Chapter 1487: Yiyi's Stay or Departure

"Correct."

The amnesia caused by post-traumatic stress disorder requires long-term professional treatment to have any chance of recovery. During the Calamity Years, that was nearly impossible.

Zhang Shi pressed her palm flat against the blade, crushed the garlic, then chopped it fine before continuing to describe Yiyi's condition.

"Ye Yuliang passed away before he could tell me about Yiyi's situation. I found Yiyi's medical records in a drawer at his house and learned about her condition…"

After Yiyi's mother died of illness in the tenth year of the Calamity, Ye Yuliang had to go out to work. The school Yiyi was enrolled in hadn't reached its enrollment period yet, so five-year-old Yiyi, who had just lost her mother, could only stay home alone. After a period of time, her mental state began to deteriorate.

After Ye Yuliang noticed something was wrong with his daughter, he took her to a hospital in the outer city. The doctor didn't prescribe her any medication.

Supplies were scarce during the Calamity Years, and the pressure of human survival was immense. Far too many people were having mental breakdowns. Yiyi's condition at the time wasn't considered serious enough to meet the threshold for medication, so the doctor only listed a few precautions on her medical record.

Even without the doctor telling him, Ye Yuliang knew he couldn't leave his daughter home alone anymore. But he had no way to bring a child to work, and there was no one trustworthy around him. He could only pull strings to contact the school, hoping to get his daughter enrolled in a class ahead of schedule.

Before he could even finalize things with the school, he fell ill. Yiyi was traumatized again, and her condition worsened.

After finishing her account of Yiyi's condition, Zhang Shi raised their current dilemma. "Yiyi is extremely sensitive right now, and has a special fear of 'losing' things. I'm afraid she'll develop a psychological dependence on me and be unable to integrate into a new family, so I've been careful to keep some distance between us…"

Xia Qing, who had been listening intently to Zhang Shi, suddenly realized this was a medical ethics question. She immediately lowered her head and washed the scallions with full concentration, terrified her idol might ask her how to solve this difficult problem.

The core of a child's post-traumatic psychological recovery is rebuilding a secure attachment relationship. For Yiyi, who had lost her parents and everything else, Zhang Shi was the first ray of light in her dark world—the natural, most important object of her attachment.

But from the perspective of medical ethics, this kind of excessive attachment a patient develops toward a doctor is called "pathological attachment." During treatment it needs to be managed, to prevent the patient from being retraumatized upon separation from the overly close doctor.

Since these are the Calamity Years, the dilemma of how Zhang Shi and Yiyi should interact can't be solved using pre-Calamity methods. Right now, there's no way to bring core members of the foster family into Territory Three to intervene in the treatment process early and let Yiyi build a secure attachment with them.

So Zhang Shi was caught in a bind.

Zhang San glanced at the new human cowering into a ball beside them, added a stick of firewood to the stove, and continued discussing Yiyi's condition with Zhang Shi. "What external stimuli has she experienced recently, and what stress responses did they trigger?"

Phew…

Xia Qing, who had narrowly escaped disaster, quietly let out a breath of relief, picked up the scallions from the water, and set them in a small basin beside her.

Zhang San pointed at the dirt still clinging to the scallion roots. Xia Qing nimbly pinched the roots off and placed them in a small basket beside her.

Zhang Shi, with her back to the two of them, sensed Zhang San's aura had grown sharp. Thinking she had failed to answer in time and provoked the big shot's displeasure, she immediately spoke up.

"Six days ago, Tang Huai brought over a green-light sheep he was raising. I noticed Yiyi watching Tang Huai's sheep through the camera, so I seized the chance to get her to form a positive psychological expectation about her future life. I told her that once she arrived at her new home, she could raise a little animal too."

As Zhang Shi picked up the scallions Xia Qing had washed and diced them, her mouth didn't stop. "After I said that, Yiyi paused for a few seconds, then developed difficulty breathing and bodily rigidity. After she came around, she began resisting communication—even Sheep Boss and Wolf Lao Er couldn't draw her attention anymore. Yesterday, Tan Qi and Eleven entered Territory Three to look at the monkeys, which stimulated her again. It made her afraid she was about to be abandoned again, and she showed extreme anxiety…"

Yiyi, her body rigid, lay in bed with one hand clutching a little stuffed sheep tightly and the other gripping Zhang Shi's hand, sleeping very restlessly. The moment Zhang Shi moved even slightly, she would wake up and stare at her in terrified helplessness.

Late at night, when Zhang Shi judged from her breathing that Yiyi had fallen asleep and carefully moved her hand away, Yiyi instinctively squeezed her little hand, grabbed nothing, and immediately jolted awake, threw herself at Zhang Shi and clung tight, and uttered her first words in half a year: "Mama, don't go."

Zhang Shi, who had positioned herself as Yiyi's attending physician, told Yiyi she was sick, so she was receiving treatment here, and once she was better, she would be sent to her new home.

Yiyi's cry showed she had developed a strong pathological attachment to Zhang Shi. At this moment of impending separation, it meant Zhang Shi's treatment of Yiyi had failed.

The oil in the wok on the small stove was hot. Zhang Shi poured in the choy sum, stir-fried it over high heat, added salt and minced garlic, tossed it a few times, then poured it out onto a white porcelain plate.

The aroma filled the air, once again letting Xia Qing truly appreciate the magic of "culinary skill." The same wok, the same seasonings, vegetables grown in the same plot of land—different people stir-fry them and get completely different flavors.

By the same token, the same treatment method, carried out by different psychologists, will produce different therapeutic effects.

Xia Qing could feel that what Zhang Shi said about always keeping her distance from Yiyi was true, but for a six-year-old little patient, becoming dependent on the doctor she spent every day with was perfectly normal.

When Zhang Shi had washed the wok clean and set it back over the fire, Zhang San finally spoke to ask, "What's your follow-up plan?"

Zhang Shi watched the water droplets that danced for a moment in the hot wok before vanishing, and gave a definitive answer. "I have to send Yiyi away before the team coming to study the No. 50 mountain spring water arrives, and thoroughly clean out the lab and the basement to eliminate any trace of the child's presence. But the foster family I found wants a healthy, well-behaved child. Given Yiyi's condition, if I send her there she might be abandoned, which would worsen her illness. So I want to find her a new foster family."

Once Zhang Shi's identity is exposed, she will face endless danger, and Yiyi by her side will face the same danger.

Even if those people knew Yiyi had no evolution ability and wasn't Zhang Shi's biological daughter, they still wouldn't let Yiyi go. They would keep a firm grip on Yiyi and use her as bait to capture Zhang Shi.

If Zhang Shi brought Yiyi into the Evolution Forest, it would mean cutting off this psychologically troubled child's chance of returning to human society.

Humans are social animals; prolonged separation from society causes serious negative effects on physical and mental health. Zhang Shi knew this from deep personal experience.

The consequences of long-term separation from society were displayed most thoroughly in her own family—particularly in her sister, Shi Jiayi. Zhang Shi didn't want her own daughter to fall into such a predicament, so she was doing everything she could, taking risks, to send her daughter back to human society.

Recovery ability will self-heal after injury, but they still need protective equipment and cold-weather gear, and these supplies can only be obtained from human society.

Even evolvers with recovery ability can't cut themselves off from society, let alone ordinary people who need human medical technology and advanced equipment to stay healthy.

Zhang San glanced at Zhang Shi standing in front of the wok. Rather than point out that the oil in the wok was already too hot, she asked directly, "You want to keep her within the borders of Northern Zone One?"