Chapter 24 Chapter 24 Oh, you are a man
After nightfall, the temperature dropped a lot.
Wu Guifang didn't want to stand in the cold wind and wait for too long, nor did she want to go to the village alone in the dark to look for someone, so she had to ask Shen Miao to help on the way home, and if she saw Chen Weimin, she asked him to come back quickly after making the call.
She sat in the car, relaxing herself by listening to the melodious music on the radio.
There were only two small shops with telephones in Qinghe Village, one at the west end of the village and one at the south end. The shop at Xiaomin's home at the west end of the village was the closest, so I guess Chen Weimin went there.
It was dinner time, and when Shen Miao found the canteen, she saw Chen Weimin leaning against the wall and talking on the phone from a distance. Xiao Min, who was in charge of watching the store, was eating noodles in her bowl, glancing at the time on the phone from time to time.
"I'm here, what do you want to buy?"
Not wanting to disturb Chen Weimin who was on the phone, Shen Miao deliberately lowered her voice, took out two cents from her pocket and handed it to her, "Take an old popsicle."
Leaning against the wall, Chen Weimin's hunched back looked a little tired. With his back to the light bulb hanging outside the convenience store, he was like a rat in a gutter, subconsciously avoiding the light above his head.
"What did Grandma Wang cook today?"
"Well, Dabao is really sensible. You must keep an eye on Xiaobao and make sure he has enough to eat. Do you hear me?"
"Has your mother gone home yet? Ah... OK, what about me? I'll be home late today, don't wait for me."
"Lock the door at home. Don't open it no matter who tells you to. Do you hear me? Turn off the electricity before going to bed. It's cold, so cover yourself with a blanket."
It was very quiet at night, so I could vaguely hear the childish voice on the phone even from several meters away.
Is she a little girl? She doesn't sound very old, but she is very sensible.
Listening to what Chen Weimin said on the phone, Shen Miao guessed that his children should live in a place similar to a "slum" in the city. He is a driver and his wife works outside to earn money, so the younger ones will go to their grandparents' house in the yard for meals.
Chen Weimin was very tired, but his voice was full of fatherly love when he called. Even though he kept rubbing the corners of his eyes, his tone was still calm and gentle.
Seeing how he loves his children, he might be a good father at home, but he is definitely not a qualified husband. Otherwise, he would not have been involved with his employer's wife behind his wife's back, and he would not have given his own child to...
Oh, forget it, it’s not our own business anyway, so why bother with it?
Eating the popsicle in his hand, when leaving, Shen Miao patted his shoulder and pointed in the direction of the clinic.
Chen Weimin understood what she meant, so he gave the children a few simple instructions and hung up the phone.
“She’s a little tired, so she asked you to go back quickly.” After he hung up the phone, Shen Miao said to him indifferently.
Chen Weimin nodded, took out a dollar from his pocket and put it on the phone table: "Okay."
He looked somewhat guilty, like a thief who was caught red-handed, his eyes flickered, avoiding Shen Miao's sight, as if he was afraid of seeing contempt and disdain in her eyes.
Haha, he also knows how disgraceful his behavior is.
Shen Miao didn’t say much to him. After she finished speaking, she ate her popsicle and walked towards home. After paying the bill, Chen Weimin calmed down and hurried back to Wu Guifang’s side…
With the several thousand yuan given by Wu Guifang in his pocket, Shen Miao walked with lighter steps.
She never dared to count how much money it was, but it must be a huge sum, equivalent to what they could earn from running the clinic for several years.
It was not the money she deserved, so Shen Miao did not want to accept it, but Wu Guifang had no intention of taking it back, so she had no choice but to take it home first to keep it safe in the cash box of the clinic.
When I got home, the yard door was open and many people were gathered at their doorsteps. Some were cracking melon seeds, while others were holding up their bowls and chopsticks and slurping noodles with a clove of garlic.
I didn't know who was sitting in the yard, I only heard the person's aggrieved and miserable crying, and the sound of him throwing a tantrum and rolling around like a rogue.
