The rain came down as though someone were emptying basin after basin of water from the sky, giving no one even a moment to catch their breath.
The roads in the compound were dirt roads to begin with, and after being battered by the torrential rain, they had long since turned into muddy pits.
Every step sank halfway into the mud. Pulling a foot free produced a muffled squelch, and every movement took tremendous effort.
With Dabao on her back, Su Man felt as though all the air had been squeezed from her lungs. They burned painfully.
Carrying more than sixty pounds was manageable for a few steps under normal circumstances, but trudging through the mud on a rainy night was nothing short of torture.
Her legs felt as though they had been filled with lead. Every time she lifted one, she had to use every ounce of strength in her body.
“Mom… I can’t do it anymore… I can’t walk…”
Erbao followed behind her, one hand clutching Su Man’s clothes tightly while the other wiped the rain from his face. He had cried until his voice was hoarse.
His little legs stumbled through the mud, one step deep and the next shallow. One of his shoes had fallen off long ago, leaving his bare foot to step into the freezing mud.
Su Man stopped and gasped for breath. Rainwater streamed from her hair into her eyes, stinging painfully.
She couldn’t stop.
If she stopped now and the strength holding her together gave out, she might never be able to get back up.
“Erbao! Stop crying!”
Su Man turned around and shouted harshly, using the faint beam of the flashlight to see him.
“What good is crying going to do? Will crying make your brother better?”
“Hold the flashlight properly! Watch the road! If you let your brother fall, I’ll spank you until your butt is red!”
Her shout frightened Erbao into swallowing his tears. Sniffling, he raised the flashlight higher.
Su Man readjusted Dabao on her back and hitched him up.
The child was burning hot with fever, his limp body draped over her back without the slightest awareness.
“Dabao, listen to me.”
Su Man gritted her teeth and trudged forward, muttering beside his ear.
“Aren’t you usually so tough? Didn’t you even want to shoot me with your slingshot?”
“What happened now? You’re giving up already?”
“If you’re a real man, then hang in there!”
“When you get better, we’ll continue fighting. If I can’t make you behave, I’ll take your surname!”
Rainwater mixed with sweat, soaking through the shirt beneath Su Man’s clothes and making it cling uncomfortably to her skin.
Suddenly, her foot slipped.
There was a rock hidden beneath the muddy water.
Su Man lost her balance and pitched violently forward.
In the instant before she fell, instinctively, she didn’t reach out to break her fall. Instead, she twisted her arms backward and desperately shielded Dabao on her back.
Thud!
Her knees slammed heavily onto the gravel.
A piercing pain shot through her entire body like an electric current. Her vision went black, and she nearly passed out.
Her pants tore open instantly, and blood mixed with the muddy water flowing from her wounds.
But she had no time to care about the pain.
“Dabao! Dabao, are you all right?”
Su Man lay in the muddy water and immediately reached for the child on her back.
Fortunately, she had taken the impact for him. Dabao hadn’t been hurt. He only let out a couple of weak whimpers.
“Mom!”
Erbao screamed and rushed over, trying to pull Su Man up.
“Don’t touch me!”
Su Man sucked in a sharp breath from the pain, cold sweat covering her forehead.
She tried moving her legs, but her kneecaps felt as though they had cracked apart.
Under normal circumstances, she would have simply stayed on the ground and refused to get up.
But she couldn’t now.
They were in the middle of nowhere, with no village ahead and no shop behind them. If they stayed here, Dabao might really die.
Su Man bit down hard on her tongue, using the metallic taste of blood to keep herself conscious.
“Get… get up…”
She shouted at herself silently.
Planting both hands into the muddy ground, her fingernails digging into the sludge, Su Man slowly and shakily pushed herself upright.
Blood ran down her pant legs, leaving faint streaks of red in the muddy water with every step.
“Go.”
She forced the word through clenched teeth.
She had no idea how she managed to make it through that final kilometer.
