On an extremely cold night, on the winter solstice of 2023, Zhu Ling left this world that treated her unjustly. Leave behind her parents who have been running for her for half her life.
At the end of last month, on November 24, she had just celebrated her 50th birthday, a birthday on a hospital bed: the week before, she had a brain tumor that caused high cranial pressure, a high fever of 39 degrees, and a severe coma.
Li Jiajia, the author of "Zhu Ling's Forty-five Years", told Phoenix.com that at present, Zhu Ling's parents, Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin, are "relatively weak", and there are many friends who are helping them tide over difficulties and take care of the aftermath.
They are over 80 years old, and in recent years, their bodies have also appeared in large and small conditions. According to the fir RECORD, when Zhu Ling's younger sister Zhao Ting (pseudonym) visited the couple, her mother Zhu Mingxin lost a lot of weight, and her father Wu Chengzhi's blood pressure rose to nearly 200 at one point, but the two elderly people "maintained their usual calm and restraint for every condolence call."
"Even if Zhu Ling leaves, Mom and Dad will not be left alone, we are all a family at all times, and we will not be separated because we leave alone. After Zhu Ling's 50th birthday, Zhao Ting wrote in a self-report, "We feel that as long as her vitality is still there, then persevere, and maybe we can advance into 2024." ”
◎ Group photo of Zhu Ling's 46th birthday in 2019
SOURCE: FIR RECORD
"Zhu Ling's Forty-five Years" once described the image of Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin: perseverance, indifference, forbearance and unyielding, under wave after wave of Internet attention, in the face of their daughter's repeated health conditions, "do not complain about the heavens, nor fiercely resist, neither humble nor arrogant, retain dignity, peace and gentleness, and never give up".
They both graduated from the Department of Geophysics of the University of Science and Technology of China, and later worked as senior engineers in the National Earthquake Administration and China Ocean Shipping Corporation, respectively. From the accident of their daughter Zhu Ling in 1995 to today, this typical Chinese intellectual family has supported each other and stumbled through a quarter of a century under the shadow of huge grief.
For more than 20 years, every time the two appeared in the public eye in the past, it was because of their daughter's case, and they told the details of the "thallium poisoning" case and the recent health of their daughter over and over again, but rarely mentioned the sadness and hardship of being parents. The years since their daughter's murder have also been decades of withering but still fighting gently.
In April 1995, the news that Zhu Ling, a female student at Tsinghua University, had a strange illness appeared in the newspapers for the first time. After Zhu Ling's middle school classmate Pei Zhicheng saw the news, he went to visit Union Hospital and met Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin, who were over half a hundred years old.
The two took care of their critically ill daughter for dozens of days in a row, looking anxious, emaciated, and exhausted. At that time, it was the winter vacation of school, and it was very cold in Beijing, and the family could not enter the intensive care unit to accompany them, so the couple put a reclining chair in the long corridor of Union Hospital, and lay down to rest when they were tired.
They put their trust in the hospital. However, the hospital has never been able to find out why Zhu Ling has symptoms of body pain, severe nerve damage, and coma.
Some doctors suspected that Zhu Ling's cause might be poisoning, but the two felt that if it was, other students might be in a similar situation to their daughter, and they didn't think that this might be a vicious poisoning incident against an individual.
◎ Zhu Ling's family, from left to right, Wu Chengzhi, Zhu Ling, Wu Jin, Zhu Mingxin
Source: "Zhu Ling's Forty-five Years"
Through Pei Zhicheng's request for help on the Internet, they received a lot of emails from all over the world, and many people suggested that Zhu Ling should be tested immediately, so they tentatively began to run around hospitals, schools, research institutes and other places, taking samples of blood, urine, cerebrospinal fluid and other samples of their critically ill daughter for testing, and only then did they wait for the exact results of "thallium poisoning" and being poisoned twice in a row.
