Free Web NovelChapter 363: Chapter 294: She Sent Us Away
May, 20th. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
Afternoon, 2:20 p.m.
The entire day after the "Golden Seven Days," nothing was found here.
The operation had fully entered the mechanical stage.
Yesterday evening, Yingxiu rescued a trapped person, who became known as the "last survivor" of the earthquake.
hours.
Fang Huai still held the greatest confidence as he searched and probed.
"Is anyone there?"
"Is anyone there?"
The voice, drowned out by the rumble of the excavator, never ceased to emit.
On the street, the sparsely distributed soldiers were all watching this stubborn firefighter.
Many recognized him.
The deputy captain who had blasted open the Tangjia Mountain Barrier Lake, the one who had urged everyone to return to the rescue a few days ago.
He also created a "vegetable market miracle" in Beichuan.
But on the ninth day, I heard that the firefighters were leaving, and this morning, a batch from Jiangxi had already been withdrawn.
The Elite Firefighter Training Team had also left.
In fact, except for soldiers on martial law and epidemic prevention duty and some finishing units, everyone was leaving today.
Even the civilians were escorted out by the troops in batches, heading to temporary shelters in Mianyang. Those who had relatives could catch the buses coming from all over Sichuan to pick them up and leave this heartbroken city, waiting for the follow-up resettlement policy.
"Fang Huai, Fang Huai, have you arrived?"
The voice came from the two-way radio in Fang Huai’s pants pocket.
Fang Huai licked his lips and, unable to help it, looked around again. With some reluctance, he shouted toward a piece of rubble with all his might:
"Is anyone there? Is anyone there?"
He had to leave too.
At three in the afternoon, they were to withdraw from Beichuan and assemble at the main road outside the city, board buses to Hanwang, and rejoin their unit.
But the rubble still gave him no response.
The street was deserted, with only the clangs and thumps of the excavator fighting against the silent ruins.
The ruins would eventually lose and obediently spit out the people they had swallowed one by one.
It’s just that no one knew to what extent the people had been digested by the rubble when they were spat out.
Fang Huai saw another purple-tinged body unearthed, a man dexterously hooked into the bucket of the excavator, turned around, and found an empty space among a pile of bodies to be laid down.
The excavator handled the operation expertly, but, inevitably, it caused the man to roll upon hitting the ground and press against another body, squeezing out a puddle of liquid from each other.
The human body is miraculous; it dehydrates upon death, but afterwards, seems to extract moisture from the air again, swelling with various fluids.
Fang Huai had grown accustomed to this scene, but what made him panic was the hollow gaze of the driver sitting in the excavator cabin, his expressionless face as if he had never seen a living creature.
The sequelae brought by this city might also fade over time.
Perhaps.
Fang Huai even swallowed nervously and took out his two-way radio to say:
"I’m here, I’m here. I’m heading towards the city outskirts."
No sooner had he put the two-way radio back in his pocket,
"Crack..." a grating sound that made one’s skin crawl.
The bucket of the excavator in front of him struggled with a concrete slab propped against the ruins for a moment.
"Bang!"
The concrete slab was partially pried open by the excavator, revealing a space inside with a pale, slightly greenish body.
The entire back of that body was pressed by the concrete slab, the shirt lifted, the upper body exposed, kneeling on the ground, head slightly drooping, obscuring the profile.
Stunning beauty that made even the excavator hesitate for a moment.
But quickly, the excavator continued rumbling, preparing to pry open the concrete slab pressing on the body.
But Fang Huai, as if he saw a precious piece of art, rushed forward, madly trying to prevent the excavator from causing destruction.
As he charged, he shouted, "Stop! Stop!"
The non-commissioned officer in the excavator cabin saw him charging that way; his heart, darkened for days, couldn’t help but entertain an even darker thought. He stopped the machine, opened the cabin door, and shouted:
"Which unit are you from? Don’t get close to the body!"
But Fang Huai was like a madman, already climbing onto the ruins.
That woman, she hasn’t been dead for long!!
Everyone participating in frontline rescue could have been apprentices in forensic medicine. Everyday, bodies were dug out with different skin colors, and over time, one could tell at a glance how many days a person had been dead. Even after hearing doctors’ diagnoses, one could roughly distinguish whether the fatal factor was trauma or internal injury.
This woman’s skin was still pale; scarcely any green to be seen, she must have died within the last 2-3 days, perhaps even less!
The deliberate lifting of the garment filled him with a strong sense of anticipation.
She might have lifted up her clothes to breastfeed!
The first thing Fang Huai did as he rushed onto the rubble was to get close to the woman. He reached his head into the space covered by the concrete slab to check.
The non-commissioned officer operating the excavator had already gotten out of the vehicle. He watched Fang Huai’s back as it pressed close to the woman, even his head entering the space where the woman was, and his face darkened.
His first reaction was to check for reporters around, afraid that the scene would be broadcasted. His second was that if he had a gun, he would sound a warning shot!
But then, he saw an even more unbearable scene.
The bright orange figure was only half outside, with even his hand entering the space where the woman was.
