Love is like a disease—whether you lean too far left or right, it’s an ailment that needs treatment.
The next day, Liu Zhengliang came for his rounds. He noted that the child’s blood pressure had stabilized, light reflexes had returned, and her pupils were equal in size and reactive. The girl’s father asked, "Doctor, what about the fracture in my daughter’s left leg?"
Liu Zhengliang replied, "Let’s focus on saving her life first. Her pupils are equal and round, her heart rate is stable, and her breathing is steady. We’ll deal with the rest once she’s stable. For now, let’s try feeding her some warm water through the nasogastric tube and observe her response."
The girl’s father stubbornly insisted that money was no issue and urged them to use the best medication available. Liu Zhengliang suggested he pay the outstanding medical bills first, as his daughter would likely need to stay in the hospital for several months. The father deflated, left to gather funds, and returned to pay in increments of two thousand yuan. Yet, back in the ward, he still claimed money wasn’t a problem.
During lunch in the cafeteria, the doctors chatted casually. Chen Junnan remarked, "That family keeps saying they’re not short on money, but isn’t it obvious they are? To save them expenses, we didn’t even dare send the child to the ICU. She’s staying in the general ward as long as possible. What’s the point of putting up such a front?"
Che Mingming didn’t appreciate this comment.
Unlike Chen Junnan, Che Mingming had grown up in a rural village in Fushun’s Xinbin County. Her family was poor, and after school, she had to help her parents tend to the vegetable greenhouse. In winter, she would wake up in the middle of the night to sweep snow off the greenhouse roof to prevent it from collapsing by morning. They also had to keep a heating stove going inside. With the family busy half the night with these chores, there was little time left for studying. Determined to start earning early, she worked hard to get into a nursing school. After working as a nurse for over three years and saving up, she took the college entrance exam again and got into medical school. By the time she graduated with her bachelor’s degree, she was already twenty-five.
Che Mingming said, "Those of you who’ve never known hardship can’t understand. Some people are so poor that all they have left is their pride, but most are so poor that all they have left is their big talk. All that empty boasting isn’t meant for us—it’s for themselves. It’s like they’re giving themselves anesthesia, performing their own appendicitis surgery. If you were to say, ‘Brother, that’s not anesthesia—it’s glucose. It won’t work. Aren’t you in pain?’ the guy would just break down completely, unable to bear it."
Liu Zhengliang asked Che Mingming, "What about the driver who caused the accident? Isn’t he responsible?"
Che Mingming replied, "The car’s impounded by the traffic police, and he hasn’t even paid the compulsory traffic insurance. He has no money either."
On the third day, during his rounds, Liu Zhengliang stimulated the child’s arm and tapped her knee joint, observing that conditioned reflexes were beginning to appear. The ward was crowded with several relatives of the patient—aunts and uncles filling the nearby beds. They clearly came from humble backgrounds, with rope for belts and sleeves covered in protective cuffs. The girl’s father asked, "Will my daughter wake up?"
Liu Zhengliang hesitated to answer, afraid of making empty promises that could lead to trouble. After a long pause, he said, "There’s been no reaction to the warm water. At this stage, we can start preparing some liquid food for her. You could get a blender to make fruit juice and feed it through the nasogastric tube."
The child’s mother immediately brightened, repeatedly thanking him, and happily went off to make preparations.That afternoon, Chen Junnan once again told the little girl's father that they needed to top up the medical fees. The man readily agreed, repeating his usual line about money not being an issue. In the morning, they had only managed to collect two thousand yuan for the medical fees. Around four in the afternoon, another two thousand was delivered, and just before bedtime, the father arrived sweating profusely with another two thousand. They were scraping together the money in increments of two thousand, slowly piecing together the means to keep her alive.
After finishing their rounds, Liu Zhengliang and Chen Junnan chatted. Chen Junnan said, "Looking at the situation, I'm afraid we might not be able to hold on. You need to think of something. It'd be a shame if the surgery succeeded but the patient didn't make it due to lack of medication."
