DM Chapter 8

This Troublesome Child Gets His Due

Posted by April Fox, ? Views, Released on December 20, 2024

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Chapter 8: This Troublesome Child Gets His Due

Jiang Xiaoyuan had spent a full two days and nights at Sister Zhang’s house, barely managing to drink half a bowl of porridge. She was so hungry that it was impossible for her to walk quickly. Therefore, she hadn’t managed to go far—just as she had managed to endure her dizziness and blurred vision and arrived at the intersection, she heard a commotion behind her.

Then, a middle-aged woman in slippers rushed out from the narrow alley and grabbed Jiang Xiaoyuan’s arm. “Girl, is Sister Zhang Xiuqin your aunt or your cousin?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan replied, “Huh?”

The woman said, “It’s terrible! Come with me quickly! She was hit by that murderous little brat on the second floor!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s sluggish reflexes were curled up into a ball of hunger, striking work. Before her mind could fully process the words, she was dragged back by the old woman, her feet barely touching the ground.

In just a short moment, Zhang Xiuqin at the entrance of the alley had been surrounded by a crowd. Jiang Xiaoyuan squeezed her way in, only to see Zhang Xiuqin lying half-dead on the ground. There were no visible wounds on her head, nor any signs of blood. However, her complexion was terrible, like that of a corpse.

In the sunlight at the entrance of the alley, Jiang Xiaoyuan could see clearly that Sister Zhang’s face was not pale from fatigue, but rather a bluish-purple color from lack of blood supply.

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s heart skipped a beat. She thought, “Could it be a heart attack?”

The foolish kid who caused the trouble had already been caught. He had no idea what he had done and was still grinning foolishly. At this moment, a freckled woman rushed out and, swinging her arm, slapped the kid in the face. Because of malnutrition, the foolish kid was as thin as a radish, with a neck that was barely a handful. Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t help but squint her eyes at the crisp sound, suspecting that the woman wanted to completely knock the child’s head off.

The foolish kid let out a sharp cry.

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s head throbbed. “Alright, stop arguing, and don’t touch her! Can someone call 120 for me? I can’t tell the address… What’s the use of hitting him, don’t hit him!”

“An ambulance has already been called,” an old man upstairs poked his head out and pointed out with keen eyes, “I suspect it’s not the hit that caused her condition. It might be a heart problem, just like what happened to my wife.”

As soon as this was said, the crowd erupted into a flurry of chatter.

Someone said, “Don’t we have to lay her down flat if it’s a heart attack?”

Another person said, “Medicine, medicine, does anyone have medicine? I heard on TV that you need to do something like CPR? Try hitting her chest!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan said, “Wait, don’t hit her randomly!”

The woman who had just hit the child thought it wasn’t chaotic enough, so she quickly added, “If it’s a heart problem, then the responsibility for this incident won’t lie with our child, right? Maybe she fell herself, and we just accidentally knocked her hat off.”

After saying this, she lowered her freckled face and glanced at the foolish kid. Seeing his tear-stained face and swollen half-face resembling a steamed bun, she became angry again and raised her hand to slap him again. “It’s all your bad luck! Why did you rush forward? What if we are blamed for this?”

This obvious blame made Jiang Xiaoyuan curse in her heart, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it at the moment.

Jiang Xiaoyuan wasn’t sure what to do. Her school had organized emergency first aid training several times, but those second-generation rich kids were busy eating, drinking, and having fun all day long. Who had the leisure to do this?

But it was too late for regrets. Jiang Xiaoyuan could only try to recall the occasional bits and pieces she had heard from health programs on TV as she spoke. “Don’t crowd around her, give her some space. She can’t breathe properly! Does anyone have nitroglycerin? Please help… Ah, why isn’t the ambulance here yet?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan tried to check if Zhang Xiuqin still had a heartbeat. If it was sudden cardiac arrest, it would be troublesome. She knew that in the case of sudden cardiac arrest, CPR had to be performed within a few minutes. However, how many minutes exactly, and how to perform CPR, she was completely clueless.

Just then, the man upstairs rushed into the house and came back with a small bottle. He threw it down from the terrace. “See if this works?”

In the narrow alley, everyone jumped up together like they were grabbing a wedding bouquet, scrambling to catch the small medicine bottle that appeared out of nowhere. No one caught it. The medicine bottle skipped over the fingertips of several people and landed in the arms of Jiang Xiaoyuan, who hadn’t stand up.

Jiang Xiaoyuan quickly stuffed the medicine under Zhang Xiuqin’s tongue for her to swallow. Then she realized that there was nothing more she could do herself, except leave it to fate.

Fortunately, the hospital was close to the old town, and the ambulance arrived quickly. In no time at all, Zhang Xiuqin was taken away. Jiang Xiaoyuan, in a state of turmoil, was about to follow, but she was stopped by the freckled mother of the silly child..

She grabbed Jiang Xiaoyuan and said, “If it’s a heart attack, it’s not our child who hit her.”

The expression on the foolish kid’s mother’s face was extremely complicated, with a hint of flattery and a hint of hostility. Jiang Xiaoyuan glanced at her and thought, “Screw you.”

With a cold face, Jiang Xiaoyuan gave her arm a hard shove, almost hitting the woman in the face. Then she rolled up her sleeves, turned to the old woman who had pulled her in, and said, “Auntie, her daughter went to extra classes this morning. Do you know which school she goes to? Can you call her back?”

“Sure,” the old lady agreed readily, “I’ll have my son go find her.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan nodded quickly and followed the footsteps of the medical staff.

