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

Wang Qiang gripped Fang Rui's collar tightly, spitting almost onto Fang Rui's face. His eyes were filled with a near-mad obsession, and his voice was raspy from extreme anger.

"Press it! Press it now! Or I'll kill you all right now!"

Wang Mei, lying on the ground, was crying so hard she couldn't make a sound. She clutched her hair tightly with both hands, looking desperately at her father, who had lost consciousness on the hospital bed.

"Let him go."

Lin Ye's voice wasn't loud, but in the emergency room filled with the alarms of medical instruments, it carried an extremely cold and penetrating force.

Wang Qiang was panting heavily. He turned around and glared fiercely at Lin Ye, but intimidated by Lin Ye's cold eyes, he involuntarily loosened his grip on Fang Rui's collar and took a half step back.

"Fang Rui, get on the footstool." Lin Ye didn't look at Wang Qiang again, his gaze passing over Fang Rui and fixed on the flat electrocardiogram. "Start chest compressions. Prepare to administer one milligram of adrenaline intravenously."

"Teacher Lin?!" Fang Rui stared wide-eyed in disbelief, as if he had heard some utterly absurd instruction. "He has late-stage lung cancer with multiple bone metastases! His bones have long been eaten away by cancer cells, making them as brittle as dry biscuits. If you press on them at the standard depth..."

"I told you to press it!" Lin Ye's voice suddenly rose, his tone leaving no room for negotiation, as cold and emotionless as a machine. "The family has a clear request for resuscitation; proceed with CPR!"

Fang Rui gritted his teeth and stepped onto the footstool with a forced smile.

He stretched out his arms, clasped his hands together, and pressed the base of his palms firmly against the lower part of the old man's withered sternum.

According to international standard guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, in order to ensure effective artificial blood circulation, the compression depth must reach at least five centimeters.

In emergency room training, that five-centimeter depth feels like pressing down on a piece of raw meat with all your might.

Fang Rui took a deep breath, leaned forward, and used his body weight to press down hard.

"Snap—!"

A sharp, chilling crack of bone breaking suddenly rang out in the noisy emergency room.

The sound was like someone stepping on a bundle of dry branches in an extremely quiet room.

Wang Qiang, who was standing by the bed, suddenly shuddered, his pupils dilated instantly, and he stared at the hospital bed in disbelief.

That was the sound of the old man's fragile ribs snapping instantly under strong pressure.

"Snap! Snap!"

With Fang Rui's mechanical pressing a hundred times per minute, the chilling sound of bones cracking rang out continuously.

The old man's chest was visibly collapsed and deformed, and the broken rib fragments were writhing eerily under the thin skin, as if they might pierce the skin and poke out at any moment.

"Dad—!" Wang Mei, lying on the ground, let out a heart-wrenching scream.

She desperately covered her ears and buried her head deep in her knees, unable to bear looking at it even once more.

Wang Qiang's face turned deathly pale instantly, and the back of his suit jacket was soaked with cold sweat. He instinctively took a large step back, bumping into the flatbed behind him, his lips trembling uncontrollably: "What...what are you doing...stop..."

"Intubate!"

Lin Ye completely ignored Wang Qiang's weak protest.

He grabbed the laryngoscope and, with extremely rough but precise movements, pried open the old man's jaw.

The cold light of the flashlight shone in, revealing that the old man's mouth was filled with mucus and streaks of blood due to internal organ damage.

"Give me the endotracheal tube!"

Lin Ye stretched out his hand to the side.

Nurse Zhu immediately slapped the No. 7.5 catheter into his hand.

Lin Ye thrust and twisted his right hand, forcefully inserting it through the glottis, pulling out the tube core, and inflating the airbag. His movements were as fast as a brutal mechanical assembly.

"Connect the ventilator, switch to pure oxygen mode, and initiate forced ventilation!"

As the ventilator was started, high-pressure oxygen was forcibly pumped into the elderly man's lungs.

However, due to Fang Rui's continuous and forceful pressing, the old man's ribs had already broken into several pieces.

The sharp broken bones pierced the old man's pleura and embedded themselves deep in his fragile lungs.

