That morning, while making ward rounds with Doctor Jiang, Fang Yuan met Liang Youtian, the patient who had initially been diagnosed with gastric cancer. His medical record listed his age as thirty one, but he looked much older than that in person. His cheeks were sunken and sallow, his eyes dull and lifeless, as he leaned against the hospital bed drinking a bowl of plain boiled water handed to him by his elderly father.
When Old Liang saw Doctor Jiang and the others approaching, he hurriedly set the bowl down, rubbed his hands together, nervously tugged at the hem of his clothes, and bowed slightly. “D… Doctor.”
“Liang Youtian, have you had breakfast yet?” Doctor Jiang asked kindly.
Liang Youtian nodded. Old Liang quickly replied, “Y… Yes, he has. Thanks to Director Lin, we were allowed to steam our rice in the hospital cafeteria. We had rice porridge this morning. It was nice and hot.”
After speaking, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Whether it was from the heat or from nervousness, it was impossible to tell.
Seeing this, a nurse standing nearby accidentally let out a snort of laughter. Doctor Jiang glanced at her lightly, and the nurse nervously took a step back while clutching her notebook.
“Liang Youtian, you had rice porridge too? Didn’t I tell you that for the next few days you could only drink rice broth?” Doctor Jiang asked, glancing at the chart as his brows furrowed slightly.
“Doctor, it was only a small bowl of thin porridge…” Old Liang explained.
“Family member of Liang Youtian, his condition has not yet been confirmed. If it turns out to be a severe gastric ulcer, he will need to fast completely. So for the next couple of days, let him drink only rice broth,” Doctor Jiang said.
“Doctor, I’m really too hungry,” Liang Youtian said weakly.
Doctor Jiang replied, “Bear with it for now. The examination results will be available very soon. We’ll formulate a treatment plan based on your condition. After you’re discharged from the hospital, you’ll be able to eat properly again.”
The entire county hospital had only thirty beds.
Doctor Jiang was currently responsible for four patients. Besides Liang Youtian and a patient who had undergone an appendectomy the previous day, the other two had both just undergone minor surgeries and would be discharged within the next couple of days.
After returning from the ward rounds, Fang Yuan reviewed Liang Youtian’s medical record. For the past several years, he had experienced persistent dull pain in his upper abdomen. Over the past few months, the pain had intensified, accompanied by a burning sensation in his stomach, and he had gradually lost weight. It was only after discovering blood in his stool that he became frightened enough to come to the county hospital for an examination. The best possible outcome would be a severe gastric ulcer. However, judging from the examination findings so far, gastric cancer was highly likely. She hoped it was still in its early stages. If it could be surgically removed and showed no recurrence within five years, it could be considered a clinical cure.
She could not help wondering whether combining the treatment with acupuncture might improve the chances of recovery.
With that thought, she shook her head, pushed the distracting idea aside, and returned to reviewing the patient’s records.
“What is it? Have you run into some problem?” Doctor Jiang had been paying attention to the new young doctor beside him. Seeing her frowning and shaking her head while reading the medical record, he assumed she had encountered some difficulty.
“No. I was just hoping Liang Youtian’s examination results rule out the possibility of gastric cancer,” Fang Yuan replied.
Doctor Jiang merely smiled without saying anything.
That morning, Fang Yuan sat beside Doctor Jiang and watched him examine patients. The patients who came in varied greatly in the severity of their illnesses.
One of them was an eight year old boy who had been carried in on his parent’s back. Since the previous day, he had been suffering from abdominal pain accompanied by vomiting. His parents asked Doctor Jiang whether he had eaten something bad. Doctor Jiang took the stethoscope from around his neck and asked the parents to lift the child’s shirt. While examining the boy, he joked with him to ease his nervousness. After a while, he turned to Fang Yuan and said, “Come take a look at this child.”
The two parents exchanged glances, looking both nervous and doubtful.
Smiling, Fang Yuan stepped forward and asked the parents to lay the child on the examination bed beside them. The little boy stared at her fearfully. Keeping her expression as gentle as possible and speaking in a relaxed tone, she asked him what he had eaten the previous day.
The child frowned stubbornly without answering. One of the parents hurriedly replied, “Yesterday morning he had thin rice porridge and fried dough sticks. At noon he had rice, winter melon, and tofu. In the evening he had cabbage noodles.”