His back was actually beginning to twitch slightly.
The non-commissioned officer operating the excavator couldn’t imagine what this person had been doing inside.
Just as he was about to rush onto the ruins, the one with the white helmet came out.
When they turned to look at him, their eyes brimmed with hot tears.
The non-commissioned officer was stunned.
Seeing this expression, he couldn’t help but think of another possibility.
A possibility that was the exact opposite of what he had imagined, miraculously possible.
With a trembling hand, he pointed to the space beneath the woman, blocked by a semi-concrete slab, and muttered as if in a dream:
"Inside... inside."
He tried to finish, but his voice was cut off. A choking sob welled up in his heart and clogged his throat; he swallowed spit and continued shakily, "Inside, there is..."
The figure dressed in orange-red with a white hat nodded.
"It’s an infant! An infant, alive! Alive!!"
The non-commissioned officer immediately burst into tears, running forward, tripped by a stone but not stopping.
When he spoke, his voice was already distorted: "Alive? Alive?!"
Four words trembled into seven or eight different tones.
"Alive!"
The voice was firm, thrilling.
The non-commissioned officer scrambled over the rubble, staggering onto the debris with the same movements as Fang Huai had just done, grabbing that concrete slab and reaching his head inside to look.
Underneath that beautiful woman was a large water jug, the type with a two or three-liter capacity, equipped with a strap, the strap still hanging around the woman’s neck, and the lid of the jug had a big straw poking out.
Beside it was an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, eyes closed, but with every slight tremble of the long eyelashes, it stirred people to the core.
Fang Huai, unable to resist as before, stretched his hand in and gently touched the baby’s delicate skin.
The non-commissioned officer quickly pulled his head out and called out with suppressed emotion, "Bring it out! Quickly bring it out!"
Then he ran toward the excavator, dancing with joy.
Upon reaching the excavator, he climbed up the tracks, took out the two-way radio from the driver’s cab, and yelled, "New County City, opposite Beichuan Middle School, there’s someone alive! Hurry, hurry!"
Only then did Fang Huai remember to carefully check and found that the swaddling clothes, though dusty, showed no signs of being compressed. His heart overflowed with ecstatic joy once again, as he gently picked up the swaddling and stepped back out of the space, grabbing the two-way radio.
"An infant has been found near Beichuan Middle School, alive, quickly notify the doctors to come over, quickly."
"Z."
The two-way radio only clicked once and then went silent.
The person on the other end of the two-way radio must have been shocked by the news and was speechless for a moment.
But, it wasn’t long before people from all directions in the city were rushing toward this place.
An ambulance was approaching with a siren wailing, bouncing into the air whenever it passed an uneven patch of ground.
When everyone arrived, they were all running.
The first people to get close called out upon seeing the patch of ruins where Fang Huai was:
"Is there someone up there?"
Fang Huai had already half-draped his emergency rescue suit over the woman and was standing high to survey the situation.
In his hands, he carefully held the swaddling clothes with the infant inside.
Seeing the crowd surging this way, he quickly raised one hand and made a "shush" gesture to the people below. Only when the hospital vehicle was nearby did he slowly come down. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Everyone fell silent, staring at the swaddling in Fang Huai’s hands.
As Fang Huai passed each person, he tilted the swaddling to show them the infant’s face.
It was a baby girl.
That little gray, dusty face unbelievably made some veterans forget their composure and form an ’O’ with their mouths, not knowing how to comfort a child, uttering strange light sounds from their throats.
The members of the Special Duty Team who had hurried over really wanted Fang Huai to turn the infant so that they could take a closer look, but they didn’t dare to speak up.
The ones left behind here perhaps needed to see her even more.
Everyone crowded tightly around Fang Huai as he walked toward the ambulance, waiting for him to distribute this precious spiritual sustenance.
Just one look, and they would believe that there was still hope in this world.
Even the anxious doctors, seeing the longing looks in the soldiers’ eyes, invariably paused, stepped back a bit, and allowed more people to see the infant’s face.
In that moment, it was like the most exalted royalty in a medieval kingdom had been blessed with the birth of a princess.
Fang Huai was like the grand priest presenting the princess for the people to behold.
The moment the doctor received the infant, they felt the heavy weight of hope in their hands and cautiously carried her to the vehicle.
Inside, they took the baby, unwrapped the swaddling, and examined her carefully.
Outside, it was as if there were hundreds of expectant fathers anxiously waiting outside a delivery room.
Suddenly, a voice came from inside:
"It’s a baby girl, temperature, blood pressure normal, heartbeat steady. We need to rush to the hospital for hearing and routine blood tests."
"Will she make it?" the non-commissioned officer operating the excavator asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.
The medic inside the vehicle, not prevaricating as they might in a hospital, said firmly:
"Yes, she absolutely will! Let’s go!"
The medical personnel boarded the vehicle immediately, the car door closed, and the ambulance smoothly started. It then sped away.
Below, everyone was tearful.
A few seconds later, the crowd erupted into an earth-shattering cheer.
