Chen Junnan said, "Mom, I'm going back to my hometown tomorrow. I have to teach him a lesson."
Liu Zhengliang handled the design, Chen Junnan's mother sourced and finalized materials, while Chen Junnan wrote the business plan to seek investors. Thus, the division of labor among these three was settled.
Chapter 16
After Chen Junnan left, the emergency room had even fewer male staff. On this day, Che Mingming happened to be on the first day of her period, lying in bed at home writhing in pain. She had just called Director Zhao to ask for leave when someone dialed 120 reporting an elderly man having a heart attack. Seeing that the few young doctors in the department were all fresh graduates, Liu Zhengliang grabbed a nurse and headed out on the call.
The old man lived at his daughter's place, located in the old workers' compound of Fushun No. 1 Petroleum Plant.
The predecessor of Fushun No. 1 Petroleum Plant was the Manchurian Railway Oil Refinery established by the Japanese in 1928. Back in 1909, the Japanese had just finished the Russo-Japanese War with the Russians. The indemnities from the First Sino-Japanese War and the Boxer Protocol had suddenly made Japan wealthy, but after the Russo-Japanese War, this already struggling imperialist nation was left crippled, and their behavior became increasingly unscrupulous.
Elderly folks in Liaoning all know that when the Japanese arrived, they truly treated Northeast China as their home, clinging on and refusing to leave, determined to put down roots here. Yamaguchi Fumio, Li Xianglan's father, followed exploration teams searching for coal everywhere. Where there was coal, there was gas, and where there was coal, there might also be oil shale. It's normal if you don't know what oil shale looks like - that stuff lies buried over a hundred meters underground, and not many people have seen it. But this thing can burn, and when subjected to high-temperature, high-pressure internal heating and dry distillation, it can produce oil.
Later, when the War of Resistance against Japan broke out, the Japanese were pushed to desperation. They said they'd been chased all over the mountains by Soviet tanks at Nomonhan, and the Empire of Japan couldn't be without tank armored groups. Japanese tanks were like peanuts compared to Soviet tanks. Peanuts were better than nothing - at least they could chip teeth - but without solving the petroleum problem, even peanuts couldn't move.
Hundreds of exploration team members scoured Northeast China, with one team even going to Jirem League. They drove countless survey cones and drilled who knows how many boreholes, but just couldn't find petroleum. The area around Dorbod Banner in Jirem League was later renamed Daqing - today's Daqing in Heilongjiang Province.
Since they couldn't find petroleum, they had to make do with substitutes. Yamaguchi Fumio finally found oil shale layers with high oil content in Fushun.
The refinery's first batch produced two glass bottles of synthetic petroleum, which were filled and sent directly by plane to Tokyo as tribute to the emperor. However, by the late stages of the war, American aircraft had cut off sea routes. With Fushun's petroleum unable to reach mainland Japan, the Kwantung Army militarists grew desperate. One Japanese officer even said, "We could send planes to airlift synthetic oil back to the mainland - our navy can't even put to sea without fuel."
A senior officer nearby immediately slapped him across the face. "Using planes to transport oil? Why don't you learn from Chow Yun-fat and light cigarettes with dollar bills?"Everyone in Fushun knew how calculating the Japanese were—they even designed machine gun embrasures in advance when constructing buildings. The first and second floors were all reinforced concrete, with walls nearly a meter thick, built to serve as permanent fortifications. Power plants were constructed this way, oil refineries too—they intended to make this place their home. But despite all their meticulous planning, the First Oil Refinery was built right on a geological fault line. Not long after liberation, Soviet experts came to survey the area and said, "Your ground surface has already sunk several dozen centimeters. If this cooling tower keeps going for a few more years, it'll become the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Didn't you notice?"
For the first few decades, they managed to get by. But when the nearby West Open-Pit Mine was excavated hollow, the First Oil Refinery to the north began suffering severe secondary disasters. There was no other choice—the factory had to relocate. In 2011, the factory moved away.
But some workers' residences didn't move with it.
Liu Zhengliang was visiting one such residential area today—slab buildings from the 1980s. Because they were in a subsidence zone, most residents had already moved out, leaving just a few households who planned to relocate after this summer. After all, with no heating provided in winter and the building drafty from all sides, temperatures dropping to over thirty below zero at night would certainly freeze people to death.
The young nurse called ahead and asked, "How do we get to your place?"
The family member on the phone replied, "Take the first northern turn at the railroad crossing along the tracks, pass the dirt road until you see a railway bridge. Come through between the stone piers under the bridge, and you'll see our building."
The nurse asked, "What's your building number? Don't give directions like that—just tell me your address so I can navigate there."
The family member said, "Ah, if you ask me, I don't know either. Just listen to me—drive through the stone piers under the railway bridge."
Abandoned train tracks within the factory area were overgrown with weeds. Liu Zhengliang and his team had to search around for that railway bridge and the stone piers. The ambulance finally found a way through, and several crew members carried the stretcher upstairs. When they opened the door, the home was bare except for the essentials, with the patient lying on the floor as a family member gently patted his chest.
Liu Zhengliang asked the family member, "What are you doing?"