Knowing that an ingredient called Prussian blue can detoxify thallium, the couple couldn't wait for the hospital pharmacy to open for work, and hurried to the chemical supply store with 2,000 yuan in cash - they thought that this "life-saving medicine" might be very expensive, but they didn't expect that the medicine that finally saved their daughter's life cost less than 5 yuan for a bottle.
That year, the national average monthly salary was less than 500 yuan. It was also that year that they received a bill for medical expenses from Union Hospital, and the cost of hospitalization, examination and treatment exceeded 500,000 yuan.
Zhu Mingxin has a book of "Memorabilia", which records the process of his daughter's awakening:
On August 21, 1995, more than half a year had passed since Zhu Ling's first reaction to pain and four or five months had passed since she was in a coma and critically ill, and she began to understand her mother's words of "open her eyes" and "close her eyes", and a few days later she could respond with a "smile".
In September, Zhu Ling could reach out and hug his mother......
These details are very similar to the process of a newborn mother recording the growth of her child day by day, which is also the process of Zhu Ling's rebirth. Zhu Mingxin later said in an interview with reporters: "When she finally woke up completely, I was not excited, only relieved. ”
Many relatives, friends, and reporters who visited Zhu Ling in the ward mentioned the shock caused by the huge gap between before and after the illness - this female student, who looked delicate, cheerful and full of vitality in the photo, looked painful and sluggish on the hospital bed.
But as parents, Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin "carefully covered" this kind of grief and pain that is twice that of others, their faces are neat and their tone is flat, Wu Chengzhi will always refuse to focus the camera on his daughter in the ward, and he doesn't want everyone to see his daughter's bad state.
◎ Zhu Ling, who was full of vigor in the past
Beyond the public camera and the slow mass oblivion, the couple has been caring for their daughter day in and day out for decades.
Awakening means a long period of close care, because thallium poisoning has severely damaged her daughter's nervous system, and her intelligence has deteriorated to the age of six or seven, and she is almost completely blind and has lost all ability to take care of herself. For more than a decade after that, the couple's life revolved around their daughter's routine so that she could be best cared for.
In 2007, under the lens of CCTV's Oriental Time and Space program, clips of the daily life of the husband and wife appeared in the public eye. They have a clear distribution of care, Zhu Mingxin is responsible for early morning to noon every day, and Wu Chengzhi is responsible for noon to midnight. The care shift between the two is lunchtime, and the family of three gets together to discuss their daughter's health.
At that time, the family's monthly rigid expenses were Zhu Ling's medical expenses of four or five thousand yuan, which were all the retirement salaries of the two in addition to the basic living expenses. Zhu Mingxin said frankly that he has no savings, and if he has an accident one day, his daughter doesn't know what to live on.
In 2011, Zhu Ling suffered a lung infection due to a cold and was hospitalized in the ICU for 10 months. Her trachea was cut open and never closed again, and she will need to be intubated to help her breathe in the future.
Two years later, the couple's care is once again in the public eye. They get up every day to help their daughter clear her trachea and inject insulin. When doing rehabilitation training for his daughter, Wu Chengzhi stood in front of Zhu Ling and held his knees, Zhu Mingxin supported his daughter's waist behind to protect, and a set of knee bending and half-squat movements should be done up to 60 times, but Wu Chengzhi, who was over 70 years old, looked happy.
◎ The family is accompanying their daughter Zhu Ling to do rehabilitation training
That year, because of the poisoning incident at Fudan University, Zhu Ling's case once again attracted widespread attention. In Fangzhuang, Beijing, the husband and wife received a large wave of media, and in the face of reporters' questions, Wu Chengzhi began to tell the details of his daughter's poisoning after the police filed a case-
According to a document from the Ministry of Public Security, the Zhu Ling case was closed in 1998, and in 2008 they submitted an application to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to disclose the process and results of the investigation of Zhu Ling's case.