Dean Long heard that Liu Zhengliang had performed a cranial surgery in the emergency department and managed to save a patient with Brain Herniation. He came to find Liu Zhengliang, as the Second Hospital's Neurosurgery department was currently short-staffed. If necessary, Liu Zhengliang could help out with his old specialty. Since he had also performed the surgery on the little girl, it made sense for him to take on more responsibility, avoiding the need for handovers.
Liu Zhengliang said, "I mainly focused on Interventional surgery before. At Heping Hospital, I never performed this kind of craniotomy independently."
Dean Long replied, "You're the most knowledgeable one here. If you don't do it, who will?"
The hospital had no room for formalities, and the patient had no room to negotiate. As a doctor, Liu Zhengliang had no choice but to agree.
On the third night, the little girl suddenly developed a high fever of 40 degrees Celsius and fell into a deep coma. Her mother, frantic and distraught, rushed to find Liu Zhengliang. She had already heard that this emergency department doctor had been dismissed from Heping Hospital but was more reliable than the others.
There's a saying among the locals in Fushun, a rhyme coined by people with little medical knowledge: "The Mining Bureau Hospital is ruthless, the City Hospital is chaotic, and those who aren't afraid of death go to the Second Hospital." People are all the same—when desperate, they insist on having their needs met. Many who enter this hospital don't leave, and those who go in as healthy individuals come out as ashes. No one can accept that.
The little girl's mother also knew that Liu Zhengliang had worked at a major hospital in Beijing, so his skills must be superior. She bypassed the Neurosurgery department and came directly to him. Liu Zhengliang called Che Mingming to examine the patient together. They quickly changed the dressing on her head and found purulent discharge at the bottom of the wound, which was red and swollen.
They urgently needed a blood test, a task Che Mingming took on. Liu Zhengliang directly instructed the nurse to prepare for a lumbar puncture to collect Cerebrospinal fluid from the little girl's spine for testing. This procedure was cheaper than a lumbar cistern drainage, costing only a few hundred yuan. It was a method Liu Zhengliang had recently learned at Fushun Second Hospital—small hospitals in the Northeast often did this. At first, he couldn't understand it—wasn't it a waste of the doctor's time? But Chen Junnan explained, "First, the equipment for a lumbar puncture is simple and cheap. Second, the nursing environment in small hospitals is poor, and leaving a lumbar cistern in place is highly prone to infection. This is a stopgap measure for grassroots hospitals."
By early morning, the results were in: the field was full of white blood cells.
The little girl's father rushed over from home. He had spent the entire day borrowing money, starting from the western end of Gongnong Street on his electric motorcycle, circling to Qianjin Township, then turning to Jiangjun Bridge, and finally to Zhangdang Town, borrowing from one coworker after another and delivering the money to the hospital as soon as he got it. He had traveled over two hundred kilometers that day and didn't get home until after nine at night. He had just lain down when his wife called, saying their daughter had a high fever. He hurried over immediately.
No further explanation was needed. It was an intracranial infection—the situation Liu Zhengliang had feared the most.The little girl's father was still holding on, insisting through tears, "Doctor Liu, whatever the cost, you must save my daughter. I have money—I can sell the house, and if that's not enough, I can even sell a kidney." As he spoke, he broke down into heart-wrenching sobs. The braggart who loved to boast suddenly found all his bluster gone, crying so hard it felt as if his liver were aching.
Liu Zhengliang said, "Brother, stop crying and don't talk about money. We're both from Fushun—I can tell whether you have money or not. Here's what you must do: prepare ten thousand yuan, no matter how you manage it. Tonight, we'll use high-dose medication to fight the infection."
The girl's father looked troubled, having likely begged all his friends for help that day: "I'll do my best to figure it out."
