Chapter 130 - 117: Patient Zero
The county town.
The door to the main hall of her old family home stood wide open.
Shen Yu dropped her suitcase and rushed over to hug her grandmother.
"Grandma!"
The silver-haired old woman was grinning from ear to ear. "My dear, didn’t you say you were coming back next week? How did you get here today?"
"I didn’t have any classes, so I took some time off and came back early."
Shen Yu hugged her grandmother tightly, not letting go as she said, "Grandma, hehe, I want to make a small piece, but I’m a little tight on time..."
Her grandmother tried to lift her but found she no longer had the strength.
So she just stroked Shen Yu’s hair and said, "My dear, what style are you planning to make?"
Shen Yu let go and took her grandmother’s hand. "A necklace."
Her grandmother said, "Filigree is delicate work. You haven’t done it in years, so your hands will be out of practice. Start with a scrap piece to get the feel for it again."
Shen Yu nodded.
Time was short, so she got right to it.
The process of making Jingtai Lan was extremely intricate.
The filigree step alone required using tweezers to bend and fold hair-thin copper wires, one by one, and then affixing them to the copper base with Bletilla glue.
The slightest deviation would result in a final enameled surface that was worlds apart from what was intended.
Fortunately, Shen Yu had practiced as a child and hadn’t forgotten the craft.
She stared at the tip of her tweezers, but that photo suddenly reappeared in her mind.
In the photo, Jiang He’s eyes were weary, and his clothes were stained with a large patch of blood...
Certain thoughts began to surface again.
Shen Yu was an applied psychology major—an absolute top student.
She had a keener perception of human emotions and behavioral patterns than most people.
When they first started spending time together, she only saw Jiang He as mature and steady.
But as they grew closer...
...a sense of strangeness, hidden beneath the tip of the iceberg, began to reveal itself.
It seemed Jiang He was constantly terrified of something.
Last night, Chen Hao had sent a message. He said Jiang He had rushed around the emergency room all night on an injured ankle and had even ended up performing surgery.
His words were full of admiration and fervor, as if he thought it was some kind of heroic feat.
Even Juanzi thought so.
But Shen Yu felt that from the perspective of psychological personality analysis, this wasn’t normal.
A person with a torn ankle ligament could have easily done triage from a wheelchair, only standing up for emergencies.
But he chose not to.
This behavior might have been to maximize efficiency, or perhaps... it was ’pathological altruism’.
In layman’s terms, Jiang He was deliberately pushing himself to the breaking point, and he probably didn’t even realize it.
Shen Yu then recalled a small incident from their video call a few days ago.
She had just let out a small cough.
But on the other side of the screen, Jiang He had completely frozen. The fear in his eyes was so real...
’What on earth is he so afraid of?’
Whatever it was, the source of this fear seemed to point back to her.
Shen Yu didn’t know why she was the source of his fear, nor could she find any event in Jiang He’s past that could have caused trauma of this magnitude.
But every detail of his behavior fit the state of hyperarousal seen in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
He couldn’t make himself stop.
Whether it was desperately doing research, working on papers, or running himself ragged in the emergency room without any regard for his own well-being.
In terms of psychological defense mechanisms, it was all a form of avoidance.
He was trying to use extremely intense work and the act of constantly saving others to suppress the deep-seated fear that threatened to consume him at any moment.
It was a race against his own fear.
If he ran fast enough, saved enough people, he wouldn’t have the energy to think about anything else.
If her analysis was correct...
...then this was a work pattern with severe self-destructive tendencies.
The whole world saw Jiang He shining.
Liu Jianbang appreciated him, Zhao Yumin admired him, Yang Xu protected him, and his classmates idolized him.
Everyone took the sense of security Jiang He provided for granted.
No one paid any mind to his psychological state.
Only Shen Yu realized it.
If he was allowed to continue like this, one day, either his body or his mind would be the first to collapse.
’This absolutely cannot happen.’
That was why she absolutely had to take time off and come back early to make this Jingtai Lan piece herself.
"Girl, your hand is stiff. The wire isn’t held tight, so the glue won’t stick."
Her grandmother’s voice, tinged with a local accent, sounded by her ear.
"When you’re working, don’t let your mind wander. If your heart is in turmoil, the piece you’re making will have no soul. Be careful."
Shen Yu snapped back to her senses.
She readjusted the angle of her tweezers. "I know, Grandma. I’ll redo it."
Picking up the copper wire, Shen Yu slowly progressed with her work.
The chaotic thoughts in her mind, like the wire being straightened, gradually began to clear.
Simply telling Jiang He to rest more would be meaningless for someone in a state of overcompensation.
There was only one way to truly help him.
Share his burden.
She knew that Jiang He was recently working on an miRNA early screening project.
It was a revolutionary early cancer screening technology, ahead of its time.
And any disruptive medical technology’s debut could never be confined to a laboratory.
If, one day in the future, Jiang He really managed to bring this technology into clinical use...
...he wouldn’t just be facing tumor cells.
He would be facing thousands upon thousands of patients struggling on the brink of life and death; public doubt and panic about a new technology; and complex medico-social and ethical issues.
Shen Yu put down the tweezers, picked up a small brush, dipped it in a bit of the Bletilla glue, and applied it to the gaps between the wires.
’For my exchange trip to Southern China this time, I’ll take a few more electives in addition to my required courses.’
’Medical Psychology,’
’Medical Sociology,’
’and Public Health Education...’
The base pattern of the necklace gradually took shape.
Looking at the tightly fitted patterns on it, Shen Yu finally broke into a faint smile.