Chapter 106 - 105: A Sense of Helplessness

Chapter 106: Chapter 105: A Sense of Helplessness

Led by a siren-blaring police escort, Yu Zhiming, Director Zhao, and a dozen or so of Huashan Hospital’s top medical personnel raced toward the accident scene in three ambulances.

Before getting in the ambulance, Yu Zhiming had received Director Zhao’s instructions.

Upon arrival, Yu Zhiming was to establish a temporary medical center out of one of the ambulances.

He would be responsible for rapidly assessing the seriously injured and providing emergency treatment as needed.

The goal was to buy the victims enough time to hold on until they could receive comprehensive treatment at the hospital.

Director Zhao Shan had also assigned two assistants to Yu Zhiming.

One was Sun Mingqi, a Deputy Chief Physician from General Surgery, and the other was Chen Li, an attending physician from the outpatient emergency department.

While racing to the scene, Yu Zhiming heard more information about the crash.

A tour bus carrying nearly fifty people had, for unknown reasons, plunged off an overpass nearly ten meters high, landing right in the middle of the main road below.

This made Yu Zhiming’s heart tighten.

’This is rush hour...’

Dr. Sun Mingqi, who had been assigned to assist, noticed that Yu Zhiming, sitting across from him, had a taut face and an unusually serious expression. He knew the younger doctor was nervous.

Sun Mingqi offered some advice, "Dr. Yu, when treating the seriously injured at an accident scene, you don’t need to focus on fractures. The top priority is major hemorrhaging. That’s what can kill someone in minutes."

"Dr. Yu, stopping the bleeding is all on you."

Hearing this, Yu Zhiming couldn’t help but look down at the "divine weapon" in his hands.

It was a set of expandable balloons for percutaneous intervention.

It was a type of flexible catheter with an inflatable balloon at its tip. Under imaging guidance, it could be used to dilate narrowed hollow organs in the human body, such as blood vessels, the digestive tract, the urinary tract, and respiratory passages.

In its uninflated state, the catheter’s tip is guided to the target lesion, where the balloon is then inflated.

Once the therapeutic goal is achieved, the balloon can be deflated and the catheter withdrawn from the body.

In an emergency, this balloon could be inflated to obstruct a major blood vessel, achieving rapid hemostasis.

Director Zhao Shan had specially prepared this for Yu Zhiming.

Director Zhao was highly anticipating that after Yu Zhiming identified the main bleeding points, he would use a precise puncture technique to accurately insert the balloon just upstream of the ruptured vessel, achieving rapid hemostasis and buying time for the patient’s transport and subsequent treatment.

Sun Mingqi continued to explain, "Next is visceral injuries. The focus is on emergency stabilization—just enough to get the patient to the hospital."

"Also, you have to be ruthless in your triage."

Sun Mingqi said with a grim tone, "Some patients will be too severely injured. You have to give up on them quickly. We don’t have time to waste."

Yu Zhiming nodded. "Thank you for the advice, Dr. Sun. I have studied field emergency medicine before."

"I just haven’t had a chance to put it into practice, especially not on a scene of this scale."

He looked at the thirty-one-year-old Chen Li beside him and said, "Dr. Chen, get a pen and paper ready..."

"Follow me and record the patients’ injuries, so they can receive targeted treatment quickly when they arrive at the hospital."

Chen Li grunted in acknowledgment. "Dr. Yu, I’ll record every one of your diagnostic findings without missing a thing..."

Seven or eight minutes later, the Huashan Hospital ambulance convoy finally arrived at the cordoned-off accident scene.

As Yu Zhiming got out of the ambulance, his ears were filled with a cacophony of overlapping shouts, orders, and, mixed within, the suffocating sounds of crying and screaming...

The next moment, he felt a slap on the back of his head.

"What are you gawking at? Get to work!"

Snapping out of it, Yu Zhiming saw Director Zhao Shan hurry past him, carrying a large first-aid kit and leading two other people toward the crash site, from which wisps of smoke were still rising...

Just as Yu Zhiming, Sun Mingqi, and Chen Li finished unloading two folding gurneys from the ambulance, two firefighters ran over, carrying a blood-soaked victim on a stretcher.

As the patient was being transferred to the gurney, Yu Zhiming’s hands were already on his body.

"Brain... clear!"

"Left lung collapsed, tension pneumothorax!"

"Fractures in the left clavicle, second and third ribs on the left, second rib on the right..."

"Approximately 500 milliliters of fluid in the abdominal cavity, minor bleeding from the right kidney and liver, ruptured bladder..."

In two minutes at most, Yu Zhiming had completed his assessment of the patient’s thoracic and abdominal visceral injuries.

This diagnostic speed left Sun Mingqi dumbfounded.

He had just finished intubating the patient and hadn’t even had time to address the open fracture on the man’s right arm.

Just then, Sun Mingqi saw firefighters bringing over another victim. The current patient’s open arm fracture could be handled in the ambulance.

He ordered the ambulance paramedics waiting nearby, "Get this patient to the hospital, now!"

Hearing this, Chen Li tore off the note where he had quickly jotted down the injuries and stuck it to the patient’s chest...

