Chapter 142: Open the Door, Drive Out the Thief

Evan returns to the hospital early the next morning.

Early the next morning.

Evan got up and bought two steamed buns downstairs. They were nothing special, not as good as the ones below Mingxin Clinic.

He made do with them and went straight to the Chinese medicine hospital.

He was no stranger there now. The doctors and nurses all knew him, and everyone turned to look as he came in.

His record was astonishing. How many difficult, severe cases had he treated in their hospital in little more than two weeks? Those last two had been nothing short of miracles!

Single-handedly, Evan had changed the entire staff's view of Chinese medicine. Even the Chinese medicine doctors themselves had come to see their own discipline in a new light.

“Dr. Xu! You're here.” A young nurse came over to greet him.

Behind her, a group of young women at the nurses' station craned their necks to watch.

Evan nodded and gave her a gentle smile. “Yes.”

“Have you had breakfast, Dr. Xu? Would you like something to drink?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, thank you. I've eaten.”

She smiled shyly and bit her lip. “Dr. Xu, could I add you on WeChat?”^[1]

“I don't have WeChat.”

“Oh?” She froze, then her face fell.

“All right.” Looking thoroughly dejected, she went back to the nurses' station with her head down.

The others hurried to ask her, “Well? How did it go?”

She was almost in tears. “He turned me down! He even lied and said he didn't have WeChat!”

“What? That's… that's a terrible excuse!”

“Exactly. My uncle's in his sixties, and even he's learning to use it.”

“Ah, the talented ones are always so aloof. Should I give it a try?” Another nurse looked eager.

“Go on, then. You try.”

The first nurse gave a little huff.

The second turned around eagerly. “Huh? Where's Dr. Xu?”

They looked again. There was no telling where he had gone.

All they could do was sigh. Dr. Xu really was aloof.

Evan had gone straight upstairs to find Leo Cao. By now, Leo was essentially his point of contact at the hospital. Leo had no idea how he'd acquired the role, but somehow he'd settled into it.

As he led Evan toward the inpatient wards, Leo said, “That patient is being held in a room of her own now. She finished all three batches of medicine. Just as you said, she got hungry before she'd finished the third.

“She ate a little, drank the rest of the decoction, and settled down to sleep. She's doing fairly well now, so we didn't send her to the ICU. She's in a single room instead.”

They reached the room as he finished speaking.

Marcus Cao was there, as was Alex Xu, who had brought him over earlier.

“Dr. Xu, you're here!” Alex looked delighted.

Leo smiled and greeted him too. “Morning, Dr. Xu.”

Evan nodded to both men. “Morning. How's the patient?”

“Not bad,” Alex said. “All the readings show she's out of immediate danger and recovering. I went in earlier and examined her. The gray, greasy tongue coating and the purplish patches have gone, and her pulse qualities have improved a great deal.

“The phlegm rattling in her throat has gone too, and she can talk now. The coldness in her hands and feet has improved, though only her hands have warmed up. Her feet are still very cold.”

Evan nodded with satisfaction. “Good.”

Alex scratched his head, a little embarrassed.

Evan wasn't praising Alex for being an outstanding doctor already. What pleased him was the change in his attitude. Faced with a patient this seriously ill, he now dared to examine her and take part in her care. That was a good change.

“Let's go in and have a look.”

They all went into the room.

The patient lay in bed, connected to various devices monitoring her vital signs. She was also handcuffed to the bed.

NovelPhoenix is the author's publication site for this chapter; this reproduction was made without consent, while reading there supports the writer.

Evan first looked at her face. The frightening, ashen-blue color had faded. Her tongue findings were just as Alex had described. The phlegm no longer rattled in her throat, and she was no longer gasping with her shoulders heaving.

He felt her pulse as well. Her upper limbs were warm again, but her lower limbs were still very cold.

He gave a slight nod.

“Can we question her now?” Marcus asked. “I went in earlier, but I'd barely asked a couple of questions before she closed her eyes again.”

“Her condition is still worrying. She's not completely out of danger. There's been a turn for the better, but the root of her yang isn't secure. Her long, severe illness has exhausted all her qi and blood. Her yin is spent, and her yang is collapsing.^[2]

“In a single day and night, I gave her fuzi—600 in all—and barely kept a last trace of yang alive.^[3] Look how cold her lower limbs still are. Whether that last trace of yang can recover is what will decide whether she lives or dies.”

“Are you confident?” Marcus asked anxiously.

Evan reassured him. “The worst danger is well behind her. But we still can't afford to be careless.”

He looked at the patient. She lay under a thick quilt, curled up a little as if she couldn't bear the cold. Summer wasn't even over, yet she was this sensitive to it.

“Captain Cao, when you arrested her, was she under a thick quilt like this?”

