When Fang Yuan reported to the Department of Health, she discovered that quite a large number of people had been assembled for this medical team. Nearly a hundred medical personnel had been transferred from city and county hospitals, as well as various medical institutions.
Among them, female medical workers accounted for one third of the team, including assistant physicians and nurses.
The three-day training program began with a mobilization meeting on the first day, during which the Great Leader’s highest directives and the Ministry of Health’s instructions were read aloud. The focus was on studying the new leadership guidelines and strengthening the ideological and political work of the medical teams.
On the second day, newly printed medical manuals were distributed, and everyone was organized to study the basic medical knowledge contained within them. These manuals would also serve as their future textbooks.
According to the rural cooperative medical system proposed by the leadership, they would be assigned to communes and production brigades, where they would train local part time farmer, part time medical workers and help establish grassroots medical institutions.
The third day was devoted to issuing supplies. Fang Yuan received a copy of the Little Red Book, a brown leather medical case marked with a red cross, a stethoscope, and a thermometer.
Doctors assigned to remote areas outside the province also received nationwide grain ration coupons and various other ration certificates in advance.
After everyone had received their supplies, the health department divided them into groups and explained the local customs, traditions, and conditions of their respective destinations, so that the medical personnel could integrate into local life as quickly as possible.
After the three-day training concluded, Fang Yuan returned to the county town, gave Zhang Huiyun her final acupuncture treatment, completed the handover of her work, packed her belongings at home, and set out on the first stop of her rural medical tour, Linguan Commune in Yuyang County.
The county health department arranged for a donkey cart and assigned someone to escort her and another doctor to their respective county communes. The donkey cart first dropped off the other doctor at Fengwo Commune, where he was to serve, before continuing on to Linguan Commune, where Fang Yuan had been assigned. By the time they arrived, it was already four o’clock in the afternoon.
They had set out early that morning, and even lunch had been eaten on the donkey cart. By the time Fang Yuan climbed down from it, the jolting ride had left her backside feeling completely numb. As soon as her feet touched the ground, her legs went weak, and she nearly stumbled.
Fang Yuan looked up and saw that a U-shaped single story building was the Linguan Commune Health Clinic. The whitewash on its earthen walls appeared to have been applied not long ago. Compared with the mud houses she had passed along the way, the conditions here were much better.
By the time they arrived, several curious commune members had already followed behind the donkey cart. The commotion was impossible to ignore, and people from inside the health clinic quickly came out to greet them.
There were three people in the group. Leading them was an older man whose hair had begun to thin, followed by two young men, one dressed in a white coat, the other wearing his own patched clothes.
“Hello. You must be the comrades who have come to support our grassroots healthcare work?” The older doctor looked at Fang Yuan and the others with a warm smile.
“You’re Director Lu, right?” The county health department officer who had escorted Fang Yuan shook the hand Director Lu extended with great enthusiasm. “I’m from the Yuyang County Health Bureau. Today I’m responsible for bringing Doctor Fang here.”
He briefly introduced Fang Yuan’s background.
Director Lu’s eyes lit up as he looked at Fang Yuan. Their clinic had been in desperate need of a female doctor. When he heard that Fang Yuan had graduated from the Provincial Medical University and had previously worked in the surgical department of the county hospital, he was delighted by her arrival.
“Doctor Fang, hello, hello. Welcome to our grassroots health clinic.”
“Hello, Director Lu,” Fang Yuan replied with a smile.
As Director Lu invited everyone inside, the Health Bureau officer waved his hand and said he still had to continue on his journey, so he would not be going in. Once Fang Yuan’s luggage had been unloaded with the help of the two young men accompanying Director Lu, the officer climbed back onto the donkey cart and urged the driver to leave immediately. If he headed back to the county now, it would probably be midnight before he arrived.
Director Lu showed Fang Yuan around the health clinic while introducing its staff. Fang Yuan learned that Director Lu had originally served as a military medic before transferring out of the army.
At present, there were only three people working at the clinic. Of the two young men who had come out with him, the one in the white coat had graduated from the county medical school and had been assigned here, while the other was a commune member who was currently studying medicine under Director Lu.
The main building of the clinic was a rectangular structure. The large room on the left served as the consultation room. It contained two desks, and behind them stood an examination bed. In the corner was a locked cabinet about the height of a person, which presumably stored medical instruments and medicine. The room on the right was a simple operating room equipped with a few examination devices.
The east wing had originally served as the ward, with three wire frame beds inside. However, two of the beds were now covered with personal belongings, and washbasins and other miscellaneous items had been placed nearby. Director Lu explained that Xiao Lin, the medical school graduate, and Xiao Qian, the commune member, were temporarily living there.
Both Xiao Lin and Xiao Qian lived in production brigades located below the commune, quite far from the health clinic. Traveling back and forth every day was inconvenient, so he had arranged for the two of them to stay in the ward.
The west wing contained the kitchen and a small dining room, both of which were packed with miscellaneous items.
After finishing the tour, Fang Yuan asked Director Lu where she would be staying.
Director Lu said, “Right, right. Xiao Fang, you’ve been traveling all day. I’ll take you to your place so you can get some rest first.”
Xiao Qian carried Fang Yuan’s luggage behind them while Director Lu led the way. They left the health clinic, passed several farmhouses, and stopped in front of a mud house with a thatched roof. The walk had taken less than ten minutes.
Fang Yuan lowered her head to duck through the short wooden doorway. The moment she saw the inside of the house, her heart sank.
