A week after discharge.."Ms Buo, can you check on little Xi for me?"
"Yes little madam Sheng."
The maid ran up the flight of stairs leading to the room of Sheng Xiaobo, on opening the door the baby looked to be asleep, but the maid stood by the door and did not take a closer look at the face of the baby which was showing signs of purplish-blue discoloration on his lips. Thinking that he was still fast asleep, she shut the door to the room, to let his mother know that her son was sleeping.
"How is he?"
"Young master Xi is fast sleep."
"Okay, you can gone on with your work. The doctor should be coming in about now to check on him."
Sheng Yu dismissed her maid, while waiting for the doctor whom her husband asked to make calls to her son, this way his mind would be at peace that what they couldn"t catch the doctor on the other hand would let them know if anything was amiss.
About fifteen minutes later, the doorbell rang and Sheng Yu rose up to open the door, knowing that it was around that time the doctor came to their house. They had to make a private arrangement with the hospital to have the doctor that attended to their child when he was first admitted to continue with his care at home.
"Good afternoon Mrs Sheng."
"Good afternoon Doctor Sun! You are early!"
The doctor laughter when she told him that he was early for his usual visits to her home.
"Little Xi is upstairs, the maid just checked on him about fifteen to twenty minutes ago and she said he was sleeping."
"I"ll go and see how he is doing."
Sheng Yu followed the doctor upstairs and on getting in, they saw that the baby was already blue.
"Doc..Doctor, wh..wh...what is happening to my baby?!"
"Mrs Sheng, I would need you to step outside for a bit so that I can check on your son."
"Please tell me what is going on with my little Xi!"
"Call emergency medical services now!"
The plead fell on deaf ears, as the doctor began checking for pulse, not feeling anything, that was when he began to perform CPR on the child, placing a thumb on top of the other to apply pressure to the lower chest of the child, after two minutes he placed his mouth on those of the child to blow air into the child"s mouth inflate the lungs. It went on for while, as one minute turned into two, but the child was no showing any sign of waking up.
"Emergency services."
"Pl..ease...my son..is dy..dying."
"How old is he and what is your house address?"
The female dispatcher spoke coolly to the distraught mother on the other line. Sheng Yu gave the information that she asked for, while he legs shook uncontrollably.
"When would the ambulance arrive?"
"It should be there in about five minutes."
The doctor renewed his effort to resuscitate the child, while his mother kept crying and praying for her son to make it through. An unspoken rule was to continue resuscitate measures until either help in the form of an ambulance arrives or if the person becomes too tired from trying to do CPR after such a long period of time.
By now Dr Sun"s white s.h.i.+rt was already drenched in sweat, but he didn"t less his effort in trying to resuscitate the newborn.
The ambulance finally came in at exactly five minutes, the bell rang three times, before the door was opened to them by the maid.
"Good afternoon, someone placed a call for emergency services."
"That would be my madam. She should be upstairs with the doctor."
The men nodded before making their way up the flight of stairs and this time they were not shown the way by the maid, since the master of the house was not around, why should she bother with playing nice. Let her little madam deal with them!
Instead she went back to the kitchen to make arrangement for dinner, not knowing what her oversight would cost to the Shengs.
Luckily for the paramedics the room of the child was facing the stairs with the door open, so they didn"t have any trouble locating where he was, the two men walked in, both of similar height and above average. The doctor already knew that the baby was gone, but he still waited for the paramedics to do their thing, which they confirmed after a shot of "naline" the baby"s heart did not response after receiving an injection to restart his heart.
It was already 3:58 pm when the baby was p.r.o.nounced dead by the doctor with the paramedics as witness.
The doctor pulled out his phone to call the husband of Sheng Yu, whose phone kept ringing but there was no answer. He kept trying again and again, until finally he heard the voice of a female.
"h.e.l.lo, who am I speaking with?"
"This is Doctor Sun, can I speak with Mr Sheng Jizhe?"
"Oh you mean Vice President Sheng? He isn"t here at the moment."
"Do you know when he would be back?"
"He is at a meeting, but would you like me to tell him to give you a call back?"
"Sure! I"ll give you my number whenever you are ready."
Dr sun gave the woman on the other line his number, but before the phone call ended he asked her if there was a way to get in touch with his next of kin.
"You mean President Sheng?"
"If you have his number I would love to speak with him, if you don"t mind sharing."
"Okay, just give me a second while I pull up his number from my phone."
While the woman was busy at the background, Dr Sun looked at the "wife" of Sheng Jinzhe and could not shake the feeling that he was speaking to a secret lover of Sheng Jinzhe. The woman came back to the phone and gave him the number of Sheng Henian, the President of Sheng Pharmaceuticals.
"Oh wait! I also have Madam Sheng"s number."