Seeing Shen Miao coming back, the aunt who was watching the excitement outside the courtyard hurried forward to greet her, "My Ni'er, you are finally back! Where have you been? I went to the store but couldn't find you."
“I went to the west end and bought a popsicle.” With the support of her aunt, Shen Miao followed her home, “What’s going on?”
"Your family is in trouble with the doctors!"
When she walked into the yard, there were seven or eight people in total, but even though there were people blocking her view, Shen Miao’s gaze could still accurately land on the protagonist of this big drama.
They are Li Guihua and Zhou Min.
Zhou Min was relatively reasonable and didn't do anything shameful. He just stood there with a few other men, holding a half-burned cigarette and sighing. Li Guihua sat cross-legged on the ground, swaying back and forth and crying out loudly.
Of course, there was only the sound, and I didn't see her shedding any tears.
"What's going on?"
Hearing Shen Miao's voice, Li Guihua quickly stood up from the ground, walked forward and grabbed her sleeve. Wang Dongmei and several aunts were worried that she would attack Shen Miao, so they hurried over to stop her.
"I'm small? Where did you hide me?!" Li Guihua asked with resentment in her eyes.
Shen Miao pushed her away with a confused look on her face: “Are you okay? How would I know where Xiao Niang went?”
"You must have hidden him! Tell me! Where did you hide them!!"
Shen Miao was too lazy to argue with her, so she turned to Wang Dongmei and asked, “Mom, what’s going on?”
Wang Dongmei sighed: "Zhou Qiang ran away with Wang Qin and her daughter."
Shen Miao: ???
Ran away? That's a great thing. Why should I cry?
Li Guihua and Zhou Min originally wanted to go to the clinic to cause trouble, but when they saw that the clinic was locked, they found the Shen family. As soon as they entered the door, they yelled at them to return their son, which shocked Shen Shansheng and Wang Dongmei.
Later, after hearing what Zhou Min said, I learned that Zhou Qiang and the others had run away from home.
It turned out that just a few days ago, Wang Qin started to feel unwell again. She often felt dizzy, and her hands and feet were cold and sometimes weak. So Zhou Qiang said he would take her to the clinic to stay for a few days to recuperate.
When he went out early the day before yesterday, Zhaodi and Pandi volunteered to stay and take care of the child. Zhou Qiang did not refuse and took the three of them away. The day before yesterday, he said that Zhaodi and Pandi were too busy, so he took Yingdi, Laidi and Youdi away as well.
Li Guihua was worried that there were too many girls in the house, which annoyed her. She wished to send them all away at once, so she didn't worry about them and could use a few less spoonfuls of rice when cooking every day.
It was not until today, three or four days after they left, that Li Guihua and Zhou Min realized that something was not right.
It would be fine if Wang Qin and the maids didn’t believe it, but why didn’t their son come back for dinner?
When they were cleaning the house, they found that more than half of the clothes in the closet were missing, and some daily necessities were also missing. Only then did they realize that something was wrong. When they came to look for someone today, they really found nothing...
There was no news, and no words left, so where could they go to find him? So they came to the Shen family and made a scene, demanding that they return their son, but they didn't mention their daughter-in-law and granddaughters.
"You are such a black-hearted clinic! Where did you hide my baby? Give my baby back to me..." Li Guihua cried for a long time and finally managed to squeeze out a few tears from the corners of her eyes.
If one didn't know what happened in their family, just listening to her crying and shouting in grief would really make one think that the Shen family had hidden Zhou Qiang and the others.
But the Shen family is also wronged. There is no evidence to support this. They can't put the blame on themselves just because of Zhou Qiang's words.
"Her aunt, it's no use crying now. The person is not in our house. We can't make anyone appear even if you make a fuss."
"Let's look for them somewhere else. I really haven't seen your family. Everyone in this village can testify to that."
"It's getting late, go home quickly, maybe they will be back in two days."
