Bed Three

Shen Wan had worked the night shift for three years. What she feared was not the emergencies, but the footsteps at half past one.

Old Wei had come again.

He always took the stairs, never the elevator—too stuffy, he said. In his hand was an aluminum lunchbox, its lid wrapped in an old towel so the congee would not spill. At Bed Three in the internal medicine ward, he set the box down gently, pulled over a plastic stool, and sat as if he were home.

The patient in Bed Three was a girl in her twenties, pneumonia, an oxygen tube in her nose, sleeping deeply. Wei ignored her and began to talk.

“Xiaojun called today. Said the project’s busy, he won’t make it home for the festival.” He paused. “I told him you doted on Xiaojun most. You’d have scolded me for saying so.”

Shen Wan heard him from the nurses’ station and flipped her chart loudly. Sister Ma had told her more than once to keep him away; Bed Three’s family had complained. Each time Shen Wan said the old man sat half an hour and left, quiet as could be.

Wei’s wife, Zhou Xiulan, had died in that very bed two years before, of liver cancer. Shen Wan had checked the old record; the bed number was identical. Since then, every few nights, Wei arrived with his lunchbox and sat until nearly dawn.

Once Shen Wan could not help asking, “Uncle Wei, who is the congee for?”

Wei lifted the towel to reveal pale yellow millet congee. “For her. Weak stomach, can’t take cold food.”

“Where… where is she?”

Wei tilted his head toward Bed Three, then pointed out the window. “Right there. See the osmanthus? She planted it.”

Outside the ward there was indeed an osmanthus tree, planted by someone long ago. No one could say which one had been Zhou Xiulan’s.

On the coldest night last winter, Wei did not come. His son Xiaojun burst into the station, breathless, saying his father had fallen and was in the ICU. Shen Wan followed. Wei was on a ventilator; when he saw her, he fished a key from under his pillow.

“Bed Three… the cabinet,” his lips moved. “The congee. Don’t let it cool.”

Xiaojun later explained that at home his father boiled a pot of millet congee every afternoon, packed it, and at half past one left the house on the dot. After his mother died, it became an unbroken ritual. Xiaojun had reasoned with him; the old man nodded, and the next day did the same.

Wei passed away. As he had asked, Shen Wan went to his home. The door was unlocked. The room smelled of rice. A small pot on the stove was still warm; beside it sat an empty lunchbox, its towel folded neat. On the windowsill was a photograph of Zhou Xiulan laughing, with a line on the back: Xiulan, the osmanthus is in bloom.

Shen Wan slipped the photo into her coat. Back at the ward, the girl from Bed Three had moved to a regular room; the bed stood empty. Shen Wan drew the curtain, then opened it halfway, to the angle Wei had always sat.

Later, on night shift, Shen Wan sometimes cooked an extra pot of congee. Not for anyone—she just kept it warm on the station’s small burner. Sister Ma asked whom she was saving it for. She said, in case someone comes.

Old Wei would never come again. Yet the smell of millet congee seemed to linger in the corridor, mixed with osmanthus, strongest at midnight.

Shen Wan no longer feared those footsteps. What she feared was the day they truly stopped.