Su Qingrou’s postoperative hospitalization

Su Qingrou’s postoperative hospitalization is a state of medical recovery that quickly becomes entangled with family anxiety, romantic loyalty, and coercive violence. After acute appendicitis is discovered, she undergoes an appendectomy and remains in the Hospital while physically weak. The stay should offer protection and recuperation, yet Lin Yanche’s intervention makes the hospital another contested space: Su Qingrou must endure threats almost immediately after surgery, while Su Xiangwan and Jin Zhengnan try to support her. Her recovery therefore exposes a central pattern in the narrative, in which illness both reveals intimate care and leaves a vulnerable body open to manipulation.

Diagnosis and Emergency Treatment

Su Qingrou’s hospitalization begins when Bian Jiang sees her face and realizes that something is seriously wrong. Examination confirms acute appendicitis, and he arranges for her to be sent to the Hospital for surgery to remove her appendix. The diagnosis interrupts the expected engagement ceremony, since Su Xiangwan immediately worries that Su Qingrou’s condition will delay the event. The medical emergency thus has consequences beyond the operating room: it unsettles the family’s public plans and places Su Qingrou’s bodily needs in conflict with the social timetable surrounding her engagement.

The reaction of the people around her also establishes the emotional structure of the postoperative period. Su Xiangwan is worried about her elder sister, while Bian Jiang acts as the person who identifies the danger and ensures that treatment occurs. Lin Yanche, by contrast, responds with mockery rather than concern, questioning whether the engagement can succeed even if it is not formally postponed. The contrast makes the Hospital a divided setting: it is simultaneously a site of competent medical intervention, family responsibility, and hostile observation.

Recovery Under Physical and Emotional Strain

On the afternoon of the second day, Su Xiangwan goes to the Hospital to visit Su Qingrou. She finds Jin Zhengnan holding Su Qingrou as she cries uncontrollably, an image that makes the younger sister immediately alert to the seriousness of the situation. Su Xiangwan takes Su Qingrou’s hand and asks what has happened, turning the visit from a routine check on physical recovery into an attempt to understand an emotional crisis. Jin Zhengnan’s presence provides immediate comfort, and he leaves deliberately once Su Qingrou’s mood begins to stabilize so that the sisters can speak privately.

Su Qingrou remains extremely weak after the operation. Her physical condition is not treated as a completed medical fact that disappears once the appendix has been removed; weakness continues to shape what she can withstand and how others respond to her. She tells Su Xiangwan that Shen Yiyun’s feelings toward Lu Xun are not simple, revealing that even in a postoperative state she remains occupied by threats to her relationships and by the unstable boundaries surrounding family and romantic attachment. The conversation shows recovery as an incomplete condition: the operation has addressed the immediate illness, but it has not restored emotional security.

Threats Inside the Hospital

The most dangerous turn in Su Qingrou’s hospitalization occurs when Lin Yanche threatens her soon after surgery. The timing is crucial. She has only just undergone the appendectomy, yet the hospital does not prevent Lin Yanche from exerting pressure over her. His threat transforms postoperative weakness into a form of captivity, because Su Qingrou must make decisions while still recovering and while surrounded by medical equipment and the expectations of care.

Her response is sudden and physically hazardous. She pulls out the infusion tube and runs out, producing another thrilling and dangerous episode. The action demonstrates both her desperation and the limits imposed by her condition: she is strong enough to resist passively remaining under Lin Yanche’s threat, but weak enough that fleeing immediately after surgery carries its own danger. The escape also confirms that the hospital’s protective function has failed. Medical treatment has stabilized her body, but it cannot by itself shield her from a person who continues to pursue and intimidate her.

The emotional impact reaches beyond Su Qingrou. The shock she endures is described as no less severe than the shock experienced by Su Xiangwan, while Jin Zhengnan’s gentle consolation helps her cry after she has held herself together. Tears become a delayed expression of fear and exhaustion rather than simple weakness. In this sequence, bodily injury, emotional distress, and relational danger are inseparable: Su Qingrou’s postoperative state makes the threat more immediate, and the threat makes physical recovery more precarious.

Care, Control, and Narrative Significance

Su Qingrou’s hospital stay is framed by contrasting forms of male involvement. Jin Zhengnan holds and comforts her, then gives her and Su Xiangwan privacy when their conversation requires it. Lin Yanche enters the same vulnerable situation as a coercive force, using the aftermath of surgery to threaten rather than protect. The difference is not merely personal; it defines two competing models of intimacy. One recognizes the patient’s need for support and emotional space, while the other treats illness as an opportunity to impose fear and regain control.

The state also echoes wider patterns of bodily vulnerability in the story. Su Xiangwan’s own weakness and fever later culminate in her fainting at an elevator, while Lu Xun’s past kidnapping and drug resistance, his concern over Su Xiangwan’s health, and Lin Yanche’s liver cancer all show bodies becoming sites where power, care, and danger converge. Within that broader pattern, Su Qingrou’s appendectomy is unusually concrete and ordinary: acute appendicitis requires urgent surgery, postoperative weakness requires rest, and a hospital should provide safety. The narrative’s violence lies in the way that ordinary medical vulnerability is invaded by threats and forced movement.

The hospitalization therefore marks neither a clean recovery nor a self-contained medical episode. It temporarily draws Su Qingrou closer to Su Xiangwan and Jin Zhengnan, exposes the depth of her fear, and precipitates an escape that places her health at further risk. By making the postoperative body central to both care and coercion, the episode shows how quickly a place of healing can become another arena in the conflict between Su Qingrou and Lin Yanche.