The second patient. As soon as Yu Zhiming placed a hand on his chest, his heart sank.

The man’s chest was caved in by five or six centimeters.

Not only was his heart pierced by a broken rib, but it was also crushed flat.

Yu Zhiming could clearly feel that the heart was on the verge of rupturing and completely falling apart.

But miraculously, it was still beating!

"There’s no hope for me, is there?"

Yu Zhiming looked at the middle-aged man, who was still conscious and had a clear premonition of his fate, and nodded without trying to hide the truth.

"Then how much time do I have left?"

Yu Zhiming told him the honest truth. "The fact that you’re conscious and able to speak right now is a miracle."

"Maybe only three to five minutes."

The man immediately said, "This all happened so suddenly. I have some important things I need to take care of."

"Could you please record my last words?"

Yu Zhiming quickly had Dr. Chen record a farewell video for the dying man, who remained lucid and calm...

"My name is Liu Yizhi. My mind is still clear. I would like to make the following arrangements for my affairs..."

"One, my company and all my shares in other companies are to go to my wife and daughter..."

With the third patient who came next, Yu Zhiming finally got to use the expandable balloon.

His renal artery was torn and bleeding uncontrollably.

Using a puncture needle, Yu Zhiming successfully inserted the balloon catheter into the proximal end of the renal artery on the first try. He then inflated it, temporarily occluding the artery.

From detecting the torn renal artery to locating the vessel and finally stopping the bleeding, the entire process took less than a minute.

This astounded Sun Mingqi once again...

"Quick, quick, Doctor! Save him!"

Urged on by a firefighter’s cries, Yu Zhiming received the fourth patient.

"Don’t bother transferring him."

Yu Zhiming stopped the two firefighters from moving the patient and removed his hand from the man’s chest on the stretcher.

"No heartbeat or breathing. Move him to the other side."

As soon as Yu Zhiming made his pronouncement, one of the firefighters couldn’t help but cry out, "How can that be?"

"How?!"

"He was just talking to me! He said he didn’t want to die, that he wasn’t married yet, that his parents were waiting for him to come home for the National Day holiday!"

"Doctor, Doctor, don’t give up! Haven’t lots of people been revived even after their heart and breathing stopped?"

"Save him! I’m begging you, save him!"

Yu Zhiming looked at the young firefighter, who was a few years younger than him and still had a touch of youthful naivety, and shook his head.

"His injuries are too severe. There’s nothing we can do."

The young firefighter broke down completely. He slammed a fist against his own head and cried, "If I had just been a little faster, if I had gotten him out a moment sooner, he would have been okay."

"It’s my fault, my fault... WAAH..."

Seeing the young firefighter like this, Yu Zhiming also felt a pang of anguish, wishing he had the power to bring the dead back to life.

’But he was just a young doctor with limited abilities...’

Over the next hour, Yu Zhiming successively treated another eight seriously injured patients.

For two of them, there was nothing he could do.

For the other six, after clearly assessing their internal injuries, Yu Zhiming did everything in his power to provide emergency treatment.

On one patient alone, Yu Zhiming used five expandable balloons just to stop the bleeding.

Another patient had a torn branch of an abdominal artery. After using a balloon for hemostasis, Yu Zhiming saw there was still time and proceeded to perform a small external bypass surgery to restore blood supply.

Brain and myocardial cells are sensitive to hypoxia; cell necrosis occurs after four to six minutes of ischemia.

Other cells and tissues in the human body are more resistant, with cell necrosis generally beginning after twenty minutes.

It’s worth noting that partial cell necrosis doesn’t mean the entire organ is lost.

For example, human organs and limbs can still be successfully reattached hours after being severed.

However, necrotic damage at the cellular level is unavoidable and requires a long recovery process.

Therefore, for reattachment and transplantation surgeries, the shorter the interval, the better.

The same is true for visceral ischemia—the shorter, the better.

By performing the bypass surgery, Yu Zhiming partially restored blood supply from the patient’s abdominal artery branch, which could reduce the hypoxic damage to the abdominal organs...

After a heart-pounding hour of work, no more patients were brought to him.

Yu Zhiming understood why.

Patients with injuries as severe as the ones he had seen would have a hard time surviving for over an hour without effective treatment.

And the less severely injured didn’t need to be sent to him.

Finally having a moment of respite, Yu Zhiming’s gaze involuntarily turned to an empty patch of ground nearby.

Three gray body bags lay there. Inside were three people, including the middle-aged man who had calmly recorded his last words!

They lay there quietly, waiting to be transported.

An indescribable anguish welled up inside Yu Zhiming, along with a profound sense of powerlessness...

Sun Mingqi gently patted Yu Zhiming’s shoulder a few times and comforted him, "Look on the bright side. You saved eight people."

Yu Zhiming let out a long breath. "I only managed to keep them breathing for now. They still have to face a life-or-death struggle at the hospital."

"If even five of them end up surviving, I’ll be thanking my lucky stars."

Just then, a young doctor came running toward them, shouting as he ran.

"Dr. Yu, come quick! You’re needed over here!"