Chapter 2232 - Bedside Chat

Bi Cheng sighed again but didn't respond. After a pause, he asked Old Zhang, "This isn't your first time being wounded, is it?"

"It's my second battle wound, but my third hospitalization." Old Zhang seemed rather proud. "The first time I was hospitalized was back on Qimu Island—before I'd even enlisted. Things weren't like now. That huge refugee camp had only one proper doctor—Doctor Xie—and he couldn't possibly keep up."

"There was a hospital on Qimu Island?"

"If there wasn't, how could so many lives have been saved?" Old Zhang shifted to a more comfortable position and continued. "Qimu Island was designed for three thousand people, but at the peak of the refugee influx, it held as many as four thousand. Everyone who came was starving, covered in frostbite, or cut up by rebel swords. Without that hospital, who knows how many more would have died? As for the building itself, it was far better than this field station. The refugee camp was thrown together—even sheds had to house people—but the hospital was built of solid red brick, with glass skylights. The interior, though, wasn't as good as here. There were a few dozen kettles, a hundred-odd bowls, big pots, buckets, bedpans, and washbasins—but not a single proper bed. Just a hundred or so straw mattresses laid with sheets, long pillows, and blankets. How could that compare to the beds we have now? There was one other bad thing: rush mats were always stacked in the corner. If your sleeping mat wore out, you got a replacement. If someone died, they'd use one to wrap the body—seeing that always felt like bad luck."

Bi Cheng fell silent. Looking around, he realized this was actually the first time he had truly noticed what the field station looked like. The tent he was in wasn't large; originally designed for nine beds, it now held twelve because of beds borrowed from the critical ward. But everyone had a cot converted into a hospital bed. A nurse was always present in the tent. Though doctors were rarely seen, he knew they were just over in the examination area, ready to come at a moment's notice. As for pots and pans, those weren't in the observation room. He had heard the nurse mention that such things were kept in a nearby "disinfection area," cleaned by dedicated staff—anyone who did a sloppy job was punished.

"There's one more way the Qimu Island hospital couldn't compare to this place." Old Zhang smiled meaningfully and nodded toward the nurses changing shift.

Bi Cheng smiled knowingly. The gender imbalance in Council-controlled areas was nothing new, and the military was the worst-hit zone. Wherever you went, the girls on the propaganda and medical teams were extremely popular. Soldiers would sidle up to chat; the bolder ones would try to shake hands. Some, like Old Zhang, would crack off-color jokes.

The Fubo Army had no political commissars, and its rudimentary political corps couldn't really tackle "conduct issues" with the troops. Besides, the Elders themselves were happily buying maidservants to fill their harems. If discipline were too strict, the brothers on the front line would start grumbling. So as long as it didn't involve fundamental breaches of discipline, the Council turned a blind eye to "conduct issues."

On the subject of nurses, Lin Motian had once seriously discussed with Zhang Ziyi a plan to "set up a model" in the style of Florence Nightingale—but it never materialized. The Council had established a nursing program at Fangcaodi early on (the predecessor of today's Lingao Nursing College), later added a nursing track at the Women's College of Arts and Sciences, and then one at Provincial-Hong Kong Medical School. A tiered nursing-talent system had already taken shape. Female nurses in pale-blue uniforms—even though many were no longer young—had long since become an "Australian Medicine" hallmark more famous than the white-coated Australian doctors. What had once been street gossip had become common knowledge; even traditional Chinese medicine clinics that knew nothing about "Australian medicine" had begun hiring nurses.

By modern standards, nursing skills under the Council were hardly satisfactory. In the early years, a considerable share of patient deaths had been contributed by clumsy naturalized nurses. Of course, after years of clinical experience, the first generation of nurses was now close to old-timeline competence. Standouts like Guo Fu had become deputy chief nurses and ward nursing supervisors. But the interns and newly capped nurses produced by the Council's crash-course training model were a different story. Like the green medical students, they had to be hammered and scolded by senior colleagues for years, completing their professional education in the wake of patients they had killed or crippled.

