Life is Like a Journey – Chapter 71
by Little PandaVolume 2: Inheritance
Torrential Rain
The dark side of human nature
In the quiet laboratory, only the humming sound of machines could be heard. This colossal apparatus was already half-completed. Scientists in white protective suits were adjusting its mechanical arm. The mechanical claw, more dexterous than human hands, possessed seven degrees of rotational freedom. It steadily picked up a sesame seed from the operating table and placed it in a tray.
The airtight door opened, and a scientist in protective gear entered. He gave a slight bow to the man sitting at the control panel: “Director Fu.”
“What is it?” The man took his eyes off the 3D imaging system and leaned in to listen quietly.
“I knew it wouldn’t be that easy,” the masked face showed no change in expression, but his eyes flickered slightly upon hearing the name Lu Qingshi.
“There’s one more thing. Wenwen’s test results are out. The hospital has requested your presence.”
The man finally left the control panel, discarding his mask in the trash bin. His face was chiseled, exuding a composed demeanor of a middle-aged man.
“Tell the South China regional manager that we don’t need to bother with Renji Medical University anymore. There are plenty of hospitals eager to buy our equipment.”
“Yes, sir,” the subordinate nodded slightly and went to carry out the order immediately.
The man draped his suit jacket over his arm. While waiting for the elevator, he gazed at the masses thirty floors below, imperceptibly letting out a sigh.
During the night shift, the moment the phone rang, Lu Qingshi sprang from her bed, grabbed the stethoscope on the table, and ran out the door.
The ward was in chaos. Dai Yuchen lay on the bed, struggling violently. Pain covered her face with tears as her hands flailed in the air, futilely trying to grasp something.
“Yuchen, Yuchen…” Dai’s mother rushed forward but was held back by medical staff.
“Family members, please step out for a moment.”
The curtain was drawn. Lu Qingshi pressed the stethoscope to her chest: “One dose of Dolantin for pain relief, and prepare for a bone marrow aspiration.”
Dai’s father had just lit a cigarette when a nurse came to stop him. He could only spit viciously and walk outside to smoke. The cigarette’s ember flickered unsteadily as the middle-aged man’s face was filled with hesitation. After a while, he finally seemed to make up his mind, gritting his teeth.
“We’re not treating this disease anymore,” he leaned against the wall, exhaling a long breath. Dai’s mother pounced on him, tearing at him.
“What nonsense are you talking about! So your daughter isn’t flesh and blood from your own body, you heartless thing! You have money for gambling and whoring but not for your daughter’s treatment, you conscienceless creature!”
“Calm down!” The man pulled her off himself, shouting: “It’s only been a week, and how much money have we lost? My savings, car, house – all mortgaged! I’d even borrow, steal, or rob if I could, but the problem is there’s not a single sign of improvement, damn it!”
The man crouched down, holding his head in frustration: “To be honest, I’ve lost confidence. Rather than losing both money and person, we might as well give up.”
Another round of wailing and fighting ensued. Such scenes were almost daily occurrences in the emergency department, if not them, then others.
The cold-faced doctor emerged from the ward, turning away indifferently and walking back to the on-call room.
After paying the rent, Fang Zhiyou used the remaining ten yuan in her pocket to buy Yu Gui’s favorite fruit and brought it upstairs.
“You’re back?” Yu Gui heard the knock and excitedly went to open the door.
“Mm,” Fang Zhiyou gently hugged her. “I bought the grapes you like.”
“Put them down and wash your hands for dinner,” Yu Gui took them and set out bowls and chopsticks. During their break, neither had a salary, and they had been eating instant noodles for three consecutive days.
Fang Zhiyou chewed the noodles without taste, looking at her emaciated lover as she put down her chopsticks: “I’ll go out again this afternoon to look for work.”
Better jobs rejected her for low education, while jobs that didn’t require education rejected her for lack of skills.
Yu Gui gripped her chopsticks tightly, silently tearing up: “Zhiyou, if it weren’t for…”
“Alright, let’s eat,” Fang Zhiyou rubbed her head, picking up the egg from her bowl and placing it in hers.
“Dai Yuchen, time to change your medication,” the nurse pushed in the chemotherapy drugs. The vast ward was empty, and she was suddenly startled, quickly running out of the room.
“Not good, bed fifteen Dai Yuchen is missing!”
In the green area outside the hospital, a girl with a backpack was slowly pushing her for a walk: “How long until you can come back to school? We all miss you so much.”
Dai Yuchen sat in the wheelchair with her head down, wearing a hat. In just a week, she had become unrecognizably thin. She held her friend’s hand.
