Delayed Rescue

The red light in the ambulance flickered on and off, like a tired eye. Lao Li looked at his watch, the second hand stubbornly ticking forward. He wasn't racing against time to save lives, but to meet a deadline. More precisely, to meet a "time requirement."

"Three more minutes," Lao Li muttered, his eyes fixed on the dashboard, the numbers flashing incessantly. He had been an ambulance driver for twenty years, knew the emergency manual by heart, and could recite the cardiac arrest resuscitation procedure backwards. But what he feared most was the GPS timer in the ambulance.

Today's patient was a retired teacher who had suffered a sudden heart attack. His wife was crying her heart out, but Lao Li couldn't waver, couldn't arrive a second too early or a second too late. This system was the new "intelligent management system" implemented by his unit. It was said to be designed to improve efficiency and standardize procedures.

Lao Li controlled the speed of the vehicle at a delicate balance point, neither too fast to cause unnecessary bumps, nor too slow to delay the "specified time limit." He even began calculating the timing of traffic lights, making advance predictions to ensure that every second was precise.

Lao Li glanced at the rearview mirror. The old teacher lay on the stretcher, his face pale and blue. His wife was holding his hand tightly, muttering something he couldn't hear, nor did he have the mind to listen. His mind was now filled with the numbers constantly flashing on the dashboard.

Two minutes.

The system stipulated that from picking up a patient to reaching the hospital, it had to be completed within ten minutes. Exceeding or falling short of this time would result in a deduction of performance points. Lao Li knew he had already been deducted twice, once because he arrived a minute late due to traffic congestion, and once because he arrived a minute early, deemed by the system as "jumping the gun".

One minute.

Lao Li felt his own heart pounding, not out of nervousness, but out of an unspeakable sense of absurdity. He had saved countless lives, but for the first time, he felt like a slave to a time machine. It was as if he wasn't saving lives, but completing a cold, hard metric.

He looked at his watch; the last second finally ticked over. The car came to a smooth stop in front of the emergency room.

Lao Li jumped out of the car, just about to open the back door. A doctor in a white coat ran over, looked at the old teacher and shook his head.

"He's...gone." the doctor said.

Lao Li was stunned, a surge of inexplicable anger rising within him. He wanted to question, to roar, to smash this broken-down vehicle. But he just opened his mouth, unable to say anything.

At that moment, his phone rang, it was a notification from his unit.

"Lao Li, your emergency time today is exactly ten minutes. Congratulations, you've passed the performance assessment."

Lao Li looked up at the sky, the sunlight feeling harsh. He suddenly remembered that the old teacher's wife had just been murmuring: "Doctor, a little faster...a little faster..."

He looked at the empty stretcher and smiled wryly. That "a little faster" had ultimately been defeated by "just right."