Adrian Tang has been working for more than 40 hours without a break.
The Spring Festival is a festive day, full of excitement and family reunion. But that is for ordinary people. For ophthalmologists, the Spring Festival is a tough battle. At this time of year, many patients with eye injuries are sent from all over the country. Those whose eyes are injured by firecrackers must be arranged for emergency surgery immediately, racing against time to save as many eyes as possible.
From the time Adrian Tang was admitted to the hospital until today, he has never gone home to celebrate the Spring Festival.
An operation had just been completed. The instrument nurse was still checking the surgical instruments and the circulating nurse was helping to clean the operating table. Adrian Tang did not leave yet and sat on the chair in the operating room for a while.
The doctor on duty came in and whispered to him, "Director Tang, would you like to take a break? I just asked the emergency department, and there is no one who needs surgery at the moment."
He smiled bitterly before saying, "It's over now. I hope this is not just temporary."
Adrian Tang nodded and said, "I hope so."
Opposite Adrian Tang's office is the inpatient building. The hospital is not a place with a strong festive atmosphere. On this day, everyone who can go home has gone home. Those who are still hospitalized during the Spring Festival naturally have no mood to celebrate the festival. However, some family members still prepared small red lanterns, and small red lights can be seen through the windows.
Red is never a good color in hospitals, but at this time, the dots of red light make people feel warm.
Adrian Tang glanced at his phone. It was just past four in the morning.
I entered the operating room at 7pm and just came out now. After performing more than a dozen surgeries, I was so focused that my nerves were almost numb. In fact, I can't really relax now because the next emergency surgery may come at any time.
There was a simple folding bed in the office, which was prepared by the young doctor in the department. Knowing that he would be on duty in the hospital for the next few days, the doctors in the group had already made preparations for the war. Adrian Tang did not take it out to use, and he had to stay awake before dawn.
His phone was vibrating in the drawer. There were a lot of messages on it. Adrian Tang clicked on them and took a quick look. Most of them were New Year greetings, but there was no news from Miles Tang.
He opened the pinned message screen with Miles Tang and sent a message: Happy New Year, Xiao Ning.
Miles Tang did not reply to this message, probably because he fell asleep.
The last message between them in the chat interface was half a month ago. In the days before the New Year, they didn't even make a few phone calls.
After a simple wash, Adrian Tang lay on the desk for a while, half asleep and half awake. With his eyes closed, all that flashed through his mind were examination reports and eye CT images.
The ophthalmology department of the Third Hospital is well-known. Patients from other provinces who cannot be cured come here for hope. Patients with urgent eye injuries all come to the Third Hospital first, as if they will feel relieved and their eyes can be saved when they come here.
Adrian Tang is the deputy director of the Department of Ophthalmology of the Third Hospital and the best ophthalmologist in the department.
He is a direct student of Professor Xu Shi, the dean of the hospital. Professor Xu personally brought him back from abroad and asked him to return from scientific research to clinical practice, and from the laboratory to the operating room. Many patients would rather give up medical insurance and choose to pay for it themselves to come to the Third Hospital, for Professor Xu Shi and Adrian Tang.
Adrian Tang has a very steady hand, and he makes rigorous and decisive clinical emergency judgments. Some eye diseases that were sentenced to death by hospitals in other provinces have been improved after his treatment. Such patients regard him as a god.
He took a short break for less than two hours. Before six o'clock, a doctor from the team knocked on his door and said, "Director Tang, we have a second-line eye injury patient in the emergency department. His left eyeball is ruptured and his retina is detached. Please come over to the emergency department to take a look."
Adrian Tang was awake the moment the door opened. As soon as the doctor finished speaking, he stood up and followed the doctor out.
Any doctor in the ophthalmology department of the Third Hospital is good, but the patient's family member is an internist in this hospital and insisted that Adrian Tang perform the operation.
The patient was a four-year-old girl who was brought to her grandmother's home for the New Year. She was injured in the eye by the explosion of firecrackers during the midnight firecrackers. The area around her left eye was covered with burns from sparks, and there were also several on the right eyelid. The nearby county hospital could not perform this type of surgery, so it only performed emergency treatment, and the ambulance brought her here overnight.
The girl's father was an internal medicine resident in the hospital. At this moment, colleagues omitted unnecessary small talk and greetings. His professional qualities enabled him to calmly listen to the doctor's explanation of the possible consequences of the operation and then quickly signed. His wife cried hard, but tried to be quiet and not to disturb the doctor's work.
