure what this gesture represented in my wife's eyes. My surroundings are deeper and darker than the deep sea where there is no ray of light all year round, and there is complete silence where I can't even hear the sound of tinnitus.In such a world, the touch and rhythm brought by the wife's fingers are like the only window in a single cell. A year and a half after the accident, winter came. I don't know if my wife opened the window of the ward, and I was taken aback by the cold air blowing on my right hand.In the silent darkness, I couldn't see anyone approaching or opening the windows, so I couldn't predict the cold wind blowing on my hands.I think the wife is probably opening the window for fresh air!The skin of the right hand feels the drop in room temperature. After a while, my right hand touched something cold, which should be my wife's finger, and then the finger wrote a few words on my arm. "Scared?" I moved my index finger to express my affirmation, but I couldn't tell what my wife's expression was after seeing my answer. She wrote a few more words with her finger, this time to tell me that the performance was about to start, and she also said, let her warm her hands before the performance. I felt a warm and humid wind on my arm, and I guessed that it should be the hot air she blows to warm her hands, blowing on my skin.After the warm wind disappeared, the performance began. I have firmly memorized the order, position and timing of her fingers, etc.Even if she starts playing without telling me the title, I can quickly figure out which piece she is playing.As her fingers twitched over my skin, I always felt like I could see images, sometimes blurred patches of color, sometimes blissful times I'd had in the past. I never get tired of listening to the same piece of music, because her performance is not absolutely static, and there are subtle differences every day.When I fully memorize a piece of music, I can detect the slight time difference in the performance through the skin, thus forming a different image, and producing a different scene in the dark than when I listened to the same piece of music last time. I don't know when it started, but I found that subtle difference is the expression of my wife's inner world.When her heart is stable and peaceful, the movements of her fingers are as gentle as breathing in sleep.When her heart is full of contradictions and doubts, I can detect a moment in her playing as if she is rolling down the stairs.While playing, she couldn't lie.Her truest voice lurks in the thrill of my skin. My wife's playing stopped suddenly, and the warm breath caressed my arm again. I seemed to see her slender fingers that were red from the cold through the darkness.With the breath on the arm gone, the playing resumed. The touch of the fingertips moved like shaking the elbow to the wrist, and I felt like I was lying on the beach by the sea, with gentle waves beating my hands layer by layer. I recalled the hurtful words I had said to my wife before the accident, and I was tormented by regret.I want to apologize to her, however, I have no way to express my feelings to her.