Chapter 7: False Cold, True Heat—The Belated Truth
“Shen Jiang, how is your grandmother?”
“She’s still in a coma. Officer Zhang, is there something you called me about today?”
Shen Jiang’s expression was utterly frigid. Her emotions lent a chill to her voice, making it sound less gentle than usual, like a clear stream that was cool and refreshing to the ear.
Shen Jiang knew that the police must have caught the middle-aged man who had caused the trouble.
As expected.
“The suspect who injured your grandmother has been found. He’d been hiding in the mountains these past few days. Yesterday, he finally couldn’t resist coming out for some air and was caught on surveillance,” Officer Zhang said, thinking she would be relieved to hear the news, which was why he had notified her immediately.
“Logically, he should be responsible for your grandmother’s medical bills, but he seems very agitated. I think you’ll have to go through legal channels…” Officer Zhang was a little worried. These troubling matters were too harsh for a young woman like Shen Jiang, but she had no choice but to face them.
After all, besides the elderly woman who had been in the accident, Shen Jiang was the only one left in her family.
Shen Jiang probed, “Is that man’s name Shan Guosheng?”
At this moment, with no one around, Shen Jiang’s round, doe-like eyes were no longer calm. A strange madness rolled in their depths.
Officer Zhang was a little surprised. “How do you know his name?”
Shen Jiang’s heart bled. Her last sliver of hope was shattered. Everything in the dream was being confirmed in reality.
Shen Jiang didn’t answer Officer Zhang’s question, instead asking, “Officer Zhang, did he say why he came to Mingxin Hall to cause trouble?”
“About that, the suspect said his father came to Mingxin Hall for treatment last month. After taking the prescription Dr. Shen prescribed for a few days, his condition worsened and he developed kidney failure. He asked other doctors, and they all said Dr. Shen’s prescription was incorrect. That’s why he came to demand an explanation, not expecting things to get so out of hand. We will follow up and verify all these details. Don’t worry, he injured someone, so he will have to face legal punishment no matter what.”
In fact, even if everything Shan Guosheng said was true, he should have called the police and let the police and the health bureau investigate the doctor. His act of starting a private fight and injuring such an elderly woman, landing her in the ICU, already constituted a serious criminal offense.
Officer Zhang sighed inwardly. The medical profession was truly a high-risk industry.
That old lady was long past retirement age and was still seeing patients. She had raised a granddaughter who attended Capital University. In his opinion, there must be some misunderstanding.
Officer Zhang’s rambling voice was a bit distorted over the phone. Shen Jiang cut straight to the point, “He said the patient’s condition worsened after taking medicine from our clinic?”
Officer Zhang replied, “Yes.”
He became a little nervous. “If they had chosen to call the police instead of seeking private revenge, things wouldn’t have ended up like this. You must not act rashly. We will investigate the truth and give you justice.”
Shen Jiang’s brow was furrowed so tightly she could have crushed a mosquito. She had never seen such a shameless person! His father had never taken any medicine from their Mingxin Hall!
In the dream, it was only much later that Shen Jiang learned the troublemaker’s name was Shan Guosheng, and his father, the patient, was named Shan Gui.
Shen Jiang had always suspected deep down that the medical dispute was a sham, possibly orchestrated by a competitor envious of Mingxin Hall’s good business who had hired someone to stir up trouble. She hadn’t expected the patient to be real, so she had been waiting for the results of the police investigation.
Her certainty was not blind favoritism. Having been by her grandmother’s side since childhood, the first lesson in Chinese medicine her grandmother taught her was to be cautious. Moreover, her grandmother had run Mingxin Hall for over fifty years and had never made a mistake. The wall full of commendation banners and the reputation among old patients were the best affirmation of her medical skills. Shen Jiang simply didn’t believe that her consistently cautious grandmother would harm a patient. With her grandmother’s level of skill, how could she make such a major, life-threatening mistake?
But this waiting had caused her to miss the best opportunity to clear her grandmother’s name.
