Page 63 of He Is My Bride

Li Ying returned to New York with a heart full of hope and expectations, as well as fears and doubts. It tore at him, but was there any question he would marry Hanjun?

Of course not!

Li Ying pushed off any thoughts to the contrary. His life would change drastically, but he had to believe everything would work out in the end.

—

Luckily there was so much to do between his rotations and exams that Li Ying got plenty to take his mind off his worries.

He finally began his internship at the department of pathology.

Li Ying gave it his everything, although he knew he didn’t need to kiss so much ass since he would never be employed there, even if it had once been his singular dream. He was starting to accept that as ‘Madam Wu’ he couldn’t become a pathologist.

It would be unseemly, wouldn’t it? Li Ying thought while revving up the electric saw and opened the ribcage of a cadaver under his supervisor’s watchful eye.

Li Ying had expected more blood to spray with such a tool. How disappointing. There was not even a drizzle on his visor. The blood must have been too dried up by now.

Damn, I was too nervous: I forgot to use my revenge fantasy for Wang Guosheng! Maybe on the next cadaver.

At the end of Li Ying’s shift, he was drinking coffee in the break room with his supervisor, discussing Li Ying’s learning goals for the rotation.

“Why pathology though?” the supervisor asked. “It’s definitely not everyone’s first choice. Most become doctors to help people, right?”

“Aren’t we helping? Maybe not the dead, but the next of kin, because they want to know why, and the justice system, because they need to know how . I think that’s helping.”

“M-hm, I think so. Otherwise one couldn’t keep doing this.

But is there a reason why you want to choose this way of helping, specifically?

The things you see here get to you, and it changes you.

You see the direct result of the cruelty of man first-hand.

And it’s not like we’re the superstars of the doctoring world, and the pay could be better…

Is it the ‘I don’t like to talk to people?

’ Because that’s not a good reason. If you don’t talk, you will go crazy in here. ”

“No, no, I like talking to people! I’ve heard that sometimes I talk too much, haha! It’s…”

Fascination with pathology just fit the picture of a former teen goth, didn’t it?

Li Ying had grown up surrounding himself with dark imagery, watching horror films, and making macabre art. He’d been trying to cope with some formless darkness inside him:

Little Li Ying had often had nightmares. Dreams where he was left alone in the dark, and things would appear to haunt him.

After Mrs. Qian had called him disturbed due to his drawings, Uncle Qian had put Li Ying in therapy for a short intervention. In hindsight, Li Ying wasn’t surprised that his mental landscape was deemed the result of his abandonment trauma.

Li Ying shrugged. “I guess I’ve watched too much Criminal Minds.”

Wasn’t it about time he grew out of his phase though, Li Ying thought. Maybe he wouldn’t mind becoming a family doctor instead. He could even see himself working to develop new medicine: perhaps he could work for Wu Pharma in research?

“It’s good to give it some thought,” the supervisor said.

The senior pathologist came to fill his coffee cup. “What did you find out about that stab victim?”

Li Ying hurried to answer, “Multiple gastrointestinal perforations, laceration of the pancreas and the liver, with the cause of death being blood loss.”

“Hmm, impressive! And did you figure that out all by yourself?”

Li Ying smiled, not caring if it was a jab. “Of course not, I had to confirm everything from my supervisor, but with that much haematoma in the abdominal cavity, it was a pretty easy guess.”

“Mm-hm.” The senior drank his freshly poured coffee and instantly grimaced. “Who brewed this poison?!”

Li Ying raised his hand and grinned. “ That was all me!”

Li Ying’s phone rang. He checked and saw the Chinese area code.

“Excuse me, I have to take this.” Li Ying left the break room.

He shut himself in the morgue and answered in his feminine voice:

“Hello?”

“Is this Li Ying speaking?”

“Yes, and who is this?”

“Good day, Miss Li! This is Shanghai Exclusive Wedding Services…”

And so began the planning for Li Ying’s and Hanjun’s big day.

—

The wedding agency had the same contact person follow up with Li Ying from then on, asking him about his wishes and keeping him updated on the plans.

Li Ying hadn’t really put much thought into the actual wedding ceremony, which was odd considering how much he’d dreamed of it before. Wu Yiheng’s past comments had kind of put him off.