No matter how people around her tried to persuade her, Li Guihua just couldn't stand up. Her legs were so weak as if she had rickets. After some effort they helped her stand up, she sat down on the ground again before she could take a step.
"Xiao ah, oh Xiao ah...you just don't want your mother anymore...how can you be so cruel..."
Just now she was crying about the Shen family hiding her son, but now she is crying about her son's unfilial nature and her miserable life of giving birth to an ungrateful son who forgot his mother after getting married.
He had obviously just run away with his wife and children, but Li Guihua was crying so loudly as if her son had died, it made people's ears hurt.
"Oh! Don't cry!"
Shen Miao really couldn't help it, and raised her voice and shouted at her: "It's a good thing for you to run away with your wife and children. If you don't run away, will you stay and watch them suffer?!"
“Miaomiao!”
Wang Dongmei pulled Shen Miao's sleeve, signaling her not to add fuel to the fire.
Shen Miao refused, because if she didn’t burn out the fire today, there would be more trouble in the future.
Anyway, Shen Miao is an outsider and has nothing to do with their Zhou family, so there is no need to show any mercy when talking: "You only said that you left the two of you when you were young, why don't you say that you want to give your young child away? Zhao Di is only how old, you are thinking of sending her out to marry, is there any grandmother like you?"
As soon as Shen Miao said this, the atmosphere inside and outside the courtyard suddenly paused.
Ouch? Why does the garlic in my hand taste wrong?
"Let's not talk about forcing Wang Qin to divorce Nian Xiao, and you also wanted to sell Ying Di and You Di behind Nian Xiao's back. You did that too, right?"
At this moment, Shen Miao did not regard Li Guihua as an elder. When she heard the villagers talking about these things, she looked down on them. Now that she came to her house to make a scene, why should she give her any face?
"You wrongly accused Wang Qin of having an affair with another man; you took You Di to the market and secretly abandoned her; when Lai Di was sick as a child, you didn't take her to the doctor and even told the neighbors that it would be a good thing for her to die. Just tell me, which of these things were not done by you?"
After hearing what Shen Miao said, the aunts who were supporting Li Guihua just now withdrew their hands.
Although it is quite regrettable that the family gave birth to six girls in a row, Li Guihua, as a grandmother, is really too bad!
After all, she was her own granddaughter, how could she just throw her away? She even threw dirty water on her own daughter-in-law... They were both women, and this was too much.
Li Guihua knew she was in the wrong, and the tone of her crying suddenly subsided a lot.
She wanted to curse several times, "What a nosy guy!", but if so many people hadn't been meddling in her family's affairs, she wouldn't have made a fuss, so she had to force herself to swallow the words.
Finally, seeing that Li Guihua's face was too ugly, Wang Dongmei reluctantly pulled Shen Miao's sleeve and said, "Okay, okay, stop talking." If she said anything else, Li Guihua would really have to find a crack in the ground to crawl into.
It is said that a newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger. Shen Miao's little mouth really resembles that of Old Man Shen when he was young. Her chatter is like poison, which makes the person involved feel pain and the bystanders feel happy.
Shen Miao: “Let’s not talk about asking you to be more considerate of Wang Qin, but put yourself in your shoes. If your wife still throws you away and accuses you of having an affair with another man, how would you feel? Brother Zhou Qiang secretly took them away and didn’t quarrel with you. He has a good temper. You should go home and burn incense!”
Li Guihua saw that she couldn’t win the argument with Shen Miao, so she looked at Zhou Min who was silent at the side, “Mr. Zhou, you should say something! Isn’t Qiangzi so young?”
Zhou Min still didn't say anything, but just took a deep puff of the cigarette in his hand.
Firstly, a good man does not fight with a woman, and he did not want to argue with a junior like Shen Miao; secondly, every word Shen Miao said made sense, and he really could not think of anything to refute.
Zhou Min threw the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it. He patted the ashes on the corner of his clothes, walked over and pulled Li Guihua up from the ground, "Forget it, let's go."
