Nowadays, medical treatment in hospitals is free, and people have to pay for their own medicines and food and drink, which leads to people going to the hospital for treatment even if they have any illness.
The hospital is crowded day and night. There is a shortage of beds, and the corridors and halls are filled with sick people. There is also a shortage of medical staff. Unless the disease is serious, the patient has to wait a long time before he or she can be treated.
The doctor on duty at the door saw that Cheng Suming's face was as pale as paper. When he heard Si Nan say that the patient was robbed and shot twice, the doctor's expression did not change at all.
During this period, there were many cases of robbery and murder in Xingcheng. Their hospital received patients injured in robbery almost every day, including many cases of shooting.
Some of these patients were injured by homemade firearms made by the robbers, and some were hit by firearms stolen from the JC Bureau by the robbers during the chaos. They are no longer surprised by this.
The doctor on duty immediately arranged a mobile emergency bed and asked two medical staff to push the person into the emergency room for first aid.
Si Nan stood outside the emergency room, waiting anxiously.
The passage outside the emergency room was lined with patients who had made their own beds out of paper, mattresses, and the like. They were all pale and thin, and looked at her with lifeless eyes.
The air was filled with the unpleasant smell of disinfectant mixed with various body odors and the lingering sour smell after patients vomited, which made Si Nan's stomach churn and he couldn't help but cover his nose with his hand.
About two minutes later, the doctor on duty in the emergency room came out and said to Sinan, "Your husband is seriously injured and needs surgery immediately, but the surgical equipment and anesthetics are temporarily in short supply, and at this time all experienced surgeons..."
Before he finished speaking, Si Nan put down the double backpack on her back, stuffed it into his arms and said, "Doctor, my husband is also a surgeon. I have everything you need. Please take the trouble to help me find a surgeon to perform the operation on him."
The emergency doctor was stunned for a moment, then he opened his backpack and saw that there were indeed two unopened surgical instrument kits for the hospital, two anesthetics, five boxes of pure milk, and more than ten packs of Swiss rolls and sandwich cookies.
It was the first time for the emergency doctor to see the family members of a patient bring their own anesthetics and surgical instruments for treatment. He immediately realized that the patient might be a real surgeon, otherwise he would not be able to get the hospital's special instruments and drugs.
He took out the instruments and anesthetics and returned the backpack to Si Nan: "As long as you have the medicine, it's fine. I'll go to the inpatient building right away to find a surgeon to perform surgery on your husband."
"Thank you, doctor." Si Nan stuffed the bag back into his hands. "Thank you for the trip."
Cheng Suming is a surgeon. When the temperature was high, he asked Yu Yong to get a lot of medicines and equipment that were hard to get on the market, including anesthetics and instrument kits needed for surgical operations. He stored them all in her space, and she moved them directly into her backpack with her mind, so outsiders could not see them at all.
If the emergency doctor cannot understand what the patient's family means, then his or her life is in vain.
According to hospital regulations, doctors are not allowed to accept anything from patients' families, but times are tough. Although doctors get paid and have three meals a day at work, prices are skyrocketing nowadays, and even with money they can't buy food. Their three meals a day consist of porridge, steamed buns, and noodles, and they're tired of them.
Now that there is so much food in his bag, he thinks of his colleagues in the hospital who have been working day and night in the past two years due to the sharp increase in patients. Many colleagues could not stand it and resigned. There are now half as many doctors left in the hospital as before. Everyone is exhausted, physically and mentally tired, and passive.
I will have to ask the chief surgeon, who has just got off the operating table and has had less than three hours of rest, to perform the surgery. I have to see his expression. I gave these foods to the chief surgeon and the assistant nurses. I thought they would agree to do the surgery for the sake of the food, so I didn't refuse.
The operation was carried out quickly, and the emergency doctor also found another intern surgeon to come and remove the bullet from Si Nan.
Si Nan quietly followed the doctor to the operating table and lay down, with Cheng Su Ming lying next to him. The couple were given anesthesia together and began the bullet removal surgery.