Retinal repositioning and complete suture, as far as this operation alone is concerned, Adrian Tang has completed it to the best degree of completion.
However, all reactions and developments after surgery are unpredictable. How much vision can be retained, whether the eyeball will shrink, whether the retina will detach again, etc., all of these will have to wait and see.
However, it is certain that it is impossible to completely heal this eye. The little girl may only have one eye left to see the world in the future. Fortunately, only one eye was injured. Adrian Tang had just undergone surgery on both ruptured eyes that night. The 17-year-old high school student will take the college entrance examination in a few months.
Everyone is equal in the face of injuries and illnesses, and no one will show any mercy because of your identity. High school students will need to undergo corneal transplants, but no one can predict how much vision they will retain.
---So there are no gods. No matter how great a doctor is, he is just a mortal.
It was already noon on the second day of the Chinese New Year when Adrian Tang left the hospital for a day off. After making his rounds, he went to the ward alone to see a few patients who needed special attention. The resident doctor followed him and whispered about the patients' postoperative conditions. After Adrian Tang explained everything, he changed his clothes and left work.
I haven't left the hospital for a few days. When I came in, it was still before the New Year, but now the New Year atmosphere has faded.
He went home to shower and change clothes. His parents called him several times to ask when he would be back. The two professors of traditional Chinese medicine were worried about him staying up late to work. Fortunately, Adrian Tang didn't usually have to work night shifts. There had been no news from Miles Tang on his phone, so Adrian Tang called him after taking a shower.
Miles Tang's call was answered by an intern. The young student's voice said, "Hello, Dr. Tang is not available right now."
Adrian Tang asked him: "In the operating room?"
The other party replied very politely: "Yes, Dr. Tang has an emergency operation. I will ask him to call you back when he comes out?"
Adrian Tang said: "No, it's nothing."
He and Miles Tang hadn't spoken on the phone for many days. Adrian Tang had forgotten why Miles Tang was angry with him. He was just too busy recently.
Miles Tang would stay angry for a long time every time, and he would cool down for a long time, so-called cooling off period. Adrian Tang was not good at coaxing, and when he was young, he tried to apologize and make peace every time, but it was fruitless, which only made Miles Tang angrier. So after a while, Adrian Tang stopped struggling.
This time, Adrian Tang even forgot why Miles Tang was angry, but Miles Tang still did not show up, did not answer the phone, and did not reply to the messages.
Adrian Tang had worked four days' shift and was very tired both nervously and mentally. He took a nap at home before returning to his parents' home.
Adrian Tang's parents are both professors of traditional Chinese medicine. His father has retired, but his mother is still busy and was rehired by the school to continue teaching. There has always been a gap between Chinese and Western medicine, each with its own direction and principles. If there are two types of medicine in a family, there may be frequent quarrels, but their family is very harmonious and there has never been any dispute.
When Adrian Tang went to study Western medicine, his parents supported him and were even proud of his achievements. The only regret they had was that they could not be completely assured of Adrian Tang's life. Over the years, they had accepted some things that could not be changed, but his and Miles Tang's life was too unstable.
"Is Xiao Tang on duty today?" Tang's mother asked casually.
"Yes, on duty." Adrian Tang nodded and picked up a fried dumpling from the plate his father was holding and ate it.
"Is he on night shift tonight? Why don't you ask him to come over and have dinner together tomorrow?" Mrs. Tang asked him while frying dumplings.
Adrian Tang came out of the kitchen, sat at the dining table and waited, saying, "He's busy lately, forget it."
His parents looked at him at the same time, and then continued to fry dumplings while one of them served the plate, and they tacitly agreed not to mention anything else.
He and Miles Tang have been together for so many years, and Miles Tang has only come to his house a limited number of times. At first, Adrian Tang's parents did not accept it, but later they accepted it. Miles Tang's relationship with them was not very good, and he did not like coming here. Of course, Adrian Tang did not go to the Tang family very often, and Miles Tang himself rarely went back.
Miles Tang said that he didn't want Adrian Tang to go to the Tang family.
While his parents were still in the kitchen preparing dinner, Adrian Tang took out his phone and sent a message to Miles Tang: Come over for dinner tomorrow?
Miles Tang did reply this time. Adrian Tang was eating when he received his reply: Night shift tomorrow.
Adrian Tang replied: Then why don't you come now? I'll pick you up?
