Chapter 12 twelve

The first thing Louis noticed as he swerved into campus was the heavy traffic.Cars are crowded together, bicycles are crowded together, and there are many runners.He had to brake quickly to avoid hitting two men running from the direction of Dahn Hall.Louis braked so quickly that the seat belt tightened around his shoulders.He honked the horn.Louis was always annoyed at the runners on the road, and the cyclists were annoying too, as if they were irresponsible once they got on the road, they were exercising anyway.One of them gestured to Louis without turning his head. Louis sighed and continued driving.

Then Louis noticed the campus hospital ambulance pulling out of the parking lot.This made Louis feel a little unhappy and surprised.The school hospital is equipped to diagnose and treat almost any disease or condition that requires short-term treatment. There are three well-equipped examination and treatment rooms and two inpatient wards, each with 15 beds.But no operating theaters or anything like them.In the event of a serious illness or condition, the wounded or seriously ill have to be taken to the Eastern Maine Medical Center by ambulance.When Luis came to the school for the first time, Assistant Physician Steve showed him the proud record of using an ambulance for two years when he showed him around the school's medical facilities, only 38 times... If you consider that there are There are more than 10,000 students, and there are almost 20,000 students in the whole school. This record is not bad.

And now that Louis was at school, on his first real day of work, the school ambulance was out.What does this mean?Louis parked in the parking lot under a newly written sign for Dr. Creed's parking and hurried into the hospital.He went first to Miss Charlton, who was in her late twenties, with graying hair, but with a gentle and nimble movement.She is taking the temperature of a girl in jeans.Louis noticed that the girl had been sunburned not long ago, and her skin was peeling off. "Good morning, Charlton," said Lewis. "Where's the ambulance?" "Oh, we had a car accident here, it's all right." Charlton said as he took the thermometer out of the student's mouth, "Steve came in at 7 o'clock this morning and saw a car with the front wheels and There's a mess under the engine, the car's cooler fell off, and people pulled it away." "Okay." Louis relaxed a little, at least he didn't have to make a doctor's call, which was his worst fear. "Then when will the ambulance come back?" Charlton laughed and said, "You don't know that our school's shared car will, how come this car will come back around December 15th, covered in Christmas ribbons." Charlton glanced at the students and said, "You have a slight fever, half a degree higher than normal, just take two aspirin, just don't go to bars and hang out."

The girl got off the examination table, gave Louis a quick look, and walked out. Charlton shook the thermometer vigorously and said sharply: "This is our first patient in the new semester." "You seem unhappy with her." "I know this type of patient, oh, we have other types of patients -- athletes who want to play with osteoarthritis and myositis and whatnot, they just don't want to sit on the bench, and they don't even care about the future. How dangerous their lives are. And the lady who just had a fever—" Charlton tilted his head to the window, and Louis saw the girl who was in the consulting room just now walking towards the dormitory area go.In the consulting room the girl gave the impression of being physically uncomfortable, but now she was wriggling her hips and walking briskly, attracting attention.

Charlton inserted the thermometer into the disinfection box and said: "You will often see these difficult diseases on campus. We have to see her several times this year, especially before the various preliminary examinations. She will come more often. And Before the finals she'd say she was sure she'd got mona or pneumonia, bronchitis as a last resort. That way she'd get away with four or five exams--they had tricky teachers, that's what the students said .Then she can take the easier make-up exam. Students often get sicker when they know the exam is based on objective questions rather than essays."

"Jesus, we were cynical enough this morning," Lewis said.In fact, he was a little surprised. Charlton winked at him and said, "I don't care about it at all, doctor, and you shouldn't mind." Louis grinned and asked, "Where is Steve?" "In your In the office sorting letters from a heap of useless paper from the Blue Cross. Answering letters." Louis walked to the office, and although Charlton's cynical voice was still lingering in his ears, he felt that he was already a little light-packed. Later, when Louis dared to recall, he recalled that the nightmare that day really started around 10 am, when the dying child, Victor Pascoe, was carried into the infirmary.Until then, everything is peaceful.At 9:00, half an hour after Louis went to work, two volunteer female nurses who were on duty from 9:00 to 3:00 p.m. came.Louis gave them each a doughnut and a cup of coffee, and talked to them for about 15 minutes, telling them what jobs they should and shouldn't do.Then Charlton came in and took them away, and Louis heard her ask outside the office: "Aren't you two allergic to poop and vomit? You're going to see a lot of that stuff here."