Sinan's operation didn't take long, and was over in less than an hour. She had the operation under local anesthesia, and was pushed out by medical staff after the operation, telling her to find a place to stay by herself.
An old lady saw her with a bandage on her leg, standing on one leg in the corridor looking around, and waved to her kindly: "Girl, you just had surgery? Don't you have a place to stay? Come and squeeze in with grandma."
The grandmother's hair was completely white and her face was full of wrinkles. She looked to be at least 85 years old. She had an IV in her hand, and next to her stood a middle-aged man holding an infusion bottle. They spread a soft cushion in a corner near the window so that they could all sit down.
"Thank you, grandma." Si Nan walked to the old lady with the crutch lent to her by the nurse and squeezed in with her.
While waiting for Cheng Suming to have the operation, Si Nan chatted with the old lady for a while and learned that the old lady was sent to the hospital by her son because she had gastrointestinal discomfort, vomiting and diarrhea after eating fish caught in the water. She has been receiving intravenous drips in the hospital for two days. She will receive another day today and will be discharged tomorrow.
Since the relief food distributed by the government has become less and less, many people who are unwilling to leave their homes for temporary shelter have been paddling rafts to search for all edible food in the high-rise buildings around Xingcheng in order to survive. Some dive into the water to find grain and oil stores, jewelry stores and other shops that are submerged at the bottom of the water to look for money and food that have escaped. Some people simply make their own fishing rods and fishing nets to catch the fish, snakes and rats living in the water and make them into dishes.
After the accumulated water in Xingcheng initially rose to a height of five stories, many fish appeared in the water. However, the water was very turbid, and there were many garbage and dead bodies floating on it. No one dared to salvage them and eat them, for fear that they would be infected with bacteria and die.
But after more than a year, in the absence of food, people often thought that since creatures such as fish, snakes, and rats can adapt to the water full of bacteria and live in the water, then humans are members of nature and should also be able to adapt to those bacterial organisms. So some people boldly tried to catch fish in the water to eat.
What’s more, the first people who went fishing did not feel any discomfort after eating the fish in the water. Soon, the news that the fish in the water were edible spread in Xingcheng, and people who received the news started fishing.
Most people do not have any major problems after eating fish from the water, but many elderly people and children with weak stomachs and frail constitutions cannot bear it and suffer from vomiting and diarrhea and are sent to the hospital for intravenous treatment.
The old lady's family was relatively well-off. Her son spent a lot of money to stock up on a lot of food and drink during the high temperature period, and it took her family almost two years to run out of food.
In order to make the food at home last longer, her son followed the example of others and used the mop bamboo pole at home to make a fishing rod. He tried to catch two fish and cooked them.
The whole family ate it. Her son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters were all fine, but she was the only one who suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. Her son quickly sent her to the hospital for treatment.
Si Nan was thoughtful after listening to this. Under natural disasters, the environment will be changed. If all living things in nature want to survive in the harsh natural disaster climate, they must also change accordingly.
She and Cheng Suming have been eating the fine food stored in the space, which is actually not good for them from an environmental perspective.
There will always be times when they are short of food, or when it is inconvenient to eat space food. She doesn't want her delicate stomach to not be able to adapt to the food from the outside world at that time, causing her to vomit and have diarrhea, making herself miserable.
She planned to wait until Cheng Suming was discharged from the hospital, then she would go fishing and bring home some food to see how her stomach and intestines could adapt to the outside world.
Cheng Suming's operation went very smoothly. When the nurse pushed the stretcher out, he was still in a coma. The nurse handed Si Nan a list and asked her to find a way to get the medicine from the pharmacy.
Nowadays, the production of all medicines has been suspended and medicines are in short supply. Although the hospital has waived most of the fees, patients still need to bear the cost of the medicines themselves.
In today's inflationary world, a box of ordinary cold medicine can sell for tens of thousands of yuan. Currency is no longer the main purchasing power, and it is more often exchanged for food.
