As he reached for the black pen in his pocket to write a medical order, Cao Yong lifted his head and took another quick glance at the patient's complexion, blood pressure, and other vital signs.
"Should we do an ECG, Dr. Cao?" the intern asked as he pushed the EKG machine over, waiting for the order.
"No, send her to the CT room first. Make a call to the CT room and inform them that the patient's condition is urgent, there might be an aneurysm rupture with major blood loss requiring emergency surgery, and ask them to confirm as quickly as possible," said Cao Yong. As he spoke these words, he paused in astonishment, realizing that he might be crazy.
To bypass the diagnosis procedure for a heart attack, which he initially suspected, and follow the advice of a highschooler to have the patient undergo a CT scan was unprecedented.
Surprised by his words, the intern asked, "Do you think the patient's diagnosis isn't a heart attack, Dr. Cao?"
The symptoms clearly resembled those of a heart attack.
"Go for the CT!" Cao Yong asserted. Regardless, sometimes a doctor has to trust their intuition, especially during emergencies when there's no time for a slow, thorough analysis.
Xie Wanying, looking over at the emergency room bed about to be pushed in the direction of the CT room, blinked in confusion: How did that doctor change the diagnostic direction? Suddenly, his initial diagnosis aligned with hers.
At the hospital entrance, a security guard was arguing with a middle-aged woman.
"I'm looking for my daughter; she was standing over there. We came to visit relatives living in your hospital's staff dormitory. Her name is Zhou Ruomei, a gynecologist at your hospital, and she is my cousin," said the middle-aged woman.
"The staff dormitory building doesn't go through the main hospital route, comrade. You should go to the right."
"I know that. I'm telling you, I'm looking for my daughter; she took the wrong way and ended up in your hospital," the middle-aged woman said anxiously, stamping her foot, then raised her voice to shout, "Yingying, Yingying!"
Hearing her mother's voice, Xie Wanying turned around: "Mom."
"I told you to wait for me at the hospital gate after school so we could go to your aunt's house together. Where did you run off to?" Sun Rongfang scolded, pointing at her daughter while raising her voice.
Surprised by the "after school" phrase from her mother, Xie Wanying thought, what 'after school'? She had long since graduated and was working.
That wasn't right. Looking at her mother more closely, although it was dark, she noticed her hair wasn't the white of aging but was still black and there were fewer wrinkles on her face, no age spots.
Looking down, Xie Wanying saw the canvas shoes on her feet, the kind she used to wear in her student days. She noted her sleeve cuff was that of a highschool uniform. Feeling a weight on her shoulder, she realized she was carrying a backpack. Upon putting the backpack down and unzipping it, the opening revealed it was packed with senior-year textbooks and practice exam papers.
"Mom, what year is it?" Xie Wanying asked, hardly daring to believe what she was seeing.
Sun Rongfang pushed past the security guard, came over, and jabbed her daughter's head with her finger: "Have you gone silly from studying? The college entrance exams are in a few days, and you're asking me the date?"
"It's 1996," the security guard chimed in, who had joined Sun Rongfang to see what was the matter.
1996?
Xie Wanying's eyes widened.
Heavens, she had been reborn, back to 1996, on the eve of the college entrance examination!
"Let's go quickly, I've already called your aunt; they're probably waiting impatiently at home," Sun Rongfang said, pulling her daughter towards the exit while continuing, "By the way, let's buy a bag of fruit before going upstairs, it's not nice to show up empty-handed."
Carrying her backpack, Xie Wanying listened to her mother's familiar nagging and looked back at the sign of the Third Hospital, reflecting on the life-changing moment she was currently experiencing.