Chapter 1217 - Jin Wushun's Whereabouts
"Your next step must be to leave as soon as possible," Mendoza warned. "The Australian transmigrator who was bidding on you particularly despises white people—he won't let this matter rest."
"Of course—I want to go to Manila immediately!" Marina said hastily. "But I have no money and don't know how to get there..."
"Let Mr. Lando take you." Mendoza sighed. "Since he purchased you, he can't remain here either."
Marina felt a pang of guilt. "Thank you so much," she said quietly.
"Think nothing of it. Saving the honor of a Spanish noblewoman is my privilege." Mr. Lando twirled his small mustache with evident satisfaction. "Besides, I've grown rather tired of this place. Perfect time for a change of scenery. We'll depart in a week—there's a Chinese merchant vessel bound for Manila."
"What about my two maids?"
Miss Mendoza lowered her head sadly. "They were sold several days ago. Widow Tolosa went to an Australian nobleman as a Spanish tutor. The two maids were likely sold to Australian nobles as well."
"Could I ransom them? I'll pay everything once I reach Manila."
"I'm afraid that would be exceedingly difficult," Miss Mendoza replied. "The Australians are quite fond of white slave women."
Marina knew Mendoza was right. She could only resolve silently to find a way to ransom them later. For now, escaping this terrible place was the priority—she wished she could sprout wings and fly away.
"This young noblewoman has some conscience at least—still thinking about her maids." On the other side of the wall, Li Yan, head of the Intelligence Bureau's Ming Department, observed their conversation from a darkened room.
Lando's "temporary residence" was actually a luxury suite in the Dongmen Market trading house, fully equipped with surveillance facilities and a monitoring room. Under the Foreign Intelligence Bureau's orchestration, Lando's Manila infiltration plan proceeded in an orderly fashion.
"You don't understand," Jiang Shan remarked, sipping mint-flavored ramune soda while listening to their conversation with an amused smile. "This young lady crossed the ocean to marry a stranger. Her accompanying maids are practically family—how could she not care about them? And there's still Widow Tolosa to consider."
"She deliberately left her out?"
"Perhaps." Wang Ding shrugged. "Elites always consider themselves naturally superior—everyone else is just grass beneath their feet. Widow Tolosa obviously isn't someone she cares for."
"What about Widow Tolosa?" Li Yan asked. "Did someone actually buy her to be a tutor?"
"Of course she's still in the quarantine camp, under the Government Office's management." Jiang Shan appeared to be evaluating the new flavor of soda, savoring it thoughtfully as he spoke. "Widow Tolosa merely dresses like an old woman."
"Miss Mendoza and Lando are both talented actors." Li Yan was full of praise. "I know Lando, but I never expected Miss Mendoza to be so professional. She spoke with genuine feeling."
"She's not acting—that emotion is real." A trace of a smile appeared at the corner of Jiang Shan's mouth. "When the counterfeit becomes genuine, the genuine becomes counterfeit. Miss Mendoza is currently in that state—but it's fine. It only makes her more believable."
"With this little lady paving the way, Lando's work will be considerably easier." Though Li Yan headed the Ming Department, the actual work wasn't divided so rigidly—he'd contributed substantially to this Manila infiltration plan. "But now I need to go calm Xiao Bailang down."
"He was deliberately making trouble," Jiang Shan said with displeasure. "We'd clearly communicated with everyone that bidding on this Spanish girl should be kept moderate..."
"I think it was actually a good thing—now it's become real as well. Look how effective! Just like shooting a film!" Wang Ding was quite pleased. The idea of putting Marina up for auction had been his.
"The next step is up to Lando." Jiang Shan rose from his seat. "Let's see what secrets the Spanish in Manila are hiding."
Shi Niaoren returned from the auction to his office at the General Hospital and lit a cigar. On his desk sat thick medical examination booklets for the latest batch of slave women—several large volumes that had just been delivered. He decided to review them in a few days. The material gave him headaches. At some point he'd have to train graduate students specifically to handle such reviews. Speaking of which, Ma Jia had written asking him to commit to taking Guo Fu as a graduate student.
Graduate student! Your Guo Fu's level, even generously estimated, is merely vocational school—and the crash-course kind at that! Though the Hospital Director thought this privately, he also knew that among naturalized medical personnel, Guo Fu was already in the top five. If not her, there was hardly anyone worth training.
The atmosphere at the auction had shown him the transmigrators' "ambitions," filling him with concern about the future of maternal and infant healthcare at Lingao General Hospital. He opened the latest quarterly report on transmigrator sperm vitality. Overall vitality had risen several percentage points compared to the previous quarter.