If Cheng Suming needed anti-inflammatory drugs, oral drugs, infusion bottles and other medicines in the future, Si Nan would have to go to the pharmacy with his own money and food to get the medicine. The nurse had seen many patients whose families were in financial difficulties and had no food to buy medicine and could not get the medicine, so she asked Si Nan to find a way himself.
Si Nan certainly had no shortage of food. She thanked the nurse and did not rush to get medicine. Instead, she pushed Cheng Su Ming to the side of the old lady and asked the old lady's son to help her take care of Cheng Su Ming.
There are many people in the hospital, and people often steal patients' food, drink, money, medicine, clothes and other things while they are asleep in the middle of the night. When patients wake up, they find that everything is gone. Many people have experienced that kind of despair, anger and sadness.
Because this kind of thing happens so often, the hospital has no way of doing anything and can only let everyone keep their own property.
Cheng Suming was still in a coma, and Si Nan had to go to the pharmacy to get some medicine. In order to prevent someone from stripping off his clothes or even touching him while she was away, she had to ask someone to help look after him.
Fortunately, before Cheng Suming entered the operating room, she took the backpack on his back. She pretended to look for something in the bag, but actually took out two packs of compressed biscuits and a can of eight-treasure porridge from the space, handed them to the middle-aged man and said, "Brother, I'll be back soon. Please help me look after my husband."
The middle-aged man waved his hands quickly: "It's just a matter of convenience, how can I ask for your things."
Sinan insisted: "The hospital is full of people. We have no place to stay after the operation. I am very grateful that you and grandma gave us a seat. If it were someone else, they would definitely charge us money and food. I also asked you to help me take care of my husband. This is what I should give you."
The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment and did not refuse.
Si Nan carried Cheng Suming's backpack and went to the bathroom. He took out a lot of compressed biscuits, some canned fruits, eight-treasure porridge and the like from the space and put them in the backpack, then went to the pharmacy to pay for food and get medicine.
The ward calculated the real-time price increases of food and medicines and used the corresponding money to pay for two cans of fruit, three bottles of eight-treasure porridge, and five packs of compressed biscuits, and got the medicine smoothly.
As she was about to walk back with the medicine in her arms, the crowd queuing in front of the pharmacy window suddenly became agitated, and then she heard a woman in the next window screaming hysterically: "Why is it not enough?! I've already given you 50,000 yuan and the last two kilograms of rice in my house, why can't you get the medicine?!"
She tilted her head and saw a sallow-faced, haggard woman leaning against the window with an extremely excited look on her face.
"With ten thousand yuan nowadays, you can buy a box of cold medicine at most. You have a rare disease, so the medicine you need is scarce. In terms of money, the medicine you need, a box of injection, would cost two hundred thousand yuan now. In terms of food, you would need at least ten kilograms of rice to buy it," the cashier told her expressionlessly.
"You want so much money and food? You are asking for too much. You are going to drive us ordinary people to death!" The woman tried to squeeze into the narrow window like a madman: "I don't care. Give me the medicine. I don't want to die! Give me the medicine!"
The staff member stepped back and advised, "Madam, please calm down. The world is in an unprecedented disaster right now. Many drugs in the country have been cut off. The existing drugs can no longer maintain their original prices. I hope you can understand."
"Fuck you! You are a black hospital. If you don't give me medicine, I will smash your hospital!" The woman was so angry that she climbed down from the window, looked around, found an office chair where a medical staff member sat, dragged it to the pharmacy window, and smashed it.
Her crazy appearance made everyone avoid her, and soon attracted the hospital security, who dragged the yelling woman away.
"What a sin! Medicines are ridiculously expensive now. Ordinary people can't afford them at all. They can only use their own life-saving rations to make up for it. But many people still can't get enough. No wonder that woman went crazy."
"Who says it's not true? With the shortage of medicines and inflation, I get terrified whenever anyone in my family has a headache or a fever, fearing that if the illnesses spread too much, my family won't be able to afford it."
