Chapter 217: Heavens!
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
Humans were curious creatures. The more afraid they were, the more they would want to look at something in order to understand it. Normally, a tracheotomy wouldn’t have so much visual impact. However, this was an emergency. Several nurses were doing their very best to push down patient #9. Basically, the young female nurses seemed as if they were crawling on top of the old man.
Additionally, the patient was suffocating, so he was unable to verbalize anything. He was also struggling mightily. This scene seemed like something out of an old movie with no sound. Both sides were locked in a vicious fight. The nurses weren’t saying anything, because they were doing their best to suppress the patient.
Patient #8 and patient #9 were both long-term patients. They also had similar problems with their lungs. They knew each other as they would always see each other in the respiratory department every year. Patient #8 saw patient #9’s sudden pain, and thought about his own illness. He felt as if he could sense everything for himself, giving him bitter pain and endless sorrow.
When Zhang Fan finished the tracheotomy, patient #8 saw that Zhang Fan’s hands were covered in blood, and that patient #9 now had a white tube stuck into his neck. Not only that, there was a black hole at the end of the tube that seemed to have the magic power to make patient #8 dizzy. He felt his heart beating violently to the point where it would jump out of his chest. He walked forward one step, and then fainted!
Patient #8’s lungs were in poor condition to begin with. There was a certain saying in the medical field that if your lungs were doing poorly, your heart would also be in poor condition. Currently, patient #8 also had the flu, and had a fever for three days already. He was already in really weak condition. With this sudden stimulation, his heart went into a state of sinus tachycardia, and he fainted due not to receiving enough blood in his brain!
Meanwhile, Zhang Fan still had to affix the tracheal tube for his patient #9. If the tracheal tube accidentally slipped, then blood would enter the patient’s lungs. With the old man’s current condition where he might suffocate without the tracheal tube, Zhang Fan didn’t dare to take any risks. He swiftly sewed things up while also paying close attention to patient #8’s condition. Zhang Fan was doing his best to multitask.
The head nurse of the respiratory department stood at the entrance of the patient room and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Hurry! We need a doctor! Patient #8 has fainted! Hurry!”
A rotation doctor who was at the nurses’ station hurriedly ran over.
When the rotation doctor saw that the patient had fainted and was on the ground, he wanted to go and help the patient off the ground since he was young and lacked experience. But, Zhang Fan saw that this patient probably had a heart problem, so he hurriedly prevented the rotation doctor from helping the patient off the ground when he saw the latter doing so. “Don’t move him! First, help the patient to lie flat on the ground.” Zhang Fan then acted even swifter to finish sewing things up for patient #9. He really was rushing. He had never injured himself while sewing sutures before, yet today, he accidentally pricked himself twice!
In such a situation, it would be dangerous to first help the patient up off the ground. It was more important to first diagnose what the problem was. If it really was a problem with the heart, having the patient lie flat on the ground would be the safest—if the patient was helped off the ground, that would add to the heart’s burden and only make things worse.
Of course, the more one rushed, the more one would be prone to mistakes. However, this situation was truly urgent, so Zhang Fan had to rush! He finally finished affixing the tracheal tube, and then immediately went to check on the unconscious patient #8’s condition without even taking off his surgical gloves.
“Hurry and bring over a gurney!” he told the head nurse. “Go, and take away all of the other patients in this room,” he then told the other nurses. Zhang Fan was really afraid that another patient would faint.
“What should we do about patient #9?” a young nurse inquired.
“Bring him to the care station!” Zhang Fan answered without even raising his head.
“Make way! Make way!” The head nurse ran at top speed while pushing the gurney. The narrow corridor was filled with additional beds to hold extra patients, shoes, water bottles, other nurses who were administering shots, doctors performing checkups, and so on, yet the head nurse who was in her 40s still seemed to fly down the hallway.
Her foot slammed against a metal bed railing as she ran, yet she didn’t react at all. She continued to run at full speed as if such a powerful impact didn’t even happen to her own foot.
“Hurry! Make way!”
The head nurse did her best to run at top speed for the final dozen meters. “Zhang, here!” She was panting so heavily that she wasn’t even able to speak complete sentences.
Zhang Fan didn’t have the time to worry about her right now. He pulled out the electrocardiogram from the middle of the gurney, and then forcefully pushed the patient onto the gurney. *Beep! Beep! Beep!* The electrocardiogram started showing the patient’s heart radiograph.
