Chapter 1028: Astonishing Mortals (Part Five) (Patreon)

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"Oh, really? Did he say that?" Schiller spoke, reflecting, while across from him, Strange was eager to grab the mobile phone. However, Schiller continued unhurriedly, "Yes, indeed. This is the highest praise a father can give to his son..."

After saying this, Strange's eyes instantly reddened, and then Schiller raised another question, "So, Mr. Old Strange, why didn't you have the choice to contact your son?"

"Alright, I understand, thank you." Schiller lowered his head again, then confirmed some details about the condition with the doctor on the phone before hanging up. He set the mobile phone aside and looked up at Strange, who appeared even more weary.

Schiller placed his hands on the desktop, looking at the contents on his notebook. "Your father has had noticeable respiratory difficulties for about three years now. This indicates that, by this time, his lung function had already begun to decline."

"You mentioned it was due to his smoking habits, but this doctor has a different opinion. Mr. Old Strange has visited him for treatment many times, so he has some authority on the matter."

"Your father has had bronchitis all along, hasn't he?" Schiller asked Strange.

Strange nodded somewhat absentmindedly, "Yes, when I was young, he often coughed. Our rooms were adjacent back then. He used to cough at midnight, keeping me awake. My grades dropped significantly for a semester. Later, he moved to a small room next to the warehouse to sleep."

"Bronchitis generally accompanies a certain degree of lung infection. It seems that after a recurrence of bronchitis during a seasonal change, the lung infection became severe, and without timely treatment, it led to lung damage."

"Of course, your mention of smoking also has a certain impact. According to the doctor, Mr. Old Strange is a heavy smoker, but according to you, did he start smoking only after your mother's death?"

Strange sighed, "Initially, he did smoke, but very little. He was just an ordinary farmer from Philadelphia, like all the other farmers there, who liked to have a cigarette while working in the fields."

"But since my mother's death, he has intensified, smoking a lot every day. That's also why I don't want to go home. I hate that cigarette smell, which sticks to my clothes and can't be washed off. I can't bring that smell into the operating room..."

Strange kept using some emphatic words to express his feelings. Schiller briefly comforted him and then said, "His current lung symptoms may not only be due to his bad habits but also limited by the local people's awareness and medical conditions."

"I've told him many times to come to New York, Victor... oh, my younger brother. He runs around in the fields all day, neglecting his studies. Eugene doesn't care, letting him do as he pleases!"

"I've talked to him about this, but after a couple of sentences, he says I'm a noble New Yorker who should get out of Philadelphia and never come back. He's such a stubborn and hot-tempered person..."

"Has he never been to New York before?" Schiller asked.

"This is his first time coming. If Victor and I hadn't forcibly drunk him and shoved him into the car, he wouldn't have come!" Strange took a deep breath, looking very helpless. He said, "He even coughed up blood, but he still refuses to come to Presbyterian Hospital. I really don't understand, what's going on? Doesn't he feel uncomfortable?!"

Taking a deep breath, Strange calmed down slightly for a moment, then covered his face, and with a choked voice said, "My mother died in an accident, which greatly affected him. Not long after, Donna also passed away. The two most important women in his life left him one after another..."

"Since then, he has become eccentric. When I called him while I was studying, he never asked about my studies. Instead, he always ended up talking about Donna."

Strange lowered his eyelids, grinned, showing his teeth, and then said, "I acknowledge, part of the reason I don't want to go back is that he blamed Donna's death on me..."

"We went swimming together, and Donna drowned, I..." Strange's Adam's apple visibly bobbed up and down, his choking preventing him from finishing the sentence, but Schiller knew what he wanted to say.

"I know, Victor thinks the same way." Strange covered his face again, saying with a somewhat choked voice, "I know they don't want to see me because they think I killed Donna, Eugene is the same..."

"He would rather endure the pain of coughing up blood than come to see me. He's almost dying, but he still doesn't want to see me for the last time!" Finally, Strange couldn't hold back anymore. His arms were shaking so much that he couldn't support his head anymore, so he lowered it and fell silent.

"Is it really like this?" Schiller asked.

"Did your father tell you that he doesn't want to come to New York to find you because he thinks you killed Donna?"

"He didn't say it like that," Strange closed his eyes with some pain, then continued, "But I know that's what he means."

"Stephen, have you ever considered that these speculations of yours are just your imagination, and the reality may be completely different from what you think?" Schiller lightly tapped the desktop with the pen in his hand, pulling Strange's consciousness back. Strange looked at him as if he had grasped a lifeline.

"The problem between you and your father lies in communication. How long has it been since you had a peaceful conversation?" Schiller asked.

Strange looked away, saying, "Probably about a year... no, maybe three years. Two years ago, during that phone call, we argued again..."

"In other words, for these three years, every time you communicated, it ended in an argument, and you couldn't understand each other's situation rationally, knowing nothing about each other's careers and feelings?"

Strange was somewhat reluctant to acknowledge, but ultimately nodded. Schiller lightly tapped forward with the pen and said:

"Many misunderstandings in communication between parents and children stem from this. Parents, in order to establish their authority when their children are young, often resort to authoritarianism, always using commands and reprimands to urge their children to do things."

"But in reality, parents have put a lot of love behind their actions, yet children only perceive authority and fail to sense any security from this love, feeling only omnipresent threats."

"At the same time, they consider their love for their children too obvious, assessing it too cheaply, feeling no need to articulate it."

