After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

Lin Wan arrived on the fourth day.

She wore a light pink polyester shirt, her hair was tied in a ponytail, and she wore light makeup, looking fresh and neat. She carried a brand-new canvas shoulder bag with a small fabric flower hanging on it.

Zhou Hai's administrative secretary led her to the office door and pointed to the two desks pushed together and the mailbags piled up in the corner.

"This is your workstation. For specific work arrangements, please ask Comrade Zhao Lanlan."

Lin Wan walked into the office and looked around. The room wasn't big, with one window, two tables, and four folding chairs. On the windowsill sat a wilted potted green plant, next to a thermos.

Zhao Lanlan was engrossed in writing at the table, not even looking up. Gu Yue glanced at Lin Wan, her expression indifferent.

"Are you Lin Wan?" Zhao Lanlan looked up after writing the last line.

Lin Wan smiled and extended her hand: "Hello, we'll be colleagues from now on. Please take care of me."

Zhao Lanlan didn't shake her hand. She pushed a stack of bound documents on the table towards her.

"This is the triage manual and a quick reference table for common congenital heart diseases. The telephone line will be officially connected tomorrow. Your task for today is to memorize this."

Lin Wan took it and flipped through it; it was over twenty pages, all densely covered with handwritten notes.

Her smile lasted for three seconds.

The day the telephone line was connected.

The post office technicians arrived early in the morning with their toolboxes. The two of them squatted in the corner of the office, tightening screws and connecting wires, working for more than an hour. A dark green rotary dial telephone was installed on the table by the window, next to which was a notice written in calligraphy: "China Heart Congenital Heart Disease Relief Hotline Nationwide Direct Dialing".

Zhao Lanlan sat in the seat next to the phone, with a triage registration form, red and blue pencils, and a "Triage Handbook" that had been flipped through until the edges were frayed.

Gu Yue was behind another table, responsible for opening the mail delivered that day, classifying it by province, and filling it into the pre-registration form.

Lin Wan sat on the folding chair next to Zhao Lanlan, with a blank registration form and a ballpoint pen in front of her. She had taken the triage manual home and looked at it yesterday, but to be honest, those terms like "cyanotic type," "non-cyanotic type," and "blood oxygen saturation" were pretty much useless to her.

She thought the job wasn't difficult. It's just answering the phone, noting down names, addresses, and illnesses, then filling it out on a form. "How could I, a grown woman, not understand how to answer a phone?"

All day long, the dark green rotary dial telephone that the post office technician had installed remained silent, like a mute.

As Lin Wan leaned back in her folding chair after get off work, sipping hot water from the thermos and chuckling to herself. She'd thought it was some kind of grueling job, but it turned out to be just a stable, paid office job with no work or trouble at all. This money was so easy to earn.

However, this smugness only lasted until the morning of the next day.

The ringtone rang out in the quiet office, sharp and piercing.

Lin Wan paused for a moment, then straightened her back and reached for the receiver.

"Hello, this is the Huaxia Heart Congenital Heart Disease Relief Hotline—"

Before he could finish speaking, a long string of voices burst out from the receiver.

The voice was urgent and rapid, its tone fluctuating, mixed with sobs and gasps. Lin Wan listened intently for ten seconds, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

She didn't understand a single word.

It wasn't Mandarin, or even any dialect she'd ever heard before. The intonation was strange, the words were heavily slurred, as if several syllables had been rubbed together and pasted into a single, unintelligible phrase. The only recognizable word was a recurring one, sounding like "Niwa" or "Niwa."

Lin Wan gripped the receiver, her composure crumbling little by little.

"Um...can you speak Mandarin?"

There was no sign of any adjustment from the other side; the crying and shouting grew louder and faster, and a man's gruff voice chimed in from the side.

The two people were talking into the receiver at the same time, both speaking the same dialect, making Lin Wan's ears ring.

She instinctively moved the receiver two inches away from her ear, turned to look at Zhao Lanlan, and for the first time, panic showed in her eyes.

"I...I don't understand what she's saying."

Zhao Lanlan didn't rush to take the microphone. She looked at Lin Wan and calmly asked, "Did you memorize that quick reference sheet from yesterday? It's on the third page, the shorthand for common dialects in Southwest China."

Lin Wan's face paled for a moment.

She flipped through it without looking closely. At the time, she thought those convoluted phonetic symbols and annotations were useless.

The crying on the other end of the phone grew louder. Through a layer of electromagnetic noise, the despair and anxiety pierced the receiver and crashed into the quiet office.