The foundations of nursing science had been built into the Council's educational system. Night rounds by duty nurses were the most basic nursing duty; the "Lady with the Lamp" routine had been standard since the Council's first hospital opened. Because the Council understood the importance of nursing, from the start it was seen by naturalized subjects as one of the best ways for a girl to "eat government rice." There was no need for a noblewoman to lead the way and elevate the profession's prestige. Assembly-line vocational training naturally couldn't instill the religious compassion of Nightingale's era—but for soldiers who once couldn't even afford a doctor, having nurse girls always present in the ward was already an immense comfort.

From the moment it arrived in this era, the Council had stood on the shoulders of pioneers. They couldn't replicate that kind of great model—nor, it seemed, did they need to.

"Once I get leave and go home, I'm gonna get me a nurse for a wife! She'll wait on me every day, polish my boots and my sword—if they're not shiny, I'll smack her backside..." Old Zhang stared at the nurse's retreating figure and began daydreaming, as if the nurse who daily threatened to "re-insert his catheter" were already his bride.

"Keep dreaming," said a lightly wounded soldier on the opposite bed. "Nurse girls are picky. You're just a little second lieutenant! Think they'd look twice at you?"

"That's not fair," another wounded man said with a rueful smile. "Old Zhang's got all his parts, and he's an officer. Even if he can't snag a nurse, he won't lack for a suitable wife. It's us—missing hands and feet—who've got it hard."

"Being a cripple is rough, but at least we can go home. This war—I've had enough." The soldier who had slapped the prisoner with his own severed arm spoke up. "In battle, if you die, at least it's quick. It's being wounded that's pure torment—worse than death."

He had been fierce when he was hit; now he looked utterly dejected.

"Weren't you wounded on the boat with me?" Old Zhang asked.

"This is my second time wounded. The first was at Tengxian—took a pellet to the calf. Went to the dressing station. They bandaged me up, but since I couldn't walk, they said to wait for evacuation to the Fengchuan field hospital.

"If I'd known the suffering ahead, I'd rather have stayed in Wuzhou. At the casualty assembly point, there were no stretcher bearers—just an escort squad the unit had arranged. I begged the medical team for a 'Peace Cart,' squeezed myself and five other brothers onto it, and headed for Wuzhou first."

"Don't think I'm ignorant—I've seen a Peace Cart." Bi Cheng laughed. "Those carts are maybe seven chi long and four or five chi wide. Men our size can lie two across. How do you squeeze in six?"

"Heh—you don't know. The medical team calls it an 'ambulance cart.' When six wounded gather, they start a run. An ox or horse pulls it to Wuzhou. The medic told me that in Guangzhou city they also use Peace Carts to move patients—and the Council's carts aren't like Ming wooden carts. They've got steel bearings and rods, rubber tires—smooth ride, no bumps. But those Guangzhou carts usually carry only two people! How could they cram this many in, so we couldn't even move? And Guangxi roads are hellish. Even with Council magic, I was half-shaken to death. Rain kept coming; the road turned to mud. The cart started and stopped; it took days. The more I bled, the weaker I got. A brother right beside me died on the road—I didn't even have the strength to push his corpse away. The cart—who knows what it had carried before—the wheels creaked like grinding teeth, and the groans of us brothers never stopped. The noise still rings in my ears to this day..."

No one in the room could think of anything to say. They had been lucky: the field hospital had arrived in Yangshan just when they were wounded. They hadn't endured long-distance evacuation—never experienced such a miserable animal-drawn cart.

"That was still not the worst. I saw some brothers come back riding captured horses—small Ming cavalry horses, tough and hardy. Not bad. But wounded men can barely ride; they need someone to lead the horse and look after them. Stretcher bearers sent from the rear weren't enough, so the army conscripted local laborers. And among those laborers—vagrants who'd steal coins from a boiling pot. Even ordinary conscripted peasants were dirt-poor, only thinking of money. If the escort looked away for a second, they'd steal from the wounded and the dead. Some waited for the escort to slip up, dumped the wounded by the roadside, and ran off with the horse. On the road, I saw one wretch—because a wounded man couldn't stay on the horse going uphill—tie the man's legs together and drag him behind the horse up the slope. Our escort captain saw it and ran him through with a bayonet. That was satisfying—but that night, half the laborers had run off..."

"These laborers... weren't they all sent from the rear?" Bi Cheng was shocked.

"If only! Some were sent from the rear, but not nearly enough. If we hadn't used these scum for labor, who knows how many more wounded would have been stuck at the front."

(End of Chapter)