Director Gu’s pulse was weak. After Sang Zhi administered a few acupuncture needles, she briefly explained the situation to the father and daughter, as well as the others present.
"When burning coal or charcoal for heat in the winter, if the ventilation is poor, carbon monoxide enters the body. It binds with hemoglobin and competes with oxygen for transport channels. This deprives the brain, heart, and other vital organs of oxygen, leading to a coma. At that point, the heartbeat and breathing become extremely faint, the circulatory system malfunctions, blood pressure plummets, and organs are starved of blood supply. Doctors often declare death based on this state of extreme physiological stress or damage. But if a family member is observant, or if someone is as lucky as Director Gu—woken up by external stimulation—they can be saved. Anything beyond that is truly hard to say."
As a doctor, Sang Zhi had heard many cases of people 'waking up' in mortuaries after carbon monoxide poisoning. Of course, more often, there were cases where people had been buried alive and woke up inside their coffins; finding no way to call for help, they would claw at the coffin lids until they were a mangled mess. When families moved the graves later and saw the scratch marks on the wood, the survivors’ grief was inevitable, but the ancestors were long gone, and it only added to the agony.
Chapter 89