One of the most gracious smiling faces in the elevator
Text/Zhu Kejian
Modern urban life, upstairs and downstairs, left and right neighbors, and even door to door, door-to-door friendship has been very rare. The elevator becomes the nearest social space.
Up and down the elevator, like a life encounter, you will encounter a variety of faces. After living in one place for a long time, even if you like to play with your mobile phone down, look up at the monitor, turn your head to look at the advertisement, and do not say a word, people can feel each other's temper and personality from the familiar figures of each other.
Of the faces that have become more familiar, the one that impressed me the most was a face that always stared at you quietly and smiling, as if the eyes could speak behind the lenses.
This is a lady. Judging from the slender crow's feet that open from the corners of the eyes, it may be fifty miles away, but with short haircuts and often wearing a trench coat, that kind of lean and agile look, it feels only thirty or forty years old.
Every time, as long as she was inside first, she would always ask softly:
How many floors?
12, I said.
So she silently presses 12.
She herself was downstairs at the 9th floor.
Apparently, she gets up early every day, and I almost always meet her whenever I get up early for a walk. There are many encounters, but less communication, because she always comes and goes in a hurry.
Sometimes, when we went to the garage together, as soon as the elevator door opened, she took three steps and two steps, the trench coat with the wind, the leather shoes snorted, and in the blink of an eye, she saw only her back. Even though we sometimes got in the car at about the same time, her car always started first and slipped out of the garage with a cigarette.
This kind of behavior is so hurried that it is difficult for me to ask her who her surname is.
Once, my father-in-law had acute appendicitis and rushed to the emergency department of Xiangya X Hospital at the back of our community overnight, and the doctor said that he had been perforated and had been operated on immediately. The family panicked.
Just after pushing the bed into the emergency operating room, my wife and I paced around outside the door, another iron door next to us opened, a female doctor wearing a mask and a white coat came out, whirlwind in the emergency room for a while, the tired nurses seemed to be nervous at once, and then she ordered two small nurses, took it, turned around and went into the iron door again.
After the door was closed, I always felt that the eyebrows outside the big mask, the vigorous gait, seemed to be familiar, so I casually asked:
Who's this?
Director Yang! Someone told me.
Early the next morning, I went to buy an early breakfast. When the elevator went down to the 9th floor, she came in. I tentatively whispered: Director Yang?
She smiled and narrowed her eyes, as if to say, Oh, finally know my last name?
I asked: Are you in the emergency room?
She said: "I am in charge of the intensive care department, including the emergency room.
So, I told her about my father-in-law's hospitalization.
She listened quietly and smiled: "Are you all settled?"
You're welcome! She went on to say, in the future, of course, I hope that you will not look for me, but in case there is any need, whether it is in the hospital or at home, you can come directly to me.
After my father-in-law was discharged from the hospital, my wife and I went to the billing hall to settle the bill. Madame suddenly pointed to a row of posters and said: Isn't this our neighbor on the 9th floor?
As soon as I looked, sure enough, in a row of "heroes in red", the familiar smiling face greeted me. Below it reads:
Yang Ming, Director of the Intensive Care Department
Look closely at the introduction to know that in the elevator often meet, for a long time do not know the surname of who she is, is a senior critical care medical expert,
In 2020, the global outbreak of the new crown epidemic filled every household with panic.
In our family, the wife with a strong sense of distress began to stock up on food, the daughter and son-in-law, who had a strong scientific concept, began to explain the principles of the virus to the little grandson, and I, suffering from shingles, lay in bed and couldn't take care of myself.
My wife and I have classmates who are trapped in the hardest hit areas in Wuhan. Through mobile phone WeChat, the disaster situation from the hard-hit area is getting worse and worse, and every day there are new situations, as if the unprecedented plague is coming unstoppably, as if the end of the world is approaching minute by minute like the countdown...
At this moment, our province organized a medical team and rushed to Wuhan for rescue.
That night, Madame opened her mobile phone and whispered: Director Yang downstairs is in the list of chi aid!
Retrograde is a magical concept: in the distance, a little abstract, it seems not surprising; around, too vivid, and seemingly incredible, it makes people's hearts beat faster.
She's downstairs from us, she has the same home as us, she also has the real small family's livelihood to worry about, but she... I thought that at that moment, if Madame had her telephone number on hand, she would have called her immediately to express her unquenchable respect as a woman.
Soon we met again in the elevator.
Madame said, salute to the triumphant hero!
She was stunned for a moment and smiled: I did not go to cheng, and when I was about to leave, I accepted other tasks.
We immediately felt a bit of a human collapse.
It was not until after the stage victory in the fight against the epidemic that we learned in the news feature that her so-called other tasks did not go to Wuhan to glory, but her dangers and hardships were no less than rushing to Wuhan. She was in the province, like a fire brigade, going north to Changde and south to Zhuzhou, non-stop, running around, and marching towards the grassroots. As the "anti-epidemic commissioner" of Sanxiang Dadi, she was awarded the Reward for Meritorious Service.
At that time, she was nearly old.
After learning all this, I stood on the balcony of my home, looking at the unobstructed West Lake Park, looking at the Yuelu Mountain, which is known as the forest of historical monuments, and with a group of white pigeons, I was close and far in the clouds, and I did not feel that I remembered Hugo's famous words:
What is wider than the sea is the sky, and what is wider than the sky is the human mind.
Heroes, there have always been prominent and nameless, focusing on heroes, although respectable, in fact, there are more hidden heroes as a foreshadowing, the latter's mind must be more open than the former.
This is just like Hemingway said about the icebergs on the sea, revealing only a small part of its peaks.
I don't remember why, I once sighed to her in the elevator: You are so good!
Perhaps, at that time, what was lamented was all kinds of complicated doctor-patient conflicts.
She said: Actually, it's all good! The profession of doctor determines, overwhelmingly, that it is good.
Yes, the true colors of heroes in the vicissitudes of the sea, sometimes, may be a whole composed of a few eminent beings and more hermits.
After the wave of the epidemic in Wuhan as the hardest hit area, we spent more time in Shanghai than in Changsha because we accompanied our grandson to study. This winter vacation is long, and I have not met this neighbor once.
Mrs. Guess: The epidemic is so complicated, will it be sent anywhere again?
I said: Quite possibly.
As the elevator went up and down, sometimes I closed my eyes as if I saw the most gracious smile again... The hurried figure seemed to overlap between the daily neighbor and the angel in white...
Note: The protagonist in the text does not use his real name