After the typhoon holiday, following several consecutive busy days, the blood draw station finally quieted down today.
There is always a strange quiet on summer mornings. The air conditioning sends out excessively low temperatures from the ceiling, mixed with the smell of alcohol swabs and disinfectant. Patients sit in order on plastic chairs, heads down scrolling on their phones, or silently staring at the electronic number display. Time flows slowly in the hospital, as slow as the drop-by-drop blood falling in a dialysis machine.
Sometimes, I feel like I have also become part of this building.
Every day I repeat tying the tourniquet, disinfecting, drawing blood, applying tape, saying almost the exact same words.
"Make a fist."
"Relax."
"You've worked hard."
Those words have been said so many times that over time, even I can hardly tell if they are genuine or just professional habit.
There were few patients that day.
I finished drawing blood for an elderly man. He didn't leave immediately but sat resting outside the corridor. In front of the hospital elevator entrance, there were warning lines for the visually impaired to identify direction—yellow raised textures standing out conspicuously on the white floor tiles.
I took my water bottle to the water dispenser to fill it.
"Miss."
He suddenly called out to me.
I paused, thinking he might be feeling unwell, so I walked over and sat down beside him.
He pointed his finger at the elevator entrance.
"Look over there."
I followed his direction and looked.
"Four lines."
I nodded.
But he smiled.
"It could also be three lines."
I looked at him in confusion.
Three?
I looked carefully again—still four.
Could I be seeing it wrong?
The old man watched the confusion on my face, like a teacher who had finally hooked a student, and said unhurriedly:
"It could also be two lines, one plus one, or…… nothing at all."
I didn't answer.
In fact, I had no idea what to say.
Normally, I would probably just smile politely and find an excuse to leave. But that day, I actually started thinking.
How could four lines become three?
And how could they become two?
If the two lines are seen as one group, then it's one plus one; if attention is not on the lines but on the spaces between them, then perhaps there really is nothing.
The old man went on to say that all things in the world actually have their own order.
Later, he talked from those lines to direction, from direction to the Eight Trigrams of the universe. I only half-understood, but didn't interrupt him. Strangely, what truly shocked me was not the Eight Trigrams, but something else.
Why today of all days?
Why me of all people?
Because recently, I have been in a kind of indescribable chaos.
I began to re-examine my interpersonal relationships at work.
My colleagues always have their own small circles, gathering at lunch to share who said what, who made a mistake, who has been on bad terms with whom lately. Sometimes I sit there too, listening to them discuss topics I have no interest in.
It's not that I dislike them.
It's just that at some moment, I suddenly felt exhausted.
I don't understand why adults are still so keen on taking sides, forming alliances, and huddling together for warmth. Those topics are too narrow, too closed, like a world that only accommodates themselves.
I started asking myself, do I really need to be part of it?
If I don't join, will I be isolated?
If I do join, am I slowly losing myself?
I used to think that closeness between people was maintained by sharing secrets and exchanging emotions. But as I grew older, I realized that some relationships become more draining the closer they get.
Perhaps I am not suited for that kind of liveliness.
I once also thought that people should have a sense of belonging.
Later I learned that liveliness can sometimes be more draining than loneliness.
Sometimes, watching them laughing together, I even wonder if it's just me who's too strange. The joy that others easily obtain, I always seem separated by a layer, both envious and unable to truly approach.
And love is the same.
When young, I always thought that loving someone meant finding a soul exactly like my own. Later I learned that such luck doesn't exist in this world.
Most people, over the long years, gradually learn to understand things they didn't originally understand.
Thinking of this, I suddenly remembered those yellow lines in front of the hospital elevator.
They were originally just a few lines.
Whether four lines, three lines, two lines, one plus one, or nothing at all, it wasn't originally that important. What matters is that people always love to find answers for themselves from ordinary things.
When young, we think there are standard answers for everything—how love should be, how friends should be, how life should be. But as we age, we gradually understand that some answers don't exist.
Some people are drawn to crowds, some prefer solitude; some see marriage as a home, others prefer living alone. In the end, it's just that everyone has their own order.
I don't really remember what else the old man said afterward.
I only remember that day's sunlight slanting into the corridor, falling on those yellow lines. He sat there like someone who had casually passed through my life.
And I suddenly felt that encounters between people are probably all like this.
Some people accompany you for a lifetime yet may never understand you.
Some people only sit with you on a hospital bench one ordinary morning, saying a few irrelevant words, yet you remember them for a long time.
Those lines can be any shape.
So too can people.