56: Chapter 56 The Nobel Laureate Kneeling in Blood

The Red Cross transport plane was bumpier than a military transport.

There were no shock-absorbing seats, no securing straps.

Thirty crates of medicine and twelve bags of plasma were stacked in the rear of the cabin, held in place by a cargo net hooked to the bulkhead.

Henry Bernstein sat on a crate of intravenous fluids, his lumbar spine pressed against the corner of the crate for an hour and a half.

Upon landing, a pothole on the runway made the entire plane bounce.

Half a crate of penicillin was flung out of the cargo net, and seven glass ampoules shattered.

The liquid medicine mixed with the broken glass, rolling back and forth on the vibrating metal floor.

Henry bent down to pick out the unbroken ampoules from the shards one by one, stuffing them back into the crate.

His fingers were cut twice by the glass shards, but he didn't even look.

The cabin door opened.

A heatwave rushed in, carrying the smell of diesel and a sour, burnt odor.

The runway was filled with gravel; the asphalt paving cut off halfway.

In the distance, the skeletal steel frame of the terminal building was all that remained, its glass curtain wall shattered into powder covering the ground, stinging the eyes when hit by the sunlight.

A white pickup truck was parked by the side of the runway.

The UN Refugee Agency logo was sprayed on its body, and there were two bullet holes in the front bumper.

A man stepped out of the passenger seat.

He was in his early thirties, with sunken cheeks, messy stubble, and eye sockets deep enough to hide the exhaustion of an entire battlefield.

"Professor Bernstein."

He said with a thick accent, "I am Isaac. The only surgeon in the camp."

He paused. "Everyone in the world thinks you are crazy."

Henry adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, which were stained with residue from the penicillin liquid.

"Lead the way."

---

The refugee camp.

A hundred times worse than any news footage.

Tents were a luxury.

Most people huddled behind low walls of broken bricks, about half a meter high, covered with a sheet of plastic.

The rainy season had just ended, the mud hadn't dried, and with every step, the soles of one's shoes had to be pulled out of the gray sludge.

The air was layered.

At the bottom was the fishy smell of mud, in the middle was the sour stench of rotting food, and floating on top was a cloying, nauseating odor.

Henry recognized that smell.

Gangrene.

He had smelled it in Africa.

But he had never smelled it on such a scale.

The entire camp was soaked in this scent, like a piece of rotting, living flesh.

The "operating room" was in the middle of the camp.

Half a brick wall, enclosed by two sheets of corrugated iron, with no door.

A wooden board placed on two ammunition crates—the operating table.

A desk lamp powered by a car battery—the shadowless lamp.

The bulb wasn't powerful enough, leaving a circle of dim, yellowish light over the surgical area, with dark shadows at the edges.

Surgical instruments were laid out on a dirty cloth.

Three pairs of forceps, two of them rusted.

The suture needles were made from fishing line.

The anesthetic bottle had a date printed on it; it was four months expired.

Isaac stood to the side, his eyes filled with a weariness that transcended apology.

"This is all."

Henry scanned the instruments.

In Zurich, he used a two-million-dollar Da Vinci robot, forty-two intraoperative consumables, and six assistants.

Now he had a wooden board and three rusty forceps.

He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, took out the povidone-iodine he had brought from his crate, and began to sterilize the instruments.

"First patient."

---

Word spread through the camp.

A foreign old man with completely white hair had arrived.

It was said he was the best doctor in the world.

The line of people stretched from the entrance of the "operating room" to the barbed wire fence.

The first case: Amputation.

A nineteen-year-old mother, her right lower leg mangled by a landmine, bone fragments protruding through the skin, the wound blackened.

No surgical saw.

Henry used a hacksaw found in the ruins to complete the amputation.

The sound of the saw teeth catching on bone echoed in the tin shed; the young mother bit down on a wooden stick without making a sound.

Her baby slept in a cardboard box nearby.

The second case: Debridement.

An old man had a large chunk of flesh and skin sheared off his back by shrapnel, pus and necrotic tissue mixed together; Henry spent two hours cleaning it.

The third, fourth, and fifth cases.

Several medical staff in the camp stood at the door and watched at first.

When they saw the precision of Henry's movements with those three rusty forceps—the angle error of the hemostatic forceps was no more than two degrees.

When they saw him locate shrapnel by feel alone without any imaging guidance—his fingertips sliding under the skin for three seconds, the tweezers probing in, and extracting it in one go.

When they saw him control the dosage of expired anesthetic with 0.1 ml precision.

Everyone stopped talking.

Isaac leaned against the half-brick wall, arms crossed.

He had worked in this camp for two years.

He had seen volunteers come and go, reporters who took photos for five minutes, and politicians who did a three-minute show before boarding a helicopter.

Henry was the first to arrive and roll up his sleeves to get to work immediately.

Fourteen hours without stopping.

At the eleventh hour, Isaac brought over a cup of water.

Henry took it, drank a sip, put it down, and continued suturing.

Isaac stared at those hands.

Sixty-two years old.

Eleven hours of continuous surgery.

The hands did not shake.

---

During a break between the sixth surgery.

Henry squatted outside the tin shed to catch his breath, his hands soaking in a basin of povidone-iodine to disinfect.