Zhang Fan felt slightly reassured to see that it was only sinus tachycardia. “Administer lidocaine by IV injection, along with esmolol at 25/mg per min.” After giving this command, Zhang Fan calmed down slightly as he had the rotation doctor and nurses help lift the patient onto the bed.
The nurses swiftly began to treat the patient and administer the medicine. After that, patient #8 gradually woke up again. The moment that he opened his eyes, both he and the head nurse simultaneously exclaimed, “Heavens!”
When the head nurse saw that the patient had woken up, only then did she feel that her foot was in great pain. Earlier, she couldn’t be bothered to worry about herself due to having to save the patient, but now that she saw that he was alright, she suddenly felt great pain and swollenness in her foot.
As for patient #8, his exclamation was probably due to the earlier sight of Zhang Fan performing surgery that had caused him to faint originally.
“Sir, how are you feeling?” Zhang Fan asked in a gentle voice.
“Not well. I feel as if I’ve been sucked into a black hole. Even now, I’m still feeling panicky.”
“It’s fine. That’s nothing more than a tracheal tube. You’re such a coward!” Zhang Fan couldn’t allow the patient to continue thinking about that scene, so he could only try to think of a method to lure the patient into thinking about other things instead.
“Of course I would be afraid! I—”
“Such a small matter! You’re not even afraid of receiving injections in your butt, so why be afraid of anything else? Let me tell you, your illness is more than half cured now. After such a shock, your body produced a large number of hormones that will help your body. I think that you’ll be able to leave the hospital tomorrow.”
“Really? I suppose so! I do feel like I’m much lighter now! Hey! How miraculous!” The patient was delighted to hear that he could leave the hospital tomorrow.
“This is science!” Zhang Fan was actually just spouting rubbish here!
Today’s matter was truly dangerous. The respiratory department was older than other departments, so it lacked curtains to maintain privacy between patients in the same room. Not a single moment could be spared when trying to save the patient who was suffocating, and personnel had been lacking, so the other patients couldn’t be moved in time, leading to this incident.
Luckily, it was only sinus tachycardia. If the patient had suffered a heart failure instead, all of the doctors and nurses present would have been severely punished. There would be no excuses. The hospital wouldn’t care about the fact that the patient room wasn’t modern enough to have curtains.
The hospital would definitely blame the doctors and nurses by saying, “You were the ones who scared the patient to death!”
Zhang Fan and a slightly older nurse helped to support the head nurse out of the patient room as they all wiped away their sweat. The younger rotation doctor and nurses didn’t know about how dangerous this had been for their careers, but Zhang Fan and the older nurses definitely understood.
The head nurse said, “It was such a close call today! We almost scared another patient to death by saving a patient! Sigh, I feel like I’m about to collapse. Ouch! My foot is in such great pain. Zhang Fan, help take a look for me. I think that I can finally get some rest!”
She was implying that she had a bone fracture, which would allow her to be relieved of duty from the flu epidemic work. The head nurse sat down in the doctors’ resting area and took off her shoe. Zhang Fan saw nothing but blood red. He furrowed his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. They were both in the medical field. He didn’t need to say anything to console her.
The head nurse stuffed her head into the other nurse’s embrace. She wasn’t afraid, but rather was in pain, extreme pain. It was impossible to remove the sock because it had gotten stuck to the injury.
“Head nurse, bear with the pain for a moment. When I tell you to prepare, take a deep breath.” Zhang Fan saw that the head nurse’s big toenail was violently broken.
He could only remove the sock by using scissors. There was no other way. There was no need for anesthesia, as it would only take a moment. Zhang Fan then gently pulled on the edge of the sock, pulling off the portion where the sock was stuck to the toenail and foot tissue. This caused the head nurse to moan in pain.
“Head nurse, prepare yourself!” As he said this, Zhang Fan swiftly tugged and then cut off the rest of the sock with his scissors. “Ok, I’m going to disinfect and wrap this up for you now.”
“Ouch! Heavens, you damned brat, I didn’t even get to mentally prepare myself yet!” The head nurse gently slapped Zhang Fan as tears appeared in her eyes.
This was actually a sign that they were close to each other. She understood that Zhang Fan had been intentionally trying to distract her. But even so, it still really hurt when he removed the sock attached to her blood!