Chapter 15: Chen Cang, A Drop in the Ocean (Important Chapter, Must Read to the End)
Translator: 549690339
The landlord aunt continued, “Let’s collaborate. If you can keep my daughter from going abroad and have her stay here, I’ll rent you a place for free!”
At this point, the landlord aunt seemed somewhat disheartened, “My daughter doesn’t want to return to the country; however, my health isn’t good, and I have to take care of her grandparents on both sides. The five of us are like five empty-nest elders.”
“Once this girl goes abroad, she’ll become ambitious and look down on our Anyang City. She only wants to make a big impact somewhere else, but that’s just nonsense. This time, I just want to keep my daughter here so that later on she can take care of me in my old age, find a good son-in-law, and have a stable life.”
“We’re not greedy for wealth. We’re just common folks from the village with no special talents. It’s only because times are good and policies are favorable that an old woman like me can earn this much money, and I’m already content with that.”
Actually, the landlord aunt is quite nice and often looks after the tenants. She doesn’t constantly nag about the rent, as long as you pay what you owe when you can.
During festivals, she also gives out mooncakes, dumplings, and rice dumplings, full of human kindness.
But ever since her daughter graduated from high school, she went abroad to study—because she didn’t get into a good university, the family had the money to send her away.
She’s also a pitiable person!
At this thought, Chen Cang suddenly started!
Chen Cang, you’ve become arrogant!
Do you dare to pity a billionaire?
After sharing her troubles, the landlord aunt left.
And Chen Cang didn’t take it seriously, since the landlord aunt often came to chat with him about this and that, and he didn’t mind because he’s easygoing and used to it.
However, this time, Chen Cang had to seriously consider the matter of renting.
With the village within the city being demolished, he needed to find a new place to live.
Where to rent?
Everywhere’s expensive!
He downloaded an app called 58 Town and found the one-bedroom apartments near the hospital were all over 1500, and that’s not even including utilities and property fees. It would be impossible to get away with spending less than 2000 yuan a month!
Chen Cang sighed deeply.
Although he now had a system that generated some income every day, Chen Cang dreaded the possibility of it disappearing one day. What then?
When you’re used to being poor, you develop a sense of crisis, fearing a return to your former state.
In the quiet of the night, as Chen Cang looked out at the city slipping into darkness, he sighed. In such a vast city, he didn’t even have a place to call home.
The self-built house had a huge balcony, and Chen Cang stepped out onto it, observing the bustling life and homey vibes of the village within the city around him, and the glitzy high-rises a few hundred meters away. It was as if he was caught between two worlds.
There seemed to be endless temptation and motivation there, with countless people struggling their whole lives just to settle down in the provincial capital.
Chen Cang wanted that too.
No, Chen Cang didn’t even dare to dream of it before because it was too far-fetched.
Heh… Is he being pessimistic?
Of course not. In fact, most of the time, he’s quite optimistic.
Optimistic?
That’s because he keeps his sadness inside, his inferiority deep down.
People are always like that.
It’s only in the dead of night that you realize what you’re truly like.
It’s only when you’re alone in a corner that you dare to confront the truest part of yourself, deep inside.
Gazing into the night, Chen Cang silently made a small plan for his life.
Chen Cang is from a rural background, with parents who are honest, down-to-earth farmers, and he also has a younger brother who started university that year. With two boys to raise, the pressure on his parents was immense.
It’s not that Chen Cang couldn’t get into graduate school, to be honest, he couldn’t afford it!
Not to mention the tuition fees of 8000 yuan a year, including accommodation, which would run over 10,000 yuan.
And that’s excluding food and drink.
Medical students get a subsidy of 6000 yuan a year from the government. Indeed, there are national scholarships available, but do you really think they’re easy to get?
He thought about returning to the local hospital, but even if he wanted to go back, he needed connections, which would also cost money.
Five years studying medicine, five years living off his parents.
Honestly, Chen Cang was scared!
He wasn’t afraid of hardship or toil. If he was, he wouldn’t have chosen the emergency department.
In private hospitals, you can grab a lot of money and work without a conscience.
But Chen Cang still had a soft heart. His father, a simple and honest man, taught him two life principles since he was young: honesty and integrity.
Chen Cang spent half a year at a private institution before resigning. Just then, the Second Provincial Hospital’s emergency department was hiring temporary staff, so he took the opportunity and started working there.
That lasted more than two years!
