Public Slap in the Face

Lynn ran through the situation in his mind.

This man was being misdiagnosed.

If they followed the current treatment plan, he would suffer cardiac arrest and die on the emergency room bed in eight minutes at most.

Should he save him?

From a purely selfish perspective, this was not his patient.

If something went wrong, it had nothing to do with him.

Besides, All-Things Diagnosis had stated that this was an ordinary person with no superpowers to copy.

But from another perspective—

Lynn's gaze swept between the gathered residents and Griffin.

He needed this neighborhood to know what level of skill Miracle Clinic possessed.

A public, face-to-face, indisputable diagnostic crushing would be more effective than spending a hundred thousand dollars on advertising.

And... this would also happen to shut Griffin up.

The cost-benefit analysis was complete, taking less than a second.

Lynn walked into the emergency room.

His pace was neither fast nor slow as he walked straight to the hospital bed.

The young doctor was busy signing papers and had not yet noticed the outsider entering.

"You are not having an anxiety attack," Lynn said to the man on the bed. His voice was steady and clear, audible to everyone in the quiet emergency room.

"You are having an acute myocardial infarction. Your left anterior descending artery is blocked. If it isn't treated within five minutes, you will die."

The young doctor's pen stopped.

He looked up and saw Lynn, his expression shifting from confusion to annoyance.

"Who are you? This is the emergency area. Family members wait outside."

"I am not a family member," Lynn said. "I am the doctor from the Miracle Clinic across the street, Lynn."

The young doctor remembered—he was that young Chinese man who ran a small clinic and had been mocked by Griffin.

He retorted without hesitation:

"Dr. Lynn, is it? Our ECG shows sinus rhythm with no ST-segment changes. This is a textbook case of an anxiety attack. You can diagnose a heart attack just by looking from the doorway?"

"Your ECG leads are placed incorrectly," Lynn's gaze landed on the electrode patches on the man's chest.

"V1 and V2 are swapped. V1 should be in the fourth intercostal space at the right sternal border, but you placed it on the left. V2 should be in the fourth intercostal space at the left sternal border, but you placed it on the right. The two positions are swapped, causing the signal acquisition for the anterior wall leads to be completely wrong."

The young doctor's face tightened.

"Impossible. I've placed ECGs hundreds of times—"

"Then place it again," Lynn interrupted. His tone remained calm and unhurried, but it carried a certainty that brooked no argument.

"Swap the positions of V1 and V2 and run another ECG. Once the results are out, it will be clear who is right and who is wrong."

The emergency room went quiet.

The nurse's hand, holding a syringe, hung in mid-air, unsure whether to proceed or wait.

The man on the bed was already twisting in pain, sweat dripping from his forehead drop by drop.

The number of onlookers at the door had grown from four or five to over a dozen.

Griffin had also walked over.

He had heard Lynn's voice, set down his coffee cup, and walked to the entrance of the emergency room.

"What's going on?" Griffin frowned as he looked at the young doctor.

"Vice Dean Griffin," the young doctor's face flushed slightly. "The doctor from that small clinic across the street says our ECG placement is wrong and that the patient isn't having an anxiety attack, but a heart attack."

Griffin's gaze turned to Lynn.

He still remembered this face—the young man he had insulted to his face during the clinic's renovation.

"Dr. Lynn," Griffin's tone was neither polite nor clearly sarcastic. "Our emergency team is professionally trained. You, someone without a license—"

"My temporary license was approved last week," Lynn interrupted calmly. "License number NYS-TP-2024-7783. You can check it."

"Vice Dean Griffin, I have no interest in discussing credentials with you right now. This man on the bed has about four minutes left. Do you intend to waste those four minutes arguing with me, or will you have your doctor reapply the electrodes?"

Griffin's expression changed.

He wasn't convinced; he was choked up.

The gathered residents began to whisper among themselves.

A middle-aged woman lowered her voice and said to the person next to her, "What if that young doctor is right? What if they really did place them wrong..."

Griffin remained silent for two seconds, then nodded at the young doctor.

"Run it again."

The young doctor was reluctant but dared not defy the Vice Dean's order.

He walked to the bedside and tore off the V1 and V2 electrode patches—he glanced at the positions—

His hand stopped.

Then his face turned pale.

He had indeed swapped them.

The positions of V1 and V2 were reversed.

He reapplied them correctly and started the ECG machine.

The paper strip spat out with a "zzzt" sound, running for about ten seconds.

The young doctor tore off the strip and took one look—

The ST segment was elevated with a convex upward shape.

All the anterior wall leads from V1 to V4 showed changes.

It was a textbook case of an acute anterior wall myocardial infarction.

The air in the emergency room solidified.

The young doctor's hands were shaking.

"Start resuscitation!" Griffin's voice suddenly rose an octave. "Notify Cardiology! Activate the cath lab! Prepare for PCI! Hurry!"

The entire emergency room instantly burst into motion.

Nurses pushed medication, doctors issued orders, and calls were made to notify the surgical team.

The man on the bed was quickly wheeled toward the operating room.

From the moment Lynn spoke to the confirmation of the diagnosis, less than four minutes had passed.

There was no applause from the crowd—this wasn't a television show.

But the look in everyone's eyes had changed.

The way they looked at the young Chinese doctor in gold-rimmed glasses was completely different from how they had looked at him five minutes ago.

Lynn stood where he was, not lingering any longer.

He turned, walked out of the emergency room, crossed the street, returned to his clinic, and closed the door.

Griffin stood at the entrance of the emergency room, looking at the "Miracle Clinic" sign across the way.

His coffee had gone cold, but he had forgotten to drink it.

The young doctor walked out from behind him, cold sweat and shame on his face, and whispered, "Vice Dean... if that patient had been treated for an anxiety attack..."

"He would have died," Griffin's voice was dry. "You almost killed a man."

The young doctor said nothing more.

Griffin glanced at the clinic across the street again.

Through the floor-to-ceiling glass window, he could see Lynn sitting back down in the chair behind the front desk, picking up his coffee cup, and opening his anatomy textbook.

Everything was as usual. As if nothing had happened at all.

That night, the story of "the young doctor in Hell's Kitchen who pointed out an incorrect ECG at the hospital and saved a life" spread throughout the community.

It started with the middle-aged women who had been watching—they told the story to their neighbors upstairs and downstairs.

The neighbors then told the owner of the laundromat.

The laundromat owner told every customer who came to pick up their clothes.

As the story spread, it was constantly embellished—

"That Chinese doctor saw it at a glance."

"The people at the hospital across the street were all stunned."

"He can tell what illness you have just by looking at you."

By the next morning, there were three people lined up at the door of Miracle Clinic.

By the third day, there were seven.