Volume 1: Rise
Scene
Retired but not fading, changing uniforms but not changing heart
“After entering the scene, the medical staff, working in pairs, must quickly check the injured. Critically ill patients should be sent to the ambulance first, while the others who can be treated on-site should be handled there. Hao Renjie, distribute the triage tags, and also—”
She intentionally looked at Yu Gui: “Our goal is to save as many lives as possible, not to save everyone. Do you understand?”
“Understood!” Yu Gui replied, looking at the triage tag in her hand, and absentmindedly echoing the others.
The emergency grading system, which she learned about in textbooks, is mostly used in large-scale disaster emergency situations. The tags come in four colors: red, yellow, green, and black, representing critically ill patients, severe patients, non-emergency patients, and deceased patients, respectively.
Yu Gui clenched her fist, crumpling the tag into a ball, her heart in turmoil.
“Currently, this is FM106.3 Jinzhou City Traffic Broadcasting Station. Dear car owners, hello, I am the host Yun Jin. Urgently interrupting with a news flash: the ambulances with license plates Jin A256JZ and Jin A368JC, departing from Renji Medical University First Affiliated Hospital, have reached Feng Tang Avenue. They are the hope for the injured in the Loutai Apartment fire. Please notice and make way for the traffic, opening up the emergency passage, so our ambulances can smoothly reach the scene!”
The city’s high-rise buildings stand densely, with tens of thousands of vehicles merging into the steel forest. Among them, a car as small as an ant quietly moves out of the emergency passage, followed by the second, third, fourth car… More and more vehicles make way for them.
A police car, sirens blaring and hazard lights flashing, swiftly catches up from behind to clear a path for them.
“Captain Gu, we have arrived at the scene,” Gu Yanzhi’s Bluetooth earpiece rang. She pushed the engine to its maximum, weaving through the congested traffic at a speed of one hundred fifty miles per hour.
“What’s the situation?” Although her position is an instructor, she holds the rank of a second-level commander in the fire service, with command authority over the entire squad.
“Fire truck cannot enter, the alley is too deep, the road is too narrow, high voltage lines are too low…” The firefighter over there stammered.
Gu Yanzhi got angry: “F*ck! If you can’t drive in, then run with the hose, how did I teach you!”
“Yes, yes, hurry up, connect the hose to the hydrant!”
Hearing that the scene over there was in chaos, with all kinds of crying, shouting, sirens, and even explosion sounds, Gu Yanzhi’s heart sank straight down.
She stomped on the brake, jumped off before the motorcycle stopped completely, hung the helmet on the handlebar, showed her credentials to the police outside the cordon, and the other party quickly led her inside. Her own team members also came over to hand her the fire suit and mask.
“Captain Gu, the fire is too big, the fire truck can’t come in at all! Just these few fire hydrants aren’t enough!” Although the troublemaker usually doesn’t listen during training, on the scene, he is quite an effective strong arm. At this moment, his fair face was also smoked into confusion.
Heat waves surged layer by layer, just standing downstairs you could feel the hair curling up one by one. Gu Yanzhi raised her head and looked: a six-story high old apartment, shared rental housing in the urban village. Once such a place catches fire, with clutter and dense populations, the fire often spreads very quickly. Plus, because the alley is narrow, the fire truck can’t come in at all, increasing the difficulty of extinguishing the fire, and the number of casualties will only be higher.
She threw the binoculars into his arms: “Set up the fire guns for me!”
A dozen fire guns were quickly taken down from the fire trucks and placed on the open ground downstairs, facing different angles of the building, forming a powerful turret, with water streams like a waterfall rushing toward the building, immediately being swallowed by the raging sea of fire.
This thing has long range and great power, it’s more than suitable to use here, but Gu Yanzhi was still not reassured.
“Call headquarters to dispatch two more ladder trucks for me, did you bring the mobile foam fire extinguishing device?”
As she said this, she carried a ten-kilogram dry powder extinguisher on her back.
“Brought it…” The troublemaker hesitated, “But now the fire is too big… The place that caught fire and exploded is just the first-floor hallway entrance, there is no other passage, can’t get in at all!”
Looking in the direction he pointed, a beauty salon advertisement board burning just fell from high above, scattering sparks everywhere, and the crowd watching let out a scream.
