"Here." Two small white pills were placed in front of where Zaria sat at the long conference table, a glass of water placed beside them. Chiu Leong sat back down next to her, turning her chair to face him. "I can't give you anything stronger. It has only been a couple of hours since you took your last dose of the big ones."
"Thank you," she murmured, putting them on her tongue and swallowing them quickly with a mouthful of water. Chiu Leong gently prodded the skin around her cheekbone, and she hissed but did not pull away.
"Should be fine," he proclaimed, sitting back and picking up her hand to look at the knuckles. "I'm not worried about your wrist. Your injury is only a day old. It is going to hurt when jostled for a while. The cast is keeping anything from moving around in there, so unless the pain is blinding, then I don't think we need to go back for more x-rays. And your face seems okay. The swelling will go down if you keep putting cold packs on it. Same for this hand. There is some split skin on the knuckles, but if I put bandages on them right now, then we can't put an ice pack on, so we will worry about that later."
Zaria sat quietly, nodding to acknowledge his words. Now that her anger had faded, she felt tired. The whole situation would have been funnier if she wasn't hurting and so exhausted. Confronted by a jealous woman in a public bathroom. That was some television drama stuff there. As soon as she was handed off to Chiu Leong, Gu Cheng had disappeared. The room seemed much bigger without him scowling from across it.
A phone chimed with an incoming call, and Chiu Leong placed her hand on the table so that he could answer it. A furrow appeared on his brow, and he smiled in apology before standing up and leaving the room. Zaria stared at the surface of the table and traced the lines of the wood grain absentmindedly. Outside, the sun was still shining brightly, but the afternoon was growing late, and there were only a few hours left until evening. Without anger or frustration to fuel her, she felt so tired that she wanted to lay her head on the table and fall asleep. Her eyes were drifting shut as the door to the conference room opened again, and something cold landed on the top of her hand. She opened them again to see an icepack resting on her knuckles and another coming toward her face. She turned her head just a little to make it easier to reach and closed her eyes again. As her lashes touched down, she saw the pack right before it touched her cheek, as well as a nicely muscled forearm. The throbbing in her face dulled and then went numb, and she slowly opened her eyes once more. Her eyes followed the strong forearm up to the rolled sleeves of a white button-up shirt.
"Gu Cheng..."
*****
Fifteen minutes prior, when Joseph Zaria first ran from the conference room, Chiu Leong was occupied with sighing and chastising his old friend.
"Are you going to just glare at her the whole time we are here?" He watched as the other man rubbed his hands across his face with a sigh. "Gu Cheng, if you really do dislike her that much, then you didn't have to offer to help."
Gu Cheng ran his hands across his face, pressing against his firm jawline. "Is my face puffy?"
The young doctor stared at him for a long moment before muttering something under his breath. He took a long sip of his water before responding, "Horribly so. You two are like children, poking at each other to make sure the other is paying attention."
Gu Cheng snorted, his face blank but derision in his eyes. His eyes drifted toward the door, and he felt his feet moving him toward it. Mo Ye followed after him, unsure if his boss was just stepping out to avoid the conversation or if he was heading toward somewhere where his assistant would be needed. They walked around the edge of the office space, ignoring the curious stares of the workers at their desks. As they approached the hallway leading to the bathrooms, Gu Cheng stopped before turning the corner.
"Stop throwing yourself at CEO Gu," a woman's voice carried from somewhere near the restrooms.
A voice he easily recognized replied,"Okay, first of all, I am not throwing myself at him. Second, he should have the right to choose whomever he wants, not whomever some random woman in his office picks for him. Thirdly, don't worry. If he happens to mention that he has a fetish for loud women who wear more lipstick than a clown, I will send him your way."
Gu Cheng felt his brows furrow and his lips twitch. Her words seemed ambiguous, and he could not tell if he was being defended or insulted. A sharp 'clap' sound echoed down the hall, followed by a thud and a familiar cry of pain. He hurriedly turned the corner in time to see Joseph Zaria pushing herself off of the wall and throwing her fist in a straight punch at the other woman's face. There was a shrill cry and heated words that he did not catch as he strode forward to separate them.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
When the other woman ran up to him with a bleeding nose, all he could think of was a large lipped clown in business attire, and he looked past her in disgust. Several meters away, a small figure was slumping against the wall, her arm held tight to her chest and a grimace of pain twisting her features. He called her name and walked toward her, smiling inside as she freely admitted to having hit the other woman. It was good. A person should not let themselves be stepped on by others, especially others who were lesser than themselves. She let him guide her back to the conference room and handed her to Chiu Leong to check her out while he went for some ice packs. He took off his suit jacket as he walked, finding the need to be free of the restrictive material. No matter how well tailored they were, he found suits to be too confining. If they were not required for the office, he would never wear them again.