“I want to go back too… but the doctor won’t let me get out of bed. I feel like I might be really sick this time…”
The girl with pigtails crouched down in front of her: “No way, you’re the best forward on our school team. Everyone’s waiting for you to come back.”
“But…” Dai Yuchen looked at her legs. Even if she was slow to realize, she knew something might be wrong with her right leg. It was growing weaker day by day, and now it was difficult even to stand up. At night, the pain was especially excruciating.
“Have you forgotten our promise? We said we’d apply to Beijing Sport University together, then join the national team and break through internationally with the women’s football team…”
The girl held her hand, offering what little comfort she could with her meager strength.
“No need to search anymore, she’s here,” Lu Qingshi hung up the phone and slowly walked over.
“Dai Yuchen, it’s time to return to the ward.”
“Okay,” she turned slightly to say goodbye to her classmate: “Peipei, goodbye.”
The girl waved vigorously: “Yuchen, you must keep fighting! I’ll come see you again soon.”
On the way back to the ward, Lu Qingshi remained silent. Dai Yuchen looked up at her handsome chin, feeling that this person was quite gentle, but for some reason, it seemed other doctors and nurses were a bit afraid of her.
“Dr. Lu, do you have a dream?”
Being asked such a question by a little brat, Lu Qingshi impatiently raised an eyebrow: “No.”
“But I’ve seen on TV, and some of my classmates say that being a doctor is a very tiring but glorious thing. If it weren’t for a dream, few people would persist.”
“You can do it for money just the same,” the doctor said coldly as she pressed the elevator button. If the head of medical affairs were here, he’d probably be heartbroken again. If you’re not the one getting complaints, who is? How dare you instill such values in a minor!
Dai Yuchen pondered with an “Hmm” sound: “You seem to dislike me very much.”
Lu Qingshi glanced at her: “Talking too much is annoying.”
The disliked person continued to chatter incessantly, finally eliciting a cold response: “So annoying, shut up!”
Behind them, a group of medical staff collectively clutched their chests, heartbroken: “Director Lu is scolding patients again…”
Hao Renjie: “If Director Liu hears this, our department bonus will be deducted again…”
An intern: “Don’t even mention it. Since I came to the department, we’ve never received a bonus. It’s nonexistent.”
“These are this morning’s biopsy results. The tumor has infiltrated the tibia and shows a tendency to spread to the femur. My recommendation is to operate as soon as possible.”
Lu Qingshi placed the pathology results on the table and pushed them over. The orthopedic professor had already seen them and now frowned: “Regarding the surgical plan, we’ve come up with three suggestions.”
“The first is amputation of the right lower limb under general anesthesia.” As soon as he finished speaking, Dai’s mother nearly fainted, her lips trembling as she asked.
“What… what else?”
“A more conservative approach would be local curettage of necrotic tissue, followed by steel plate implantation to fix the tibia. However…” He exchanged a glance with Lu Qingshi.
“Although it would preserve the limb intact, we don’t recommend this surgical approach because the prognosis is poor, with a constant risk of recurrence and metastasis.”
Dai’s mother collapsed into the chair, tears streaming down her face: “Let me think about it… think about it…”
Lu Qingshi turned her head slightly, catching a glimpse of a shadow at the conference room door blown open by the wind.
Hearing this news, Dai Yuchen also collapsed to the ground, her face covered in tears. She tightly gripped her knees, feeling the pain intensely to keep herself from crying out loud.
“There’s one more option,” Lu Qingshi hesitated for a moment: “We could open up the tissue of her right leg, expose the tibia, freeze it in ultra-low temperature liquid nitrogen to kill the cancer cells, then reinsert it into the body to rebuild the bone and suture it back.”
This unheard-of surgical method left people bewildered. Dai’s mother, her tears never stopping, said: “No matter what surgical method, as long as it can save Yuchen, we’re willing to try…”
“Currently, internationally, this method has only been applied at MD Anderson Cancer Center in the United States. It’s still uncharted territory in China, so we’d be feeling our way through. The success rate is only 20%, and there’s still a possibility of not completely killing the cancer cells. Moreover, the liquid nitrogen would also damage normal cell tissue…”
The orthopedic professor laid out all the pros and cons: “None of the options can guarantee a 100% full recovery. We hope you understand.”
“Why has it been raining every day lately? It’s so annoying,” Qin Xuan lifted her wide-leg pants, walking carefully in high heels, holding an umbrella as she waded through the road in front of the hospital that had turned into a river.
