When I'm on the night shift, all the department heads can't sleep.

Lin Ye tore off his blue sterile gloves, which were covered in sweat and a little blood, threw them into the yellow medical waste bin, and turned to walk to the sink.

Beside him, Fang Rui was stiffly hanging the ultrasound probe back onto the instrument stand.

The 25-year-old resident trainee moved very slowly. Even now, his wrists, which had been tightly gripping the probe, were still trembling slightly out of control.

Lin Ye took a paper towel, leaned against the sink, and quietly watched him.

"Is this the closest I've ever been to a pierced heart?"

Fang Rui turned around abruptly, swallowed hard, his eyes filled with a mixture of fear and excitement: "Teacher Lin, just now, if that needle had been off by half a centimeter, or if the patient had suddenly struggled because of the pain, wouldn't the needle tip have...?"

He didn't dare finish his sentence. Pericardiocentesis, especially a blind procedure performed bedside in the emergency room, is an extremely high-risk procedure highlighted in red in medical textbooks. A single needle piercing the coronary artery or rupturing the already fragile right ventricular wall could kill the patient on the spot.

"Yes, half a centimeter off, a ventricular rupture, even a miracle couldn't save him." Lin Ye crumpled the paper towel into a ball and accurately threw it into the trash can. "So the hands you used to steady the probe just now were essentially saving my life."

Fang Rui gasped, rubbing his wrists with lingering fear. "Then... what if we don't wear them? Didn't the director already say on the phone that he'd be coming down immediately? Can't we just rely on medication to keep our blood pressure up and tough it out for five or six minutes while the cardiothoracic surgeons come to open our chests?"

This is typical of a resident trainee's mindset, shifting the greatest risk to superiors and the college. In the vast majority of cases, this is the absolutely correct approach.

"He won't make it." Lin Ye turned his head, his gaze passing over the emergency room to the deep night outside the gate. "His blood pressure has dropped to 60 or 30, and the patient has already lost consciousness. His pericardial cavity is full of blood, and his heart is like it's been sealed with cement. If we don't drain those 50 milliliters of blood, he will experience irreversible ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest within two minutes."

Lin Ye straightened up and walked up to Fang Rui: "Remember, the bottom line in emergency medicine is not that we have to kill or bring the patient back to life here, but that no matter what means we use, we must never let the patient stop beating in the elevator during transport or while waiting for a specialist consultation. What we need to do is buy the surgeon time to open the chest cavity."

Fang Rui was stunned, his eyes gradually focused, and then he nodded heavily.

Lin Ye patted him on the shoulder, then turned and walked back to the nurses' station.

Sitting in front of the computer, Lin Ye stared at the black reflection on the screen and slowly exhaled a long breath. He had appeared calm and collected in front of the other party, but his own back was already soaked with sweat.

He recalled the two countdowns that appeared on the edge of his sight—[11:45] and [07:45].

There was no diagnosis, no test results, and no treatment suggestions. The system was like a cold and ruthless referee, only responsible for pressing the stopwatch to end the life, leaving the rest of the mess to be dealt with.

If he hadn't noticed the changes in Zheng Deyong's electrocardiogram, if he hadn't been able to identify Zhang Qiang's Baker's triad at a glance, those few minutes of countdown would have become a real death knell.

The system has been completely "weaned".

Strangely, Lin Ye did not feel any panic about losing the cheat.

On the contrary, as the cold countdown faded away with each decisive action, a deep sense of security seeped from his very bones. He no longer needed to wait for the light screen to grant him his wish; the knowledge in his mind, the stethoscope in his hands, and the ultrasound probe were enough for him to stand firmly on this battlefield without gunpowder.

At the same time, in the observation area just a door away, the atmosphere was far less passionate than in the emergency room, but rather filled with the restlessness of ordinary people.

"Doctor, my wife has acute gastroenteritis, why does it take so long to draw blood? It's been almost half an hour!" A middle-aged man wearing a striped polo shirt banged on the glass of the triage desk, his voice echoing in the corridor.

Tang Wen stood inside the station, holding a stack of test reports, her brow furrowed. She tried to reassure the other party with standard doctor-patient communication: "Family member, please don't panic. The machines in the emergency lab are used in batches. Several critical blood samples were just sent over and need to be processed first. Your spouse's vital signs are currently stable, so please be patient and wait a little longer..."

"Stable? She's writhing in pain on the bed and you're telling me it's stable!" The man's anger didn't subside; instead, the word "patience" ignited it completely. "Is your hospital treating patients differently based on their status? We've paid the emergency room registration fee and the medication fee, and you're just going to leave us here waiting?"

"This isn't about favoritism; it's the hospital's emergency triage system..." Tang Wen's face flushed with anxiety, her voice rising slightly as she began reciting the regulations, "Patients requiring Level 1 emergency care have absolute priority; that's the rule!"