In those two years, despite being a bit bitter, tired, and poor, Chen Cang felt he had something to strive for; after all, he could learn a lot in emergency care and he had met a good teacher: Chen Bingsheng.
Chen Cang had been greatly influenced by Chen Bingsheng’s character over these two years.
According to his initial plan, he would just study hard here for five or six years, hopefully rising to the position of attending physician, and then he could return to his hometown where he could directly enter a department and become a core member.
Chen Cang never overestimated himself because life always makes it crystal clear that you’re just an ordinary person, a grain of sand in the sea, insignificant, just an ordinary citizen, and even that status was debatable.
Just an ordinary doctor!
He’s just a doctor, not a god, right?
What angels?
Don’t doctors need to eat?
Don’t doctors need a dowry when they get married?
Don’t doctors need to buy houses when they get married?
Or do you not have to pay off a mortgage?
It’s all nonsense.
A doctor’s duty is to treat diseases and save lives, but doctors are still human. Humans have emotions and desires, household needs, and all sorts of worries.
Chen Cang was genuinely afraid of being poor.
Now that he finally had a way to make money, he cherished it like nothing else, and to be honest, it was as if it had given Chen Cang a second chance at hope.
Now Chen Cang had something to strive for, to settle down in this place.
He also had his own dreams.
But dreams, you see, you can only talk about them when you have money. Without money, all you can talk about is surviving.
Sometimes, frankly, dreams weigh heavily, and life deters you from chasing them.
Although it’s ironic, it’s also very true.
Sure, you can abandon everything to chase your dreams. You could! But Chen Cang couldn’t do it, and neither could most people.
As the eldest son, Chen Cang had a strong sense of responsibility. His parents, old farmers, in their spare time, worked as cooks during weddings and funerals in the village, earning a little money.
But relying solely on that, to put two students through university, simply wasn’t feasible.
In the rural areas of Dongyang Province, everyone grows corn, and the Chen Family’s plot of five acres and a little over yields good earnings of ten thousand yuan in a fruitful year. But when the harvest is less bountiful, they only manage to scrape together seven or eight thousand. After all, they eat at the mercy of the heavens.
Being a chef had also been a profession in the Chen Family since the grandfather’s generation in the village. Later on, Old Chen took over, and throughout the year, he could earn quite a sum, around ten or eight thousand yuan. With some odd jobs here and there, they could barely piece together thirty thousand yuan for the year.
But nowadays, what can you do with thirty thousand yuan?
If Chen Cang continued with his postgraduate studies, the financial gap for the family would widen, adding to his parents’ burden and increasing the pressure on his younger brother. Chen Cang could not bring himself to do such a thing.
Everyone has their own life, and at the same time, everyone must make choices about their lives.
Chen Cang did not choose to give up. Working as a temp in this provincial capital was his final struggle.
Therefore, he had to seize and secure this opportunity for a permanent position.
After all, this was his only chance to stay in this provincial capital.
Chen Cang was very frugal. In two years, he had earned less than fifty thousand yuan, yet he managed to save over twenty thousand—a feat not just anyone could achieve.
Sometimes, poverty isn’t just a joke.
It’s the last straw that breaks the back of an adult.
The collapse of an adult begins, most often, with borrowing money.
When Chen Cang was in school, poverty, to him, meant nothing more than choosing between having a steamed bun or an extra chicken leg at night—it did not dampen his happiness. But when he fell in love with a girl, he deeply felt the inferiority and helplessness that poverty brings.
Pillows stuffed with moldy dreams, inside which lived the people he couldn’t have.
It was then that Chen Cang suddenly realized.
Life really did contain much pettiness and not just the wolfberries in a cup of tea…
As for poetry and distance, those were for people without worries.
The night was silent.
The next day, Chen Cang got up early and went to the hospital.
The emergency room was as busy as ever. Old Chen, who was on duty, saw Chen Cang arrive and quickly waved his hand, “Hurry, let’s go, no time to change clothes, come with me to an off-site emergency!”
Chen Cang, seeing Old Chen’s serious expression, quickly followed, “Big brother, what’s happened?”
Old Chen’s face was somber. As they walked, he said, “There’s been an electrocution at the construction site, and the victim is now unconscious. Someone just dialed 120.”
Hearing this, Chen Cang’s face also changed!
Unconscious after electrocution…
This was no small matter.
Because it was the Monday morning rush hour, the roads were congested. Chen Bingsheng was feeling frantic and even a bit anxious.
