This wound was far more shocking and gruesome than any picture Lin Wanshu had ever seen in her textbooks.
The flesh was torn and turned inside out, mingled with dirt and shredded fabric strips, and the bone in its depths was faintly visible. The thick, metallic stench of blood blended with the scent of disinfectant, rushing straight up her nostrils.
Lin Wanshu’s heart skipped a beat, but it was quickly suppressed by a strange, inexplicable surge of excitement. Taking a deep breath, her mind rapidly ran through all the steps of debridement and suturing—from instrument preparation to disinfecting and draping, then to anesthesia, debridement, suturing, and bandaging. Every single detail was as clear as if it had been engraved in her brain.
“Head Nurse, I need a debridement kit, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of normal saline, and size 5 silk thread,” she spoke, striving to keep her voice steady.
The head nurse didn’t say a word, merely gesturing with a tilt of her chin toward the instrument cabinet nearby.
Everything was set.
Lin Wanshu slipped on sterile gloves, picked up the forceps and a cotton ball, and began cleaning the debris around the wound. The young soldier lying on the bed looked very young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen at most. His face was deathly pale from the pain, yet his lips remained stubbornly pressed together.
“Comrade, don’t be nervous. I’ll be gentle,” Lin Wanshu said softly.
“It’s fine, Doctor! Go right ahead!” The young soldier bared his teeth, trying to smile, but it tugged at the wound, causing him to hiss as he sucked in a sharp breath. “I… I’ve got thick skin, I can take a beating!”
Lin Wanshu stopped talking, pouring all of her concentration into the wound under her hands.
As the hydrogen peroxide was poured, a layer of white foam immediately bubbled up over the wound, sizzling aloud. The young soldier’s body abruptly tensed, and a layer of fine sweat instantly broke out across his forehead.
Lin Wanshu’s hand trembled, almost imperceptibly.
She was too nervous. This was a completely different world compared to practicing on models back at school. Models didn’t feel pain, they didn’t bleed, and they certainly wouldn’t let out a painful groan right in front of you because of a single move you made.
She forced herself to calm down, following what the textbooks taught as she used the forceps to meticulously pick out the dirt and fabric embedded deep in the flesh. Her movements were textbook-perfect, perhaps even flawless.
But they were too textbook. So perfect that they were… a bit slow.
“Are you embroidering a dress?”
The head nurse’s icy voice rang out right beside her ear without warning.
Lin Wanshu’s hand jerked, and the tip of the forceps scraped across a patch of healthy flesh. The young soldier let out a muffled groan.
“I—I’m sorry,” she apologized frantically, her cheeks burning fiercely.
“Is an apology useful? Can an apology make his wound stop hurting?”
The head nurse’s voice turned a fraction colder. Without her noticing, the woman had stepped up right behind Lin Wanshu, her gaze cutting like a knife as it fell upon her stiff hands.
“Didn’t your teachers at school teach you that debridement needs to be swift, precise, and ruthless? Dithering around like this—are you trying to cause a secondary infection, or do you want to let him grieve to death from the pain?”
The barrage of questions lashed down on Lin Wanshu like a whip. Her brain went completely numb, turning into a blank void.
“I…”
“I what? Keep that theoretical script of yours for writing research papers when you go back. In the Emergency Department, the patient is an order, and time is life!”
The head nurse pushed her aside with a firm hand, deftly snatching the forceps and scissors from her grip.
“Watch closely!”
For the next few minutes, Lin Wanshu felt as though she were rooted to the spot.
She watched open-mouthed as the head nurse’s seemingly ordinary hands put on what felt like an artistic performance. The scissors flew, and the forceps moved with absolute precision. Exactly which parts were necrotic tissue and which parts needed to be preserved—she seemed to make the most accurate judgment with just a single sweep of her eyes.
The fragments of stone and cloth that had seemed incredibly tricky to Lin Wanshu were cleaned out entirely in just a few strokes under the head nurse’s hands. The entire process was as seamless as flowing water, without a single wasted movement.
Aside from furrowing his brow at the very beginning, the young soldier on the bed didn’t utter a single peep afterward.
Very quickly, the debridement was complete. The head nurse set down the instruments and prepared to suture.
“What are you standing there gaping for? Come and hold the retractor.”
“Oh! Right!” Snapping out of her daze, Lin Wanshu hurriedly stepped forward and picked up the retractor. Following the head nurse’s instructions, she pulled back the flesh on both sides of the wound, exposing a clear field of vision for the suturing.
Her hands were still trembling. Not out of fear, but out of shame and… awe.
She had thought she had learned so well, able to recite theoretical knowledge backward and forward, yet when it came to clinical practice, she couldn’t even perform a basic debridement properly. It was all armchair generalship. The head nurse was right; she was just fighting battles on paper.
The suturing concluded rapidly. The stitches were fine and neat, as uniform as if they had been embroidered by a machine.
Tying off the final knot, the head nurse snipped the suture and instructed without lifting her head, “Handle the rest.”
With that, she peeled off her gloves, tossed them into the medical waste bin, and turned to walk out of the treatment room. From beginning to end, she didn’t give Lin Wanshu another glance.
Only Lin Wanshu and the young soldier were left in the treatment room. The silence in the air was a bit awkward.
Lin Wanshu silently covered the wound with gauze and wrapped it with a bandage, her movements so gentle it was as if she were touching a rare treasure.
“Doctor,” the young soldier on the bed suddenly spoke up. His voice was somewhat weak, but his tone was deeply sincere. “Thank you.”
Lin Wanshu’s hands paused. She looked up at him, a bit bewildered. “Thank me for what? I… I almost made your wound worse.”
“That’s different,” the soldier shook his head, grinning to reveal two rows of stark white teeth. “That head nurse just now, she was saving my life. But you—you were the first person to tell me ‘don’t be nervous.'”
“We soldiers aren’t afraid of bleeding, and we aren’t afraid of pain. What we’re afraid of… is being treated like a piece of meat with no feelings.”
Lin Wanshu’s heart felt as though it had been gently nudged by something. She suddenly understood that medicine wasn’t just cold techniques and theories. It possessed warmth.
……
After seeing off the young soldier, Lin Wanshu remained in the treatment room alone, silently packing up the instruments. The scene from moments ago kept replaying in her mind like a film strip—every movement of the head nurse, every look in her eyes, and every word she had spoken.
“Doctor Lin.”
Chen Yi had walked in at some point, holding an enamel mug in her hand. “The head nurse asked me to bring this to you. She said she was worried your blood sugar might drop.”
Inside the mug was warm sugar water.
Lin Wanshu cradled the mug, the rising steam blurring her eyes. “Sister Chen, am I really useless?”
“Nonsense,” Chen Yi patted her shoulder. “Who isn’t like this on their first day? Back when I first arrived, I was lectured so badly by the head nurse that I hid under my blanket and cried the whole night.”
“Our head nurse just has a sharp tongue, but her heart is golden. She’s like this with everyone. The more she values someone, the harsher her scolding. If you were truly useless, she wouldn’t have even bothered to look at you just now.”
“Really?”
“Of course it’s true,” Chen Yi leaned in close to her ear and whispered. “I heard that Director Wang had a huge argument with the Chief of Surgery just to get you assigned to our Emergency Department. Our head nurse won’t say it out loud, but she’s secretly thrilled in her heart.”
A warm current flooded Lin Wanshu’s heart. She gulped down the sugar water in the mug in one go, the sweetness spreading from the tip of her tongue all the way to the depths of her soul.
“Sister Chen, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Chen Yi smiled. “Let’s go, I’ll take you to see your next patient.”