"Thanks for giving that to me also."
After the woman recited both number again to the doctor, she went on to hang up the phone, bringing their conversation to a close.
------------------
"Who was that?"
"It was a Dr Sun, he wanted to speak to you, but I gave him President Sheng and Madam Sheng"s number instead."
"Did he say anything at all?"
"No, he didn"t say a word except that he wanted to speak to you, but I thought I heard someone crying."
"That must be Yu, crying again as usual."
The woman went to the wine bar to get them both a gla.s.s of wine while the man lazily sat on an hotel chair of green, wearing only a white robe. She laughed provocatively at the man, while making her way to him with a gla.s.s of wine on each hand. When she got closer to him, Sheng Jinzhe reached out playful tug at the strap of her robe.
---------------------------------
"h.e.l.lo, this is Dr Sun. Am I speaking to President Sheng?"
"Yes, is anything the matter?"
"I have tried calling your son, apparently he seems to be out of reach. Your grandson just pa.s.sed away this afternoon. Just wanted to bring it to your notice."
"My what? Little Xi is dead?"
"Yes, Sheng Xiaobo pa.s.sed away at around 3:58 pm this afternoon, his mother is beside herself with grief, we would need to transport the body out to the hospital morgue for possible autopsy. To rule out death from unnatural cause."
Madam Sheng began screaming her head off, the moment she heard what her husband said.
"Give me the phone! I need to speak to the doctor, who is he to say that my grandchild is dead!"
"Darling, the doctor knows best, I"m sure he already checked and saw that little Xi...."
Sheng Henian could not bring himself to repeat that his grandson had pa.s.sed away.
"I"m coming there, right now!"
"Doctor Sun my wife meant no offense it"s just hard for her to accept what must have happened to little Xi."
"No need for any apologies, I totally understand, but I don"t know if you would be able to make it here on time before we head out."
"It"s no problem doctor, I and my wife would go straight to the hospital if we happen not to make it."
"Alright, I have to go."
"Okay doctor, we would see you soon."
Dr Sun hung up, he turned to face the grieving mother letting her know that her in-laws were on the way.
"Mrs Sheng, would you like me to call your parents?"
Sheng Yu kept rocking the cradle of her baby, ignoring the question that the doctor sent her way.
"Mrs Sheng?"
"Can I spend a few moments with my son alone."
"Sure! We would wait out."
The doctor gestured for the paramedics to followed him out of the room, to honor the request of his patient"s mother, closing the door behind him to give them privacy.
Sheng Yu picked her child from his crib, holding him for one last time, before setting him down. She took off the belt on the waist of her pant, tip toeing around the room to get a rocker chair.There was a ceiling fan in the room, she placed the rocker chair directly under the fan, before climbing on it to tie the belt to the fan, sliding her neck through the hoop of the belt, before taking her leg completely off the chair.
The doctor and paramedic stood outside for close to fifteen minutes, while they waited to be called in by the mother.
"Do you think we should check up on her?"
"Maybe we should give her an extra five minutes, before knocking the door, what do you think doctor?"
"It"s close to fifteen minutes since then, I"ll say we going in once it is exactly fifteen minutes."
"Okay."
The two paramedic chorused in reply to the doctor, while waiting patiently for the time to go in.
"Mrs Sheng, we are coming in."
But they didn"t hear anything back.
"Mrs Sheng?"
"It"s too quiet inside, let"s just open the door."
The door was thrown open to reveal a woman hanging from a fan.
"Mama!"
The little girls footsteps was so light that neither of them heard her only she spoke.
"Hurry, block her from see this!"
The doctor sharply spoke one of the paramedic, who got into action and dashed across to slam the door shut after him.
"I want my mama!"
Dressed in a frilly pink dress, little Liena stared at the strange man that came out of her brother"s room. The man sat on his knee to speak to her.
"Your mom is sleeping in your brother"s room."
"Papa said that if I"m a good girl, mama would take me to see my little brother."
"What is your name?"
"Liena!"
The little stood with her chest puffed out, as though proudly announcing that she knew her name.
"Liena, that is a pretty name."
"Mama said that papa gave me my name."
"What is your brother"s name?"
"Little Xi."
"Little Xi?"
"Yes!"
The young paramedic was making small talk with the little child, who did not know that her mother and brother had pa.s.sed away in the other room.Inside of him, his heart bled for the little girl who had lost not one, but two of her family in one day!
Inside the room, the doctor and paramedic, struggled to cut loose the woman and lay her on the floor, they did all they could but her oxygen supply had been cut off for quite some time.
"Sheng Yu, time of death 4:17 pm."
Within him, the doctor blamed himself for the demise of such a young woman, although it was the right of the patient"s family to grief and have privacy while doing so, but the doctor still blamed himself for the unfortunate incident.