Che Mingming grew impatient: "Your daughter has an intracranial infection. Which hospital charges ten thousand a day? Here's the plan: we won't put her in the ICU, just provide first-level care, cutting costs wherever possible, leaving only the medication expenses. We'll use the best antibiotics and imported hormones to reduce inflammation."
Liu Zhengliang nodded in agreement. Though a critical condition notice had been issued, the lumbar puncture and the antibiotic Meropenem were administered without waiting for the family to pay—Liu Zhengliang covered the cost out of his own pocket. Even though Heping Hospital had let him go, the legacy of Heping Hospital hadn't been lost.
By daybreak, the little girl's fever had subsided, and her white blood cell count had dropped. Liu Zhengliang told the girl's mother, "Sister-in-law, your child will be staying in the hospital every day, and we'll keep a close watch. The bed fee isn't much, and after these days of anti-inflammatory medication, there won't be any major expenses ahead. To be blunt, for a while, you'll have to treat this place as home. There's no other way—it's just what your child has to go through. The hardest part is over. As long as we're on duty, we'll check on her. After all, she's just a child, her life barely begun. We've done our part; the rest is up to her own fate."
And so, the little girl's family became permanent residents of the inpatient department, paying just forty yuan a day for the bed. The other two beds remained empty since the Neurosurgery ward had few patients, so they were all allocated to the family.
The little girl's father was named Zhang Dexu, her mother Dou Liping, and the child Zhang Jiao. Zhang Dexu had a family heirloom he brought to show Liu Zhengliang—a bracelet made of jet stone, a local specialty of Fushun. Zhang Dexu asked, "Doctor Liu, do you think this thing of ours could fetch a good price?"
Jet wasn't common elsewhere, but in Fushun, you could dig up half a basket of it from any gangue hill. Liu Zhengliang didn't think much of it.
Zhang Dexu said, "Let me tell you, this thing has a story behind it."
In 1929, when Zhang Zuolin still ruled the Northeast, a miner named Zhang Guanyi arrived at Fushun's West Open-pit Mine. After work, Zhang Guanyi would lecture the other miners on philosophy, asking, "Why are you so poor? It's because the capitalists exploit you." The workers would reply, "Cut the nonsense—let's go to Qianjin Township after work for a couple of drinks and some fun."
But people warmed up to him quickly. If you had good character, folks liked to be around you, and soon they were all getting along with this 1.92-meter-tall man from Henan.Years later, Zhang Guanyi had become the commander of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Once, while passing through Zhangdang Village in Fushun with his guard Zhang Xiufeng, they encountered a swollen Hun River that had washed away the small bridge. There they met a cart driver who turned out to be an old coworker from the West Open-pit Mine—this cart driver was Zhang Dexu's grandfather.
The cart driver said: "Old Zhang, let me get some logs to build a temporary bridge. Winter's almost here, fording the river would be freezing."
Zhang Guanyi replied: "I should tell you, I go by Yang Jingyu now."
Later, when Yang Jingyu was surrounded by Japanese troops, the vanguard leading the Japanese forces was his former guard and traitor Zhang Xiufeng. After liberation, Zhang Xiufeng didn't dare mention his past involvement with the Anti-Japanese United Army or his subsequent service as an inspector in the Manchukuo Police Department. He lived under an assumed name and kept quiet. The field commander who surrounded Yang Jingyu was Cheng Bin, formerly the commander of the 1st Division, 1st Army of the Anti-Japanese United Army, who had also turned traitor. Later he went to Shanxi, and when the War of Resistance ended, he killed several Japanese POWs and infiltrated the North China Field Army. But this guy had particularly bad luck - in 1951, while handling affairs near Beijing's Qianmen Gate Tower, he got caught in the rain and took shelter inside the gate, where he ran into a former colleague from his Manchukuo days. Both men were like startled birds during the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, and they immediately reported each other. The next day, Cheng Bin was arrested near No. 11 Dongdan Pailou Hutong—yes, that's where Oriental Plaza stands today, next to the south gate of Heping Hospital.
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