"Why are medicines so expensive now? Doesn't the government care?"
"How can we manage it? The natural disaster has been going on for almost two years, and the country has been using the treasury to subsidize and help the people. Our country has a population of over one billion. Even if the death toll in the past two years exceeds 200 million, there are still so many people waiting for the government to help. I'm afraid the treasury would have been emptied long ago. Now medical treatment is free, only medicines are charged. What else are you dissatisfied with? The country also needs operating capital."
Si Nan stood in the crowd and watched the excitement for a while, carefully protecting the medicine in his arms, and found the nurse on duty to give Cheng Suming an infusion.
She stood there holding the infusion bottle, forcing herself to stay awake all night, changing Cheng Suming's dressing and calling the nurse.
When it was almost dawn, Cheng Suming finally woke up.
At that time, he had finished the intravenous infusion for the day. Si Nan was about to rest on his stretcher bed for a while. When he saw him wake up, he came to him in surprise and said, "Su Ming, you woke up? You scared me to death. The doctor said that it was a good thing that we sent you here in time. If it was later, you would have lost too much blood and died. How do you feel? Does your wound hurt? Do you want to eat something?"
Cheng Suming saw a bruise under her eye, and it was obvious that she had not slept well. His Adam's apple rolled and he said in a hoarse voice: "It doesn't hurt... Water..."
Si Nan quickly took out the mineral water from his backpack, unscrewed it, poured it into a thermos cup filled with hot water, neutralized the water temperature, held his head, and slowly fed the warm water into his dry lips.
After drinking the water, Cheng Suming felt a little better. Si Nan fed him some medicine and found a way to heat up a can of eight-treasure porridge for him. Seeing that his complexion looked a little better, Si Nan lay down beside him and took a nap.
The two stayed in the hospital for nearly a week, and Cheng Suming insisted on leaving the hospital despite the medical staff's dissuasion.
It was not raining when they were discharged from the hospital, so the two of them went home in a speedboat, with Sinan paddling of course.
When the two returned home, Cheng Wei heard the door open and came out to see Si Nan supporting Cheng Su Ming, whose face was pale and bandaged. She dropped the cup in her hand in shock, "Brother, how did you get hurt? Where have you and sister-in-law been for the past week? I was so worried about you guys."
"This is not the place to talk, let's go inside." Si Nan motioned for her to lend a hand and open the door, and she hurried over to help.
Soon, Yang Wentao and Yu Yong heard the news and came to see Cheng Suming.
Cheng Su Ming lay weakly on the bed in the master bedroom. Si Nan sat beside the bed and fed him medicine. He then told everyone what happened that night.
Yu Yong suddenly realized, "I said that my eyelids were twitching that night, and when I woke up the next day, I heard people in the building crying and making a fuss. Later I learned that all the fifteen people who went to the robbers' base with Wu En were dead. The relatives of these people waited and waited, but they didn't come back, so they gathered a raft to find out the news, and saw corpses all over the ground. Not only those people were dead, but all the robbers were also dead. At that time, I was thinking that Wu En was quite powerful. 16 people against nearly 50 people, but they were able to make both sides lose. It turns out that you were involved."
"Luckily you came back alive." Cheng Wei was terrified. "After seeing their family members dead, some of the relatives went crazy on the spot, wailing about whether to die or not. It was scary. Some people came back to discuss what to do with you, brother and sister-in-law. I lied and said that your friend who went to visit sister-in-law was not at home, so I asked Wentao and Brother Yu to come forward and let them deal with the bodies of their family members themselves."
Yang Wentao said, "There has been a lot of sadness in the building these days, especially the woman in 1403 who had been abused for years. She started crying and laughing when she found out her husband had died. She kept holding a kitchen knife and mumbling to herself all day long, going from house to house to chop doors and demand that people return her husband. Brother Cheng, you must not let anyone know that you were injured, otherwise it will arouse suspicion from the families of the deceased, who will blame you for their deaths and take it out on you."