"What kind of bullshit rules are these! I'm just asking you, when will the blood test results be available?!"

The man slapped the table.

Tang Wen was startled, her eyes instantly reddening. Her hand holding the form trembled slightly, and she couldn't utter a word for a long time. She couldn't understand why the other person just wouldn't listen when she was clearly explaining according to the guidelines.

"Hey bro, that was a really loud slap. You've practiced Iron Palm, haven't you?"

A slightly teasing voice cut in from the side. Ma Hao, hands in his white coat pockets, swaggered over and casually pushed Tang Wen back half a step.

The middle-aged man turned his head, looked at the name tag on Ma Hao's shoulder that indicated he was a resident physician, and his anger remained unabated: "And who are you? Are you in charge?"

"I'm her mentor." Ma Hao's smile faded, and he looked calmly at the man. "Brother, we completely understand that your wife is in pain and you're worried. But this blood test result, it's not that we're holding back from sending it to you."

"Then why don't you hurry up and urge me!"

"I urged them. But let me be frank with you," Ma Hao lowered his voice slightly and leaned forward, "just now, they brought in a patient whose heart had been pierced by a nail gun. The blood was drawn directly from his heart. There are only so many machines in the lab, and when they encounter someone who is about to die, the machine automatically puts their sample at the front of the queue. It's a fixed program that the machine is programmed to run. Even if I kicked down the lab door, it would still have to follow this order."

The man's anger subsided slightly, probably because the gory description of "his heart being pierced" had a certain deterrent effect.

Ma Hao pressed his advantage, glancing at the computer screen. "But I just checked for you; your sister-in-law's sample is already being processed. Here's what we'll do: you go back to the bedside and comfort her, I'll keep an eye on it for you. As soon as the results are out, I'll print them out and send them over immediately, without wasting a second. Is that alright?"

The middle-aged man opened his mouth, but the string of profanities he had prepared was suddenly swallowed back. Looking at Ma Hao's somewhat江湖气 (jianghu qi, meaning a kind of江湖江湖, ...

Tang Wen watched the man's retreating figure, let out a long sigh of relief, and turned to look at Ma Hao, her eyes filled with both gratitude and grievance: "Teacher Ma, I was just explaining to him that the lab was busy..."

"Is that what you call an explanation? That's just reciting a text." Ma Hao turned around and pointed at the triage desk. "Xiao Tang, remember, rules and regulations are the bottom line to protect our medical staff's lives, but to the family, when you use the rules to pressure them, you're just shirking your responsibility."

Tang Wen paused for a moment, seemingly understanding but not quite.

"When communicating with anxious family members, you have to put us on the same side as them." Ma Hao patiently shared his hard-earned "emergency room philosophy." "Don't tell them 'hospital regulations require waiting.' Instead, tell them 'I also want things to go quickly, but there's an objective reason (the machine's procedures) that's holding us back.' Finally, give them a promise so they feel that you're trying to find a solution for them. Once their anger subsides, the conflict will naturally be resolved."

Tang Wen nodded thoughtfully and quickly jotted down a couple of notes in her small notebook.

Outside the gate, the night grew deeper.

Just as Lin Ye and Fang Rui finished completing, printing out, and signing Zhang Qiang's emergency record, a commotion erupted outside the emergency room.

Two young men with dyed blond hair pushed a man, who was also reeking of alcohol and shirtless, into the room in a wheelchair. The man was clutching his stomach, hunched over in the wheelchair like a boiled shrimp, uttering incoherent groans.

"Doctor! Doctor, come quick!" one of the young men shouted. "My buddy's drunk, he's thrown up several times, and now he says his stomach hurts terribly, he can't even straighten his back!"

A strong smell of alcohol mixed with the sour stench of vomit instantly filled the hall.

The most troublesome "midnight bomb" in the emergency room: intoxicated patients who arrive on time.

Lin Ye frowned and, as was his habit, prepared to get up and walk over.

But a hand pressed down on his shoulder.

"Teacher Lin." Fang Rui had somehow already picked up a stethoscope and a blood pressure monitor and hung them around his neck. His gaze was much more determined than when he was by the sink. "Let me do an initial assessment of this case first. You just performed two major resuscitations, take a breather first."

Lin Ye looked at Fang Rui, a hint of surprise flashing in his eyes. He then loosened his legs, which he was about to stand up, and leaned back gently in his chair.

"Go ahead. Move her to position number three and start the physical exam. Call me anytime if you're unsure about anything." Lin Ye nodded, relinquishing the authority.

Fang Rui quickly went to meet him.

Lin Ye sat at the nurses' station, his gaze fixed on Fang Rui and the drunk man in the wheelchair. His experience in the emergency room had taught him countless times that those shouting, seemingly just drunkards were often the best at using their alcohol aura to mask potentially deadly dangers.

The real test of teamwork is just beginning.