Fang Yuan gently pressed on the child’s abdomen and found a mass around the navel and in the lower right abdomen. It was irregularly elongated and seemed to shift under pressure. She discreetly felt the child’s pulse. After a short while, she helped pull his shirt back down.
After climbing off the examination bed, the child vomited again. His clothes and the floor were splattered with vomit. His parents repeatedly apologized. Doctor Jiang asked the boy’s mother to carry him to the restroom to clean him up, while Fang Yuan called in a nurse to clean the vomit from the floor.
The boy’s father remained behind and asked nervously, “Doctor, look at him. He keeps vomiting and says his stomach hurts. What exactly is wrong?”
Doctor Jiang also looked toward Fang Yuan at that moment.
After thinking for a moment, she said to Doctor Jiang, “I suspect ascariasis induced intestinal obstruction. We should take an X-ray to confirm it.”
Doctor Jiang nodded and said to the father, “I’ll write you an examination request. Take your child for an X-ray first, then bring the film back to me.”
The boy’s father hesitated before asking, “Doctor, from what I’m hearing, he just has roundworms. Can’t you just prescribe some deworming medicine? Why does he need an X-ray?”
“We suspect ascariasis induced intestinal obstruction, not an ordinary roundworm infection. The worms have already blocked his intestinal tract. Please take him for an X-ray as soon as possible. If the condition is severe, surgery must be performed immediately. Otherwise, intestinal necrosis or perforation could develop, and that would become very dangerous,” Doctor Jiang explained.
The father was visibly frightened after hearing that. Taking the examination request from Doctor Jiang, he hurried off to find his son and take him for the X-ray.
“I noticed you took the child’s pulse just now. What, did you also learn pulse diagnosis at university?” Doctor Jiang asked with a smile.
Fang Yuan had not expected Doctor Jiang to be so observant. She could only answer honestly, “I learned it from my family. My grandfather was an old traditional Chinese medicine doctor.”
Doctor Jiang nodded. Just as he was about to say something else, the nurse had already brought in the next patient.
The newcomer appeared to be in his twenties. Several Great Leader badges were pinned to his dark blue jacket, and his expression was rather spirited. Even while sitting down, he held his chest high.
Fang Yuan noticed that the fabric on the right side of his jacket looked somewhat darker in color. Sure enough, before Doctor Jiang could ask any questions, the young man unbuttoned his jacket himself.
Doctor Jiang and Fang Yuan were both startled by what they saw.
A Great Leader badge had actually been pinned through the flesh of the right side of his chest. The surrounding skin had become inflamed and ulcerated, and small blood clots clung to the badge itself.
Doctor Jiang irritably tugged at his collar and said to Fang Yuan, “You handle this. I’ll go check on the X-ray from the previous patient.”
He hated dealing with these radical and fanatical young people the most. Since it was only a minor problem, he simply left it to Fang Yuan.
“Doctor, how can you let a female comrade treat me?” the young man said righteously as he buttoned his jacket back up.
Doctor Jiang’s face darkened. “Doctors are neither male nor female. The Great Leader said that times have changed, and men and women are the same. Are you questioning the Great Leader’s words?”
The young man mumbled awkwardly and lowered his head, no longer daring to object.
Doctor Jiang could walk away, but Fang Yuan could not. She asked the young man to sit on the treatment bed, then took disinfectants, medicine, and instruments from the cabinet beside them before going over to treat his wound.
Wearing gloves, Fang Yuan carefully removed the Great Leader badge that had already become stuck to the flesh of his chest. The young man immediately cried out in pain. Fang Yuan merely glanced at him before efficiently cutting away the dead tissue, applying medication, and bandaging the wound. Throughout the process, the young man perspired heavily from the pain.
“Doctor, why did this happen just because I pinned the Great Leader badge on? You have to believe me, my devotion is absolutely sincere and unwavering,” the young man said in confusion while clutching his chest.
“Other people pin them to their clothes. You pinned yours into your flesh. Of course it became infected. Go get a tetanus shot as well.” Fang Yuan silently complained to herself. No matter how sincere you are, you’re still made of flesh and blood.
