Liu Zhiming, the director of Wuhan-based Wuchang Hospital, passed away on Tuesday.

File photo of Liu Zhiming

The news came as a total shock to the staff, who are still struggling to fully come to terms with such a loss. Their amiable 51-year-old director, who had been fighting the coronavirus to his last breath, will never show up again.

Before Wuchang Hospital was officially designated to fight the outbreak on January 21, Liu had become aware of the seriousness of the emerging virus. After seeing a number of suspicious fever cases, he immediately carved out a specific section within the hospital to treat them as an infectious disease. 

After the hospital was officially commissioned to receive patients with COVID-19, the workload surged drastically. According to Hong Yi,  secretary of Discipline Inspection at Wuchang Hospital, turning the hospital into one designated to combat the coronavirus had been an almost impossible task to achieve within three days. As the director leading the battle, Liu could not find any chance to rest.

Three days after the announcement, Liu tested positive for the disease and was later admitted in the ICU. But even then, he refused to give up his mission. Liu called his colleague from the ICU over and over to check whether there were any shortages in the hospital while his own life was gradually draining away. 

When Cai Liping, Liu’s wife and the chief nurse at another designated hospital in Wuhan, thinks of the last days of her husband, her own absence particularly pains her. More than once, Cai had proposed to take care of Liu, but that request was repeatedly turned down by her husband. Now, any chance for reunion is gone forever.

The grief left by Liu’s death has also gripped other people. “I was caught up in the rain on my way to Wuchang Hospital, where my wife was then hospitalized. A stranger offered to share his umbrella with me, and along the way he had been quite attentive to my wife’s condition. It was not until I came across the staff board that I realized he was the director there,” a man said in his first encounter with Liu. 

The outbreak, however, leaves little time for grief. 434 patients are still grappling with COVID-19 in Wuchang Hospital alone. “He has become our beacon in the battle”, said one of Liu’s colleagues.

(Compiled by Wang Jinhong)