Her mind was completely blank, with only one thought remaining:
I have to get to the medical station.
When the little white building with its lights on finally appeared in her line of sight, Su Man felt as though she were looking at the most beautiful light in the world.
“Doctor! Help! Somebody help!”
Su Man kicked open the medical station’s door and used the last shred of strength in her body to shout.
The doctor on duty was an older military physician named Doctor Li. He had been sitting there reading a newspaper through his reading glasses.
Hearing the commotion, he looked up and was so startled that the newspaper fell from his hands.
Standing in the doorway was a woman who looked as though she had crawled out of a mud pit.
She was soaked from head to toe, her hair plastered against her face, her pants covered in blood and mud.
Yet her eyes were frighteningly bright. A large, unconscious child was strapped to her back, while she held the hand of a smaller child who was barefoot.
The sight was almost more horrific than someone coming straight off a battlefield.
“Oh my! What happened?”
Doctor Li hurried over to take the child from her.
The moment the weight was lifted from Su Man’s back, the last bit of strength holding her upright disappeared.
Her legs gave way. She slid down against the doorframe and collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air like a fish on the verge of death.
“Acute pneumonia! His temperature is forty degrees!”
Doctor Li touched Dabao’s forehead and listened to his lungs. His expression changed dramatically.
“Quick! Give him an antipyretic injection! Start an IV! If you’d brought him in another half hour later, this child could have suffered brain damage from the fever!”
The nurses hurriedly wheeled Dabao into the emergency room.
Terrified, Erbao burst into loud sobs and clung tightly to Su Man’s leg.
Leaning against the wall, Su Man listened to the commotion inside. Weakly, she raised a hand and stroked Erbao’s head.
“Don’t cry… Your brother is going to be okay now…”
After working frantically for quite some time, Doctor Li finally got the IV started for Dabao, and his condition stabilized.
He walked out and looked at Su Man, who was still sitting motionless on the floor, then sighed.
“Mrs. Lu, you really went too far.”
“Your own leg is injured this badly, yet you still carried such a heavy child all that way?”
“Come on, get up. Let me treat your wounds.”
Su Man waved a hand and tried to stand, only to discover that her legs had already gone numb and refused to obey her.
“Doctor Li, don’t worry about me yet.”
“Is Dabao really all right?”
“He’s temporarily out of danger. We need to keep watch over him tonight. As long as his fever comes down, he’ll be fine.”
Doctor Li helped her into a nearby chair, then brought over a pair of scissors and cut open her pant leg.
When he saw the bloodied, mangled knee, even the old military doctor, who had seen countless injuries in his lifetime, couldn’t help sucking in a breath.
“Tsk, tsk. The flesh is practically torn open, and it’s full of sand.”
“You’re one fierce stepmother.”
“You’re harder on yourself than anyone else, but when it comes to those children, you’re willing to risk your life for them.”
Su Man’s face was deathly pale from the pain, but she still managed to force out a faint smile.
“Doctor Li, listen to yourself.”
“Once I married into the Lu family, those children called me ‘Mom.’ From that moment on, they became as precious to me as if they were flesh of my own flesh.”
“There’s no such thing as stepmother or biological mother. A mother’s heart is a mother’s heart.”
At that moment, a young nurse beside them came over carrying rubbing alcohol. Hearing those words, her eyes turned red.
“Sister-in-law, you’re really wonderful.”
“I heard all those people in the compound spreading rumors before, saying you would abuse the children. I almost believed them.”
“If anyone dares say anything bad about you again, I’ll be the first to tear their mouths apart!”
Su Man smiled but said nothing.
When the alcohol touched her wounds, her entire body trembled. Cold sweat instantly soaked through her back.
Yet she didn’t make a sound.
She turned her head toward the crack in the emergency-room door, looking at the small figure lying on the hospital bed inside.
The suffering she had endured tonight had not been in vain.
She had not only saved a life.
She was also going to smash every rumor in the compound to pieces.