Refuting rumors is time-sensitive. It must be done quickly, before the rumors can spread.
Today was already the eleventh day since her grandmother’s accident, long past the opportune time to clarify things with the public. And the situation in the dream was even worse. It wasn’t until a month later that Shen Jiang learned the suspect’s name was Shan Guosheng and found the patient Shan Gui’s information in their clinic’s medical records. It was only after many twists and turns that she finally found the real reason for the patient’s kidney failure.
By then, everything was already set in stone. The hype had died down, and even if Shen Jiang tried to speak out online, she couldn’t make a single ripple.
No one was willing to believe her.
No one cared about the convoluted and complex explanations of a notorious clinic.
Everyone only remembered that a pitiful family had been destroyed because of a quack doctor.
When Su Xingran changed the sign of Mingxin Hall to Qingde Hall, Shen Jiang felt terrible, but there was nothing she could do. The name Mingxin Hall was already tarnished. If they continued to use it, no patients would be willing to come.
At this moment, a raging fire erupted in Shen Jiang’s eyes.
“Officer Zhang, I have some information here that might be helpful to your case. I’ll take a picture and send it to you first.”
Shen Jiang hung up the phone and walked to the vandalized consultation room. From the messy objects on the floor, she found the simple, old-fashioned medical record book.
This was a habit her grandmother had maintained for many years of practicing medicine. After seeing each patient, she would record the day’s consultation in the medical record book. Since Shen Jiang started using a computer, she would also regularly save these medical records on the computer as a backup.
The dream didn’t have many details about this medical dispute incident; it was almost mentioned in passing. But she vaguely remembered that the final investigation result was that the patient had never taken any medicine from their clinic at all.
The police had also closed the case on this basis and convicted Shan Guosheng.
But things were far from over. The netizens’ judgment was still in full swing, and they didn’t buy the police and the judge’s verdict. Because Shan Guosheng’s family came forward and insisted that although they didn’t get the medicine from Mingxin Hall, they did take the prescription written by Dr. Shen Anlian.
Although Mingxin Hall had escaped legal sanctions, the stigma on the doctor’s head was once again confirmed. Everyone believed that this tragedy was caused by the grandmother’s lack of medical skill. Shen Jiang recalled the online frenzy surrounding this farce in the dream, her brow furrowing tighter and tighter.
Shen Jiang quickly found the patient Shan Gui’s consultation record.
Both the medical record and the computer file from that time showed a crucial piece of evidence. It was a note at the end of the case file, very small and not too obvious:
“Patient refused to fill the prescription at Mingxin Hall, requested to take the prescription home to fill it himself.”
Shen Jiang first took a photo of this medical record and then sent the computer file with the time stamp to Officer Zhang.
Then, she stared at the case file without blinking and began to study it.
The dream didn’t mention her grandmother much, only a few words here and there when Su Qing appeared. Shen Jiang didn’t know what the real truth was, only that in the dream, she had repeatedly mentioned that there was no problem with her grandmother’s diagnosis.
Now, she needed to re-examine the specific details of the medical record.
This patient’s obvious symptoms were pain in the lower back and knees, fatigue, and a feeling of being cold all over. Coupled with a weak, floating pulse, many traditional Chinese medicine practitioners would subconsciously treat it as a cold syndrome.
But her grandmother didn’t. The medical record clearly stated: false cold, true heat; yang flourishing and repelling yin.
This is a term in traditional Chinese medicine, meaning that fire is stagnated internally, unable to get out, but the external symptoms all have the characteristics of a cold syndrome.
This illness actually occurs frequently, but most doctors would treat it as a cold syndrome. It’s generally difficult for doctors without extensive experience to diagnose it, because the misleading symptoms are too obvious. In clinical practice, symptoms of both cold and heat will appear at the same time, but whether it’s “internal stagnation of fire evil” or “yin flourishing and yang declining,” the two extremes of cold and heat are very difficult to distinguish during pulse diagnosis, requiring the doctor to have an extremely high level of experience.
