Chapter 114: Courage (1) |
"..."
What kind of joke is this?
Why the hell is Old Song here?
Glass shards scattered everywhere. The sudden sharp crash made him the center of attention. Countless gazes turned toward him, and time seemed to freeze, wrapping everyone in a viscous atmosphere. Zhang Shutong could feel the muscles around his eyes stretching bit by bit, until he struggled free from this frozen moment with all his might.
"What happened to him?" Zhang Shutong asked urgently. "What's going on? He's my homeroom teacher, a teacher from Yingcai Junior High..."
But the lead male nurse clearly had no time to deal with him. Instead, he was startled by the shattered IV bottle:
"Head injury, excessive blood loss—watch yourself! There are so many people in this hallway. We'll talk about this later!"
Before the man finished speaking, the hospital bed's wheels continued rolling, beating against his heart like urgent drumbeats. The nurses threaded through the crowded corridor, and he could only catch fragments of their rapid conversation:
"I just got here. Xiao Li, Xiao Hu—you two went with the ambulance. What's the situation?"
"Head trauma, no bleeding from ears, nose, or ear canal. Chest and abdomen show contusions. Currently suspecting splenic rupture—internal bleeding would be trouble..."
"The bleeding itself isn't too severe, but he lost blood for too long. By the time he was discovered, he was already unconscious."
"Level 2 critical condition, hurry..."
Critical condition...
But the emergency room doors had already slammed shut with a bang.
Only then did Zhang Shutong realize he'd followed them all the way to the entrance.
All this happened in the blink of an eye. A massive sense of vertigo surged through his brain. He desperately wanted to rush over and demand answers—what exactly did "Level 2 critical" mean? Was the man's life in danger? What had he been through? But now the cold metal door blocked everything off. Zhang Shutong just stood there at the entrance until that young nurse came running out:
"What's wrong? What happened?"
She approached Zhang Shutong and noticed the needle in his hand. Blood had already flowed backward, spreading into a faint red line.
"You need to remove that needle right away!"
Without further ado, she grabbed Zhang Shutong's hand and calmly pulled out the needle:
"Press on it yourself. Don't just stand there dazed."
Zhang Shutong instinctively pressed down on the wound.
The young nurse wanted to say something more, but someone in the ward was already calling out: "Nurse, change the dressing—"
"I heard you! Coming, coming!" She shouted back, then turned to run back to the ward. "Go back quickly. There's someone cleaning outside. When I'm done, I'll come give you a new IV. Don't just stand there like an idiot..."
Everyone was frantically busy.
Yet Zhang Shutong stared at the emergency room doors without moving.
The green light above the door had turned an alarming red. The earlier commotion was like a stone cast into surging waves—not even a splash remained.
This was a hospital, where life and death played out constantly. No wonder others seemed indifferent. The crowd had merely glanced for a moment before going about their own business—buying meals, using the restroom, smoking. Meanwhile, he paced anxiously outside the door, forcing himself to calm down.
What on earth had happened?
Hadn't they just eaten lunch together?
Ruoping said Old Song suddenly had urgent business and couldn't drive them home, which meant he must have driven off somewhere...
So was it a car accident?
But if it was a traffic accident, why did that nurse say he was already unconscious when he was found?
Where the hell had his homeroom teacher driven to?
Zhang Shutong inhaled and exhaled. The people who knew were all inside the emergency room—there wasn't a single person he could ask.
For the first time, he realized all he could do was wait. Anxiety crawled up his heart like countless tentacles, pulling so tight he couldn't breathe. His head was already dizzy, and now it began to ache. Zhang Shutong threw himself onto a chair across from the emergency room and instinctively began searching "splenic rupture symptoms."
The network here was poor. The data bar at the top of the browser took forever to finish loading. Finally, the screen refreshed, and a stream of data flooded his vision:
"...True rupture causes abdominal hemorrhaging in patients, with a mortality rate up to 90%. With timely treatment, the overall cure rate is approximately 50%..."
Zhang Shutong cursed under his breath and turned off his phone.
They say searching symptoms online always leads to terminal illness diagnoses—that wasn't wrong at all. What a mess. He should never have searched in the first place. But as he scratched at his hair, that string of cold statistics seemed branded into his mind.
Too sudden.
So sudden there wasn't the slightest warning.
How could someone suddenly be dying?