Wu Yiheng had made the point that even their wedding wasn’t really for them , but to send a message to the Shanghai elite, so Li Ying had told the wedding planner what he thought a dutiful daughter-in-law should say:

“I’ll defer to you. I want my guests to be wowed, but my fiancé is a traditional man and I want to respect that as well, and for his family to feel comfortable with everything, so nothing… weird.”

Now that I think of it, Li Ying had thought, I would have wanted a Mariachi band. And a staged fighting sequence where I combat off ninjas or something, when they try to get between me and Hanjun on the aisle. Something fun! Something weird.

It would have been more like him.

As for the dress, Li Ying asked if Anne would have wanted to do it as a collaboration with Huang Xiang again, but Anne had insisted a wedding dress should be handled by a specialized tailor:

“I know the limits of my skill and as a professional, I know when to defer to a colleague to make my client happy.”

Anne and Li Ying were having a kiki over at the coffee shop on Park Avenue.

“I would be happy if you made it, but I understand,” Li Ying said.

He was wearing skinny jeans and sneakers with an old, worn-out band tee that he had repurposed by cutting it up to an uneven cropped shirt, showing off his waist. He had also put on his leather and rhinestone choker, smudged on some eyeliner, and painted his nails black, since he had a few days off and didn’t need to be at the morgue .

Li Ying was not trying to pass, just playing around with his boy and girl styles, something he had done much more lately since he’d discovered how fun it was to dress in clothes other than jeans and t-shirts, without the alternative being stuffy chinos and collared shirts.

“I say we should find you a New York-based wedding tailor so you can go to fittings,” Anne said. “It needs to be perfect. Absolutely by someone who knows about traditional Chinese wedding dresses. I will ask around for you.”

“Thanks. I would be in trouble if I had to figure out the dress all by myself!”

“As if I would abandon you now that I have brought this so far.”

They shared a smile.

“So, do you have a date yet?” Anne asked.

“I will be a June bride!” Li Ying twirled a lock of hair around his finger.

It was fun for Li Ying to talk about the wedding with his new best friend. It was easier to get hyped when he could share the excitement with someone.

Anne was going to be the only guest Li Ying would bring, naturally as his bridesmaid, the only one outside Shanghai who even knew of him marrying. Li Ying tried to see the positive side of it: at least he had Anne.

“So, in a little over a year from now, that should be enough to plan everything. What will you tell your family, by the way, when you move to Shanghai permanently?” Anne asked.

Li Ying chewed his lower lip, a thoughtful frown on his brow. “I guess I’ll just tell them I’m moving there to work.”

“Will they settle for that?”

Li Ying shrugged. “They will have to.” He sipped his frappé. “Aside from the wedding, guess what we are gonna do with Hanjun when he next comes to New York?” Li Ying excitedly pattered his painted nails on the table, unable to contain his smile .

This was something he also worried about a great deal, but more than anything, it was the brightest light in his married future.

“Well?”

“We are visiting a fertility clinic!”

“Ooh! So you…? Okay, wait!” Anne was getting more excited than Li Ying had ever seen her.

“We are preparing for the whole process to take some time, at least a year, so we are getting started this summer so that I can start ‘expecting’ around the wedding date.”

“I guess you have to do it here?”

Li Ying nodded. “We do everything in the States over this year while I’m still here and when Hanjun is visiting.

We will also spend the last months of ‘my’ pregnancy here, on the excuse that I’m more comfortable giving birth in an American private clinic before moving in with Hanjun for good.

That way, I also don’t have to fake the belly for a very long time; I’m paranoid someone will figure it out.

I will show off for the Wus with a fake belly at least once though, and we will arrange a public appearance where we know the press will be, so that there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that I carried the baby. ”

Anne nodded along. “They make very convincing fake bellies for women who can’t carry their child but want to be perceived as having done so. Where there’s a demand, there’s a supply.”

“Yep. Throw in the ultrasound pictures and me and Hanjun posing happily at the clinic in front of it, and there should be plenty of proof for anyone who might doubt the legitimacy of our child.”

“If Wang Guosheng’s earlier tricks are any indication of what to expect, he might want to pass all kinds of rumors to delegitimize you and your child. You should use every trick in the book to counter them.”

Li Ying agreed. The child would be a spanner in Wang Guosheng’s works, for sure.

“You don’t think he would try to hurt the baby? ”