Chapter 82: Rural Absurd Past Events Chapter 82

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Protagonist:

Li Xiulan

Entered the crowded hospital interior.

Li Xiulan's face was full of bewilderment and helplessness, like a lost little chick, not knowing what to do.

Fortunately, her eldest and second brothers had been to this hospital before.

Knew how to register and how to find a doctor.

Li Yaozu was busy lining up to register.

Li Xiulan and Li Jiahao accompanied their mother, finding a place to sit and rest in the hospital.

The registration line was very long, and the crowd was bustling.

Li Yaozu lined up for more than half an hour before finally getting registered.

"Got the number for that expert doctor from before! Let's go upstairs to wait!"

Li Yaozu came back holding the registration slip and said this.

Then he asked his mother:

"Mom, are you hungry?"

Her mother shook her head: "Not hungry."

Her scattered, weak gaze carried bewilderment and fear; in this strange hospital she was like a child lost in the night.

"How about we go back? There's no need to spend this money. I don't want surgery..."

Her mother said this in a low voice.

The older generation naturally fears surgery.

Many elderly people believe that once they have surgery, death is not far off.

And without surgery, perhaps they could live a few more days.

"Mom, we've come all this way, let's just go see the doctor. You don't need to be afraid, it's fine."

Li Jiahao comforted patiently.

Her mother finally said nothing more.

In her heart she actually longed to be cured, longed to live.

But the fear of treatment and the desire to live created conflict within her, making her waver back and forth between the two, consumed by inner turmoil.

The three siblings brought their mother up to the third floor, waited outside the expert consultation room for about an hour, and finally their mother's name was called.

The three brought their mother in, and saw a middle-aged person in a white coat sitting at the desk; he was the expert doctor.

"What's the patient's condition?"

The doctor asked.

"Got cancer, lung cancer, came to see you last time..."

Li Yaozu had his mother sit in a chair and spoke honestly to the doctor.

Li Jiahao and Li Xiulan stood to one side.

"Let me see the medical records."

Li Yaozu quickly handed over the medical records.

The doctor looked at the records while asking the patient some general questions, then said:

"This situation is not very optimistic... needs surgery, and the surgical risk is very high... What is your family situation? Where are you from?"

Li Yaozu said honestly:

"We're from the rural area. There are three siblings in our family; behind me are my second younger brother and third younger sister."

The doctor glanced at Li Jiahao and Li Xiulan.

Found that they were dressed shabbily.

Immediately gauged their general economic situation.

So he said:

"Surgery is estimated to cost over thirty thousand. If your financial situation doesn't allow it, I suggest conservative treatment with Chinese medicine."

The doctor's meaning was obvious: he leaned toward suggesting conservative treatment, just putting it more tactfully.

"Doctor, we've scraped together over thirty thousand."

Li Xiulan interjected at this point.

Obviously she didn't understand the doctor's meaning.

The doctor glanced at Li Xiulan and said more tactfully:

"I suppose it wasn't easy for you to come up with this money?"

Li Xiulan gave a bitter laugh:

"It really wasn't easy, but we have to let our mom keep living. As long as she can live, spending any amount of money is worth it!"

Since Li Xiulan had said that, the doctor couldn't say anything more.

He said:

"Then I'll issue an admission slip. You handle the admission procedures for the patient, go downstairs to the first floor to prepay the hospitalization fee. After ten o'clock tonight, don't eat anything. Tomorrow morning, don't eat rice, don't drink water, eat nothing at all, and don't urinate. Have a preoperative physical examination in the morning. Once the preoperative examination results come out, we'll arrange the surgery."

Li Xiulan and her two brothers weren't very clear what a preoperative physical examination was, but they would just follow the doctor's arrangements.

So after leaving the consultation room, they went to handle the admission procedures as the doctor instructed.

When paying the fees, Li Xiulan and her two older brothers discovered they needed to prepay twenty thousand yuan in hospitalization costs, and all three felt the pinch acutely.

In the end, they still pooled the money together.

After paying, they received the hospitalization receipt and the admission guide sheet.

Following the instructions on the admission guide sheet, they went to the inpatient department, found the nurse on duty, and the nurse arranged the admission.

Arriving at the hospital ward, Li Xiulan only then discovered that the ward was not one person per room; there were six beds in total, six patients sharing one ward, and among these six patients, most were elderly and frail, with only one young person.

All the patients shared one commonality: they were filled with fear and rejection toward hospitalization, and in their eyes one could clearly see the fear of death.

And this fearful emotion is contagious.

On the day Li Xiulan's mother was admitted, it so happened that a patient in the ward passed away; the patient's family wailed and made a scene in the ward, making the surrounding atmosphere even more oppressive.

Li Xiulan's mother saw all this, and although she said nothing aloud, her heart suffered a tremendous impact.

She knew she might not last much longer before ending up the same way...

Past six in the evening, Li Yaozu went out and bought dinner, returning with three cheap boxed meals, and everyone ate a simple dinner together.

Li Xiulan ate a few bites and could not eat any more.

The strong smell of disinfectant in the ward gave her no appetite.

Looking at the bed next to her where someone had just died, she felt very uncomfortable inside.

Mother also ate very little.

She only drank a bit of congee water before she could not swallow any more.

In the blink of an eye, evening arrived.

Li Jiahao said he would go book a guesthouse near the hospital to sleep.

But when he asked, it turned out to cost forty or fifty yuan a night, expensive to death.

Li Jiahao came back to consult Li Yaozu and Li Xiulan's opinion: with such an expensive guesthouse, should they still stay?

If they didn't stay at a guesthouse, where would they spend the night?

"Why not just make do for one night."

Li Xiulan spoke up with this sentence at that moment.

Li Yaozu also felt there was no need to go to a guesthouse; after all, they were not well-off.

So the three siblings tacitly decided to spend the night in the corridor outside the hospital ward.

The hospital was very cold, and the corridor benches were very hard.

The three siblings endured the night, and none of them slept much.

They barely managed to persist until the next morning.

The three went out and bought three steamed buns, solved breakfast, then returned to the ward and began running pre-operative checks for their mother.

There were many pre-operative check items: blood draws, urine collection, and various machine examinations.

The three accompanied their frail mother, busy front and back, running east and west to various departments.

This not only left their mother exhausted, but the three of them were also exhausted.

They had not slept well the night before to begin with, and now with all this tossing about, from body to spirit they suffered extreme torment.

They had never been this tired; even when doing farm work and heavy labor in the past, they had never been this tired.

They were like walking corpses rushing about in the hospital, experiencing a chaotic, muddled nightmare.

And this nightmare was far from over.