Chapter 775: Who Is It?

Chapter 775: Chapter 775: Who Is It?

From Li Xu’s perspective, he actually understood Zhang Ze’s concerns.

After all, treating patients in a hospital and saving lives on the street were completely different legal environments. Outside, there was no comprehensive medical equipment and no liability waiver. If the elderly man were to suffer a complication due to his internal injuries during the acupuncture process, Li Xu, as a passing doctor, would never be able to clear his name.

This was the modern reality of "no good deed goes unpunished."

"Alright, I won’t touch him. But if he starts choking or falls into a coma, I will intervene immediately," Li Xu said, putting away his silver needles.

Shortly after, accompanied by the urgent wail of sirens, an ambulance roared to the scene and parked securely. Traffic police arrived at almost the exact same time, beginning to direct traffic and survey the site.

SCREECH.

The moment the ambulance arrived, a taxi slammed its brakes on the roadside. A middle-aged man, drenched in sweat, rushed out.

"Dad! Dad, how are you?" The man threw himself over the fallen elderly man. It was his eldest son.

"Don’t move him yet. We are doctors." The paramedics quickly hopped out of the ambulance, rushing over with a stretcher and a first-aid kit.

"I’m the doctor who just called you," Li Xu said, walking up to the son. "I did a brief examination. There’s no immediate, life-threatening danger at the moment, but his breathing isn’t looking good. He needs to go to the hospital right away."

"You... you’re the doctor?" The man looked up, his eyes brimming with gratitude.

"Yes."

"Thank you so much, Doctor. I am deeply indebted to you. May I ask which hospital you work for? I will definitely pay a visit to express my thanks later," the son said politely.

"City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Li Xu," Li Xu replied.

"Thank you, Dr. Li. Thank you."

While they spoke, the paramedics had already begun a preliminary vital signs check on the elderly man.

Li Xu stepped forward and addressed the lead paramedic, "The patient has closed fractures on his right fourth to sixth ribs, accompanied by signs of acute respiratory distress. I suspect a traumatic pneumothorax or wet lung. Be extremely careful to protect his right thorax when moving him, and administer high-flow oxygen the moment he’s in the ambulance."

"Young man, are you a doctor too?" Hearing such highly professional terminology, the paramedic looked up at Li Xu in surprise.

"Yes, I’m a doctor at the City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine," Li Xu reaffirmed his identity.

The paramedic nodded, a trace of professional trust appearing in his eyes. "Alright, got it. Understood."

Li Xu watched as the emergency personnel skillfully secured the elderly man in a cervical collar and on a spinal board, loaded him into the ambulance, shut the doors, and sped off. Only then did he let out a sigh of relief. He left the scene with Song Sisi and Li Lin, continuing their journey to the City Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Meanwhile, at the hospital.

The elderly man was taken to the nearest facility: Feng City Medical College Affiliated Hospital. It was the top-ranked Grade 3A Western medicine hospital in Feng City, with unmatched comprehensive strength—especially in trauma emergency care.

Upon arriving at the emergency department, he was immediately pushed through the fast-track green channel and sent straight into the resuscitation room. Various advanced medical devices were swiftly connected to him. Bedside X-rays, ultrasounds, and blood gas analysis tests were executed like clockwork.

Director Shi Haoping, the Deputy Director of Emergency Surgery, rapidly fired off medical orders to his subordinate doctors and nurses while standing in front of the viewbox, examining the crystal-clear imaging results that had just come back.

"Multiple fractures on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs on the right side. Although the broken ends haven’t obviously shifted, they have already damaged the parietal pleura.

"The patient’s arterial oxygen partial pressure is extremely low, and the carbon dioxide partial pressure is elevated. It is confirmed to be traumatic pneumothorax, accompanied by traumatic wet lung—which means severe acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.

"In addition, there’s traumatic subcutaneous emphysema and mild pneumomediastinum. The patient has a medical history of hypertension, and his blood pressure has currently spiked to 180 over 110. There’s also a minor scalp hematoma on his head, but no intracranial hemorrhage has been detected yet.

"Quick, prepare a puncture kit immediately. Second intercostal space at the right midclavicular line. Prepare to place a closed thoracic drainage tube to release the air. Put him on a ventilator for assisted breathing, and get the antihypertensives and antibiotics ready."

With each of Shi Haoping’s commands, the tension in the resuscitation room reached its absolute peak.

"Holy shit..." The young paramedic who had just returned with the ambulance stood off to the side. Listening to Shi Haoping’s diagnosis, he unconsciously blurted out a curse, his eyes as wide as saucers.

"What’s the matter? Why the sudden outburst?" Shi Haoping furrowed his brows and shot the young doctor a stern glare.

In the resuscitation room, the biggest taboo was a doctor shouting and causing a scene, which could destabilize the team’s morale.

The paramedic swallowed hard, stuttering out an explanation as he pointed at the X-rays on the viewbox in sheer disbelief.

"Director Shi... no... it’s not that. Earlier at the accident scene, there was a young passing doctor. When our ambulance arrived, he had already examined the patient barehanded.

"He pulled me aside and briefed me on the patient’s condition. He said... he said the patient had fractures on his right fourth to sixth ribs, accompanied by acute respiratory distress syndrome, and he suspected a pneumothorax or wet lung.

"Director Shi, look at these scans and lab results. That young doctor was out on the street without a single piece of equipment. Just by feeling with his hands, his diagnosis matched the results from our hundred-thousand-dollar machines... flawlessly. He even got the number of broken ribs almost exactly right!"

"Just through a barehanded field examination?" Shi Haoping froze upon hearing this.

"Yes, absolutely. Everyone at the scene heard him," the paramedic nodded vigorously.

"Without any auxiliary tests, relying solely on visual inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation on a noisy street... he managed to diagnose such a complex internal chest injury with that level of precision?" Shi Haoping took a deep breath, a flicker of shock passing through his eyes. "How old was this person?"

"He looked quite young. Probably around twenty-seven, twenty-eight, or maybe thirty," the paramedic recalled.

"Around thirty? How is that possible?"

As the pillar of the emergency department at the Affiliated Hospital, Shi Haoping had seen his fair share of medical prodigies. Every doctor was required to have a baseline level of clinical judgment. However, pinpointing the location of multiple rib fractures and diagnosing pneumothorax complications with such absolute accuracy—relying purely on manual palpation through clothes and flesh—was not something an ordinary person could achieve.

That required the "Hand of God," a skill honed only after physically examining thousands upon thousands of trauma patients to construct a vast, razor-sharp 3D anatomical model in one’s mind. Such an intuitive touch was typically only possessed by veteran orthopedic experts with over thirty years of experience.

A thirty-year-old young man couldn’t have developed that level of mastery even if he had started palpating bones in his mother’s womb.