Once a doctor’s medical skills are not up to par and they misdiagnose the illness without realizing it, the patient becomes the unlucky one who pays the price.
Her grandmother had taught her how to distinguish the key points of pulse diagnosis and differentiation for this kind of illness. This was an area her grandmother was very skilled in.
And just to take the most basic point: the patient’s tongue coating was yellow, greasy, and thick, and the tongue body was red. This is a sign of excess heat. If it were a yin deficiency patient, the tongue coating should be floating and unsubstantial.
The medical record also noted that the patient had reported dark yellow urine, which further corresponded to the signs of a heat syndrome.
It was clear that her grandmother’s diagnosis was indeed correct.
Shen Jiang recalled what Officer Zhang had just said. He said that before Shan Guosheng came to cause trouble, he had consulted many traditional Chinese medicine experts, and they all said that there was a problem with the prescription her grandmother had written.
Was it because of those quack doctors’ words that Shan Guosheng thought there was a problem with the prescription, which was why he came to cause trouble in a fit of anger?
Then why didn’t he honestly tell the police that his father hadn’t gotten the medicine from Mingxin Hall?
Looking at the medical record, Shen Jiang suddenly remembered something about the patient Shan Gui.
Last month, her grandmother had mentioned this to her during dinner. A patient felt that the medicine at Mingxin Hall was too expensive and demanded the prescription, saying his son sold traditional Chinese medicinal herbs and he would just go back and have his son fill it.
Of course, her grandmother didn’t agree. That patient was also stubborn and simply snatched the prescription her grandmother had already written and ran off.
At that time, Shen Jiang had comforted her grandmother, saying that at least the medicine the patient filled at home would be genuine, instead of him going somewhere else to get cheap medicine.
Her grandmother had smiled helplessly at the time. More than worrying about that patient, she seemed to be more troubled by another matter: high-quality traditional Chinese medicinal herbs were becoming increasingly scarce, and the medicine would only become more and more expensive in the future. It might even be impossible to fill some prescriptions.
“If it really comes to that, then traditional Chinese medicine will truly decline.”
The warm, familiar voice still lingered in her ears, which, combined with the messy and dirty scene before her, seemed extremely ironic.
Shen Jiang closed her eyes.
She reorganized her thoughts.
The patient’s condition worsened after taking medicine prescribed at her grandmother’s place.
But in reality, the patient took the prescription written by her grandmother, and the medicine was filled at his own family’s Chinese medicine shop.
A bold and absurd idea couldn’t help but pop into Shen Jiang’s mind: could the patient’s worsening condition be due to taking fake traditional Chinese medicine?
Shen Jiang was so shocked by her own speculation that she couldn’t come back to her senses for a long time. A moment later, she wanted to pull at the corners of her mouth, but found that the muscles there seemed to disobey her command, unable to form an expression.
Reality wouldn’t play such a big joke on them, would it?
Between doubting her grandmother’s medical skills and doubting that there was a problem with the medicine the patient took, Shen Jiang felt that the probability of the problem being the latter was almost one hundred percent.
It was written clearly in her grandmother’s medical record. She could say with certainty that there was no problem with the prescription her grandmother wrote. But to be on the safe side, she still made a call to her mentor, Old Mei, for confirmation.
“Yo, your skills have improved after not seeing you for a few years. The prescriptions you’re writing now are so impressive, little girl. That patient will probably be coming to give you a commendation banner after taking just three doses, haha.”
After receiving Old Mei’s affirmation and teasing, Shen Jiang felt no joy at all. She managed to maintain her expression without breaking down, thanked him seriously, and then hung up the phone.
After eliminating all other possibilities, there was only one truth, no matter how incredible it was: the problem was with the medicinal herbs from the patient’s own family’s shop.
Shen Jiang gasped for breath, not at all expecting the truth to be like this.
Ignoring the suffocating feeling in her chest, there was only one thing she wanted to do right now.
She had to find a way to prove and clarify this matter to the public immediately!