“My master pins his badge into his flesh too, and nothing happened to him,” the young man said dejectedly.
So there was more than one person doing something like this? Fang Yuan was speechless.
Although she deeply admired the Great Leader as well, she could never bring herself to do something so utterly foolish.
After sending the excessively fanatical young man away, Doctor Jiang returned with the little boy and his parents.
The boy was confirmed to have ascariasis induced intestinal obstruction. Since his condition was relatively serious, Doctor Jiang scheduled surgery for the following day and instructed Fang Yuan to prepare to serve as his surgical assistant. Fang Yuan nodded excitedly. During her internship, she had already participated in several surgical procedures and assisted with suturing. Now that she had become a resident physician, she hoped to take up the scalpel herself and independently perform a surgical operation as soon as possible.
…
During the lunch break, there were no patients in Outpatient Consultation Room One. All the curtains separating the consultation areas had been pulled open, and both the doors and windows were open. Outside, the leaves of the phoenix tree rustled gently, occasionally sending in a faint cool breeze.
Several doctors had gathered together, chatting and laughing. As soon as Fang Yuan stepped through the doorway, they enthusiastically called her over.
“Doctor Fang, come tell us. Is it true that someone actually pinned the Great Leader’s badge into his own flesh?” one of the doctors asked curiously.
“Yes. I treated him myself,” Fang Yuan replied with a smile. She put away her cleaned lunch box, picked up the thermos beside her, and poured herself a cup of hot water.
“When I heard the nurses talking about it, I thought it must’ve been someone with mental problems. Turns out he’s actually a worker from the cardboard factory. Tsk tsk, that’s really… too crazy.”
After discussing it for a while, the doctors all returned to their own places. The lunch break was short, and everyone wanted to take a brief nap before the afternoon’s work.
Just as Fang Yuan took out a medical book she had borrowed from the hospital library and was about to open it, Nurse Xu quietly entered and whispered into her ear, “Doctor Fang, Medical Assistant Yao seems emotionally upset. Would you like to go check on her?”
Fang Yuan immediately stood up. “Let’s go take a look.”
Yao Hongying had been handling an emergency patient at lunchtime and had not eaten with them. Could something have happened to that patient? Fang Yuan wondered.
The two of them walked to the changing room. Nurse Xu gestured with her chin and said, “There. She’s been squatting over there the whole time. I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t say anything. Why don’t you talk to her? I still have something to do, so I’ll leave for a while.”
Fang Yuan nodded. She walked over to Yao Hongying and squatted down beside her.
“What happened?”
Yao Hongying looked up at Fang Yuan. Her eyes were red around the rims. Her lips trembled a few times before tears began streaming down her face. Sobbing, she said, “My patient… We couldn’t save the mother or either of the two children.” As soon as she finished speaking, she broke down crying.
Fang Yuan gently patted her shoulder, understanding how she felt.
“From the day we became doctors, we knew that we would do everything we could to save every patient. But not every patient can be saved.”
“You don’t understand. Those three lives could all have been saved. When the family brought the pregnant woman here and found out Doctor Tian was the attending surgeon, they refused to let him operate because he was a man. That delayed everything. By the time the babies were delivered, they weren’t breathing anymore. If I had been able to perform the surgery, none of this would have happened.” Yao Hongying buried her face in her knees and cried. Her short braids had partly come undone, and small spots of blood still stained her white coat.
All the surgeons capable of leading operations in the county hospital were men. Because Doctor Tian from the obstetrics department was male, there had already been several incidents in which people refused to let him even examine pregnant women. No one had expected that, even at the critical moment between life and death, family members would still prevent him from trying to save both the mother and the children.
“This has nothing to do with you. The problem lies with the woman’s family. It was their feudal obsession with keeping men and women apart that caused this tragedy,” Fang Yuan said indignantly. Although the family had learned a lesson written in blood, the lives that had been lost could never be brought back.
The two of them remained crouched in the corner in silence for a long time.
Finally, Yao Hongying raised her head. Her face was swollen and damp with tears. Gritting her teeth, she said firmly, “I’m going to study hard under Doctor Tian and master surgical skills as soon as possible. I won’t let something like today happen again.”
“Let’s strive together,” Fang Yuan said as she clasped Yao Hongying’s hand.