Chapter 251 - 113: A Sudden Turn for the Worse (Part 2)

Chapter 251: Chapter 113: A Sudden Turn for the Worse (Part 2)

The afternoon passed just like that.

Zhang Shutong rode his bike back to the hospital and registered on his own, once again at the respiratory department. The doctor on duty was the same middle-aged man from before, who was clearly taken aback.

"You again?"

"I think my fever’s coming back..." Zhang Shutong said. "Can I get another shot?"

"Kid, you can’t treat these fever shots like meals, getting one at noon and coming back for another in the afternoon," the doctor said, his head aching. "I think you should just get an IV drip and rest here for a while. At this rate, if your fever hasn’t broken by tonight, things could get serious."

Zhang Shutong thought about it and didn’t object.

He took the prescription to the ward to get his IV. It was the same young nurse. "You’re back again?"

"Just busy," he said. He’d always had a sense of humor.

Zhang Shutong held out his hand. She tied the tourniquet and patted the back of his hand, as if sizing up a rack of ribs.

"How long have you been outside? You’re freezing."

"All afternoon."

"Don’t go running around anymore, okay?"

"Can’t run now," Zhang Shutong replied weakly, lifting his hand.

He asked the nurse for a charger. ’This time I’m not taking any chances. I need to behave and let it charge fully.’

Zhang Shutong closed his eyes to rest, occasionally opening them to check the IV bag, worried he might fall asleep.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried about falling asleep. The ward grew even more crowded at night, packed with people. The sounds of coughing and spitting, a medley of strange odors wafting through the air, and the wails of children all combined into a din that made his temples throb.

A hospital was by no means a good place to be, and yet, somehow, he felt a strange sense of warmth here.

Zhang Shutong saw a chubby little boy. The nurse couldn’t find a vein in his hand and suggested trying his foot, but the boy adamantly refused. He used his hands and feet to frantically tuck his feet under his body, looking like a meditating Arhat. His mother fretted beside him while the boy cried nonstop and the nurse persisted. Zhang Shutong smiled at the scene. ’I wonder if I was like that as a kid, crying at the sight of a needle.’ But being an adult, he supposed, just meant that one day when you felt sick, you took yourself to the hospital for a shot without being told.

This small ward was about the size of his living room at home, a few hundred square feet, furnished with both a sofa and beds. The sofa was riddled with holes, with so little of its foam padding left that you could feel the metal frame when you sat down. ’Who would do this? Just get your shot and be done with it. Why pick at the sofa...?’ But when he came to his senses, he discovered that he, too, had just plucked out a small tuft of foam. A wave of embarrassment washed over him.

As mealtime approached, the aroma of food began to mingle with the ward’s unpleasant smells, making Zhang Shutong feel a bit nauseous. He decided to go for a walk. Unhooking his IV bag, he carried it out into the corridor. It was packed shoulder to shoulder with people. He came up with a clever trick: he hung the IV bag from a window latch, finally freeing up his hands.

The hospital’s rules weren’t very strict. A man stood next to him, chain-smoking as gusts of cold wind from the open window swirled the smoke in all directions. Zhang Shutong knew the emergency room was nearby. ’Whose husband is he?’ he wondered. ’Whose father?’

Winter was a bleak season, and the hospital was the place closest to death.

People hurried past behind him—adults and children, men and women. The noise was at his back, but as he gazed at the snow outside the window, he found the only tranquil place in sight.

He yawned. Just as he was about to head back, he was suddenly jostled.

"Make way!" A group of nurses was rushing down the corridor, led by a male nurse. His voice was frantic, and he paid little attention to his surroundings. He nearly knocked Zhang Shutong over, and for a moment, blood backed up into the IV tube in his hand.

He looked closer and saw the nurses were clustered around a gurney. It was an emergency. He quickly stepped aside. ’This is no time to get hung up on being bumped,’ he thought. ’If you can’t help, at least don’t get in the way.’

’This must be the downside of a small hospital,’ he even found himself thinking. ’It’s not like the big ones where everything is clearly zoned—an injection area is just for injections, emergencies are handled far away, and even kids have their own separate pediatrics department.’

But on this small island, you could see every kind of patient: those with runny noses, those with fevers that wouldn’t break, those in urgent need of saving, and those on the brink of death.

Zhang Shutong felt a wave of emotion. He shook his head and brushed past the gurney.

A man lay on the gurney. His head was wrapped in bandages that were soaked with blood. His eyes were shut tight, his face ashen.

CRASH—

The IV bag fell from his hand, shattering on the ground. The fluid spilled everywhere, and shards of glass skittered across the terrazzo floor. The corridor was already a center of chaos, and now he had only added to the mess.

Zhang Shutong stood frozen, as if struck by lightning. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Because he recognized the man.

The man’s name was Song Nanshan.