Chapter 184 - Critical Damage
Doctors of all ages came to assist.
Zheng Ren paid them no heed and tore open the incision kit, dousing the knife wounds on Fang Lin’s body with iodophor.
The dark solution gushed from the bottle and ran out in seconds.
Zheng Ren threw the bottle aside and put on his surgical gloves. He took a scalpel from the kit; without any preamble, he cut into Fang Lin’s flesh.
He moved in a flurry. Any comments from bystanders died down after witnessing the first incision.
‘Was he going to stop the bleed with his hands?’ The old doctors were shocked.
They had not witnessed this outdated method of hemostasis in a long time. How was this civilian outperforming most doctors?
Zheng Ren and Su Yun were, after all, dressed in civilian clothing.
A middle-aged doctor made to stop Zheng Ren, but before the words could leave his mouth, the scalpel drew a 10 cm incision from the stab wound to the right side of Fang Lin’s rectus abdominis.
Dark red blood burst out from the incision.
With the aid of his general surgery and interventional surgery Master ranks, combined with the experience of 300 liver dissections, Zheng Ren was able to locate the hepatic artery with his bare hands.
“We need blood and a stretcher! Get him to the OR!” Zheng Ren’s eyes were bloodshot as he shouted.
A doctor went to grab the stretcher trolley. As they were in the clinic, it took a few minutes. Another doctor was on the phone contacting the relevant departments about getting an operating room.
Zheng Ren’s right hand pressed at the hilar area, stopping the leak. He thanked his lucky stars.
They were in Imperial Capital’s Class Three Grade A Hospital.
If they had been elsewhere, Fang Lin might already be dead.
The stretcher trolley arrived. Zheng Ren moved awkwardly but carefully as Fang Lin was lifted onto the vehicle with the help of others.
He did not want to tear open Fang Lin’s hepatic vein by accident. The consequences could be fatal.
He knelt on the stretcher trolley as a few doctors pushed them toward the operating room.
One of the doctors was an old man who could not keep up physically. He stopped and called the operating room, wheezing as he informed them of the injured doctor’s arrival.
Everyone was playing their part in the rescue operation. It was a life on the line, coworker or friend notwithstanding.
The young doctor was at the helm, pulling and steering the stretcher trolley. He also acted as an ambulance siren to get patients and bystanders out of the way.
The sight of a white coat on the stretcher trolley made passing doctors and nurses abandon their current duties.
No one knew the details of the incident but they all wanted to help.
Some assisted with pushing the stretcher trolley while others cleared the road ahead. Some helped summon the elevator to avoid wasting precious time.
Someone asked to take over Zheng Ren’s duty but he adamantly refused. He trusted no one but himself to keep Fang Lin’s bleed under control.
The journey from the clinic to the operating took five long minutes.
The anesthesiologist received a call to be on standby. Several other doctors and nurses arrived at the operating room.
The elevator door opened and the stretcher trolley was pushed out, leaving a trail of fresh blood in its wake.
The anesthesiologist, dressed in a blue isolation suit, took over the stretcher trolley from the doctors and nurses. Without a word, he pushed Zheng Ren and Fang Lin into the operating room.
Thus began the emergency rescue!
The sight of Zheng Ren kneeling on the stretcher trolley with one hand in the patient’s abdomen shocked many despite their being medical professionals.
Internal hemostatic control with one’s bare hands was something read about in books but hardly witnessed in person.
“Which vessel?” the anesthesiologist asked.
Zheng Ren forced out an answer. “Hepatic. I can’t let go.”
The anesthesiologist understood what Zheng Ren was doing.
An intravenous line and vital signs monitor were set up. Fang Lin’s blood pressure was so low that it was undetectable. A blood sample was sent to the hematology lab for blood typing.
A number of emergency drugs were pumped into Fang Lin’s veins through the intravenous line.
Zheng Ren was now kneeling on top of the operating table with the surgical light shining down on him. Disinfection was tricky, to say the least.
However, he could not move from his position.
Not even a muscle twitch.
The general surgery department chief rushed over and asked about the situation.
Once he was up to date, he scrubbed in and prepared to operate.
The thoracic chief surgeon was also present. Together, they set up a closed chest drainage system. Air bubbled in the water seal chamber when the drainage tube was inserted.
At the same time, the anesthesiologist attached a ventilator and started total anesthesia.
In the event of a tension pneumothorax, the ventilator would not be connected until a closed chest drainage system was set up.
Pumping air into a chest cavity that was not able to ventilate could cause lung collapse while the increased pressure would prevent oxygen uptake in the lungs.
It would kill the patient.
As total anesthesia was taking effect, the general surgeon laid out the surgical drapes and accessed the abdominal cavity through the incision Zheng Ren had made.
Fang Lin was on death’s door. Hence, the emergency rescue had to be carried out at the same time as anesthesia.
The damage was shocking.
The knife had sliced through part of the liver and diaphragm.
The surgeon shot a look at Zheng Ren. He knew that had it not been for Zheng Ren’s decisive actions controlling the bleed from the hepatic artery, Fang Lin would not have made it to the operating table.
“Young man, come on down. Let me handle this,” the surgeon said in a low voice.
Zheng Ren’s rational mind told him there was nothing more he could do, but his heart wanted to scrub in and fix the problem himself.
Logic won out in the end.
A gloved hand entered his field of vision and rested by his own.
The surgeon and him exchanged a glance. Zheng Ren nodded and removed his hand from the liver. The surgeon took over his duty.
Zheng Ren had to remind himself that this was Imperial Capital, not Sea City General Hospital.
As he climbed off the operation table, Zheng Ren’s vision darked.
The brightness of the surgical light had temporarily blinded him.
He shut his eyes and tried to relax.
However, as soon as his eyes were closed, the scene in the consultation room appeared in his mind.
It was the violence and cruelty of humanity on display.
Zheng Ren swayed slightly on his feet. He lacked the energy to walk out of the operating room.
He leaned on the wall of the operating room and slid down onto the floor.
One of the nurses noticed Zheng Ren’s odd behavior and gave him an opened bottle of glucose solution. With a gauze dipped in saline solution, she helped to wipe away the bloodstains on his body.
A deadly silence filled the operating room.
Deathly.
“Ah!” A cry broke the silence. “Get our ortho and hand surgeons!”
Eyes turned to look at Zheng Ren. There was an open wound bleeding out on his left shoulder.
Attempts to contain the bleed were futile as the blood simply seeped through layers of gauze.
This…
Had he been performing hemostatic control while injured?