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

Li Hong said, "And the third one, Chungen?"

Zheng Mei slowed her pace.

"Chungen is in Huaishuping Village, which is quite a distance from here."

Ye Zhen looked at her.

"You know him."

Zheng Mei nodded, her voice very low.

"I know him. His mother used to bring him to the school gate, hoping to see if he could learn a few words with the older children. But after Chungeng started panting as soon as he ran, she stopped letting him come."

Gao Haiping asked, "The symptoms written in Granny Wang's account book are: purplish discoloration after birth and weak crying, right?"

Liu Xiaolan turned to the page she had copied.

"Yes, Chungen, male, three years old, born with purple discoloration, weak cry."

Li Hong glanced at the sky; the light on the mountain ridge was already quite dim.

"Teacher Ye, should we go back to Shiao Village first and then go to Huaishuping tomorrow? The mountain road gets even narrower as we go further ahead."

Ye Zhen looked up at the end of the mountain road, where the dirt road disappeared after turning a corner in the weeds.

"Let's go today."

Gao Haiping did not object, but simply switched the canvas bag to the other shoulder.

"Let's go, while it's still light."

Huaishuping Village is even smaller than Shiao Village, with about twenty households scattered on the hillside. Each house has piles of firewood in front of it, chickens scramble for food along the dirt road, and occasionally a dog barks from one of the houses before quickly fading away.

Zheng Mei asked an old man sitting at the door mending baskets for directions.

"Uncle, where does Chungen live? We want to ask his mother something."

The old man looked up at the group of people, his expression hesitant, and paused for a moment with the bamboo strips in his hand.

"What do you want with Chungeng's family?"

Li Hong explained in dialect, trying to keep her tone as soft as possible.

"The doctor from the north city listened to the baby's heart. Did Chungen have health problems before?"

The old man put down the bamboo strips in his hand, sighed, and drew out the sound.

"You're too late."

Liu Xiaolan was stunned.

"What do you mean you're late?"

The old man pointed to the locked mud house down the slope, his fingers trembling.

"Chungen is gone. She died last month."

He paused, then added.

"After the child died, his mother fell ill and later went to stay with relatives in another town with his father. The house was locked up."

Zheng Mei stood there, her lips moved, and it took her a long time to squeeze out a single word.

"How did it disappear?"

A woman carrying firewood nearby chimed in, her voice lowered, and she stopped walking.

"That baby was born with purple skin, and its cries were soft, like a cat's meow. It lived for three years and two months."

She took a breath and continued.

"The last time it happened in the middle of the night. His lips were black and he couldn't breathe. His mother carried him on her back and ran towards the town. He stopped breathing halfway there."

Liu Xiaolan held the pen, not putting it down for a long time.

Gao Haiping took off his reading glasses, wiped them with the corner of his clothes, put them back on, and then took them off again to wipe them, his movements slow and deliberate.

Li Hong turned her face away, her shoulders heaving slightly.

Ye Zhen walked to the door of the earthen house.

A rusty lock hung on the door, the rust running down the keyhole in a dark red ring. Dry grass was stuffed in the cracks of the door, and half a broken wooden horse sat on the windowsill. A piece of the horse's ear was missing, and the paint was peeling off, revealing the grayish-white wood underneath.

Zheng Mei walked over and stood next to her, her voice very soft.

"His mother said that when Chungeng is a little older, she will let him learn to write his own name."

Gao Haiping's throat moved slightly; his voice was hoarse.

"Xiao Ye".

Ye Zhen didn't turn around. She simply turned to a new page in her notebook, put her pen on the paper, and wrote the two characters "Chun Gen" (春根). Next to it, she wrote "three years and two months old".

Liu Xiaolan looked at her pen without saying a word.

Ye Zhen wrote four words in the remarks column.

Deceased, undiagnosed.

These four words, written on the paper, carried more weight than any angry outburst. There were no exclamation marks, no superfluous explanations, yet they were like a knife, directly slicing through the falsity of this screening process. All the talk of traffic difficulties, lack of public cooperation, and insufficient funding became mere fig leaves in the face of the death of a three-year-old child.

The woman stood to one side, rubbing her hands together, and spoke cautiously.

"Doctor, if this child had been seen earlier, would he have survived?"

Li Hong's tears fell, and she quickly wiped them away with her sleeve, keeping her head down so no one could see.

Ye Zhen looked at the woman with a flat gaze.

"I cannot draw conclusions about patients I have never seen."

The woman paused, still rubbing her hands together.

Ye Zhen continued to ask.

Before Chungen fell ill, did anyone come to the village for screening?

The old man shook his head, placing the bamboo strips on his knees. "No one has ever come here. Our village is remote; even barefoot doctors don't like to come up here."

The woman carrying firewood shook her head, looked around, and then lowered her voice even further: "The town officials came to collect the forms. They asked if the children had been examined, and we said we hadn't seen a doctor. They told us not to talk back and to say we had been examined so as not to cause trouble for the village. They also said that the higher-ups were going to check the forms, and anyone who talked nonsense would look bad when the year-end relief grain assessment was being conducted."

Gao Haiping's face darkened, and he asked the question very slowly.

"Who said that?"

The woman glanced around and lowered her voice even further.

"The people from the health center, I don't know their names, were wearing armbands and said the county needed to check the forms."

Ye Zhen turned to look at Liu Xiaolan.

"remember."

Liu Xiaolan held back her tears and continued writing, her handwriting heavier than usual.

"Huaishuping Village, Chungen, three years and two months old, deceased, no medical treatment, villagers' testimonies, he did not receive cardiopulmonary screening before his death, and the township health center staff required a consistent account."

The old man quickly waved his hand, looking somewhat flustered.

"Girl, I didn't say I was going to sue anyone, I'm just telling the truth."

Ye Zhen looked at him and spoke very calmly.

"We are recording the child's situation; we won't push you out to take over."

The old man finally breathed a sigh of relief, but couldn't help asking again, his voice carrying a hint of something.

"If another child like that appears in the village in the future, will they still be able to be saved?"

Ye Zhen closed the notebook.

"Whether it can be saved depends on finding it first."

Zheng Mei wiped her eyes, put her hands behind her back, and spoke in a steady voice.

"When I get back, I'll make ten copies of the four standards, post one copy in Shiao Village, and one copy in Huaishuping."

Gao Haiping nodded and continued.

"The barefoot doctors and midwives also had to carry it down, and whoever saw a baby turning purple had to register it immediately."

Li Hong sniffed, her voice a little hoarse.

"Teacher Ye, Cao Qing will definitely not admit to Chungen. He will say that the person is already dead and there is no way to verify it."

Gao Haiping spoke in a deep voice, word by word.

"Xiao Ye, Grandma Wang's delivery ledger, Teacher Zheng's absence log, Xiao Man's on-site seizure record, Huai Hua's auscultation record, and Chun Gen's villager testimonies can all be put together."

He paused for a moment.

"This is not just a matter of one or two people being missed by chance; the entire screening process is being falsified."

Ye Zhen did not answer immediately, but simply put the notebook into her handbag and fastened the clasp.

She stood in front of the locked old door and took one last look at the rocking horse on the windowsill.

The rocking horse's ear was missing a piece, and the broken paint trembled slightly when the wind blew.

"Walk."

Ye Zhen turned around, her footsteps landing on the stone pavement with a soft but steady sound.

"Organize these documents, go back tonight, and we'll go to the next village tomorrow."