"Go? Xiao hasn't been found yet, where are you going?!"
Zhou Min rarely raised his voice and suppressed her objection. "Xiao is not here. Will he come back if you stay at his house?" As he spoke, he helped pat the dirt off her pants. "Let's go. It's useless to stay here. If Xiaozhen wants to leave, no one can stop us."
“You, you…!”
Shen Miao knew a lot about their family, whether it was from what the villagers said, or from Zhou Qiang and Wang Qin's complaints when they came to their home for treatment some time ago, she must have heard about most of the dirty things in the family, even if she didn't know all of them.
In order to save his last bit of face, Zhou Min had no choice but to drag Li Guihua away by force. God knows if Shen Miao is really irritated, she will reveal a bigger scandal of her own.
Li Guihua, who came in a rush and with great momentum, was like a stray dog when she left. Although she was shouting toughly, her face had been crushed to pieces, and she was also very angry.
After working for more than an hour, it didn't seem like they were here to look for their son. Instead, they were just asking for trouble.
After they left, Shen Wanshan asked Shen Miao seriously, “Do you know about their son running away from home?”
Shen Miao scratched his head: “Probably… I don’t know.”
Shen Wanshan: ???
The last time she went to Zhou's house, Shen Miao heard Zhao Di mention that she heard her parents discussing taking them to live in the city when they went to bed that night. At that time, she didn't pay much attention to it, thinking that it was just Zhou Qiang's words to comfort Wang Qin.
After all, if it was really for their own good, they would have been taken away long ago, and it wouldn't have been delayed until now.
Unexpectedly, Zhou Qiang was serious this time and took both mother and daughter away.
It’s better to move away. This way, they won’t have to endure the anger of that evil mother-in-law anymore.
Not bad, not bad. Zhou Qiang is a good man who dares to act and take responsibility!
*
After about half a month, when Shen Miao was seeing patients in the clinic, Xiao Min from the west end of the village asked someone to call her, saying that someone was calling her. Shen Miao didn't think much about it and followed Xiao Min.
In the past two years, many people in the village have moved to the city. Some capable ones have even bought houses in the city and brought their parents over to enjoy a better life.
The medical conditions in the city are much better than those in the village, but they still trust Shen Wanshan's medical skills more, so when the old illness comes back, they will still call the village and ask Shen Wanshan to help write a prescription for them to take, or ask him to bring some pain-relieving plasters next time they go to the city.
Not only people from the village, but also some people from the city who want to come to Shen's Medical Clinic for treatment will call in advance to make an appointment.
But the person who called Shen Miao today was neither from Qinghe Village nor from the city, but...
"Hello, who is this?"
"Hello, it's me."
As soon as the person on the other end of the phone spoke, Shen Miao recognized it was Zhou Qiang.
It’s not that his voice is so recognizable, but because she heard the voices of Zhaodi, Pandi and Youdi beside him on the phone.
"Dad, can I have a word with Sister Shen?"
"Let me say something, too."
"Hello, hello? Sister Shen, can you hear me?"
After leaving that depressing home, the voices of the little girls sounded as clear as wind chimes, and there was a sense of freedom and unrestrained joy between the lines.
"Hey, I can hear you."
Zhou Qiang held the phone lower so that they could hear Shen Miao's voice.
"Sister Shen, we have moved to the city and are living with my father."
"Yes, yes, we are living a good life now. We can eat meat every day~"
"My sixth sister has a name, Jiabao, doesn't it sound nice?"
Several young girls were talking on the phone about the good news they had received recently. They had lived a hard life in the village for too long, so no matter whether it was big or small, it was all very good news to them.
"Okay, okay, I'm going to talk to Sister Shen about some serious business. Pan Di, you go play with the sisters first."
"middle."
Putting the receiver to his ear again, Zhou Qiang's first words were an apology: "I'm sorry, sister... Before we left, I found an excuse to go to your clinic for recuperation. My parents must have come to your house to cause trouble."