The family member said, "My dad's having a heart attack. I'm anxious, so while waiting for you, I'm helping clear his blood vessels. Since his vessels are blocked, patting them is like unclogging a drain—once it's clear, it won't be blocked anymore." She continued patting as she spoke.
Liu Zhengliang pushed her aside, and the team quickly moved the patient onto the ambulance. Once inside, the young nurse immediately performed an ECG, which showed ST-T segment changes.
The family member muttered to herself, "Pain indicates blockage; no blockage, no pain. There's nothing wrong with me patting him like this, right?" Liu Zhengliang said, "Take a rest for now. A heart attack means the coronary arteries are blocked—patting won't help. Worse, if you dislodge a blood clot from a vein and it travels to the brain, it could cause a cerebral infarction; if it goes to the lungs, a pulmonary embolism. Either one could be fatal."
The family member said, "They said this method could cure illness. How was I supposed to know it's unreliable?"
Liu Zhengliang asked, "Who are 'they'? Who told you this?"
The family member shrunk back and fell silent.
Liu Zhengliang pressed, "You said he was in pain—was it chest pain?"
The family member replied, "Yes, it's been hurting for an hour. You took forever to get here."
The young nurse was about to retort but stopped at a look from Liu Zhengliang.This was no time for bickering—the patient had gone completely still. Liu Zhengliang immediately began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He instructed the young nurse to draw blood first so troponin levels could be tested immediately upon arrival at the hospital. Given the patient’s age of over seventy and a history of hypertension reported by the family, acute coronary syndrome seemed highly likely.
When the ambulance reached the hospital, Director Zhao came to take over the case. Liu Zhengliang briefed him right away: "I told the family on the way that if we transferred him to the central hospital where they perform intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation, he might still have a chance. But the family refused, probably worried about the cost. I performed chest compressions the whole way, and defibrillation didn’t help in between."
A cardiologist rushed over and first asked the family to sign the consent forms—surgery couldn’t proceed without their signature.
As the family signed, one of them asked Liu Zhengliang, "Will my father make it through this?"
Since Liu Zhengliang wasn’t involved in the surgery, he sat down to comfort the family. "The heart is like a pump. If a heart attack lasts too long, it can easily lead to cardiogenic shock. When you called for the ambulance, what was your father’s condition?"
The family member replied, "He was having trouble breathing, and his blood pressure was almost undetectable. We thought the blood pressure monitor was broken—he’s always had hypertension, never low blood pressure. Can the method you mentioned earlier cure his condition?"
Liu Zhengliang explained, "For heart issues, balloon counterpulsation isn’t a cure—it’s just an assistive treatment. It’s like when you’re changing water in a fish tank and you squeeze an air bag attached to the tube to help pump the water. But given your father’s age, I could tell the situation was critical even back in the ambulance."
Noticing the family member wore a white sable coat, Liu Zhengliang added, "Your family doesn’t seem to be struggling financially. If there’s any hope, it’s worth a try. Relying solely on adrenaline at this point may not be enough."
Little White Sable quickly interjected, "What do you mean we’re not struggling? We are! If we can avoid aggressive treatment, we should. The old man is too frail to endure all that."
Liu Zhengliang showed no particular reaction and returned to his office to check the patient’s blood test results. The troponin levels were extremely high, indicating a massive myocardial infarction. Troponin is released when myocardial fibers are damaged and begin to degrade—it starts appearing two to three hours after heart muscle cells die, and by now it had peaked. Not even a miracle could save him.
Less than half an hour later, a sudden wail of grief came from the hallway outside. Liu Zhengliang rushed out to find the cardiologist and Director Zhao comforting the family—the patient had passed away.
Liu Zhengliang wasn’t surprised at all; he had sensed the outcome was grim back in the ambulance.
The cardiologist came out and told Liu Zhengliang there was nothing more they could do. They had only had time to administer one dose of adrenaline before the patient’s face turned cyanotic, his body grew cold, and neither his femoral nor carotid pulses were detectable.
The family member, clad in white sable, stood out somewhat conspicuously in Northeast China’s April weather. Daytime temperatures could reach twenty degrees Celsius, but nights still plunged below freezing, leaving puddles coated with a thin layer of ice by morning. Little White Sable began to weep, but after one loud sob, Zhang Dexu gently stopped her, saying, "Don’t cry here in the hospital—there are other patients. Try to control your emotions."Little White Sable was sobbing while murmuring, "This is my father-in-law, not my birth father."
She had married the deceased's son six years ago, but her husband went out riding his motorcycle after drinking, accelerated hard, and crashed off the Ancient City Bridge into the river. Although Little White Sable had found a lover afterward, she never remarried. She had her eyes on her father-in-law's several properties and the savings the old man had accumulated over the years as an engineer at the First Oil Refinery.
How could the father-in-law not understand what his daughter-in-law was after? But with his wife long gone and his son lost to a drunk driving accident, he figured if someone wanted something, let them have it. His nephew wanted to take him in, and his younger brother also invited him to stay—for a few days, with the underlying message being, "Just live here, we'll handle all the meals and expenses, you just stay." But how could you live in someone else's house without paying? The nephew was waiting for the old man to make a grand gesture, perhaps offering eighty to a hundred thousand in one go. Instead, the old man frugally proposed paying a thousand yuan a month for living expenses.
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