Si Nan nodded: "I know, don't worry, I will take good care of him during this period."
In order to take care of Cheng Su Ming more conveniently, Si Nan moved a quilt and slept on the floor in Cheng Su Ming's room.
Cheng Suming watched her limping on the floor and spreading the bedding, and shook his head and said, "The bed is so wide, there's no need to sleep on the floor. We can sleep together and take care of each other. If you really want to sleep on the floor, I'll sleep on it..."
Before he could finish his words, he was interrupted by Si Nan: "Alright, alright, don't I understand your little thoughts? You are injured and still thinking about so many things. It turns out that men are only honest when they are hung on the wall. If you keep talking nonsense, I will go back to my room and sleep. I will get up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, drink water, etc., and you can solve it yourself."
Cheng Suming:......
What did he say?
Because of the injuries on his back and left waist, Cheng Suming is currently unable to stand up on his own. He needs help going to the toilet, drinking water, etc., and can only sleep in a prone position on the bed.
Si Nan knew that he would be uncomfortable lying like this, so he turned him over and asked him to sleep on his right side. He also put a small pillow under his abdomen to make him sleep more comfortably. He turned off the flashlight, lay down on the floor, covered himself with a quilt, closed his eyes and fell asleep.
In the dark night, the two could hear each other's breathing and heartbeat. In the two years of marriage, except for the high temperature period when they used to sleep on the sofas on the left and right of the living room to save electricity, this was the first time they were truly in the same room.
The air was filled with the faint smell of disinfectant alcohol mixed with medicine, as well as an indescribable pleasant smell. Si Nan knew very well that it was the smell of Cheng Suming, faint, making it impossible to ignore his presence.
She inevitably suffered from insomnia. She wanted to turn over but couldn't, because she felt that Cheng Su Ming seemed to be looking at her from behind with his eyes open. If she turned over, it would give him the illusion that he was tossing and turning in sleep.
She was not yet fully prepared to be his wife, so she could only keep her back to Cheng Su Ming and fall asleep stiffly.
Early the next morning, Si Nan was awakened by the repeated geese calls of Dabai and his wife at the door.
She woke up rubbing her eyes and got up, subconsciously looking towards Cheng Suming's room, only to be stunned.
Cheng Suming was still sleeping in the same position as last night, his dark eyes full of resentment: "You're finally awake, could you please turn me over?"
Si Nan chuckled, went over to him, took his hand, and slowly helped him up: "You said you had been through mountains of swords and seas of fire before, and no matter how much blood you shed or how badly you were injured, you would be fine. Look at you, do you look fine? If your wound hurts and you want to change your sleeping position, you can turn over slowly by yourself, or ask me to get up and help you turn over. Why do you have to endure it until dawn?"
Cheng Suming stood up straight with her hand, his handsome face full of helplessness: "Of course I can turn over by myself, but if I move, the wound will be involved, causing it to burst and bleed, and it will not be able to recover as before in the shortest time to deal with various emergencies. These days in the noisy hospital, you have not been able to rest well because of taking care of me. You slept soundly last night, I didn't have the heart to wake you up, so I could only wait for you to wake up."
"Okay, whatever you say makes sense." Si Nan helped him into the bathroom in the master bedroom and teased him for the first time: "It's inconvenient for you to relieve yourself, do you want me to take off your pants for you?"
"If you want, of course I'm willing." Cheng Suming glanced at her with a smile in his eyes.
Simon:......
Let you talk too much!
"I'm just joking, don't take it seriously." She quietly closed the bathroom door, and reminded him, "You squeeze the toothpaste and wash yourself. I'll go to the kitchen to make something to eat, and then I'll come over to help you."
Cheng Suming listened to the sound of her limping away in her woolen slippers, and the corners of his mouth curled up into a beautiful arc. He slowly opened the glasses case beside the sink and put on the gold-rimmed glasses inside.
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