It was the evening rush hour, and with the rain, bicycles, motorcycles, electric bikes, and private cars were jammed bumper to bumper. The winding rainwater gushed into the sewers with a rumbling sound. Everything was damp and sticky, even people’s moods became gloomy.
In such weather, walking was faster than driving. As the red light turned green, Qin Xuan took a step forward but was suddenly pulled back.
“Watch out!”
An electric bike, squeezed among the crowd crossing the road, skidded in the rain and knocked down an old vegetable vendor. Carrots and cabbages rolled everywhere.
Qin Xuan patted her chest, still in shock: “That was close, so close.”
The person beside her closed their umbrella and had already rushed forward.
She first helped the fallen old man up, gently patting his shoulder: “Are you alright? Can you hear me? Grandpa? Grandpa?”
The old man lay half in her arms, panting. His torn trouser leg revealed a swollen, bleeding knee. Lu Qingshi, soaked in the rain, pulled out gauze from her bag and covered it.
Meanwhile, Qin Xuan had pulled out the woman trapped under the electric bike. She felt for her carotid pulse: “Not good, she might have hit her head. She’s unconscious.”
Lu Qingshi’s gaze wandered, noticing the woman’s slightly bulging belly under her bulky clothes. Her pupils dilated slightly.
Qin Xuan must have noticed too, one hand holding an umbrella over the pregnant woman: “Someone help! She’s about to give birth!”
Seeing this situation, passersby stepped back in fear, scattering like birds and beasts.
“Hey! Don’t leave! The hospital is right across the street! Help us out!”
As the green light quickly turned red again, the stream of vehicles rushed to cross in these ten-odd seconds. A Toyota brushed past them, splashing mud all over.
With the combination of pregnancy and obesity, Qin Xuan used all her strength but couldn’t lift the woman: “Damn it… The world is going to the dogs, morality is declining, people’s hearts are not what they used to be…”
Lu Qingshi dragged the old man to a safe spot by the roadside, then rushed back into the crowded traffic to help her half-carry the woman. Both were drenched like drowned rats, their hair clinging to their foreheads in strands.
“Do you have your phone with you?!” Lu Qingshi shouted over the sound of rain and car horns.
Qin Xuan fished it out of her bag, but the screen was wet and unresponsive no matter how she pressed it. She couldn’t help but curse: “F*ck!”
Just as they were getting anxious, a motorcycle roared to a stop in front of them. A firefighting instructor in a deep flame-blue uniform jumped off the bike.
“It’s too dangerous here. Let me help you carry her to the roadside.”
Lu Qingshi was supporting the pregnant woman’s head. Qin Xuan crouched on the ground, parting the woman’s legs to take a look. The blood flowing from beneath her was diluted by rainwater into a light red color.
“No good, we need to get her into the operating room immediately. The cervix is already two fingers dilated!”
“Alright, make way,” Gu Yanzhi took off her jacket, knelt on one knee, and lifted the woman. In the slightly cool weather of September, a thin layer of sweat appeared on her forehead.
Lu Qingshi watched her back, suddenly stood up, and ran back to the hospital in one breath, braving the pouring rain.
“Wait here, don’t move!”
Shortly after, a group of doctors in white coats rushed out. The pregnant woman and the old man were lifted onto stretchers. Gu Yanzhi waded through ankle-deep rainwater with them, sending the patients into the operating room. Lu Qingshi took off her soaked shirt, revealing a white tank top underneath, quickly rinsed off, put on green scrubs, and ran to scrub in.
The lights in another operating room also lit up.
“Anesthesiologist, monitor the fetal heart rate,” the doctor in purple scrubs stood up and placed the device on the pregnant woman’s belly.
As soon as it was placed, the device began to beep sharply. The ultrasound showed the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, and placenta previa prevented delivery.
Qin Xuan bit her lip: “Change the surgical method. Expand anesthesia to general. Prepare for a C-section.”
For the elderly, a fracture can be a life-threatening condition. Lu Qingshi didn’t dare to be careless, immediately arranging detailed examinations, then fixing a support and applying a cast.
The old man lay on the bed wearing an old-fashioned Zhongshan suit. His graying hair was a bit dirty, his face deeply furrowed. He looked at her and said, “Thank you.”
“Grandpa, could you give us a phone number for your spouse, or son or daughter?” Hao Renjie came over with a phone.
The old man shook his head: “I have no son or daughter.”
“What about your spouse?”
“Dead.”
“Hey— I’m saying…” He leaned in to whisper in Lu Qingshi’s ear: “Sis Lu, he’s not here to scam money, is he?”
Before Lu Qingshi could respond, the head nurse came running with a mobile phone: “It’s Dr. Qin from the operating room.”
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