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“Move back, move back!” The police were maintaining order, and there were people who barely escaped crying.
“I… my mom… is still inside… I beg you… let me in!”
“Wife! Wife!” A seven-foot-tall man coming home from work was holding a phone, crying and shouting, the other person’s phone kept going unanswered.
There were also seven or eight-year-old children crying and calling for their dad, held back desperately by their elderly grandparents.
“My boyfriend is still inside, he saved several people, now he went back in, I beg you… please save him!” Seeing the fire getting bigger and bigger, a young girl clung to the police officer’s hand, crying heartbrokenly.
Gu Yanzhi fastened her belt, picked up the water gun: “Who are we?”
“We are firefighters!” The troublemaker also mimicked her, carrying a fire extinguisher on his back and raising the water gun.
Behind him was the entire first squad, all in orange fire suits.
Retired but not fading, changing clothes but not heart, is a slogan circulated among all retired veterans.
“Our mission is—” Gu Yanzhi led the charge into the fire scene.
“To protect the lives and property of the people!”
Lu Qingshi jumped off the ambulance, and Hao Renjie jumped down with her. She turned back and glanced: “Sister Hao, you go follow Yu Gui.”
“Sister Lu…”
“Don’t dawdle, hurry up.”
Hao Renjie gritted his teeth, ran to Yu Gui, who was still in a daze, and tugged at her sleeve: “Sister Lu asked me to follow you!”
The fire scene was too noisy, with all kinds of sirens, ambulance sounds, the hustle and bustle of people coming and going, explosion sounds, cries, and shouts. Yu Gui did not hear what he said, and asked again blankly: “What?”
Hao Renjie shouted into her ear: “Lu Qingshi let me follow you! Do you know why this is?! This represents—Sister Lu trusts you!”
After speaking, he gave her a hard push: “Don’t embarrass Sister Lu, okay!! Show some promise! You fool!”
The injured being carried out from the fire scene one after another were gathered in the open space in the alley. Lu Qingshi led people in triage, and yet another person burned beyond recognition was carried to her side. The scorched smell of hair rushed into her nostrils. Lu Qingshi, without changing her expression, lifted the non-woven fabric covering him and pressed the stethoscope on.
“Breathing and heartbeat stopped, time of death 14:06:08,” she looked at her watch and skillfully hung a black tag on his wrist.
This was the third black tag she placed.
The firefighter who had just come out of the fire scene was going back in. Lu Qingshi raised her eyes and looked at her as she walked past, gently saying: “Be careful.”
The other person nodded quickly, her steps did not stop, but the hand behind her back quietly made a cheering gesture to her.
“Sister Lu, I have a patient here with an open fracture who is bleeding heavily and is not going to make it,” the walkie-talkie in the chest pocket sounded.
Lu Qingshi was debriding a patient with a leg injury, without lifting her head: “Find the bleeding vessel and block it. Once blocked, send to a nearby hospital for surgery immediately. Speed it up, within fifteen minutes there’s still hope, otherwise the whole leg will be useless.”
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Liu Qingyun responded with “Hey,” immediately getting to work, kneeling on the ground with beads of sweat oozing from his forehead. He was so nervous that the hemostatic forceps slipped from his hand several times, and the nurse handed him a new one.
“Doctor, doctor… oh… oh… my arm can’t move…” A middle-aged man was clutching his arm and shouting. Yu Gui ran over to take a look. It was just a fracture, probably from falling while running down the stairs, and she immediately put a cast on him to fix it.
“Doctor, doctor, quickly come and see my mom! She’s covered in blood!”
“Coming, coming!” Before she could finish treating one, the next one immediately called out. Yu Gui, sweating profusely, ran over to see that the old lady had just scraped her skin a bit.
“Apply some of this, disinfect yourself!” She left a bottle of iodophor and a bag of sterile dressing, then hurriedly ran to see the next patient, with Hao Renjie closely following behind her.
“Doctor, doctor, quickly come and see my child!” A middle-aged woman cried, grabbing her white coat. Yu Gui looked down at the child in her arms and gasped.
A two or three-year-old little girl’s half face was burned to a bloody mess, even her eyeball was exposed.
Yu Gui quickly knelt down to receive the child: “Measure blood pressure.”
