How to Raise a Baby in an Apocalypse - Chapter 7 - Bed Number 17
An Ran, feeling discouraged, gripped the handle of the door to the emergency exit tightly. She bent over and gasped intensely for air, catching her breath. The cloth covering her forehead was already soaked with her sweat due to excessive physical activity. Because of that, there were also faint traces of milk stains coming from her nipples, which indicated that she had begun lactating. However, her child was not with her. Her breasts continued to swell painfully.
The pain sent An Ran back to reality from her muddled thoughts, making her realize that she should not give up. No matter what had happened to this hospital, her daughter was still in the neonatal unit. She had to get her daughter out of this hospital in spite of everything!
The flesh born from An Ran’s gave her some strength. She closed her eyes, pondered for a moment, and decided that she would go downstairs back to her ward first. Then she would call Zhan Lian. Even though he was still serving the military in Northwest China, he was still a native in Xiangcheng.
An Ran wanted him to think of a way to help get her daughter out of the neonatal unit.
At this moment, she no longer cared about the harsh words she had thrown at him before, like saying she would never beg Zhan Lian no matter how desperate she was. Her daughter’s well-being was the most important thing to her right now.
And so, An Ran descended the stairs despite her exceedingly exhausted body, spending about 30 minutes to reach her room, where her bed number 16 was. She reached under her pillow and grabbed her phone, and this time, she dialed Zhan Lian’s phone number without any hesitation.
“Beep~ beep~ beep~”
The phone rang for almost a minute but no one answered yet. An Ran was getting anxious as she thought to herself why this man was always like this. When she needed him at a crucial moment, he was never there!
He only has his country, his unit, and his brothers in his best interest!
After hanging up the phone, just as An Ran was standing by her bed in a state of utter stupefaction, the corner of her curtain was pulled open. The woman in bed number 17, who had undergone a cesarean section and was also wearing a headscarf, frowned at An Ran with tears in her eyes and asked in a feeble tone:
“Um, hello there. May I trouble you for a minute? I.. I am really hurting right now, so can you help me call my husband please?”
Her husband and mother-in-law had been gone for several hours now, and it was already 10AM. However, it seemed as if the day had not yet begun since there was no sign of daylight whatsoever. The mother in bed number 17 was also getting anxious. She was in pain and hungry, but the only thing on her mind was to find her husband and mother-in-law and bring them back.
An Ran hesitated for a moment. She wanted to tell the woman in bed number 17 that there were people with strange veins on their faces out there, and her suspicion that this hospital had fallen under a curse or something. At this moment, the husband and mother-in-law of the woman in bed number 17 might not be coming back. For some reason, An Ran felt that their chances of returning were relatively slim.
Yet she nodded and agreed to help the woman make the phone call. An Ran had some dark thoughts that maybe the husband and mother-in-law were fine, and they just didn’t want to take care of the mother? After all, there were only three mothers in this ward at the moment. If there was a man who could take the lead to figure out how to get the children out of the neonatal unit, that would be great.
An Ran decided to ease her restlessness for the time being and proceeded to dial the number that the woman on bed number 17 had uttered. Her fingers swept across the screen and pressed on a string of numbers before pressing the dial button, only to get a busy tone in response.