"I remember you mentioned a small detail before. Your father, because of bronchitis, often coughed at midnight, causing you to lose sleep and your grades to drop. Later, he moved to a small room next to the warehouse to sleep."

"Did he ever tell you the reason for doing this? Have you ever thought carefully about why he did this?"

"Or is it that he thinks it's only natural to sacrifice his living conditions for your peaceful sleep, while you completely fail to understand what he has sacrificed for you?"

Strange's expression paused visibly, but he still said, "Perhaps, it's not necessarily because of me..."

"Children raised in such family environments always tend to reject others' emotional investment because no one has ever expressed their love to you directly. So when others show affection to you, you always question, 'Maybe it's not necessarily for me.'"

"Some parents always do more and say less, having a sharp tongue but a tender heart. But this is not a good thing. They consider their love too cheaply, feeling no need to express it, and because you haven't received direct expressions of love, you continue to doubt yourself, feeling no sense of security."

Strange felt that Schiller had hit on something, but he couldn't organize his thoughts logically to analyze what exactly Schiller had hit on.

"Your father's reluctance to see you is just the result, but all the reasons you've summarized are actually your own speculations." Schiller pointed out the key point that made Strange feel troubled.

"If you really want to know why your father doesn't want to see you, you can ask him, or maybe he has formed a fixed mindset and is unwilling to communicate with you, but you can go to your younger brother."

"You mean... Victor?" Strange showed a resistant expression. He hesitated a bit and said, "Since Donna's death, Victor... well, I know, it's still the same reason. I haven't contacted him for three or four years either."

"You have to understand, I'm the Sorcerer Supreme, I'm so busy exploring the cosmos, I really don't have time to contact home, I..."

Looking at Schiller's calm gaze, Strange couldn't continue the second half of his sentence. In the end, he said somewhat begrudgingly, "Alright, I know. I shouldn't make excuses when facing a psychologist."

"You and your father may have developed this communication pattern that's hard to change easily, but perhaps there is still room for communication between you and your younger brother. You can go talk to him and ask what's going on."

In the end, Strange left with a heavy heart, although he didn't say it aloud, he had already accepted Schiller's advice.

He really didn't want to face Eugene, his father, but when he was young, his relationship with Victor was still good, even better than his relationship with Donna.

It's just that later, Victor entered his rebellious phase, idling around the farm every day, doing nothing, performing poorly in his studies, and not liking to read. At that time, Strange was at the peak of his studies, filled with thoughts of how to get into the best hospital in New York, and gradually, they had nothing to talk about.

After leaving Arkham Sanatorium, Strange called Victor and learned that he was in the hospital, so they arranged to meet in Strange's former office at Presbyterian Hospital.

Even after becoming the Sorcerer Supreme, Strange did not give up his career as a surgeon. He used the Time Stone to go back in time and do many things, but he was unwilling to use the Time Stone to revisit the surgical process.

Even if he had countless opportunities and could redo a surgery if it failed, he didn't want to give himself such an escape route. He had developed a perfectionist personality, partly because surgery left no room for error.

After the two brothers met, they remained silent for a while, because they both found that the other had changed too much.

Victor had changed from a rebellious rural youth to someone very much like their father, more like a mature farmer. The sun and wind had made his skin somewhat rough, but his eye contact and expression were like those of experienced Philadelphia farmers, full of vigor.

As for Strange, he no longer had the proud and confident posture he used to have. He looked very disheveled, his hands were still shaking, and he couldn't stop them, not even able to hold the small paper cup handed to him by the nurse. He spilled half of the water on himself and didn't even notice.

"Stephen." Victor spoke first, and to Strange's surprise, his younger brother's voice had become much deeper, but still with the familiar Philadelphia accent.

"How have you been lately?" Strange still exchanged some pleasantries, but Victor looked into his eyes and said, "I know what you want to ask. Eugene doesn't want to see you, and he won't even let me come see you."

"You want to know why he would rather endure it himself than come to New York, knowing that his eldest son is the best surgeon, yet he doesn't want to contact you to have someone operate on him..." Victor said a series of things, while Strange looked at him.

"Stephen, do you know? When you came back for the first time after going to college in New York, we were all stunned by you. You changed a lot." Victor pursed his lips and said, "We hardly recognize you anymore."

"You no longer have an accent, you don't wear plaid shirts anymore, but wear white shirts, and even have a set of very beautiful suits. You said they were given to you by your mentor. You can write cursive English and even understand the names of the medicines posted on the walls of the small-town hospital. These are things that we farmers could never do."

"Dad was surprised, but actually, he was happy. Do you remember? He invited his farmer friends over to the house, wanting them to meet you, the outstanding student from the New York University Medical College."

"But that day, you said you were busy with... a paper? You didn't say much and left. Actually, we could all see that you didn't want to talk to us, feeling that there was nothing to talk about with us rough laborers."

On the opposite side, Strange had covered his face. He once again spoke in a hoarse and choked voice, "No, don't say it, I just... I just..."

After taking a deep breath, he said, "Alright, it's all my fault, it's all my fault. I shouldn't have brushed you guys off, shouldn't have acted differently from you guys, I should have been more enthusiastic. It's all my fault..."

But at this moment, Victor shook his head and said, "

No, both Eugene and I know that it's not easy for you. It's too hard for a small-town youth to make a name for himself in New York, especially when the family can't provide any support..."

Strange was stunned.

[Read at www.patreon.com/shanefreak, and thanks for the invaluable support!]

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Next Chapter>>Chapter 1029: Astonishing Mortals (Part Six)