“Yes. And all her clothes were thick and padded too.”

Evan nodded. “Even in the height of summer, she won't go without padded clothes. She's been seriously ill for a long time, but she still has an aversion to cold without sweating, chest pain that goes right through to her back, and tightness so severe she feels she's suffocating. She's still on a ventilator now, and her back is extremely cold too.

“Deep, entrenched cold remains inside her. The cold pathogen is lodged there, and her nutritive and defensive qi are obstructed. Shaoyin yang collapse and taiyang exterior excess are occurring together. That's a very difficult combination.”^[4]

Marcus hadn't understood a word. “What does that mean?”

“We distinguish between the body's exterior and interior,” Evan said. “Exterior patterns are milder. A pathogenic factor reaches the surface first. If it isn't released from the exterior, it gradually penetrates deeper, into the interior.

“Inside her now is deep, stubborn cold. The cold pathogen has sunk into the interior. That last trace of yang I preserved has barely kept her alive. Getting her condition to improve is still no easy matter.

“And she has exterior excess. It's like dumping a pile of ice on you, then wrapping you and the ice tightly in a thick quilt so the cold can't get out.”

Marcus looked a little startled. “It's that serious? What do we do, then?”

“What do you think we should do?” Evan asked Alex.

Alex froze. Another test?

His thoughts raced. “Uh… we should… we should…”

Evan and Marcus were both watching him.

“Uh…” Alex was still thinking. His eyes roamed, then landed on Marcus.

“Oh!” he cried suddenly.

“Whoa!” Even Marcus jumped at the unexpected shout.

Evan didn't know whether to laugh or sigh. Why did Alex keep startling people like that? He'd frightened that couple last time, and now here he was doing it again!

Alex paid no attention to Marcus's reaction. Excited, he said, “I've got it! It's the same approach as for his mentor. With these symptoms, we should first release the exterior. The cold pathogen is lodged deep inside, so first we open the door and drive out the thief. Let it leave by the same route it came in. Open the closed exterior, then help the pathogen out. That should resolve this crisis.”^[5]

“Right?” He looked at Evan anxiously.

Evan gave a slight nod. “That's a good answer.”

Alex lit up even more.

Reader Notes

Reader Notes

1. ↩︎ Adding someone on WeChat. WeChat supports personal contacts and private text or voice messages, alongside the public accounts mentioned in earlier chapters. The nurse is asking to add Evan as a personal contact, rather than to follow a clinic's articles. The joke rests on her interpreting his answer as an excuse to reject her. That is the nurses' conclusion; the narration does not establish that Evan has an account. Source: Shanghai Municipal Government — How to use WeChat like a local, “Add friends” and “Start chatting”.
2. ↩︎ The remaining yang. In this traditional framework, yang includes warming and activating functions, while yin includes nourishing and moistening aspects of bodily life. “Collapse” describes a critical depletion, rather than a laboratory measurement. Evan's “root” and “last trace” of yang are ways of explaining how precarious he believes the patient's recovery remains. The warming of her hands is an improvement in the story; he explicitly distinguishes it from being fully out of danger. Source: WHO — TCM terminology, entries 3–7 and 413–416.
3. ↩︎ Fuzi and the missing unit. Fuzi is an aconite medicinal material discussed in the preceding rescue. This sentence gives the number 600 without a unit. Earlier chapters specify 200 g per batch and three batches, but the translation leaves this sentence's omission visible. Aconite materials contain potentially toxic alkaloids; the health authority's precautions do not establish the safety of the novel's unusually large quantities or its preparation method. Source: Hong Kong Department of Health — Safe use of Chinese medicines containing aconitum alkaloids (in Chinese).
4. ↩︎ Two patterns together. Taiyang and shaoyin belong to the six-division system of pattern differentiation associated with cold-damage medicine. They are diagnostic categories, rather than two anatomical compartments. “Exterior excess” includes the idea of a closed surface with no sweating; “excess” here does not mean abundant bodily strength. Nutritive qi and defensive qi describe nourishing and protective functions. Evan's difficulty is that he sees deep depletion and cold together with an exterior that remains closed. These are his pattern judgments, not new test results. Source: WHO — TCM terminology, entries 237–240, 1012–1013, 1396–1400 and 1407–1408.
5. ↩︎ Opening the door. The thief is the pathogenic influence, and the door is the closed exterior in Alex's explanation. “Releasing the exterior” is a traditional treatment category intended to let an exterior pathogenic factor disperse. No literal door is opened and no surgical opening is proposed. The terminology standard describes such methods, but its rule for treating the exterior first has specific conditions; it does not validate that sequence for every critically ill patient. Alex's answer and Evan's approval remain part of this particular fictional case. Source: WHO — TCM terminology, entries 2280–2283 and 2286.