"Oh, my God!" Louis whispered, covering his eyes with his hands, but he laughed again.The words of a sharp old boy like Charlton were not to be believed. Louis began to fill in various long forms sent by the Blue Cross, all of which were detailed names of medicines and medical devices. Louis remembered what Steve said: these things every year.Louis, why don't you list a complete set of heart transplant equipment, worth about 8 million dollars?That would surprise them!Louis was concentrating on thinking, Wei Wei felt that a cup of coffee would be quite comfortable.Suddenly Steve screamed from the direction of the waiting room in the foyer: "Louis! Hey, Louis! Come on! It's a mess!"

Steve's almost panicked voice made Louis stand up straight from his chair and run out quickly.Then he heard a squeaky squeal, then a harsh slam of the door, and Charlton said, "Stop it, or get out! Stop it!" Louis rushed into the waiting room, The first impression is blood, blood everywhere.One nurse was sobbing, and the other was pale, and she was putting her fisted hand in her mouth, making the corners of her mouth crooked, like a distorted grin.Steve is on his knees, trying to hold down the writhing head of the kid on the floor.He looked up at Louis, his eyes wide with fear, trying to say something, but nothing came out.

People gather outside the glass doors of the Student Medical Center, peering inside.Louis imagined an unnatural image in his head: it seemed that a child under 6 years old was watching TV in the morning with his mother who was going to work.He looked around and saw that there were people standing outside the window as well.He couldn't cover the door, but the window still— He snapped at the nurse who had just screamed, "Draw the curtains." The nurse didn't do it right away, and Charlton slapped her instrument box. "Go, ma'am!" The nurse moved like clockwork, and after a while the green curtains were all drawn.Charlton and Steve moved instinctively between the boy lying on the floor and the door, trying not to let anyone outside see inside.Charlton asked: "doctor, do you want a stretcher? Get one if you need it." Louis squatted beside Steve and said, "I haven't had time to see how he is." Charlton said to the man who just pulled the curtain The nurse said, "Come here." The girl looked at Charlton again with that slanted mouth in agony, and whispered, "Oh, whoops!"

Charlton jerked the girl to help, saying, "Yeah, it looks scary, but hurry up." Louis leaned over to examine the first patient he'd seen since arriving at UMaine.It was a young man of about twenty, and it took Louis three seconds to make the diagnosis: the young man was dying.Half of his head had been crushed, his neck had snapped, and a collarbone had protruded from his swollen, twisted right shoulder.A yellow, pus-like liquid trickled from his head and onto the carpet.Louis could see the gray brain of the young man, still beating through a shattered skull, like through broken glass.The slit in the head is about 5 cm wide, and if there was a baby in his head, the baby could be born through the slit, just like Zeus gave birth to his child from his forehead.And it's unbelievable that this young man is still alive.Chad's words popped in Louis's head: Sometimes you can fucking feel it.Then his mother's voice: Death is death.Louis had a crazy sense of wanting to laugh.Well, death is death.My fellow, that's for sure.