Miles Tang: I won’t go. I have to work overtime and take good care of my uncle and aunt.
Adrian Tang put down his phone and continued eating.
Tang's father and mother would look up at him from time to time and pick up food for him. Adrian Tang wanted to pretend that he didn't see it, but the old couple looked at him too often. Adrian Tang laughed and asked, "Just say what you want to say. Why are you always looking at me?"
"No, nothing to say." Tang's mother still picked up some food for him, "You eat yours."
Adrian Tang smiled and said, "You guys don't look like you have nothing to say. Ask the professors."
The two professors still shook their heads and neither said anything more.
After dinner, Adrian Tang accompanied his father to drink health tea. The old man said that he didn't look good. Adrian Tang comforted him: "It's okay. I've been busy recently and I'm tired."
"How is it this year? Are there still so many patients?" asked the old man.
Adrian Tang said "hmm", pinched his brows and said, "On New Year's Eve and the first two days, we received more than 200 emergency visits for eye injuries."
"Ah..." His father sighed, "Isn't it forbidden to burn cigarettes?"
"If it's banned, there will only be more than 200. If it's not banned, the number will double."
"In my opinion, it should be banned completely, regardless of whether it's in the city or in the suburbs. Don't just focus on environmental protection, but also pay attention to your eyes, because it's not worth getting hurt from setting off firecrackers." Tang's mother came over with some fruit and felt uncomfortable after listening to this.
"Not all firecrackers, there are oil-breaking and ash-injecting ones, right?" Father Tang poured another cup of tea for Adrian Tang, shook his head and said, "Some children look forward to setting off some fireworks during the New Year to have some fun. It's not right to ban them all."
"Why don't you just join in the fun? Why do you have to do this?" Tang's mother still couldn't accept it. She felt sorry for those patients.
They drank tea and chatted for a while. Originally, his parents didn't want him to go home so late, but Adrian Tang had to go to work the next day and it was too far for him to walk from here.
"I'll get you some food for you to eat after get off work tomorrow. If you don't want to cook, just heat it up." When Tang's mother said this, she had already packed several lunch boxes and was putting them into her bag.
"No, I won't take it. I'm not sure when I can get off work, so I'll eat it in the hospital." Adrian Tang said.
"Then I'll pack two less lunch boxes for you? You can heat them up and eat them in the hospital at noon." She took out all the lunch boxes again.
Adrian Tang didn't insist, he smiled and said, "Okay."
Adrian Tang used to think his parents were always serious, but in recent years he has found them more and more lovable and childlike. Perhaps this transition between parents and children always needs to be completed.
Tang's mother took the bag and put it on the cabinet at the door. She also filled it with a lot of fruits, which were given to him by students during the Chinese New Year. She asked him to share them with his colleagues in the hospital.
Adrian Tang said: "They dare not take what I give them."
"You're too scary, aren't you?" Tang's mother said with a smile, "Smile more at work, don't always have a sullen face."
"I really don't. I'm quite calm. The interns avoid me when they see me." Adrian Tang said helplessly.
"You don't look friendly, just like me." His father continued, "My students used to tremble when they saw me."
"You're still showing off your good deeds." Tang's mother laughed, "Go home early and have a good rest."
Adrian Tang nodded, it was indeed time to go.
His mother stood at the door and watched him change his shoes. She held his coat for him, and handed him the coat when he finished putting on his shoes.
"You and Xiao Tang..." She hesitated and finally spoke. Adrian Tang looked at her, waiting for her to speak.
"You two broke up again, didn't you?"
Adrian Tang smiled and said, "That's not the case, no."
"I see that you are not right every time you come back. It doesn't seem like you are living together... If you break up, don't be afraid to tell me. Don't feel pressured." She looked at Adrian Tang's expression and continued tentatively, "Your dad and I have seen a lot of couples like this... It's normal to break up and get back together. If you are really alone, tell mom so that I can come to your place often to clean up."
"Really not." Adrian Tang looked down at his mother and said these carefully. He felt a little soft in his heart and hugged her with a smile, "Don't worry about me, I'm fine. Next time I'll let him go back with me. Don't think too much."
"Okay, just be nice..." His mother patted his arm as Adrian Tang hugged her, "He doesn't have to come if he doesn't want to, so stop making trouble."
"Okay." Adrian Tang nodded and raised his chin towards his father from a distance, "I'm leaving now."
"Let's go, drive slowly." said the old man over there.
Login to comment
Be the first one to comment...