Chapter 30: A Son at the Bedside

“Mom!”

The door to the hospital room was suddenly pushed open by a young man. Mrs. Michael, who had been lying on the bed resting, immediately sat up. The young man walked to her side and embraced her, his face showing a trace of worry and lingering fear.

Early that morning, he had met the police. They told him about his mother being attacked the night before. Fortunately, the community security guard had arrived in time, and the criminal had been frightened off before he had time to assault Mrs. Michael.

After a night of rest, Mrs. Michael had calmed down. She described the man’s appearance. After the police station determined that the case had likely been committed by someone familiar with the family, they believed Young Michael might have some clues, such as having seen the man before.

With that thought in mind, and because the family had to be notified, Young Michael left school early in the morning and rushed over.

After the expression on his face faded, it was replaced by anger, with a trace of ferocity. “I’ll find that man. I swear.”

Mrs. Michael clearly did not want her child putting himself in danger. She held Young Michael’s hand while stroking his soft golden-brown hair. His hair color came from Michael. In places without light, it looked brownish yellow.

But under strong light, that brownish yellow turned golden-brown. It was very handsome.

“The police station is more professional than you. We should trust them. Look, I’m fine. I don’t want anything to happen to you either!” Mrs. Michael squeezed Young Michael’s hand. “I’m all right now. Don’t get involved in this.”

She still remembered the weapon in that man’s hand, and his brutality. She did not want her child to become the next victim. But sometimes parents’ words did not necessarily reach their children’s hearts, especially not half-grown boys of sixteen or seventeen like Young Michael.

They believed that because they had bodies almost like adults, they also possessed adults’ minds and experience. They often wanted more respect, but they always ended up making a mess of everything.

Within that cycle, they became even more desperate to prove that they had matured, that they had grown up, that they no longer needed their parents’ control. So they would do things their parents did not want them to do in order to prove that their parents were not always right.