Chapter 4: Bed Nine

At ten past two in the morning, the night nurse on seven said, "Doctor, bed nine."

Tong Yu was in the duty room with his shoes off and a plate of his roommate's instant noodles going cold beside him.

He had been on call for three hours, and so far he had written two discharge notes and told one man to stop eating oranges.

"The drain?" he said, already on his feet.

"A hundred and eighty in the last hour. It was thirty before midnight."

The nurse's voice was steady and quiet.

"And it's bright red. I paged Dr Jiang twice."

"What did he say?" asked Tong Yu.

"Observe."

Bed nine was a woman of sixty-one, two days out from a liver resection, and she was awake and pale and a little cross.

"I'm only thirsty," she said.

"I know. We'll sort that out." Tong Yu took her wrist and counted.

Her pulse was 112. Her blood pressure was 96 over 60 and had been 120 over 80 at supper.

He laid his hand on her belly, and it was tighter than it should have been.

"Get two units cross-matched," he said to the nurse. "Run the saline wide open. I'm calling Dr Jiang again."

Jiang Tao picked up on the ninth ring.

"It's the post-op," he said wearily. "They always drain a bit. Observe it for an hour."

"Dr Jiang, her pulse is a hundred and twelve and her pressure's dropping. I think she's bleeding."

"You've been a doctor for three days."

"Yes. I can also count." Tong Yu kept his voice level.

"I'm going to call Deputy Director Lu, because it's his patient. I wanted you to hear it from me first."

There was a pause.

"Don't," said Jiang Tao, and the phone went dead.

The roommate turned up in the corridor three minutes later in his duck cap, with his stethoscope round his neck and no questions.

"The nurse paged me," he said. "I'm the on-call anesthetist. What have we got?"

"A bleed. Probably the cut surface. Two units are coming."

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