Chapter 98: So You Really Can't Hand Out a Want Want Gift Hamper on the Night Shift?

Zeng Yingying raised a hand and stood up. "I'm here. What delivery?"

The courier handed her the bag. "Snacks from the supermarket. The address says this place. Didn't you place the order yourself?"

Zeng Yingying was baffled. "No. I never eat snacks while I'm on duty, but thanks anyway. Sorry to trouble you."

The courier said, "Enjoy your meal," and left the emergency hall.

Back at her station, with the other curious colleagues craning their necks to look over, Zeng Yingying opened the delivery bag in full view of everyone.

"Damn!"

The outburst drew the attention of the already curious medical staff.

It was the dead of night, and everyone was drowsy, eager for some gossip to chase away the sleep.

Another young nurse walked over, peered into the bag, and hurriedly covered her mouth, laughing. "Yingying, did you offend someone? An emergency shift, and at midnight someone sends you a delivery of Wangwang gift packs! Hahahaha!"

Black lines seemed to fill Zeng Yingying's face. She already knew who it was.

That thoughtless blind date of hers, the one who mistook lack of emotional intelligence for humor.

"It must be that blind date of mine! Oh my god, is this person sick in the head? He takes ignorance for innocence and idiocy for wit. Who would even like a joke like that?"

Meng Qiaoyuan turned her head back to her book and gave a soft laugh.

The legendary taboo of emergency-night duty: Wangwang snacks and mangoes. To many medical workers, it was a nightmare with a name all its own.

Probably mangoes couldn't be bought this season, or else there might have been a mango delivery too. Youth was a fine thing; so full of energy.

She adjusted her glasses. Ten minutes after her attention had returned to the book, the sudden shriek of the landline made every nerve in the emergency hall tighten.

"Hello, Emergency Department of the Affiliated Hospital of Medical University... Yes, received!"

The nurse who had answered the call hung up and shouted, "A gas pipeline exploded in a residential complex. There are many casualties! The ambulances are already on the way, and the patient flow will be here any minute!"

"Damn it!" someone muttered under their breath. They had barely made it through the uneventful first half of the night, and now this was happening in the second half.

As she got up, the irritation that had been on Zeng Yingying's face only moments before was gone, replaced by panic, as if this unexpected delivery had somehow brought ruin to countless families.

Meng Qiaoyuan wore her stethoscope around her neck and gently patted Zeng Yingying on the back. "Focus. There's no such thing as that kind of superstitious nonsense. Get moving. Povidone iodine, gauze, saline, and the wristbands for sorting mild and severe cases. Go help out; don't delay."

Zeng Yingying snapped back to herself and hurriedly nodded before running off like the wind to prepare the supplies.

The hall was in uproar.

Within minutes of the call being connected, wave after wave of injured people poured in.

The ambulances brought in mostly seriously injured patients who were barely conscious, and without exception they were all rushed straight into the operating rooms.

Some of the less seriously injured, the nonfatal cases, had left the scene by every means of transportation available and now converged again in the emergency hall.

Shen Mushi was awakened in the middle of the night by the phone. He didn't even have time for the irritability of being roused from sleep; he threw on his clothes, got into the car, and headed straight for the hospital.

Today was Meng Qiaoyuan's shift. Passing through the emergency hall, she could hear crying, cries of pain, the calls of medical staff, and the incessant beeping of equipment.

The affiliated hospital was one of Jinchou's top-tier general hospitals. Even such a scene could not throw the medical team into disarray. Initial triage was carried out at once, with mild, moderate, and severe cases marked by green, yellow, and red wristbands. Departments for external trauma and internal injuries were each assigned their work in orderly fashion: busy, but never chaotic.

Among the crowd, Meng Qiaoyuan's white coat had already been stained with a little of a patient's blood. Wearing her mask and stethoscope, she listened to a patient's heart sounds.

Behind her frameless glasses, a clear light seemed to shine.

She truly loved being a doctor.

Withdrawing his gaze, Shen Mushi quickly went upstairs toward the operating rooms.

One surgery followed another. The intensity of his concentration left him no chance to concern himself with anything outside, much less to know how many absurd things were still happening in the emergency hall.

After a flood of patients surged in, the emergency hall became extraordinarily noisy, and hospitals across the entire city were thrown into a frenzy.

Only when dawn began to pale the sky did the surge of frantic patients finally begin to ebb.

Looking at most of the patients already settled in the emergency hall, Meng Qiaoyuan finally breathed a sigh of relief. She flexed her arms, numb from endless CPR, and carefully checked the medications and test orders she had issued.

Just then, three drunken men came staggering in with their arms slung over one another's shoulders. One of them had extensive bleeding; dead leaves and gravel were stuck to his somewhat pilled sweater. Supported by his equally intoxicated companions, he was half-carried inside. As they came in, one of them shouted at the top of his voice.

"Doctor! Doctor! Is there a doctor here? My buddy fell into a greenbelt. Hurry up and come check him!"

The director of the emergency department dropped what he was doing and ran over. A nurse brought over a wheeled gurney, and together they lifted the blood-soaked drunk onto it and pushed him away.

The other two, too drunk to know where they were, lurched and swayed until they slumped against the wall not far from Meng Qiaoyuan.

Meng Qiaoyuan looked away.

Drunks like this were almost a daily sight in the emergency department. They were nothing unusual, and no one paid much attention to the two men standing by the wall.

The two of them chatted aimlessly about everything under the sun while Meng Qiaoyuan, listening to the murmur of their conversation, studied the cardiac film in her hand under the overhead lights.

This patient had a congenital heart deformity. Surviving to the age of thirty had already been a miracle in the history of human medicine. Yet the heart on the film, though belonging to a thirty-five-year-old, showed no sign of decline. Life was bursting with vigor inside that body.

And yet he had died from the trauma of a gas pipeline explosion caused by age and corrosion, not from the defective heart that could have taken his life at any moment.

If not for this accident, he might still have had a long and splendid life ahead of him.

One of the nearby drunks had exhausted the last of his energy and leaned against the wall with his eyes closed. Suddenly he bent over and vomited on the spot.

The violent retching drew many eyes. One or two nurses went up to tell him to go outside to throw up, but he complained of dizziness and being unable to walk, and refused to move.

Since there was time, the nurses joined forces to clean up the vomit.

Meng Qiaoyuan watched coldly. His face had turned bluish-purple; something about him seemed wrong. She stepped forward, and the man who had just vomited was so weak he could barely support himself, finally sinking onto the floor.

The other man, who still retained some awareness, cried out in alarm. "Brother Kuang? Brother Kuang, are you all right?"

Meng Qiaoyuan asked him, "Did he fall?"

The standing man thought hard for a long time and said, "Yes! There was an icy patch by the entrance of that restaurant. He stepped on it and slipped. At the time he seemed fine, and when he got up he looked like nothing had happened. Doctor, what's wrong with my friend?"

Hearing that the man called Brother Kuang had indeed fallen, Meng Qiaoyuan's warning bells rang loudly. She reached out to check his head. After a few careful probes, she indeed found an unnatural swelling.

The moment her finger lightly touched it, the half-conscious man frowned in pain.

Meng Qiaoyuan sprang to her feet at once and called to Zeng Yingying, who had just sat down nearby. "Yingying! Bring a gurney! Rush him to the CT room, stat! Suspected cranial injury!"