bookrebus Chapter 59 The production brigade and clinic that suffered the consequences
Chapter 59 The production brigade and clinic that suffered the consequences
A figure is looking up at the sky; it is Lu Zhiqiang.
The three men quickly checked Lu Zhiqiang's breathing, while Da Hu stood guard vigilantly to the side.
Li Ju'an breathed a sigh of relief; thankfully, he was still breathing.
Fortunately, the bullet that exploded in the barrel didn't hit any vital parts of his body; it just knocked him unconscious.
Song Desheng had never seen anything like this before, and asked tremblingly, "Brother, what do we do?"
"What else can we do? Take this reckless kid down the mountain."
Making one sled is the same as making two.
Lu Zhiqiang was very heavy, and with the 400-pound black bear and the big yellow snake, even three people couldn't move him. They cut down a tree and made a sled, put Lu Zhiqiang on the black bear's belly, loaded him onto the sled, and pulled him back.
Li Guaizi joked, "Young man surnamed Lu is lucky. No one else has ever been able to lie down in a bearskin and ride in a sedan chair down the mountain."
Li Ju'an said, "A bear skin that's been gutted smells awful. If you're envious, go ahead and sit on it."
"You're picking and choosing when there's a seat available? What kind of sedan chair haven't I dared to ride in? The only one I really wouldn't dare to ride in is Old Qian's little wolf-skin sedan chair."
When the topic of the wolf cubs being skinned came up, everyone fell silent.
They all shared the same question: Was the wolf attack on Lu Zhiqiang a coincidence, or retaliation? The Lu family had long since retired from their criminal activities, and Lu Zhiqiang had hardly ever been to the mountains. How could he have been targeted and attacked by wolves?
The production team's farm is just ahead.
The production team had a deer farm, a dairy farm, an industrial fourth company that mined coal, an engineering team that did construction, and also a pig farm and a chicken farm.
This land is known for its abundance, with the saying "a handful of black soil will produce oil, and even chopsticks stuck in it will sprout." Some even jokingly say that in this place, "you can catch roe deer with a stick, scoop fish with a ladle, and pheasants will fly into your cooking pot." As long as you put in the effort, you can have plenty to eat and wear.
The production team had many soldiers and a clinic.
After discussing it, Li Ju'an and Li Guaizi decided to first settle Lu Zhiqiang, who had been knocked unconscious and injured, in the production team's clinic, and then notify Lu's family to come into the mountains to meet them.
If the two of them were to personally take the unconscious Lu Zhiqiang back to the Lu family, the Lu family patriarch would undoubtedly hurl countless nasty insults. After all, he had a reputation as a troublemaker in the family compound, even worse than Li Guaizi's.
It's not impossible that the Lu family would believe that the two of them instigated Lu Zhiqiang to go hunting in the mountains and then left him half-dead. After all, the women in the Lu family are prone to crying, and the men are easily swayed. When their wives cry, they cry their hearts out, and even if the truth isn't there, the Lu family will still hold a grudge against them after three days of this.
The less trouble, the better.
They decided to leave Lu Zhiqiang at the production team's clinic, where a pretty female nurse would take care of him, and asked the production team leader to contact Lu's family. The matter was handled flawlessly and perfectly.
The production team's clinic was just a large single-story building, and the female nurses there were very gentle and patient.
"Who is the family member?"
"He has no family members. We found this young man in the woods. In the spirit of doing good deeds anonymously, we brought him here so as not to delay his treatment."
Li Ju'an and Li Guaizi made up stories without batting an eye, while Song Desheng, on the other hand, seemed somewhat at a loss when looking at the pretty female nurse.
Song Desheng asked anxiously, "Nurse, is Lu Zhiqiang's condition serious?"
"It's hard to say right now, we'll have to wait until the patient wakes up." The female nurse suddenly exclaimed in surprise, "Huh?" and looked at Song Desheng. "Comrade, do you know this patient? Didn't you just say you didn't?"
Song Desheng immediately stammered, his face turning bright red, and looked at Li Ju'an and Li Guaizi for help.
Li Ju'an looked up at the sky, and Li Guaizi looked down at his boots; neither of them paid any attention to him.
Seeing that he was about to be exposed, Song Desheng scratched his head sheepishly and tried to smooth things over: "I've seen him in Lijiatun. His family are well-known hunters in the area; everyone in the surrounding villages knows him. I know him, but he doesn't know me."
The nurse nodded, thinking that made sense, and let the matter drop.
She looked at the tall and imposing Li Ju'an, her gaze following his straight back to his firm and strong profile, then to the mule he was leading and the large sled laden with the hunting spoils, and asked in surprise, "You can still hunt in the dead of winter?"
Song Desheng quickly tried to impress, saying with a smile, "I can do it! I can hunt bears every time in winter! This bear was really tough for me."
Li Guaizi watched him make a fool of himself and remained silent.
The nurse saw that Li Ju'an was covered in blood, his cotton-padded coat and hat stained with blood, clearly from being splattered by blood from a close encounter with a bear. She then looked at Song Desheng; the boy's clothes were clean, even his trousers were spotless, with no signs of a struggle except for some mud.
His female nurse colleague, Yang Tingting, smiled and jokingly followed up on his words: "Alright, alright, you're all great heroes. Since you're here, sit down and have some hot water to warm yourself up."
As she sat down and poured hot water from the thermos, she glanced at Li Ju'an inadvertently.
Li Ju'an got up to leave, saying, "No need for that. We have important business to attend to."
The fresher the bear bile, the better the price it can fetch. Now it's Saturday, and besides the supply and marketing cooperatives and pharmacies, there are also merchants coming and going from the south at the market, making it a good time to sell at high prices.
Yang Tingting poured three cups of hot water and continued, "Of course we should express our gratitude. Even if we don't say anything, the comrades in the production team will express their thanks to you. Without you, we don't know how much more suffering our production brigade would have endured."
Upon hearing this, Li Ju'an sensed an underlying meaning in the words and asked curiously, "What's been going on with the production brigade lately?"
Nurse Yang Tingting then recounted what had happened.
The production team's farm fed its pigs with homegrown potatoes, corn, and various low-quality vegetables, such as radishes and cabbages. The people in the production brigade lived frugally, often roasting pig feed, which consisted mainly of corn and potatoes. That day, one of the brigade's duty officers ate two potatoes and was suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by the squealing of pigs and barking of dogs.
That howling wasn't the squeal of an ordinary pig; it was the desperate howling of at least dozens of pigs.
The pigs were squealing so loudly, like they were being slaughtered, that not only the production team could hear them, but even the duty room of the clinic next door could hear them.
Yang Tingting happened to be on night shift that day, so she quickly put on her cotton coat, grabbed a flashlight, and went to check what was going on in the production brigade next door.
The pigsty was lower than the house, without doors or windows, and the inside was divided into pig pens by low walls. She saw the young comrade on duty from the production team rush in and then let out a scream.
Several pigs squealed and rushed out of the pigsty, nearly knocking over the production team members. She quickly turned on all the lights in the duty room and shouted.
She only saw the young comrade on duty in the production team retreat in fright, gesturing for her to be quiet and not move, before turning and scrambling to run away. Only then did she see a huge black bear tearing at a struggling sow.
She screamed in terror.
The young officer on duty, upon hearing her shout, drew the attention of the bear cub. The bear cub saw not only her but also him; they both saw each other. The young officer on duty was only 18, a hot-blooded and impetuous age. Seeing the bear cub harming the pigs and then seeing the bear cub about to pounce on him and the female officer from the clinic, his blood rushed to his head, and he acted without considering the consequences.