Everyday Casualties, Part Two

After finishing up, Henry left the still unconscious man in the clinic and was about to return to his rented apartment when the doorbell rang again. He had no choice but to revert to his role Tinkerer and unlock the door he had just locked.

It was a young mother, holding her crying child, Hao Tao, and looking utterly bewildered. Her race was unmistakably Black. She was remarkably petite; compared to the average Black person, one couldn't help but wonder if this little girl was even old enough to graduate from university.

Ultimately, he wasn't the one who caused the trouble, and appearances vary from person to person; some people just look younger. So the Tinkerer didn't intend to meddle and delve into things he couldn't change.

Besides, this young mother was a regular customer. The scar across her eyebrows became even more prominent when she frowned. The Tinkerer asked, "What happened to the child again?"

It was a toddler, about a year old, probably too young to even walk. He lay limp in his mother's arms, his only sound a loud, powerful cry, as if trying to fight for more of his limited life.

"William has a fever again, and he vomits everything I feed him, so he can't eat anything. He also seems to be unable to move much; he seems to be in pain no matter what I touch. Doctor, please help him."

"Sigh. Come in, let me see what I can do for you." Although he really wanted to shoo them away, the Tinkerer let the mother and child in because of the child's irritating crying.

The young mother was startled by the person on the hospital bed and the large amount of blood. There wasn't much room to stay inside the clinic, so the Tinkerer pointed to the only remaining chair and said, "Sit over there. Let the child's bottom stick out; I'll give him a fever-reducing injection."

When the Tinkerer opened the back door, went out, and came back, he was carrying a tray with some medicines and tools.

First, he disinfected the area with cotton soaked in alcohol, then drew up the medication with a syringe. The Tinkerer deftly gave the child a shot in the buttocks, which only made the child cry louder.

Looking at the young mother heartbroken for her child, the Tinkerer coldly said, "Take the child back. I should have told you, there's not much we can do."

The heartbroken young mother seemed to want more help, but the Tinkerer was reluctant to ask. His last act of excessive sympathy had almost resulted in him gaining an extra wife and child. These two were basically trying to freeload off him!

It was only after taking a more resolute approach that the young mother gave up; otherwise, this Black Clinic would have been transformed into a welfare institution.

In fact, children should not be given fever-reducing injections indiscriminately, because these injections only suppress the symptoms and do not help with the underlying condition.

However, this child has Poliomyelitis, commonly known as "infantile paralysis." First of all, there is no medicine to treat this disease, but it can be prevented by vaccines.

Secondly, 90% of people who contract this disease will recover naturally without showing any symptoms; however, 10% will develop very severe symptoms.

Although children with severe inflammatory symptoms still have a chance to recover, high fever may damage brain nerve cells, causing muscle contractures, developmental abnormalities, and other problems.

In other words, the only option is to rely on supportive therapy to suppress symptoms and prevent the virus from causing irreversible damage to the body. Then, we can hope that the body's immune system will work its magic to protect the child and help them recover.

This is a highly contagious disease. In the United States in the 1990s, the only reason this disease occurred was that children were not vaccinated after birth and were in high-risk environments, which led to their infection.

In other words, the real cause of this disease is "poverty," not some nasty virus. Even if they can be saved this time, countless difficulties await this young mother and child in the future.

Having already experienced it once, not only was the Tinkerer cold-faced the entire time, but the young Black mother also knew his style. She couldn't ask for more.

Ultimately, the whole thing happened because she didn't have the courage to refuse, the courage to give up, or the courage to die.

If she had been a little braver, things might have been different.

Pulling a few crumpled bills from her pocket, the young mother said, "This is all I have."

"Take it back." The Tinkerer, having finished packing up his belongings, looked at the mother and child who had fallen into the Abyss of Hell and said coldly, "I only take money to save lives, and his life is worthless. Take him back and prepare yourself mentally."

The young mother wanted to say something, but the memory of having a gun pointed at her head before made her legs go weak, and she couldn't speak.

Not all doctors are good people.

In the end, she gave up on seeking help, put away the few bills that everyone had rejected, and left with her child, whose crying had subsided slightly.

Before opening his Black Clinic, the Tinkerer thought he would see many patients with intractable diseases that poor families couldn't afford, besides those with knife and gun wounds. Little did he know that what he would see most were lives filled with despair.

Many diseases are not incurable, like the one that just happened to the child. But the Tinkerer couldn't guarantee that the child would grow up healthy and have a complete life.

What If...? that child becomes a typical polio patient, he will become a burden on the family. Especially in a family with only one mother, when maternal love is eroded into despair, the outcome will be even more tragic.

No wonder there's an old saying in my hometown, "If I can't be a good prime minister, I'd rather be a good doctor." Being a doctor is just a second choice. Because the truly difficult diseases are never in the human body.

Perhaps they shouldn't have even given him that fever-reducing injection.

With this thought in mind, Henry returned to his rented apartment and changed out of his Tinkerer's clothes. That feeling of helplessness, along with the clothes he took off, was left behind in the Black Clinic in South Los Angeles.

He recalled seeing clues, such as identification, on the two men he had X-ray Vision while treating gunshot wounded patients, and wrote them down on a piece of paper. Combined with the information he had gathered from patients at the Black Clinic over the past few days, Henry drove to the Continental Hotel.

Even non-bounty-based intelligence can be worth anywhere from one to ten times the value of a single piece. As long as the basic requirements of a person's name plus their movements, or a person's name plus a plan, the rest depends on how many people report it.

If the same intelligence is reported by different people, the first person may receive a tip of five to ten yuan, depending on the richness of the information.

Starting with the second person, the bounty decreases. However, if no new information is provided to supplement the original intelligence, the bounty will be at its lowest level.

The reason it's not zeroed out is because the people who designed this intelligence gathering system are well aware that the rate at which a message spreads is itself a form of intelligence.

It's generally believed that the more people report something, the more credible it is. However, the abnormal spread of a message sometimes doesn't necessarily mean that someone is manipulating things behind the scenes.