Chapter 352 Saving Lives with Bacteriophages!

He picked up the two little ones, Ping An and Ning Jing, one in each arm, and turned to walk into the house: "Don't worry. I'm here at home, nothing can go wrong."

Ping An leaned on Gu Beichen's shoulder, sniffed, and called out in a muffled voice, "Mommy, I'm scared of injections."

"Don't be afraid." Su Yue patted his chubby bottom. "Mommy is going to give someone a shot."

She turned and disappeared into the rain, her steps hurried.

This is the flu.

And it's not just the common flu.

Upon arriving at the General Hospital of the Military Region, a sense of oppression immediately enveloped me.

The corridors of the fever clinic were packed with people, and there weren't enough IV stands. Some parents simply stood against the wall holding up their IV drips.

The sounds of children crying, adults scolding, and doctors and nurses rushing around, mixed with disinfectant and musty dampness, assaulted my senses.

"Dr. Su! You've finally arrived!"

Head Nurse Zhang was covered in sweat, clutching a handful of thermometers as if they were lifelines. "The child in bed number 3 is in critical condition. He has a fever of 42 degrees Celsius and is having seizures! Dr. Liu just gave him a sedative, but it didn't work!"

Without saying a word, and without even changing into her white coat, Su Yue threw her bag on the triage desk, grabbed her stethoscope, and ran to the emergency room.

"Whose child is this?"

“That martyr’s orphan from the First Regiment, Tiedan!” Sister Zhang followed behind, her voice trembling. “His mother works at the cannery. She was working overtime last night and didn’t pay attention. The child had a fever all night, and when he was brought here, he was unresponsive.”

Su Yue paused in her tracks.

Iron Egg.

The child whose father died clearing mines on the border, and whose mother raised him alone.

The air pressure in the emergency room was frighteningly low.

The electrocardiogram monitor emitted a piercing alarm sound.

On the hospital bed, the five-year-old child was as thin as a cat, his chest heaving violently, each breath sounding like a bellows, and a hoarse gurgling sound coming from his throat.

"Administer oxygen! Establish intravenous access!" Su Yue placed the stethoscope on the child's chest.

The lungs were filled with moist rales.

It's like a boiling kettle.

"Have you done the penicillin skin test?" Su Yue asked.

"The test was negative. We've already given eight million units intravenously, but it didn't work." Dr. Liu, on duty, took off his mask, his face full of frustration. "We've also used streptomycin in combination, but it still didn't work. The fever just won't go down, and the blood oxygen keeps dropping."

Su Yue grabbed the X-ray film from the bedside table and plugged it into the viewing lamp.

*Smack*

The lights came on.

On those two lung lobes, large patches of white shadows were shocking, as if thick fog had swallowed up the original texture.

"White lung." Su Yue tore the film off. "This is influenza virus combined with a severe bacterial infection, and it's drug-resistant bacteria. Conventional antibiotics simply can't penetrate it."

"What should we do then?" Dr. Liu asked anxiously, wringing his hands. "Are we just going to leave it like this?"

Su Yue didn't speak, but turned and walked out: "Notify the expert group that there will be a consultation in the conference room in ten minutes. Also, retrieve the medical records of those critically ill children from before; I need to see their drug resistance spectrum."

The conference room was filled with smoke.

Several internal medicine department directors sat around the table, frowning at the X-ray film.

“Transfer him to another hospital.” Liao, a senior director of the internal medicine department, tapped the table and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “This child’s condition is too critical. Our hospital’s equipment and medicines are inadequate. Send him to Beijing. They have imported ventilators and more advanced antibiotics there.”

"Transfer to another hospital?" Su Yue sat at the end of the table, twirling a pen in her hand, the cap making a soft tapping sound on the table. "Director Liao, it takes five hours to get from Hainan Island to Beijing, even by military plane. With Tie Dan's current blood oxygen saturation, the pressure change during takeoff could rupture his alveoli."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Director Liao took off his glasses and slammed them on the table. "Keeping him here is a death sentence! Sending him out means at least we've done our best. If he dies in our hands, how can we face his martyr father? How can we face his mother who fainted from crying at the door?"

This is the absolute truth.

It's also a way of shirking responsibility.

Once it's on the plane, this hot potato is finally out of the way.

Whether he died on the road or in Beijing, that had nothing to do with the Hainan Island Military Region General Hospital.

The conference room was deathly silent.

Several young doctors lowered their heads, not daring to utter a sound.

Su Yue stopped spinning her pen.

She stood up, pulled out a chair, and walked to the whiteboard in front of her.

Swish, swish, swish.

She wrote a chemical formula on it and then drew a microscopic diagram of what looked like a lunar module.

"Bacteriophage".

She turned around and looked directly at everyone present. "This is the fourth variant strain I isolated in my lab. It has an extremely strong lytic ability against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. You've all seen the previous animal experiment data; the sterilization rate is 99% within two hours."

"Nonsense!" Director Liao slammed his hand on the table. "That's lab data! Those are lab mice! Tiedan is a human being! He's the orphan of a martyr! You dare use him for experiments? This stuff doesn't have clinical trial approval. Who's responsible if something goes wrong?"

"I'll take responsibility."

Three words, each one resounding.

Su Yue closed the medical record book in her hand with a crisp sound.

"Director Liao, you've practiced medicine for thirty years, you should know better than I do that, with the current treatment plan, Tiedan won't make it through the night. What are we waiting for? To wait for death to take him away, and then we'll write 'resuscitation failed' on his medical record?"

She took a neatly folded piece of paper from her pocket and slapped it on the table.

“This is a pledge. If the treatment fails, I, Su Yue, will take full responsibility. Dismissal, imprisonment, or even execution, I accept it.”

The black ink on the letter paper was not yet dry, and the handwriting was as sharp as a knife.

Director Liao looked at the paper, his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but no sound came out.

He looked at Su Yue.

The young female doctor stood there, her back ramrod straight, like a gun poised to pierce the roof. She didn't have that hysterical excitement, only an almost cold rationality.

"Dr. Su..." the dean, who had been silent until now, spoke solemnly, "Have you thought this through? This is not just a matter of your future."

“I’ve thought it through.” Su Yue put the pen back in her pocket. “I’m a doctor. Doctors treat patients by snatching people from the jaws of death. If you don’t even dare to take this risk, you might as well go home and take care of your children.”

She turned and walked out, the hem of her white coat catching a gust of wind.

......

It got dark.

The rain was still falling, pattering against the windowpane.

Su Yue returned to her office, too lazy to even turn on the lights, and simply lay down on the desk.

I'm so tired.

This kind of exhaustion is not only physical, but also mental.

The door was gently pushed open.

A delicious aroma of food wafted in. It was braised pork and freshly cooked rice.

Su Yue sniffed, without looking up, and mumbled indistinctly, "Dr. Liu, I'm not hungry, you guys eat."

A large hand landed on the top of her head and gently ruffled it.

Dry, warm, with a thin cocoon.

Su Yue froze, then abruptly raised her head.

Gu Beichen stood in the darkness, holding an aluminum lunchbox in his hand, still carrying the dampness and chill of the outside world. He wasn't wearing a raincoat; the shoulders of his military uniform were soaked, and his trouser legs were covered in mud.

"Why are you here?" Su Yue straightened up, intending to turn on the light.