"Call an ambulance," Louis yelled at Steve, "we—" "Louis, the ambulance has-" "Oh, God!" Louis patted his forehead, remembering that the ambulance had gone out in the morning, he looked at Charlton and asked, "Charlton, what do you do in this situation? There is no ambulance, Should it be the police car from Campus Security or the ambulance from State Emergency Services?" Charlton looked panic-stricken and dejected—a rare thing for her, Louis thought.But her voice remained calm when she answered: "Doctor, I don't know. We've never had anything like this since I've been working in the school infirmary." Louis thought as fast as he could, and said, "Call the campus police. We didn't have time to call EMS to send their ambulance. They could take him to Bangor in a fire truck. At least the fire truck has sirens and lights. Go ahead, Charlton." Charlton was out, and Louis had neither seen nor had time to understand the deep sympathy in her eyes.No matter what they do, the young man is going to die.Even if the school ambulance had been parked outside with the engine running when he was brought in, the young man would have died. Incredibly, the dying man moved.His eyes moved and opened.The eyes were blue, with blood all over the irises.The eyes looked around blankly, but saw nothing.He tried to move his head, and Louis pinned him down hard, because Louis was thinking about the young man's broken neck, and head trauma could be excruciatingly painful. The hole in his head, oh god, the hole in his head. Louis asks Steve, "How did he do that?" Just as he's out of his mouth, he realizes that it's a silly and pointless question to ask in this situation, a bystander's question.But the hole in the young man's head makes him feel that he is also a bystander, because no one can do anything.Louis then asked, "Did the police send him here?" "A few students wrapped it in a blanket. I don't know what happened." Steve replied.Louis immediately thought of what might have happened, and it was his responsibility.He said: "Go get them and take them to the other door. I want them to be there when they are called, but I don't want them to see these horrible scenes again." As if getting out of here would relieve Steve, he stands up and walks towards the door, which opens to a flurry of excited, curious, and bewildered conversations.Louis also heard the siren of the police car, and the school police were coming soon.Louis felt sad, but also a little relieved. There was a gurgling sound in the throat of the dying young man, and he tried to speak.Louis could make out some syllables, but not what he was saying.Louis leaned over and said, "Boy, you'll be fine." But he was thinking about his wife and daughter, and his stomach hurt.He quickly covered his mouth with his hands, restraining himself. The young man said, "Ka, ga—" Louis looked around and saw that for a moment he was alone with the young man.Dimly he could hear Charlton yelling to the nurse that the stretcher was in the second storage room.Louis doubted that they would be able to find the storage room, since it was their first day at work.They know all kinds of medicines very well.The green carpet near the young man's head has been soaked with purple blood like mud, and the young man's brain fluid has stopped flowing out. "At the pet cemetery," the young man said hoarsely, and he opened his mouth to laugh.It was a smile similar to that of a nurse who draws the curtains. Louis looked down at him, beginning to disbelieve what he was hearing.Then I thought I must be hallucinating.Young people make voices, and I myself subconsciously associate them with similar things in my experience.But after a while he realized he wasn't hallucinating.There was a wave of fear in his heart, and a layer of goose bumps appeared on his body.But he still couldn't believe it.Yes, the words were on the young man's bloody mouth on the carpet, and in Louis's ear, but that only meant that it was a hallucination that could be seen and heard. Louis asked in a low voice, "What did you say?" This time, the young man stared blankly, bloodshot eyes, like a talking parrot or a starling, and said clearly: "That's not a real cemetery." Louis suddenly felt terrified. He put his hands on his chest and his heart tightened.This feeling made him feel smaller and smaller, and he wanted to slip away.He was not a religious man, nor did he believe in any superstitions, but in any case he was unprepared for the event. Louis tried his best to restrain the feeling of wanting to run, and forced himself to lean closer to the young man, and asked a second time, "What did you say?" What's worse, the young man still showed that wicked smile, and whispered, "Louis, a man's heart is harder than a rock. A man reaps what he sows, and he reaps what he sows." Hearing his own name, Louis was startled, oh God!He called my name—Louis. Louis asked weakly and tremblingly, "Who are you? Who are you?" "Yin Zhang brought my fish." "How do you know my—" "Stay out of the way, we. Know—" "you" "Ka," said the young man, and Louis could smell the death of the young man now, in his breath, in his wounds, in his staccato speech, in his failures and catastrophes. A crazy idea appeared in Louis's mind, and he said, "What?" "Gah—" The young man in the red gym shorts began to shake, as if every muscle in him froze suddenly, and his eyes lost their blank look and fixed on Louis's.And then it's all over.Young people die. Louis sat back, vaguely feeling that his clothes were soaked in sweat.There seems to be a wing flapping gently in front of my eyes, there is darkness, and the world seems to start to retreat.Realizing he was about to faint, Louis half-turned, resting his head on his knees, and pinched his gums so hard they were bleeding with the nails of his left thumb and index finger.After a while, the world became clear again.