Words could not describe how tired Liu Guolin was after attending to 100 cases in one afternoon. After a quick shower, he landed on his bed and drifted off to sleep. His phone was set to vibrate. He had a nurse girlfriend who worked at the same hospital so neither of them had the time to celebrate Valentine’s. Liu Guolin slumbered until incessant knocking came on his bedroom door. The person outside it shouted loudly, “Ol’ Liu! Ol’ Liu!”
‘Who the hell is it… Can they tell what time it is?’ Liu Guolin very unwillingly peeled his eyes open and glanced at the phone on his bedside table. It was already 6 am. There were 15 unanswered calls… A jolt of shock went through him. He checked the phone records, not all of them came from his girlfriend, instead most came from his boss, Doctor Lee and they were made within the span of the last half an hour. Instantly Liu Guolin woke up with a start. The sound from outside the door took on an identity, it was the sound of his female colleague, Zhang Wenjun from the pediatrician clinic. She was supposed to take over the day shift…
‘What’s the emergency?’ Liu Guolin’s heart squeezed. This could only mean bad news…”Coming, coming.” He quickly sat up and put on a pair of trousers and shirt as he hurried to open the door. Zhang Wenyu fidgeted anxiously outside the door. Once she saw him, she complained instantly, “Why didn’t you answer any of the calls? You still have the mood to sleep… The people from Phecda are coming. Clean up your act. Our boss is frazzled. Even the hospital directors are coming. So, please hurry up!”
Liu Guolin was stunned. ‘What… The people from Phecda are coming?’ Liu Guolin was instantly reminded of the little girl from yesterday night. ‘The blinking eyes and incoherent voices… Could it really be related to supernatural forces? But it is impossible, the patient looked perfectly healthy, all her vitals were in optimum shape… What kind of illness could it be? Is it contagious? Probably not, or else it’d be someone from the disease control centre would knock on my door now…’ The flurry of thoughts crossed Liu Guolin’s mind as he hurried to grab his coat and followed Zhang Wenjun back to the pediatrician clinic.
Even though Third People Hospital was only a third grade hospital at Nan Xiang City, it was by no means a small hospital, that early morning, following a call from Phecda at the adjacent Eastern State, the hospital was soon cordoned off by police. The hospital looked very much unlike its usual self. Both the hospital director and vice director were there. Zhang Dongliang, head of the emergency department and Zhou Guihong, head of the pediatrician clinic were present as well. When Liu Guolin arrived, the place was already filled with many who outranked him and that made it conspicuously clear that it was the most junior doctor who arrived the latest.
“Xiao Liu, you’re really something else!” Once Superior Zhang saw Liu Guolin, he was so anxious he was about to explode, “You’ve caused a big trouble this time.”
“Superior Zhang, I…” Liu Guolin began hesitantly but, in the end, he silenced himself and shouldered the blame quietly. After all, he noticed both the hospital directors were looking his way with fury in their eyes. Liu Guolin could only grumble internally about how unlucky he was.
“I know you have your excuses but you should be sensitive enough to notice this.” Superior Zhang huffed angrily, “We have three patients with the same symptoms and epidemiological characteristics.”
Liu Guolin was startled. He shuffled down the corridor and looked into the three adjacent quarantine rooms. Each of them housed a child and their nervous parents. All three patients were from age 5 to 7 and they were all girls. Guo Qinying whom he consulted yesterday night was one of them.
“What is going on…” Liu Guolin whispered to Zhang Wenjun. With such clear overlapping properties, it fitted the early signs of an epidemiological outbreak.
“No one knows yet.” Zhang Wenjun whispered back. The eyes behind her round-rimmed glasses were filled with confusion, “Based on Superior Zhang and Superior Zhou’s opinion, this looks like Tourette Syndrome but Tourette Syndrome has only 1 percent infection rate among pre-primary children. It’s fine to have 1 patient in a night but three? That is highly unusual…”
Tourette Syndrome? Liu Guolin was shocked as the epiphany dawned on him. Indeed, why hadn’t he thought of that rare disease yesterday night…
Zhang Wenjun handed him a stack of documents, “Quickly look through these. The people from Phecda will be here soon.” Liu Guolin gave it a quick skim and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. ‘This is bad, this is really bad…’
Tourette Syndrome has no clear pathology. It typically shows up in children between ages 2 and 8. It manifests in two main symptoms, multiple movement tics and coprolalia. The tics are typically preceded by an unwanted urge or sensation in the affected muscles, they can sometimes be suppressed temporarily. They might also change in location, strength, and frequency. Common tics are blinking, coughing, throat clearing, sniffing, and facial movements. In severe cases, it might even mimic epilepsy.
Coprolalia is a form of vocal tic. The patient would make sudden noises that sounded like obscene or incoherent remarks. However coprolalia is very rare even among Tourette Syndrome patients. Therefore, having 3 patients showing both symptoms at the same hospital in one night was definitely unusual… Normally Tourette Syndrome was not contagious and it would not affect the patient’s life expectancy or intelligence. Many famous individuals suffered from this illness, for example historians believed that Mozart was one of them.
For most cases, motor and vocal tics did not require treatment, and modern medicine had no drugs to treat them either. Instead, the patients would be arranged for psycho and physio therapies to help lower the severity of the symptoms. In fact, many patients lose their symptoms after they reach adolescence. Therefore, this makes the diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome extremely hard. Many patients with light symptoms might not even know they suffer from this illness, their symptoms would be treated as naughtiness, impoliteness, juvenile curiosity by their teachers, friends and families. This was especially true in countries where such medical knowledge was not common. Sometimes even doctors would miss the diagnosis, case in point, Liu Guolin…
‘What the hell is happening?’ Liu Guolin looked at the three patients in the quarantine rooms with befuddlement. Tourette Syndrome is more common in boys, males are about three to four times more likely than females to develop Tourette syndrome. This did not help the diagnosis of the illness for parents saw this as boys being boys.
But… in this case… the patients were all girls…
Before Liu Guolin could finish reading the files, the people from Phecda arrived. There were two groups. One was the medical doctors, led by a middle-aged man and the other were in protective suits. Seeing their arrival, the hospital director, vice directors and the different department heads rushed to welcome them. Liu Guolin and Zhang Wenjun followed closely behind.