She threw the stethoscope from her neck onto the dying child’s chest: “Still has a heartbeat, open intravenous access, tag with yellow label.”
Hao Renjie obediently pulled off a yellow label and hung it on the child’s wrist: “Blood pressure 60-80.”
“One dose of dopamine, IV push,” she said while unbuttoning the child’s clothes and sliding the ultrasound over her chest and abdomen, holding an iPad in her hand, using her shoulder and head to clamp the walkie-talkie to talk with Lu Qingshi.
“Teacher Lu, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old burn patient here, low blood pressure, heart rate 140 per minute, already tagged with a yellow label. Has the ambulance not returned yet?”
Lu Qingshi glanced at the alley entrance crowded with people: “Not yet, hold on a bit longer, I will come over in a while.”
Hearing the affirmative answer, Yu Gui indeed breathed a sigh of relief: “Okay.”
“Director Lu, let me do it.” Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is physically demanding. Lu Qingshi did it continuously for three minutes, sweat soaking her heavy clothes, but the patient still did not regain a spontaneous heartbeat, and the colleague next to her immediately took over.
This was a young man with an 80% burn area. Lu Qingshi was unwilling to give up and pushed another shot of adrenaline in.
The boy’s girlfriend knelt beside him, shaking his shoulders and crying loudly: “Why are you so foolish! Why did you save me! Why did you save me! Run yourself! Why did you run out and still go back to save others! You are great! You are amazing! Get up, get up and argue with me!”
When it came to the tenth shot of adrenaline, Lu Qingshi gave up, closing his eyes that couldn’t close due to muscle stiffness, and hung a black tag on him.
“Time of death, 15:30.”
Amid the girl’s heart-wrenching cries, Lu Qingshi turned and rushed to the next patient.
While waiting for Lu Qingshi to come over, the blood pressure and blood oxygen of the child patient by Yu Gui’s side continued to drop, with blood oxygen once dropping below eighty, life hanging by a thread.
The child’s mother grabbed Yu Gui’s hand, kneeling and crying for help: “Doctor, doctor, please save her, doctor, doctor! I only have this one daughter!”
Yu Gui’s thin body was like duckweed, being pushed around, and the tears falling on her hand and heart were burning hot.
Seeing the blood oxygen drop to forty, the ECG monitor started beeping, and Hao Renjie also became anxious: “What should we do, say something!”
“I… I…” Yu Gui hesitated: “Intubate… intubate… Sister Hao…”
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After trying three tubes consecutively and still not getting it in, Yu Gui knelt and lay on the ground, sweating profusely. Another discarded blood-stained tube was thrown on the ground, and she was about to cry out of anxiety.
“No way, the airway burn is too severe, the laryngeal edema1 makes it impossible to intubate!”
Hao Renjie had a ‘hating iron for not becoming steel’2 expression, pressing the communicator on his chest to call the anesthesiologist in the group: “Sister Chen, there’s a two-and-a-half-year-old child here that can’t be intubated, can you come over?”
The doctor named didn’t even lift her head, performing local anesthesia on a patient: “No way, it’s critical here too, I can’t leave.”
Lu Qingshi’s voice came through the communicator: “Perform a tracheotomy3, Yu Gui.”
Yu Gui felt as if granted amnesty, rolled up from the ground to grab the emergency kit: “Sister Hao, disinfect, give me the scalpel.”
Hao Renjie, half-believing and half-doubting, handed over the scalpel: “You… can do it?”
Yu Gui gritted her teeth: “I don’t know, I haven’t done it before, let’s try, can’t just…”
She took a deep breath and made a vertical cut on the disinfected area.
“Let her just die like this.”
Footnotes
- Laryngeal Edema: Refers to the swelling of the larynx (voice box), often caused by inflammation, infection, or injury, which can lead to breathing difficulties due to a narrowed airway.
- Hating Iron for Not Becoming Steel: This Chinese idiom expresses frustration or disappointment with someone for not meeting expectations or achieving their potential, akin to wishing a person would improve or succeed but feeling let down when they do not.
- Tracheotomy: A medical procedure that involves creating an opening in the neck to place a tube into a person’s windpipe (trachea), enabling them to breathe when the usual airway is obstructed or compromised.