By seven in the morning, Sun Li'en had already washed his face for the seventh time.
Wiping away the excess water from his face with fingers pale and wrinkled from soaking, Sun Li'en, his eyes bloodshot, gazed once more at the mirror above the sink. He prayed with all his might that the thing he was seeing was merely a hallucination brought on by excessive night shifts and sleep deprivation.
Unfortunately, the conspicuous line of text remained, hovering silently above his head: Sun Li'en, Male, 25, Somewhat Anxious.
"Well, first, let's rule out organic retinal disease." Silently drying his hands with a towel, Sun Li'en left his dorm room with an even heavier heart. Draping his white coat over his arm, he dragged his feet to the ophthalmology department where his university roommate, Feng Ming, was doing his rotation.
"You dragged me here first thing in the morning, before I could even finish my breakfast, just to have me check your eyes?" Feng Ming put down the half-eaten bun in his hand, wiped the grease off on his white coat, and casually picked up the ophthalmoscope from the desk, leaning in. "Fair warning, the bun I'm eating is leek-filled. Don't complain about the smell later."
The leek-scented examination concluded ten seconds later. "Completely normal," Feng Ming declared, resuming his attack on the bun. "Relax. If you think you're seeing something strange, you must have run into a ghost."
As a quasi-doctor who had passed the standardized residency training exam, Sun Li'en was well aware of what hallucinations implied. If his retinas were confirmed healthy, the issue could only lie in his brain. Either a brain lesion was causing him to see status windows over everyone, or he hadn't survived the ravages of his five-year medical undergraduate education, succumbing to schizophrenia in the second month of his residency. As for the "golden finger" commonly found in novels—please, that was just fiction. How could it possibly be real?
"What should I do? Get a functional MRI?" Sun Li'en slumped onto a stool, filled with regret. As for the ghost theory, he knew Feng Ming was just joking. Without symptoms like headaches or motor ataxia, the likelihood of a brain lesion wasn't particularly high. The most probable explanation was a psychiatric issue. And a schizophrenic could never become a doctor.
"Fragrant grilled gluten~ Have you tried it~"Just as Sun Li'en was wallowing in despair, his phone rang. Answering the call, a vigorous voice shouted at him, "Stop sleeping! If you keep sleeping, someone's going to die! Get over here and help!" Eighteen words in three seconds, then the other end hung up cleanly.
A call from his supervising physician was an order. By the time Sun Li'en processed it, he was already in his white coat, standing in the emergency resuscitation room of the City's Fourth Central Hospital.
"I told you to go back and sleep, not to go back and cram." Sun Li'en's direct supervisor, Zhou Jun, looked at his listless appearance with irritation. "Look at yourself in a mirror! You look like you've lost your soul!"
Before Sun Li'en could reply, Zhou Jun threw himself back into the intense resuscitation efforts. He pounced on the incoming hospital bed like a starved beast, immediately firing off questions about the patient's condition. "What do we have?"
"23-year-old female, MVA (motor vehicle accident)," shouted the paramedic rushing the gurney in. His left hand steadied the bed rail, his right pressed firmly on the patient's right leg, yet dark red blood persistently welled forth. "Open fracture, possible injury to the lower limb veins."
Zhou Jun glanced at the patient, whose eyes were barely open, face smeared with blood and grime. He patted her shoulder firmly and shouted in her ear, "Wake up! Do you know where you are?"
The patient's eyes remained half-lidded. No response.
"She was conscious in the ambulance," the paramedic said, stepping back a couple of paces to let a strong male nurse take over the optimal position for compression. He briefed Zhou Jun, "She's severely injured. Open fracture of the right femur, with a degloving injury to the right leg. Possible pelvic fracture as well."
Three or four well-trained nurses swiftly attached a full set of vital signs monitors to the patient without a word. Zhou Jun quickly listened to the patient's chest with his stethoscope. "Lungs clear bilaterally. Heart sounds normal."
"Blood pressure's dropping! Hang two bags of crystalloids! Call the blood bank for crossmatch! Maintain volume first!" Before Zhou Jun could even pocket his stethoscope, the newly connected monitor sounded a piercing alarm. A reading of 75/42 flashed by, continuing to fall. In the emergency, Zhou Jun's commands were rushed but not chaotic, his instructions to the other staff more direct. "Sister Jing, go get Deputy Director Liu from the lounge! Li'en, push a dose of norepinephrine!"
A life hung in the balance. Even if he suspected he might be mentally ill, saving the injured person before him came first. The moment he heard the order, Sun Li'en unhesitatingly pulled a pre-packaged syringe from the emergency cart drawer and inserted the needle directly into the injection port of the established IV line.
"Alright, BP's coming back up." Zhou Jun nodded, seemingly satisfied with the effect of the norepinephrine. Deputy Director Liu Tangchun, who had hurried over following the nurse, also arrived on the scene.
"Teacher." Zhou Jun greeted his mentor and direct superior. "Patient was hypotensive. Started crystalloids. One dose of norepinephrine brought it back."
Deputy Director Liu was no longer young. The short sprint left him slightly breathless. Before he could even catch his breath, he frowned at the pool of blood on the floor. "Hemostasis isn't aggressive enough. Has Ortho been consulted?"
Sun Li'en quickly volunteered, "Director, I'll go call them."
"You go fetch a tourniquet." Zhou Jun shook his head. "Tourniquets aren't used often. This is a good opportunity for you to learn." As he spoke, he pulled out his phone, dialed a number with practiced ease. "Hello, Director Zheng? We have an MVA patient in the ER, multiple fractures plus a degloving injury. Could you please come take a look?"
Sun Li'en retrieved the prepared pneumatic tourniquet from a nearby emergency cart. Glancing at the segment of sharp, exposed thigh bone on the patient's leg, he silently put the pneumatic tourniquet back. Instead, he pulled out two rolls of bandages and four rubber tubes and began wrapping them tightly around the patient's upper thigh. The pneumatic tourniquet required too much surface area. To ensure hemostatic effect, it couldn't be placed directly over the abdomen. But if placed snugly against the wound, it risked being punctured by that exposed, sharp femur the moment inflation started. Using bandages and rubber tubes in the traditional tourniquet method became the only viable option.
Director Zheng from Orthopedics soon rushed into the resuscitation room. Seeing the young woman's stark white thigh bone exposed and the large flap of skin torn away dangling beside it, his expression turned grave. "Where are the family members?"
"Not here yet. Police have contacted them. They're out of town; it'll take time for them to get here." The head nurse answering was holding four or five blood bags, placing them into a blood warmer. As she did, she looked pityingly at the unconscious young girl on the bed. "What a shame. So young, and so pretty…"
"Surgery is needed ASAP." Director Zheng said to Liu Tangchun. "I'll go prep the OR now. Let's get the scans done. The moment the family arrives, have them sign the consent. There must be no delay, or this life is likely gone."
As the two directors were deep in discussion regarding diagnosis and treatment, on the other side, Sun Li'en stared pallidly at the patient on the bed, convinced he had truly gone mad.
In Sun Li'en's view, above the pale yet delicate face of this patient hovered a status window. And on that status window was a line of text:
"Lin Lan, Male, 23. His belt is a bit too tight."