The house was low and dim. The earthen walls and floor were full of uneven holes and depressions. A filthy cloth curtain, so dirty that its original color could no longer be recognized, divided the house into two rooms.
The room on the left contained an old wooden bed, and beneath the small window opposite it sat a broken desk that was nearly rotten. The room on the right had an earthen stove, and a long bench with one broken leg lay toppled over in the corner.
“This originally belonged to an old bachelor from the commune. He passed away earlier this year, so the house became vacant. When we learned you were coming, the commune chief specially arranged this place for you,” Director Lu said.
After thinking it over, he realized his words might have been inappropriate and quickly added, “Xiao Fang, although the previous owner passed away not long ago, we had people thoroughly clean the place beforehand. You don’t have any objections to that, do you?”
Fang Yuan shook her head with difficulty. Since Director Lu had said this place had been specially arranged for her, it was probably already considered preferential treatment. Xiao Lin and the others had not even been assigned a place to stay yet.
She had been to the countryside before, and before her grandmother’s family built their house, their living conditions had not been good either. Even so, when she looked at the place where she would be living for a long time to come, she still felt a wave of despair.
After Director Lu and the others left, Fang Yuan stood inside the house for a long time. Even when her feet became sore, she still could not bring herself to sit on the bed.
After encouraging herself once again, she rolled up her sleeves and prepared to thoroughly clean the place.
Fang Yuan asked several curious children peeking in through the doorway and learned that the well was about two hundred meters away. Carrying the wooden bucket beside the stove, she made several trips to fetch water, then scrubbed the wooden bed and desk over and over again with a stiff brush.
Looking at the desk, which was already half rotten, Fang Yuan placed only lighter items such as her washbasin on top of it.
Next, she thoroughly cleaned the kitchen as well. She swept the uneven floor clean, though unfortunately both the walls and floor were made of packed earth, so no matter how much she cleaned, they could never truly become spotless.
After the wooden bed had dried, Fang Yuan finally spread her bedding over it. Sitting on the soft quilt, she fell into another daze.
She took out the two boiled eggs she had left from before, along with a cold vegetable pancake, from her bag. Just then, Xiao Lin knocked on the door and brought her a kettle of hot water. Fang Yuan was deeply grateful.
After taking a couple of sips of the hot water and giving herself a simple wipe down, she lay on the bed. It was the first time she had discovered that she could fall asleep so quickly even when her entire body still felt filthy.
She was simply too exhausted today, both physically and mentally.
That night, while Fang Yuan drifted in and out of sleep, she felt something crawling up her leg. She suddenly jolted awake and reached through her trousers to grab the soft, squeaking lump. Every hair on her body stood on end. With a scream, she yanked off her entire pair of trousers. Still clutching the squirming thing tightly in her hand and not daring to let go, she hurled it, together with the trousers, as far away as she could.
Clutching her quilt, still shaken by the fright, she stared into the pitch black room, overwhelmed by an indescribable sense of fear and helplessness.
After a while, squeaking sounds echoed repeatedly through the room. Rats scurried everywhere along the corners of the walls. There seemed to be more than one. Several rats fought and chased one another, occupying the house as though they were the true masters of the darkness.
Fang Yuan remained sitting in the middle of the bed with her quilt clutched tightly around her. She did not dare lie down, afraid that rats racing across the ceiling would fall onto her. She also dared not lean against the wall, fearing that one might crawl onto her shoulder at any moment.
Resting her head on her knees, she drifted between sleep and wakefulness until daybreak.
After getting up the next morning, looking listless, she nervously walked to the doorway and stared at the trousers she had thrown there the previous night. After hesitating for a long time, she went into the kitchen, fetched a pair of fire tongs, and picked up the trousers. When a small lump fell out from inside them, she screamed in fright and jumped backward.
It was a dead little rat.
Fang Yuan opened the door, carried the dead rat outside with the tongs, and threw it away.
Compared with the stifling air inside the low mud house, the early morning at Linguan Commune was enveloped in a vast blanket of white mist, open and beautiful.
The air carried a trace of moisture and sweetness. In the distance stretched broad fields. Through the hazy mist, commune members could be seen leading water buffaloes out to graze. In front of the nearby mud houses, someone squatted on a large rock, holding a coarse porcelain bowl while eating breakfast.
An older woman who had just returned from her private plot with a handful of fresh scallions passed in front of Fang Yuan. She looked Fang Yuan up and down curiously before greeting her, “You’re the new doctor from the health clinic, aren’t you? You’re up pretty early.”
“Hello,” Fang Yuan replied with a nod. She awkwardly touched her hair. She had let it down before going to bed the previous night, and since she had just gotten up, she had not combed it yet. With her hair hanging loose, she was certain she looked a complete mess.
“Where are you from? From the way you speak, you sound almost like one of us. You’re from Yuyang County too, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Seeing that the older woman looked ready to continue asking questions, Fang Yuan quickly excused herself and returned inside.
There was an iron pot on the earthen stove, and several bundles of firewood had been stacked behind it. It appeared that Director Lu and the others had prepared them for her.
Fang Yuan sat in front of the stove and struggled with it for quite a while, but she still could not get a fire started. In the end, she had no choice but to give up.
Her curly hair hung loosely behind her, tied back only with a hair tie. Her face was smeared with black soot, and she had not yet washed her face or brushed her teeth. Just as Fang Yuan was wondering what she should do next, a pressing bodily urge reminded her.