Chapter 272: Never declining to shoulder responsibility
Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu
People in the border province, especially those who were older, had a really descriptive analogy for motorcycles. They referred to motorcycles as meat buns on wheels! The border province was sparsely populated compared to the rest of China, so land was more spacious and more people used motorcycles back in the day. Chinese people in the border province also loved to drink alcohol. Shanghai’s Xingfu 120 motorcycle brand had seen countless of its riders die over the years. Since these youngsters were driving at recklessly high speeds while also high on marijuana, it wasn’t strange at all for them to have caused such a major accident.
A second ambulance arrived from the hospital. Five police cars also arrived. Since this was such a major accident, it even gained the attention of Chasu City’s highest-ranking government leaders. Chasu City’s leader of the Bureau of Transportation also arrived. The emergency doctors searched for survivors, while the forensic doctors searched for the dead. Many of the policemen directly vomited upon seeing this scene. This scene was far too disgusting. It was likely that many of these people would be unable to eat meat for a while!
“Hurry! This person is still breathing and has a heartbeat! Carefully and slowly separate this motorcycle wheel and the trash wheelbarrow. Don’t remove the wheel from this person’s body!” A veteran attending physician from the emergency department was in charge here of saving whoever the survivors might be.
“There’s another survivor here, Doctor! Hurry! She’s still breathing!” A policeman discovered the middle school girl who was by the pondside. She had been truly lucky.
Although she had been tossed from the motorcycle like a rag doll, she had crashed through a dense thicket of trees. These were all scenic trees, slightly more than one meter tall and really dense. This had helped to mitigate most of the impact, which was how she remained alive. Her condition was quite similar to Old Yang’s.
The iron wheelbarrow handle was sticking directly into Old Yang’s abdomen. The iron handle had also split open from the impact while sticking in his abdomen. As for the teenaged girl, she was wearing a leather jacket and light cotton underwear in order to appear sexy. She hadn’t even buttoned up the jacket, wanting to reveal more skin. As a result, the high speed at which she was tossed into the thicket of trees meant that tree branches had penetrated her abdomen as if they were sharp knives. The girl had been lucky, truly lucky, as none of the tree branches were very thick. Any slightly thicker tree branch would have killed her!
Both her legs had landed into the pond. Luckily, the water resistance had also helped to mitigate the impact. Even so, both of her legs were now broken with comminuted fractures. Although she had been wearing a motorcycle helmet, the helmet was of shoddy quality, and it had shattered completely from the impact. The helmet’s plexiglass mask shattered to become sharp glass knives which all stuck themselves into her face! Although the tree branches had mitigated a large amount of the impact, she had still been thrown at far too great of a speed. After she broke through the dense tree thicket, she had landed on the ground chest-first, causing her rib bones to shatter!
The head emergency doctor at the scene immediately went over to check her pulse. “Hurry! Stretcher, and raise her horizontally! You must be absolutely careful and lay her flat!” Old Yang and the teenaged girl were both taken to Chasu City Hospital in separate ambulances.
Old Yang and the teenaged girl both had incredibly similar injuries. Both of them had a collapsed chest, a large number of foreign objects penetrating into the abdomen, and shattered legs, although Old Yang had only his right leg shattered, while the teenaged girl had both her legs shattered.
Also, the teenaged girl had one more injured location compared to Old Yang. Her face was filled with glass shards! Luckily, none of the glass shards had gone into her eyes!
This was such a gigantic accident! The scene was far too gory. All of Chasu City’s highest-ranking government leaders were astonished and had their attention on this matter, so a great deal of importance was placed on dealing with this incident. Firstly, all police in the city were woken up, even though it was still very early in the morning. The hospital leadership were also all woken up, and they rushed to Chasu City Hospital.
Since the government was placing great importance on this matter, everyone hurried as fast as they possibly could. The teenaged girl’s family members were also notified. Old Yang was rather pitiful as he had no family to notify at all.
At Chasu City Hospital, Superintendent Ouyang was informed that many people had been injured, and that many people had also died. She was worried that there wouldn’t be enough doctors on duty, so she immediately ordered that every single surgeon of Chasu City Hospital gather at the hospital immediately for an emergency. It was as if she sounded a military horn to call for the start of battle. All of the surgeons, who lived all over, started hurrying to the hospital even though it was still completely dark out!
“What’s the matter?” The wife of an attending physician in the cardiothoracic department drowsily noticed that her husband was putting on his clothes.
“There’s been a major incident. The hospital is summoning all surgeons!” he swiftly explained to his wife as he finished putting his clothes on.
“Oh! Be careful on the way. How about I accompany you? It’s so dark out.” His drowsy wife instantly woke up! She was worried for her husband.
“Just go back to sleep!” The cardiothoracic surgeon immediately left without saying anything else as he had finished putting on his clothes!
But, how was she supposed to sleep!? The doctor’s wife just stared at the ceiling. Although she wasn’t worried that something would happen to her husband, she was still unable to sleep! Similar scenes occurred in many doctors’ homes.