The matter with Gu Qiumian hadn't even reached a conclusion yet. He was still in the hospital getting an IV, just waiting for everything to come to light tonight so he could finally catch his breath. But now his teacher had suddenly been admitted to the hospital, separated from him by a single door, his life hanging in the balance.
And he could do nothing but wait outside.
A sense of helplessness washed over him, until the metal door in front of him opened. Zhang Shutong's head snapped up.
"That student—yes, you!"
It was the lead male nurse from before. The man walked over in a few quick steps:
"What's your teacher's name?"
"Song Nanshan." Zhang Shutong quickly stood up. "East, south, west, north—that 'south.' High mountain—that 'mountain.'"
The man was holding a phone—he recognized it as Old Song's.
"What about his family? Parents, spouse—anyone will do. Do you know how to contact them?"
"No."
"Do you mean you don't know, or there isn't anyone?"
"There just isn't anyone." Zhang Shutong suddenly found himself at a loss for words. "His parents are out of town and can't get back. As for a spouse... my teacher is single."
As for Old Song's colleagues and friends... he tried to recall but drew only blanks.
Zhang Shutong froze. Only now did he realize he didn't truly understand this man. The other was a carefree, easygoing fellow—righteous and informal. Someone like that should have had plenty of friends, yet he'd never seen the man be particularly social. Even when drinking, he'd buy beer and drink it in his dorm. The only ones who usually hung around him were a few kids like themselves.
"Not a single person?" The male nurse confirmed again.
"No." Zhang Shutong pressed further: "How is he now? I heard you mention internal organ bleeding earlier, so..."
"That's not the only problem now."
The man anxiously interrupted him:
"Your teacher has severe blood loss and urgently needs a transfusion, but we haven't gotten his blood type results back yet. We simply can't operate—all we can do is some basic hemostatic measures and maintain him with medication."
It was clearly winter, yet Zhang Shutong saw the man wipe sweat from his brow. The male nurse spoke quickly again:
"You're not the only one anxious—we all are. Right now, everyone's just waiting for the test results. They should be out any moment. But we're a small hospital. Our blood bank doesn't stock every blood type. If he has one of the common types, that's fine—he'll have made it through the hardest hurdle, and we can arrange surgery immediately. But if he has..."
But if it was a rare blood type, they'd be thoroughly screwed.
Zhang Shutong silently completed the sentence, a sense of foreboding rising in his heart. But this ominous feeling didn't linger long before it transformed into a falling blade—
Because the emergency room light had already gone out.
The door opened. Those nurses and doctors rushed out again, pushing the bed in a hurry, with various medical devices hanging from the bed frame.
"Results are in—Type O," an older doctor ordered. "Xiao Hu, call the city hospitals right now and ask who still has blood bags. Then tell the ambulance to prepare to move. We can't delay another second!
"The rest of you, get the patient into the vehicle immediately. Monitor his heart rate constantly throughout and be ready to inject at any moment. It's five o'clock now—we can still make the ferry... Xiao Li!"
The man called out again.
"Here!" The male nurse immediately responded.
"Xiao Li! How's it going with the patient's family you were trying to contact? Where are they? Just tell them to go straight to the dock—don't come to the hospital. We need to save time!"
But Xiao Li hesitated:
"I haven't been able to reach the patient's family yet. His phone is password-locked. I just asked the patient's student—he said his parents are both out of town, he's single, no friends or anything..."
"He's a teacher? Then quickly contact the school leadership. I don't care who—anyone will do. Someone must be on the ambulance when we go to the city!"
"The school contact number isn't answering. It's Saturday..."
"Who called 120 in the first place? Where are they?"
"They didn't come with us..."
"Didn't I emphasize that the first responder must be brought along!"
"But that person..."
Both were growing frantic.
"I'll go." Zhang Shutong propped himself up and stood. He forced down his dizziness. "Don't delay any longer. I can go with you. I'll get in the ambulance right now."
"You..." The doctor saw he was just a kid and instinctively wanted to refuse.
"My parents are both in the city. I can contact them to come help." Zhang Shutong looked into the man's eyes while pulling out his phone to send a text.
"All right then." The doctor gritted his teeth. "We can't delay. Xiao Li, you take this kid with you. Get in the vehicle right now. Quick—the patient's heart rate is dropping again..."
Nurse Li immediately ran to the front of the bed to clear the way: "Make way!"