“Master Yang, please hurry! This won’t do, at this rate the patient will be gone!”
“Red light! We’ve got to run it! The patient doesn’t have much time to spare!”
“Aren’t we not allowed to run a red light without a patient? Ah, crap! What kind of stupid rule is this!”
“Quickly, quickly! There’s no time!”
After seven or eight minutes, the ambulance arrived at the Nansha River construction site. The vehicle hadn’t even come to a complete stop before Chen Bingsheng, with the medical kit in hand, leapt out in a big stride, with Chen Cang right behind him.
At this point, the patient was already unconscious. A man in his fifties, clad in camouflaged clothing and covered in dust and dirt, saw the ambulance and loudly urged, “Make way, make way, the doctor is here!”
As the crowd parted, the man hurriedly said, “Doctor, he just had breathing and a faint heartbeat a moment ago, but… but it was there, and now… now it seems to have stopped? Please, take a look, what do we do now?”
Upon hearing this, Chen Bingsheng’s face darkened instantly and he rushed forward to examine the patient.
The victim lay there, pale and colorless. Chen Bingsheng knelt on the ground, placed his right hand on the carotid artery, his ear close for breathing, and his eyes on the chest. Seconds passed and with the stethoscope, he checked the heart’s listening areas. His face grew increasingly grim.
He got up and asked, “How did the electrocution happen? Did anyone see it?”
The man in the camouflage uniform, with dirt and ash on his face, said, “I saw it. The wire was broken, and after he turned off the circuit breaker, he started to repair it. He was pulling the wires with both hands, trying to bring them together, but right at that moment, he suddenly felt a shudder in his body. I realized something was wrong and used a stick to get him down.”
By this time, a young man behind them had already been scared to tears, “I didn’t know he was fixing the circuit, our workgroup had a power outage, so I came to check. I found the breaker was off. There was no one around, no sign, so I turned it back on…because the site often trips due to short circuits…I…I didn’t know.”
Chen Bingsheng didn’t bother with these matters; he only wanted to know how the electrocution happened, what kind of electrocution it was!
But hearing what the man in camouflage said, Chen Bingsheng couldn’t help but feel a chill in his heart.
Trans-thoracic current…
It’s a bit tricky!
What is a trans-thoracic current? It’s the current that travels from one hand to the other hand. This kind of current passes through the heart during its journey and can easily cause coronary spasms, leading to myocardial damage!
This was serious!
Chen Bingsheng reacted very quickly and immediately started cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
But… after two sets, there was still no response!
Chen Bingsheng stood up, “Little Chen, keep doing CPR and assist breathing, don’t stop!”
Rescue time was critical!
Chen Bingsheng pulled down the transport stretcher from the ambulance, “Come on, get him on the vehicle! Hook up the ECG, let’s see what’s happening.”
The men were all burly, so it didn’t take much effort to get the patient onto the vehicle.
Using scissors to cut open the clothes, they went straight to cardiac monitoring!
Chen Bingsheng and Chen Cang exchanged a glance, “It’s fibrillation…”
Making a snap decision, Chen Bingsheng told Mr. Yang, “Mr. Yang, rush to the hospital!”
He turned to look at the crowd, “Who among you is a relative? Is there a manager? Come to the hospital with us.”
Everyone looked at each other, nodding without saying a word.
No one wanted to take responsibility for this kind of incident!
At that moment, the older man in camouflage, in his fifties, stood up, “I’ll go with you.”
The young man who had just turned the breaker back on also hurriedly said, “I’m coming too.”
In the ambulance, there was a defibrillator, cardiac monitor, and oxygen – all very convenient.
One shock from the defibrillator!
No effect!
The second time!
Still no effect!
The fibrillation continued.
If the fibrillation didn’t stop, there would be no chance of survival at all.
If it continued like this, the patient’s life would reach its end!
ps: In this book, every person has a story, everyone has a place they belong. This book is about the doctors I’ve seen, their lives, they are just ordinary people.
Chen Cang can be tough, but Chen Cang has his own difficulties. Life is never easy, why not face it with a smile? Chen Cang’s ‘Cang’ is the ‘cang’ from a grain in the vast ocean and the transformation of seas into mulberry fields. This book is about a society where vast currents rage, speaking of the vicissitudes of human life.
I hope the friends who read this chapter can join me in finishing this story. Thank you!
(See you at the end, ahem, calling you out, dear readers. This chapter is set where~~~~)