"It's okay. I just came once and left when I didn't find anyone. I didn't make a fuss." Shen Miao said calmly, and at the same time asked, "By the way, how are you living in the city now?"
"fine."
They had six extra children at once, and if they were caught they would definitely be fined, and it would not be a small amount.
He had left them in the village before because he thought the inspections there were not so strict and their parents would help take care of them. But after this incident, he had no choice but to take the risk and bring his wife and children to live with him. Even though it was dangerous, at least they wouldn't have to live under the influence of others.
The phone charges were quite expensive per minute, so after a few simple greetings, Shen Miao took the initiative to ask, “What’s the matter with the call?”
"Your sister-in-law is not feeling well. I want to ask if you can prescribe some medicine for her."
Ever since she gave birth to the sixth child, Wang Qin has been in constant trouble. In addition, as she is old, she suffers from frequent headaches, and when she has a headache her hands and feet will tremble.
Zhou Qiang took her to the hospital for a checkup, but the medicine the doctor prescribed was too expensive and only treated the symptoms, not the root cause. She didn't feel any pain when taking the medicine, but the pain would come back once she stopped taking it. At this time, he remembered Shen Miao's medical skills and wondered if he could rely on Chinese medicine to help regulate her condition.
"I can't prescribe medicine randomly. I have to see what her condition is." Shen Miao paused and asked, "When will you bring your sister-in-law here so I can take her pulse?"
"Ah...Is that so..." Zhou Qiang was a little embarrassed. "Sister, how about this? I'll give you an address, and you can come to the city. I'll reimburse you for the round-trip fare, and I'll pay you double the consultation fee and medicine fee."
Zhou Qiang is now a small contractor, and there are things waiting for him to deal with every day on the construction site. Although it only takes a day to go back and forth, he has already taken more than a month's leave to go home, and he is too embarrassed to ask for leave again, so he has to trouble Shen Miao to make a trip.
After Shen Miao thought about it, she agreed: “Alright, I’ll just go to the city to get some more medicine in a couple of days, so I can stop by on the way.”
"Thank you so much for troubling you. You must have a meal at home when you come. Your sister-in-law has been saying that she wants to thank you."
"Oh, you're welcome!"
Asking Xiao Min to bring paper and pen, Shen Miao wrote down an address as he said: The intersection of Hongqi Street and Zhengqi Road, Nanguo Village No. 1-16, 6th floor, Unit 12.
It is an urban village in the city.
Although it is a village, the urban village is different from their villages on the outskirts of the city.
In recent years, I heard that Henan City is promoting urbanization and transforming the urban villages within the city, so when they are demolished, everyone will definitely be rich, unlike the people in the villages on the outskirts of the city who can only make a living by farming.
Alas, people from the same village have different fates. I'm so envious...
On Wednesday, taking advantage of the fact that there were not many people in the clinic today, Shen Miao rode a tricycle loaded with medicinal materials to Yu City alone.
The bulk of the clinic's income comes from seeing patients, and a small portion comes from selling the medicinal herbs that he and his grandfather dry themselves, as well as some ointments. They sell the excess and buy what the clinic needs, and they can make about ten yuan each time.
After finishing her business, Shen Miao followed the address Zhou Qiang gave her and came to Nanguo Village in the city.
Nanguo Village is like a Chinese character "井", separated in the middle by four roads.
In order to accommodate more people, the buildings in the village are obviously more densely built than the surrounding housing estates, and all of them have more than seven floors. After entering the village, there are many more people on the not-so-wide concrete road than on the streets outside.
After asking for directions twice, Shen Miao finally found the building number 1-16 at the address.
The roads in the village are relatively narrow, and most people ride bicycles or tricycles. Occasionally, you can see wooden carts carrying fruits or vegetables being sold.
But outside the building at No. 1-16 there was a luxurious black car parked, and the license plate of the car had the most standard bomb number: Yu A·Q8888
Is it Qian Wanli's car? !
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