Outside, dozens of heads were popping up above the desk dividers to watch as the former employee was escorted out by two hulking security officers. Someone had taken pity on her and given her tissues to stuff her nostrils with, and they stuck out like fluffy walrus tusks.
"Does nobody have anything better to do than look for a show? Perhaps I need to assign more work to this division." His voice was low, but it carried clearly across the distance and over the whispered voices. A chill went down their spines, and as one, they all dropped back into their seats and buried their faces in their work. He turned to Mo Ye, leaning in so that his voice would not carry. "I don't want to hear any gossip about Joseph Zaria. Make it clear that woman was dismissed for assaulting a guest visiting the company, and that is all."
Mo Ye nodded and moved away, already entering something onto the screen of his phone. Gu Cheng continued to the small staff room. He stopped in front of the freezer and rolled his sleeves up meticulously before pulling two icepacks out. Guilt was sitting in his stomach again, a feeling that he was growing far too familiar with and did not like.
As aggravating as he found the young woman, Joseph Zaria had been quite polite and quiet while inside the building. Except for the times that he was purposefully irritating her, that is. The jealousy of women was frightening. Just the small interactions between the two of them in front of others had been enough to inspire such a reaction from an uninvolved third party.
He passed Chiu Leong as he walked out of the conference room, a serious look on his face. A phone was pressed tight to his ear, and when he saw Gu Cheng, he pulled the phone away and covered the microphone for a second.
"There is a problem at Hospital A, I might have to go there to deal with it. I can take Miss Joseph with me, but I might not be able to wait for her phone..."
Gu Cheng paused, his fingers tingling from the cold of the ice. "Leave her here. I will take her somewhere to stay after her phone is done."
Chiu Leong looked at him skeptically, but a loud voice filled with emotion came from his phone, and he ducked his head down and continued his call.
Gu Cheng pushed into the conference room and walked to the table. Zaria was sitting quietly with her hand on the table, her head drooping toward her chest. He sat down in the empty chair beside her and placed an ice pack on her split knuckles. Her long lashes fluttered as she opened her eyes to look at it before drifting shut again. Gu Cheng's gently pressed the other pack onto her face and held it there as her head bobbed lightly in place. After a moment, her eyes opened again. They wandered along his arm and across his shoulders before landing on his face.
"Gu Cheng," she called out softly, exhaustion and confusion dragging out the final sound a little. Her hand moved from the table, the ice pack sliding off of it as she reached up to take the pack that was on her cheek out of his hand.
"I can hold it," he said, moving her hand back to the table and putting the pack back on her knuckles. "Unless you dislike me that much."
Her eyes dropped to the table, and she shook her head slightly. She did not try to take the pack away again. "I'm sorry," she said, concentrating on the surface of the table so she did not have to think of the person sitting so close.
"Why would you be sorry?" He did think he sounded angry, but her eyes flicked up to his for a second before dropping back to the table.
"I caused trouble at your company. I shouldn't have come."
Gu Cheng watched her silently. A strange, itchy feeling was growing in his chest. "You don't need to apologize. She was the one in the wrong."
"No. I should have ignored her. There was no excuse. My dad always said that people only have power over you if you give it to them." After years of dealing with people at the restaurant, she really could not believe that she had let the woman get to her the way she did.
"That can be true sometimes. But it is also true that if you let someone step on you once, they will continue to do so every day after. Different situations call for different reactions."
There was the sound of a throat clearing from the doorway, and they both turned to look as Chiu Leong slowly walked into the room.
"I am glad that you two are not trying to kill each other." He slid his phone into his pocket, his eyes lingering on the other man's hand that was resting near Zaria's face. "Miss Joseph, I have to go to work for a little while, and you are more than welcome to come with me, but I may be there late and I don't know if we would be able to get your phone to you tonight. Gu Cheng offered to stay with you here if you would rather wait."
"I don't want to impose, I am sure you have your own work to do," she responded, directing the comment to Gu Cheng.
He shook his head and readjusted the ice pack. "There is nothing that needs my immediate attention. You should stay here and wait."
"Are you sure that you don't mind?"
"I would not say it if I did not mean it," he answered simply.
Chiu Leong was not sure if he trusted that the current peaceful atmosphere would last, but he did not have the choice to stay and see. After a few brief instructions on how long to ice the swelling, he promised to contact her through Gu Cheng when he was done. Zaria gave her farewells and watched as he left, leaving her alone with the expressionless man next to her.