The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau stated on Weibo that it "deeply regrets that this case has not been solved" and "deeply understands and sympathizes" for Zhu Ling's personal misfortune. The statement also stressed that there was no interference in the work, but "due to the conditions of investigation and handling, due to objective factors such as the loss of evidence, it could not be detected in the end."
Through the coordination of the public security department, Zhu Ling's family was admitted to Xiaotangshan Hospital. After this, Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin faded out of people's eyes again, and the couple's call to seek the truth and the real murderer also disappeared. Zhu Mingxin once revealed his two wishes, one is to hope that the real murderer who hurt his daughter will be brought to justice, and the other is to hope that his daughter will recover.
The first wish, she no longer had hope.
In the following years, the health of the couple and Zhu Ling had various problems, and the situation deteriorated. In 2014, Zhu Mingxin had a tumor on his parotid gland and underwent removal surgery. Wu Chengzhi experienced intestinal obstruction, massive cerebral infarction, and chronic lumbar spine problems after that. The care of his daughter at night had to be handed over to Zhu Mingxin and the nurses, and he began to be only responsible for Zhu Ling's daily diet.
Zhu Mingxin's second wish gradually began to change her goal, and she hoped that the process of sending her daughter away would be "less painful".
◎ Zhu Mingxin's WeChat avatar Source: Fir RECORD
In the limited time since then, the couple seems to be trying to make their daughter's quality of life a little higher and happier. The doctor told the two old men that Zhu Ling needed to eat a liquid diet, and they still tried to feed a softer meal. "I didn't dare to tell the doctor if I choked on food, for fear that the doctor would ask her to have a gastric tube. Zhang Lili, a Tsinghua alumnus of Zhu Ling, said.
Zhang Lili visits Zhu Ling's family every year. On Christmas Eve 2017, Wu Chengzhi pushed Zhu Ling to a window at the end of the corridor to feed her. After eating a few bites, Zhu Ling choked and coughed violently. After Wu Chengzhi let his daughter use the sputum suction machine, he continued to ask the nurse to continue feeding. Zhang Lili asked him if it was very dangerous to choke on food.
He replied, "Eating in the sun is the happiest thing for Ling Ling", and then asked with a smile, "Are those flowers planted on the windowsill beautiful?"
In 2020, the epidemic swept in, and Wu Chengzhi's kidney was found to have a tumor. Seeing that he had many underlying diseases, the Friendship Hospital recommended conservative observation and treatment without surgery. On the way to the hospital for surgical evaluation, Zhang Lili described Wu Chengzhi's state, "I am about to be 80 years old, and I am facing such a major operation alone, and I don't have any sadness and laughter along the way."
◎ In 2020, Zhu Ling's family moved from Xiaotangshan Hospital to another hospital
Source: Weibo @ Help Zhu Ling
Every year of this family is like asking God to come lucky, Wu Chengzhi and Zhu Mingxin took their daughter to overcome all kinds of illnesses and survived year after year, but they were sentenced by doctors in 2023 The end is coming.
A few months ago, a tumor was found in Zhu Ling's brain, and in order to reduce their daughter's pain, the couple refused to have a biopsy.
In November, Zhu Ling fell into a coma and was declared critically ill. A few months before this, after many years, Wu Chengshi once again revisited his daughter's case in a wheelchair: "The incident itself has been put down for us. There's no need for it. ”
After saying this, he breathed a sigh of relief at the camera, closed his eyes slightly, and paused for a moment: "It's much better than not being clear, clearly." ”
He then talked about Sun Wei, the only suspect in the poisoning case that year, and his tone was still calm, "Over the years, I guess her life has not been easy." ”
In a media interview this year, Wu Chengzhi talked about his views on life, old age, sickness and death, he described life as like a tree, never straight and smooth, "it's all crooked here and a little convex there", "people are the same, there is no perfect life".
Now Zhu Ling has passed away, leaving behind his elderly parents, and the poisoning case that they "have put down" and "is not necessary".
However, there are still so many regrets in her life, can we let go?
Source: Phoenix.com