Zhang Shutong followed at the end of the bed. This was his first time seeing Old Song's face. Zhang Shutong glanced over—the man's brow was furrowed, half his face wrapped in bandages. The situation looked grim. Perhaps he wouldn't even make it to the hospital—he might stop breathing halfway there. Zhang Shutong didn't look again, instead quickly doing calculations in his mind.
It was five o'clock now.
Assuming it would take ten minutes to reach the port, and the ferry ride to the city was twenty minutes one way, that would be five-thirty. Today was Saturday—traffic in the city would be congested. Assuming another twenty minutes to the hospital, it would be five-forty.
The last ferry was at six in the evening. In other words, if he couldn't make it back to the port by six, he'd be stuck in the city tonight.
Mathematics told him not to go, but his heart told him he had to go.
In the midst of this choice, they'd already run downstairs. Zhang Shutong helped the nurse lift the stretcher and carefully loaded Old Song into the vehicle. Then he turned and ran.
"Aren't you coming with us?"
Xiao Li shouted.
"I'm taking my bike!"
Zhang Shutong shouted back. He quickly mounted his motorcycle, ignited it, and started it up. He knew that if he took the ambulance, he definitely wouldn't make it back. Only by riding the motorcycle could he race against time.
Zhang Shutong twisted the throttle and sped off. He was much faster than the ambulance—reaching the port in just seven minutes. This was rush hour. A ferry was docked at the shore, with staff slowly retracting the gangway. The horn sounded, the engine roared. The ship was about to leave any moment. Zhang Shutong suddenly accelerated, the bike's rear end carving an arc on the ground as he quickly called out to stop them:
"Wait! There's an emergency patient—the ambulance will be here in three minutes. I'm leading the way!"
His choice to come along had been right.
No one would joke about something like this. The staff believed him without question. Zhang Shutong rode onto the ship. It was nearly full, so he asked the staff to help clear an open area for the ambulance.
After finishing all this, he could faintly hear the siren. He breathed a sigh of relief. When the ambulance came to a stable stop on the deck, he immediately ran to the rear door:
"How is he?"
"All right for now. We just gave him an injection of saline." Xiao Li added, "We got word back from the city hospitals—First People's Hospital. You know where that is, right?"
Zhang Shutong nodded. He took advantage of this time to call his mother. She and his father had been eating at a restaurant. Upon receiving the text, they dropped their chopsticks and drove over immediately.
"So we'll wait for you and your teacher at the hospital?" His mother said seriously.
"Yeah, we'll be there at five-thirty."
"All right. I actually have a classmate in the emergency department. I'll call and ask—I'll get back to you..."
His mother always believed in him at critical moments.
Zhang Shutong hung up. He didn't plan to blow in the lake wind on deck, so he walked into the ambulance and sat down.
Only now did he have time to ask Xiao Li where exactly Old Song had been found.
"The western suburbs. When we got there, the car had already gone off the road. All the airbags had deployed. Your teacher was already unconscious."
"What did he hit?" Zhang Shutong was taken aback.
"A tree. Probably fatigued driving or the car skidded," Xiao Li muttered. "These kinds of accidents happen whenever it snows. Can't really say whose fault it is. Plus, that place has no surveillance cameras. Let me give you another example—we had a patient before who swerved to avoid a kid who ran into the road. He spun out, lost consciousness. That kid saw he'd caused trouble, didn't make a sound, and just ran off. A passerby discovered it. In a case like that, who can you blame?"
"Were there any other traces at the scene? My teacher wouldn't drive while fatigued, and he shouldn't lose control of his car either." Zhang Shutong knew Song Nanshan's driving skills.
"Hard to say. The ones who have accidents most often are experienced drivers. Besides, we're not police or insurance investigators. We only cared about getting him out of the car first—no time to investigate the scene. Though I did take photos. Here, take a look."
Zhang Shutong took the phone and enlarged the image. The front half of that Focus was completely caved in from the middle. The driver's side window had a hole shattered through it. Old Song was damn lucky—if the position had been slightly off, he wouldn't have even had a chance to be rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.
According to regulations, the ambulance would only photograph the accident scene, so the pictures only showed the car with no additional clues. Zhang Shutong looked them over repeatedly before returning the phone.
He'd been circling the island all afternoon. If Old Song had crashed in the western suburbs, there was no reason he wouldn't have seen his car. But he definitely hadn't seen it, which at least proved the accident happened while he was on his way back.
"What about the person who called the ambulance? Why didn't they come along?"