The high-pressure gas pumped in by the ventilator, mixed with a large amount of blood gushing out from the punctured lung, gurgled upwards through the transparent tracheal tube.

Soon, large amounts of pink frothy sputum and bright red blood gushed out of the tube like a fountain, splashing onto the snow-white sheets.

The elderly man on the hospital bed, like a broken, blood-stained rag doll, convulsed and swayed without dignity under Fang Rui's mechanical pressure and the forced airflow from the ventilator.

ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes.

These are the longest, bloodiest, and most ineffective fifteen minutes in the emergency room.

Even after three injections of the cardiac stimulant adrenaline, the line on the electrocardiogram monitor remained a lifeless straight line.

Fang Rui was exhausted and drenched in sweat. His arms moved mechanically, his eyes were red, and sweat dripped from his nose onto the sheets.

With each press, he could feel the bundle of broken bones rubbing against his palm, a nauseating reaction force.

"Stop."

Lin Ye glanced at the clock on the wall and gave the final instruction in a hoarse voice.

Fang Rui stopped what he was doing as if he had been granted a pardon. He leaned against the bed railing, completely exhausted, and gasped for breath. He didn't even dare to look at the old man on the bed.

Lin Ye took off his rubber gloves, which were stained with blood and secretions, and threw them into the yellow medical waste bin.

He turned to look at Wang Qiang, who was standing in the corner, completely terrified and leaning against the wall like a rag doll.

"Mr. Wang, we did what you asked for and performed resuscitation." Lin Ye's voice was frighteningly calm, as if he were reading a heartless verdict. "We broke all twelve of your father's ribs and forcibly cut open his airway, filling his lungs with blood. He died in extreme pain and agony, without even having the chance to utter his last words."

Lin Ye took a step forward, staring intently into Wang Qiang's eyes, mercilessly piercing through his last layer of disguise.

"You actually knew he was beyond saving a long time ago. When the oncologist told Wang Mei, there was no way Wang Mei wouldn't tell you. You just couldn't accept the fact that you hadn't been by his bedside to take care of him for so many years, and you couldn't bear the neighbors saying you were an unfilial son."

Lin Ye pointed at the pitiful body on the hospital bed, his tone cold and stern: "You wanted to alleviate your guilt with this hypocritical filial piety of 'at all costs,' with your roars in the emergency room. Now, are you satisfied? Look at him now, has your guilt lessened?!"

Wang Qiang's eyeballs trembled violently.

He looked at his father on the hospital bed, ravaged beyond recognition, at the blood-soaked tube inserted into his throat, at his collapsed chest, and the defenses he had built in his mind with money and indifference crumbled instantly.

"Dad... Dad!"

Wang Qiang finally broke down. His knees buckled, and he knelt heavily on the cold tiles with a thud.

He clutched his meticulously styled hair with both hands and let out a wild, desperate, and regretful wail.

He finally realized that he had personally ordered his father's final execution by slow slicing.

But it was all too late.

Half an hour later.

The Wang siblings, looking distraught, pushed the gurney covered with a white sheet toward the morgue's elevator on the basement floor.

The emergency room fell silent again. The cleaning lady was silently mopping up the bloodstains on the floor.

Fang Rui sat in front of the sink in the doctor's office, frantically scrubbing his hands with red disinfectant until the skin was almost raw.

But the chilling sensation of crushing bones seemed to be forever branded on his palm, impossible to wash away no matter how hard he tried.

"Teacher Lin..." Fang Rui raised his red eyes, his voice filled with deep confusion and pain, "Did we...do we do something wrong?"

"Legally, we did the right thing. The immediate family strongly demanded emergency treatment, and we had to comply. Otherwise, before the sun even rises tomorrow morning, we'll face an exorbitant medical lawsuit." Lin Ye leaned against the doorframe, his eyes weary and deep as he gazed at the deep night outside the window. "But ethically, we just tore an old man to death with our own hands."

Lin Ye walked over and patted Fang Rui's trembling shoulder.

"Remember the sound of bones breaking today, Fang Rui. This is the price of defensive medicine, the tragedy of humanity overriding medical dignity." Lin Ye looked at the empty bed in the emergency room. "Treating and saving lives is science, but knowing when to put down the defibrillator is a lifelong learning process for emergency room doctors."