As the old lady voluntarily cleared the way for the staff from the emergency center, she turned to Jiang Xiaoyuan and asked, “I forgot again, did you tell me? Are you her niece or…”

“I’m just someone she took in,” Jiang Xiaoyuan interrupted her quickly. “It’s okay, I just stayed at her house last night.”

After saying this, Jiang Xiaoyuan was also stunned for a moment. She thought to herself, “That’s right, I have nothing to do with her. Why am I following her?”

An ambulance costs money, and so does taking someone to the hospital. Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t know how much all these procedures would cost in total, but she only had a little over five hundred yuan left…

Could she afford it?

Even if she had enough money, she was poor herself. What obligation did she have to pay this money? She didn’t even have a place to stay tonight.

But before she could figure it out, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s footsteps had betrayed her will and made the choice for her, following her all the way to the hospital.

Zhang Xiuqin was wheeled into the emergency room, followed by a flurry of hurried footsteps. This was the first time in Jiang Xiaoyuan’s life that she had experienced such a thing. Looking at the stretcher disappearing into the distance, she felt a little dazed and leaned against the wall, squatting down slowly.

Perhaps she was panting too much, and a young man in the corridor, who was either visiting or waiting for someone, looked up. He was wearing a standard striped shirt, a light-colored wool waistcoat. His sleeves buttoned tightly, and a pair of framed glasses on his face. He looked gentle and delicate. He had been idly flipping through a hospital health brochure.

Judging from his temperament, he may be a teacher or a practitioner in culture and technology.

“Hey,” he said, looking at Jiang Xiaoyuan’s pale face, “Are you alright?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan raised her head and it took her a moment to focus. She waved her hand weakly, knowing that she was probably about to faint from hunger.

The man stood up and offered her a chair. “Come over here and sit for a while.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t refuse and climbed up unsteadily, collapsing into the chair like mud. She leaned her elbows on her knees, trying to relieve the noisy ringing in her ears.

As she stood up, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s legs were trembling, and she was shaking so much that her ID card fell out of her pocket without her noticing. The man rolled up his pants leg, bent down, and picked it up for her. Inadvertently, he glanced at it and said, “Oh, a fellow villager.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan looked at him, and the man handed her the ID card back. “I thought you looked familiar. Maybe I knew you when we were kids.”

Rationally, Jiang Xiaoyuan knew that this might just be a casual conversation, but her nerves still twitched—after all, she was a counterfeit.

“Oh, I’m Qi Lian,” he said, mentioning the name of a county, with a touch of familiarity as he asked Jiang Xiaoyuan, “Do you know that place?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan could only hesitate for a moment before nodding, pretending to know.

“That’s where we live,” Qi Lian said. “We’re from the same area, just not from the same county. In recent years, more and more people have been coming from our hometown.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan forced a smile and tried to change the subject quickly. She asked, “Are you here to visit a patient or accompanying someone to see a doctor?”

Qi Lian said, “To accompany a little brother to the hospital.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan casually asked, “What happened? Is everything okay?”

Qi Lian lightly pushed up his glasses. There seemed to be a reflection on the lenses, and he smiled without answering, appearing elegant and clean.

Just then, a nurse hurried over. “Are you a family member of Zhang Xiuqin—is that you?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan was stunned, instinctively denying, “I… I’m not a family member.”

The nurse asked, “Then who are you?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind went blank. “I’m just the one who brought her here.”

“Then that’s fine,” the nurse frowned, annoyed by the many nonsense people she encountered every day. She shouted at Jiang Xiaoyuan in a rude manner, “Get your registration and payment done!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t stand this kind of hard attitude. She gasped, and for a moment, the three phrases “complain about you,” “what kind of service attitude,” and “what are you yelling at?” rushed to her throat. She didn’t know which to say, making her develop a choice phobia. She didn’t know which one to spit out first. Just as the sentences were about to burst out of her throat, the nurse was already gone!

This left Jiang Xiaoyuan choking, her anger causing her wisdom teeth to ache. She stood up without saying a word, thinking, “I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan decided on the spot to quit. As she walked away, she thought venomously, “Since I have no relationship with them, why should I suffer this kind of humiliation? It would be best if someone died in your hospital, attracting a group of troublemakers, and see how you handle it.”

After walking ten steps, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s brain theater was already playing out the scene where “the rude nurse was dismissed and spends her days crying at home” with great success, and she was gnashing her teeth.

After walking twenty steps, she had already begun to calm down from her anger and realized that she had seemed to have cursed Zhang Xiuqin to die just now. A slight feeling of guilt rose in her heart.

As she turned the corner of the corridor, a hurried footsteps sounded, and Jiang Xiaoyuan looked up to see Zhang Tian running towards her.

In the morning, Zhang Tian had left the house with a triumphant air of “Heaven is the eldest, she is the second eldest[mfn]天是老大，她是老二 (tiān shì lǎo dà, tā shì lǎo èr): a Chinese proverb that literally translates to “Heaven is the eldest, she is the second eldest.” It is commonly used to describe a situation where a woman is the de facto head of the household, even though there is a man present.[/mfn].” Now, she was left with messy hair and a pale face.

The little girl ran out of breath. Recognizing Jiang Xiaoyuan from afar, she ran straight towards her. She grabbed Jiang Xiaoyuan’s sleeve, unable to speak for a moment, just looking at her with anxious sorrow.

Jiang Xiaoyuan looked at her and thought, “This troublesome child is also facing difficulties today. Wasn’t she just showing off her skills earlier?”

This thought flashed through Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mind, and she pulled up Zhang Tian. “They’re still treating her over there. Let’s go, I’ll take you to register and handle the formalities. Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”