Diagram of the accident. Chart by Xia Kun. Little Yu lying in bed. Photographed by trainee reporter Li Bojing of our newspaper.
On the afternoon of April 4th, a harrowing incident occurred at a residential building in Nanyao Community, Zhifu District. Due to her going downstairs to collect blankets, five-year-old boy Xiao Yu woke up and could not find his mother, so he opened the window and fell from the fifth floor. After landing, Xiao Yu miraculously crawled along a small path and sought help from the owner of a small store.
Neighbors who found Xiao Yu called 120, and Xiao Yu was quickly sent to the hospital. After three days in the intensive care unit of the hospital, on the 7th, Xiao Yu's condition had stabilized.
Upon waking up and not seeing his mother, the boy opened the window and fell from the fifth floor.
On the 8th, I followed Xiao Yu's father to the scene of the incident in Rongyao Street, Nanyao Community. "Is the child feeling better?" As soon as we entered the community, neighbors sitting at the supermarket entrance asked with concern, and Xiao Yu's father Lin Yong nodded gratefully.
Xiao Yu's family lives on the fifth floor of a residential building, with the windows tightly closed. In the grass on the south side of the building, several pieces of glass shattered during Xiao Yu's fall could still be seen.
"Xiao Yu usually doesn't like being home alone; even when going downstairs to buy a steamed bun, he insists on coming along," Xiao Yu's mother Ms. Lü told reporters that it was a Sunday on the 4th, and she was sleeping with Xiao Yu at home. Around 3 p.m., seeing Xiao Yu asleep, she went downstairs to collect the blankets. The first time she came back up, Xiao Yu was still asleep. But when she came back up the second time, she found the door suddenly wouldn't open.
What Ms. Lü didn't expect was that while she was downstairs collecting the blankets the second time, Xiao Yu had already woken up. Upon opening his eyes and not seeing his mother, Xiao Yu wanted to open the door to look for his mother, but after fumbling around, he accidentally locked the latch. Unable to open the door, Xiao Yu then thought of the window. He returned to the bedroom, stood on the bed, and opened the window to see where his mother was. But in an instant, Xiao Yu disappeared from the window!
Many neighbors cooling off downstairs heard a "boom."
"The child might have fallen onto the glass panel on the second floor," Lin Yong told reporters. Afterwards, the neighbor on the second floor discovered that their own glass had been shattered.
No one noticed Xiao Yu falling. But soon after, Xiao Yu, bleeding from the head and covered in mud, appeared in a mobile phone specialty shop across a small road from the residential building where he lived.
On the 8th, in Nanyao Community, I found this shop, but the owner was not there. This location is dozens of meters away from where Xiao Yu fell.
Lin Yong told reporters that after the incident, the owner of the shop told him that Xiao Yu may have crawled to her shop after falling. "The boss told me the child obviously looked injured and kept saying 'Auntie, I'm scared' to her," Lin Yong said.
Neighboring residents quickly gathered around. Someone called 120, and a woman living in the adjacent building ran upstairs to call Xiao Yu's mother. Not long after, the emergency vehicle from Yantai Mountain Hospital arrived on the scene and rushed the severely injured child to the hospital.
In the emergency room of Yantai Mountain Hospital, doctors found that Xiao Yu's injuries were serious: in addition to a brain injury, he also suffered from hemothorax, kidney contusion, and liver bleeding. However, miraculously, there wasn't a single fracture on Xiao Yu's body. To closely monitor changes in his condition, Xiao Yu was admitted to the intensive care unit.
Three days later, his condition stabilized, and the doctor remarked, "This kid is really something."
On the afternoon of the 8th, I met Xiao Yu in the cardiothoracic surgery department of Yantai Mountain Hospital right after he was discharged from the intensive care unit.
With bandages on his forehead and shoulder, Xiao Yu has a pair of bright black eyes, but it seems he hasn't fully recovered from the scare. Any loud noise in the ward would make him cry. His aunt placed a small recorder on his bedside, and elegant music continuously played. "The child is truly lucky to have survived this," Xiao Yu's father said. He is already over forty years old, and this child is very important to him.
Xiao Yu spent three days in the intensive care unit before getting out of danger.
"We all think this kid is really something, with great fortune and a strong life force. We joke that he will be someone extraordinary in the future," Director Huang Ling of the intensive care unit was delighted when Xiao Yu's condition stabilized. She laughed as she told reporters that falling from the fifth floor has a high probability of death, yet Xiao Yu did not suffer any fatal injuries and was able to crawl to the supermarket himself.
Director Huang analyzed that during the fall, Xiao Yu might have been slowed down by a glass panel and some boxwood, which acted as a buffer. Combined with the elasticity of a child's bones and muscles, this prevented serious consequences.
Father of the Boy >>
Unable to find my number, strangers rushed to the factory to notify
Xiao Yu's family had only moved to Nanyao Community two or three years ago and knew very few neighbors. But after this incident involving his child, Lin Yong said, "There are too many good people."
Lin Yong told reporters that after the incident, because his wife's phone was left inside, and in the panic, she couldn't even remember his name, they couldn't get in touch with him for a while. However, upon hearing the news, two unfamiliar neighbors immediately set out to find him based solely on the name of his workplace. After asking around in a few workshops, they finally found him. "They asked me if I live in Nanyao and if my child is five years old. When I said yes, they pulled me into the car," Lin Yong said. The two neighbors sped him to the hospital and then quietly left.
When Lin Yong returned home in the evening, another neighbor came over carrying a blanket and his house keys. "My wife, in a hurry, threw the blanket and left the keys on the door and ran off." These were seen by a neighbor from the same building, who silently picked them up for them.
"When the child gets better, I must thank these neighbors in person. Although we don't know each other well on a daily basis, everyone comes forward to lend a hand when difficulties arise." Outside the ward at Yantai Mountain Hospital, Lin Yong seriously said.
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