Every member of the hospital administration department knew that Zhang Fan was a highly skilled surgeon, even though he was technically on rotation in an internal medicine department currently. He wouldn’t possibly be left out for such an incident. Zhang Fan immediately started putting on his clothes after he received the phone call for him to come. When Shao Hua woke up from hearing him move around, she exited her bedroom to see that Zhang Fan was already going downstairs, having closed the door to the living room.
“Sigh!” Shao Hua could only gently sigh. She checked the time. It was currently 4:40 a.m.!
All of the surgeons of Chasu City Hospital gathered in the main hallway of the emergency department. Although there were many doctors, none of them were talking. They all quietly waited on their chairs for the patients to arrive. Superintendent Ouyang and the surgeon vice superintendent stood at the entrance of the emergency department as they anxiously gazed at the hospital entrance!
This was simply how the medical field was! Doctors would never wish for there to be many patients, but when they knew that patients would be arriving, they would hope that the patients could be brought to the hospital as early as possible. This field was simply that contradictory.
Two ambulances arrived with wailing sirens. People who lived nearby the hospital hated hearing this sound. The sound of ambulance sirens would never stop for even a single day of the year. But, even if the nearby neighbors were annoyed, none of them would want to move far away from the hospital even if they had the opportunity!
The government had only told Superintendent Ouyang that there were many injured as well as many dead, which was why she had summoned every single surgeon. However, only two patients arrived on the two ambulances. Superintendent Ouyang asked, “Where are the other injured patients? Were they sent to other hospitals?”
“There are no other survivors at all. Every other person died!” one of the ambulance drivers told Superintendent Ouyang.
“Oh!” Superintendent Ouyang didn’t have the time to exclaim or be shocked at this. Even though she wasn’t an expert in surgery, she was the hospital superintendent. She needed to take charge of the emergency treatment for these patients.
There was a certain medical principle when it came to saving patients. If a hospital’s resources were limited, then it would first focus on saving those who were in a less serious condition over patients in severe condition. The hospital would also focus on saving younger people over older people. This principle was adopted in order to better save as many lives as possible.
This wasn’t for the sake of increasing the ratio of saved patients, as there was no such quota. This was simply a very cruel yet scientific method of saving people! If the patient in severe condition was treated first, this patient might not even be successfully saved, and the patient in less serious condition might get to the point of being in serious condition because they had to wait! Meanwhile, younger people would have a greater chance of survival than older people!
Of course, such choices would be unnecessary if the hospital had plenty of medical resources and personnel. Making choices on who to save would only be necessary in emergencies where there was no other choice. Making such choices would be really cruel for the patients. Who would get treated first or second wasn’t only a matter of time. It might be the difference between life and death!
Although there were only two patients, both of them were in incredibly severe condition. Both patients were moved to the emergency department as if they were copies of each other. With their injuries, it was a definite that they would have internal bleeding. It was likely that some organs were already beginning to fail.
There was no time to even perform checkups on either of them. The doctors would need to first fix the patients’ state of shock and preserve their breathing! Both patients had complex multiple trauma. All of the surgical directors gathered director to discuss and prepare a plan for surgery.
Normal patients wouldn’t require so much. All that would be needed was to begin a surgery on the operating table. However, these two patients were both in severe condition, and both also had complex injuries. It would be very unwise to start surgery on them without a good plan.
Typically, Zhang Fan wasn’t someone who was very proactive. However, Zhang Fan was always willing to shoulder the responsibility about anything related to patients who needed surgery. All of the surgical directors surrounded Zhang Fan! This was the best evidence of his skills and authority now.
“There’s no time! You can decide what we should do!” Superintendent Ouyang delegated the authority to decide what should be done about the surgeries to Zhang Fan. Although the directors had already surrounded him, leaving him at the center, he would still need this type of official higher-ranking recognition! Zhang Fan was still only a resident doctor, after all!
“Both patients have incredibly difficult situations to deal with in the chest and abdomen. I, the cardiothoracic vice director, and a vice director from general surgery should perform surgery on the teenaged girl. Meanwhile, the cardiothoracic director, general surgery director, and an orthopedic surgery director should perform surgery for the older patient.” Zhang Fan immediately began to issue commands without even trying to refuse as would be polite to do according to Chinese etiquette. There was no time to be wasted on polite refusals! Human lives were at stake!
Superintendent Ouyang also had her reasons for choosing Zhang Fan to be in charge of deciding the surgeries. Currently, none of the other surgical directors would dispute the fact that Zhang Fan was the #1 doctor of Chasu City Hospital in general surgery, cardiothoracic surgery, and orthopedic surgery, which were the three types of surgery involved for these two patients. Additionally, the teenaged girl was the much younger patient, so she would have a greater chance to live. Zhang Fan had no selfish motives involved here at all. This was simply the medical principle on whom to save first!