A Patient Died
Longzhen, Hunan, China
January 2001
Iam a Chinese doctor,and now I am 35 years old.
11 years ago, when I was still a resident in Hunan Provincial Hospital, one thing happened to me.
In those days, the doctors are not enough in our hospital, and as young doctor I was arranged for many night duties.
There is an alley from the back door of our hospital to our apartments, and it was very dark in those years. I passed that path every day, before I met that...
It was a summer night, when I was on duty, the ambulance whooped in. I rushed out immediately, and saw the medical team getting a bloody, obviously unconscious man out of the car. He fell down from the 8th floor as a staff told me, and no relatives were obtained yet. We tried our best to save him. We cleaned his body, made some sutures, offered him oxygen and a transfusion.
At about 11:50, I heard groaning from his ICU ward.Thanks god he's awaken I thought. I went to his bedside.
"Doctor, Doctor!", he just keep calling the same word. No matter how loud I cried to him, his voice got weaker and weaker. "Dang" when the bell striked 12, I saw a straight line appear on the screen of heart beating monitor. I knew that I couldn't pull his life back,and I gave up.
Things passed a few days, and one night I was on duty again. At midnight when I was ready to have a nod, the telephone rang. It was my wife calling. She told me she had a sharp stomach pain and wished me go home. I thought she had better come to my hospital and spend the night with me .So I went home to get her.
I walked slowly with my wife, holding her arm. When we were walking in the very dark alley, I suddenly heard a voice "doctor.." it's quite sullen."were you talking?" I asked my wife. My wife stood still I couldn't see her face clearly. "doctor,what time is it?" The word came slowly out of her mouth.
It wasn't my wife's voice, it was a man's voice! I felt 100 percent scared. I ran away.
I stayed in the hospital for a whole night, wide awake!.The next morning, I went home. My wife was still sleeping fast. I woke her up and asked her about last night. She was very bewildered by what I said. She even had no idea about her stomach pain.
After that my wife always considers my experience as a nightmare caused by stress. But for me, I never go home through that alley at night.