Lin Wan's hand holding the microphone began to sweat. She opened her mouth several times, wanting to say something to comfort the other person, but her lips moved for a long time without her being able to utter a word. The suffocating feeling of having a tangled mess stuck in her throat left her mind blank.

Zhao Lanlan extended her hand.

The hand had long, thin knuckles and neatly trimmed nails, bearing the slight deformities left by Marfan syndrome.

"Give me."

Lin Wan's hand was trembling when she handed over the receiver.

Zhao Lanlan took the receiver and held it to her ear. She didn't rush to speak, but listened quietly for five seconds. During those five seconds, her eyes were half-closed, and her left index finger tapped rhythmically on the table unconsciously, as if trying to scoop something out of the chaotic sound.

Then she spoke.

"Big sister, don't cry."

This sentence was spoken in a slightly hesitant but understandable Sichuan accent. The intonation wasn't standard, but the key words were pronounced clearly.

The crying on the other end of the phone stopped abruptly.

After a two-second silence, a woman's voice timidly emerged from the receiver, this time much slower: "You...you can understand me?"

"I understand." Zhao Lanlan picked up a red pen and wrote "Sichuan" on the registration form. "Big sister, how old is your child? How old are they?"

The woman on the other end of the phone was visibly taken aback. She probably never imagined that a stranger in Beicheng, thousands of miles away, could strike up a conversation with her in her hometown dialect.

"I'm five...five years old."

"Boy or girl?"

"A boy."

Zhao Lanlan quickly scribbled on the form. "Is the child's mouth black?"

"Yes, yes, yes! It was born blue!" The woman's voice became urgent again, but this time it had direction, and her words were no longer rambling. "Its lips were frighteningly blue, and it would squat down and not move after running, panting like a bellows..."

"Big sister, let me ask you something," Zhao Lanlan interrupted her, her voice not loud, but with a steady quality that commanded respect. "When the child isn't running around or making a fuss, and is sitting quietly, are his lips also blue?"

"It's black too! It wasn't wasted!"

Zhao Lanlan circled the "urgency level" column heavily in red pen and filled in a capital "A".

"Sister, don't worry. Is there a county hospital where you live?"

"Yes! But the doctor at the county hospital said they couldn't treat it and told us to go to the provincial capital. The doctor there also shook his head, saying that this ailment... said it could only be treated in Beijing, but..."

The woman's voice began to tremble again.

"But there's no money," Zhao Lanlan finished her sentence for her.

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone, followed by suppressed sobs.

Zhao Lanlan didn't offer any words of comfort. She waited until the sobbing subsided before speaking, "Big sister, listen carefully. I'm making this clear to you—the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital has a Huaxia Heart Congenital Heart Disease Relief Center that specializes in treating your child's condition. They're very effective."

When those three words were spoken, the person on the other end of the phone stopped breathing.

"Now take notes. If you don't have a pen, find someone to write it down for you." Zhao Lanlan adjusted her posture, flattened the registration form, and said as she wrote, "First, find the child's household registration booklet and all the examination reports from the county hospital. If you don't have the examination reports, go to the county hospital and get a record of the heart auscultation, and have it stamped with the official seal. Second, prepare the family's food coupons and letters of introduction. Third, bring two extra sets of warm clothes for the child when you come; it's colder in Beicheng than where you are."

She paused.

"You can cover the travel expenses. Once you arrive at the main hospital, we'll arrange your medical treatment. You don't need to go to the provincial capital or Beijing; just come directly to Beicheng to find us. Remember the address—Beicheng Military Region General Hospital, Huaxia Heart Rescue Office. When you get to the train station, take a three-wheeled rickshaw and tell them you're going to the Military Region General Hospital; it'll cost three cents."

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

Then the woman's voice rang out again, no longer as heart-wrenching as when she first called in. It trembled, but remained steady.

"Comrade, are you...are you a doctor?"

Zhao Lanlan tightened her grip on the red pen.

"I'm not a doctor," she said, "but the doctor who treated your child is the best in all of China."

After the call ended, the office was quiet for a while.

Gu Yue put down the half-opened envelope in her hand, her nose red, and took a deep sniff.

Lin Wan sat in a folding chair, holding the ballpoint pen that hadn't written a single word. She looked at the neat rows of records on Zhao Lanlan's registration form, and the capital "A" circled in red in the upper right corner.

Sunlight streamed in through the window, falling on Zhao Lanlan's slightly deformed fingers.