At this rate, transmigrator sperm vitality would return to normal levels before long. Considering that most transmigrators were young with a handful of middle-aged members, and that since D-Day they'd been living exceptionally healthy lives, their sperm quality would necessarily exceed what it had been in the old timeline. Moreover, their hormone levels were high, their libidos strong, and maid coverage was approaching universal. The second baby boom would arrive faster and more powerfully than the first.
He clearly remembered the number in the "Transmigrator Children Registry": fifty-one, with thirty-five registered pregnant women. So many children and pregnant women—maternal and infant healthcare alone was overwhelming the General Hospital. Never mind that the maternal and infant department also handled external outpatient services and deliveries: prenatal checkups and hospital births consumed an enormous amount of manpower.
No matter how he calculated, the medical personnel currently in training weren't sufficient. Enrollment had to be expanded.
"What a headache." When Director Shi thought about having to go cap-in-hand to the Planning Commission again for additional funding and personnel, he couldn't help but sigh. Perhaps Deng Bojun's Guangzhou revenue-generation plan had some merit after all—at least that would be self-financing, without having to beg for everything.
While he was pondering, a nurse came knocking. "Dr. Ning requests your consultation."
"Which patient?" Shi Niaoren asked.
"A burn patient sent from Jeju Island—special care in the burn ward."
"I understand. I'll be right there."
The patient Shi Niaoren was going to consult on was Jin Wushun. Feng Zongze had been determined to save her life, and when the Executive Committee heard of the case, they too instructed the General Hospital to do everything possible to save her—to let her live on as a banner, a beacon.
With the Executive Committee's instructions, all parties naturally spared no expense. A 901 gunboat was immediately dispatched from Hong Kong at full speed to Jeju Island. On board were medical personnel and necessary drugs and equipment—including a transmigrator doctor, Ning Jinghai, who had originally been scheduled to make rounds in Taiwan but was redirected to Jeju Island instead.
When the ship arrived, Jin Wushun was transported aboard as quickly as possible. Under the direction of personnel from Lingao General Hospital, a special isolation ward had been set up on the ship with thorough disinfection. For the following weeks of the voyage, medical staff would care for the Senate's hero here, stabilizing her condition so she could safely reach Lingao and receive treatment from the Australian Chiefs—as though blessed by divine intervention itself.
According to Ning Jinghai's diagnosis, though Jin Wushun's burns were severe—second degree—they hadn't damaged her tendons. However, based on his medical school knowledge, there remained a possibility of further wound tissue necrosis. Currently, Jin Wushun didn't need to consider skin grafting or flap repair urgently—though of course, the only place in this timeline with conditions for such treatment was Lingao General Hospital, and surgery certainly couldn't be performed on Jeju Island. But during the long voyage, Jin Wushun still required continued debridement and dressing changes; once fresh granulation tissue formed, skin grafting surgery could proceed.
Though the burned skin had already been excised by Feng Zongze, and theoretically new skin could grow on its own, anyone with basic medical knowledge understood that Jin Wushun's now-unprotected wounds lay wide open to pathogenic microorganisms of every kind. She needed a substitute for her original skin as protection.
Therefore, before departure, Ning Jinghai had formulated a plan: xenograft transplantation using specially processed deep-sea fish skin to protect the wound surface. As Jin Wushun's new skin tissue grew, the foreign skin would naturally shed after completing its mission.
In the medically undeveloped 1970s of the original timeline, using animal skin to rescue burn patients had been a widely employed technique in burn departments. Under the Senate's leadership in this new nation, industrial safety standards fell far below old-timeline levels, with accidents of every variety occurring regularly. To rescue workers burned in the myriad industrial mishaps, the transmigrators, constrained by conditions, had revived this method. The Health Department's pharmaceutical and equipment factory used fresh skin from large deep-sea fish. After descaling, disinfecting, soaking, and then immersing in glutaraldehyde—used for sterilization and leather tanning—to remove antigenicity, it was stored in cold storage and cut to size as needed. For this purpose, the ship's lower hold had been packed with ice from Hong Kong's cold storage as ballast, keeping the fish skin refrigerated.
The 901 gunboat set sail, and the test for the rescue team began. According to the burn treatment principles in Ning Jinghai's medical textbooks, serious burn patients had to pass three critical hurdles: shock, infection, and skin grafting. In the two to three days immediately following burns, safely passing the shock phase was crucial, for after burns, massive amounts of body fluid—including protein and water—are lost from the wound.
Jin Wushun had already safely passed this hurdle on Jeju Island, thanks to Feng Zongze's unstinting use of his personal supplies and meticulous nursing. During those days, besides closely monitoring her blood pressure, pulse, and respiration, the transmigrators and inexperienced local naturalized medics—drawing on their intuitive physiological knowledge—advocated breaking with convention by appropriately increasing blood transfusions.
(End of Chapter)