Isaac squatted nearby, fishing a crumpled half-pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

A local nurse walked by carrying gauze and said a few words to Isaac in the local language.

Isaac grunted after listening, his hand holding the cigarette paused, then he turned to look at Henry.

"She says it's been a lot quieter these past two days."

Henry turned his hands over in the povidone-iodine.

"Quieter?"

"The fighting has stopped."

Isaac lit a cigarette and took a puff; the exhaled smoke was blown away by the hot wind.

"They say a team of experts from China was sent over to inspect the ruins. Both sides are giving them face and have temporarily put down their guns."

He took another puff, his gaze falling on the white off-road vehicles flying flags on the perimeter of the camp.

"There aren't many countries in this world that can make two armed factions stop at the same time."

Henry didn't reply.

His gaze crossed the barbed wire and landed on the distant ridgeline.

Those helicopters and white off-road vehicles moved under the gray sky, the flags above them fluttering in the heatwave.

Peace didn't just arrive naturally.

Someone carried it and walked here.

Isaac stubbed out the cigarette, stood up, and brushed the dust off his pants.

"Whatever they came here for, if it lets these people sleep a few more peaceful nights, that's enough."

He tilted his head and looked at Henry.

"Professor, you haven't finished that cup of water yet."

Henry pulled his hands out of the povidone-iodine and dried them.

"Next."

---

The fourteenth hour.

The seventh surgery.

A child was carried in.

It was impossible to tell his exact age.

Malnutrition made his body two sizes smaller than it should have been.

A penetrating abdominal wound, intestines exposed, the wound over twenty-four hours old.

Henry opened the abdominal cavity.

His hand stopped.

The color of the intestines was already wrong.

The amount of pus in the abdominal cavity exceeded the limits of what this tiny body could withstand.

Even in the best ICU in Zurich, the survival rate would be less than five percent.

Here, it was zero.

The child looked at him with open eyes.

His pupils were already beginning to dilate, but he was still looking.

His lips moved slightly.

Isaac leaned down to listen for a few seconds, then straightened up.

His voice changed tone.

"He says... he is twelve years old. He heard from others that people here don't live past fourteen."

He paused.

"He wants to know if he is close too."

Henry's hand began to shake.

A hand that hadn't shaken in forty years.

Not in the African refugee camp.

Not in front of three rusty forceps.

Not in the face of Sun Bonian's threats.

In front of a twelve-year-old child, it shook.

He knelt down.

His knees slammed into the pool of blood on the edge of the wooden board.

Blood soaked through his pant legs and seeped into his skin.

"I can't do it."

His voice was broken.

Liu Hongde's face surfaced.

The exact same despair.

The same death sentence.

But Liu Hongde survived.

A dark golden pill, it dissolved upon entering the mouth, golden light enveloped the whole body, and cancer cells evaporated in thirty seconds.

That kind of power—if it were here.

Henry's hand stopped shaking.

He lowered his head.

He didn't know when, but that bronze piece was now in his palm.

He had fished it out of his pocket, not even remembering when he had taken it out.

The characters "Kindling" were stained with blood.

The bronze surface was warmed by the blood.

---

Three in the morning.

The child did not survive.

Henry closed those eyes.

His fingers, stained with blood, paused on the small eyelids for two seconds before moving away.

He walked out of the tin shed.

He sat outside the half-brick wall.

There were no stars in the sky.

The smoke from the artillery fire stained the entire night sky a grayish-brown.

From the camp behind him came intermittent groans and cries, mixed in with the hum of the generator, making it impossible to distinguish which was human and which was machine.

His white shirt no longer showed its original color.

Henry held the bronze piece up to the grayish-brown skylight.

Blood had seeped into the engravings, and the characters "Kindling" were now even clearer than the bronze-green.

Liu Yuyan's voice surfaced from the depths of his memory.

"Go to the battlefield and become a combat medic. Everything has its own destiny."

He hadn't found destiny.

A twelve-year-old child had died under his hands.

At twenty-eight in Africa, he had knelt in a pool of blood in a tent and made a vow to that borrowed surgical lamp.

For forty years, he had held onto that breath without swallowing it.

Today, he was kneeling in a pool of blood again.

His knees remembered this posture.

But this time, he didn't want to make a vow anymore.

Vows couldn't save that child.

Papers couldn't save him.

The Nobel Prize couldn't save him.

Forty years of experience put together couldn't save him either.

What he needed wasn't a better scalpel.

Isaac walked over and handed him a cup of water.

Henry took it and drank a sip.

The water had the astringent taste of disinfectant tablets.

"Professor, you need to rest."

Henry stood up.

He tucked the bronze piece back into his pocket.

"Next patient."

Isaac opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He watched the back of the blood-stained, white-haired old man as he walked back into the tin shed.

His gaze dropped downward.

At the base of the brick wall, in a pool of semi-dried blood, were two knee prints.

Very deep.

Isaac had worked in this camp for two years and had seen too many people off.

Volunteers came and went, doctors came and went, reporters came and went.

It was the first time he had seen someone kneel in blood, stand up, and then walk back.

---

Countdown to the arrival of Tier D—five days.