Operating Theater 2 — Ling Ran washed his hands again before entering the operating theater. The male patient was already on the operating table.
The circulating nurse had already completed the preoperative preparation. When the anesthetist saw Ling Ran, he asked eagerly, “Should I administer anesthetics now?”
Even though anesthesia was the same for all kinds of surgery for anesthetists, all doctors, including anesthetists, seemed to automatically regard appendectomy as an inferior procedure. The anesthetist just wanted the appendectomy to be completed as soon as possible.
Only the patient himself was extremely serious. He asked, “Did my girlfriend’s surgery go smoothly? Was the incision well-positioned? ”
“The surgery went smoothly.” Ling Ran was only able to answer the first question.
“Doctor, can you operate on me in a way such that my incision is positioned at the same location as my girlfriend’s?” The patient raised the same question as his girlfriend. To them, this was apparently a very important matter.
Ling Ran was already immune to this question by now. He answered earnestly, “I’ll have to see where your appendix is first.”
The patient raised his head arduously. “You must make sure that the incision is at the same position as my girlfriend’s. Or else, I will have to face consequences that are worse than the pain I feel from appendicitis.”
After the patient said that, he placed his palms together before bringing them to the left, and then to the right in prayer. He then said, “It’s not easy to find a girlfriend. Please help me out, guys.”
The anesthetist was amused. “Wow, romance comes at a high cost these days.”
“There’s more to it.” The patient sighed. “It’s fine if we just have to wear couple outfits and couple shoes in real life. But she even wants our characters in games to wear the same outfit. Can you believe this? There was this one time I had to change into a new outfit to activate special powers to fight a villain. She threw a tantrum and didn’t talk to me for three days. In the end, I had to buy her a handbag…”
The anesthetist got excited as he listened to the patient. “Your girlfriend sounds pretty interesting. She likes romantic things. Let me tell you, if I had a girlfriend…”
“We have been talking about buying cars.” The patient on the operating theater glanced at the anesthetist in disdain and said, “Do you find couple cars romantic?”
The anesthetist was stunned.
Even though a doctor’s salary was considered high compared to most medical staff, the anesthetist certainly did not dare claim that he could afford two cars. No doctors could, unless they were to smuggle drugs out of the hospital and sell them.
“It’s fortunate that you guys only need one house to stay in.” The anesthetist’s thoughts ran wild.
Things like couple cars were way too expensive and were unhealthy for romantic relationships.
The patient on the operating theater laughed wanly, “I’m not worried about houses. I’m more worried about the renovation.”
“What’s with the renovation?”
“I have four houses, and she has five. She’s now forcing me to split one of my bigger houses into two so that I have five houses too. She also wants me to renovate my houses so that they look exactly the same as hers. I have tenants occupying those houses. How am I going to tell them about this? All this unnecessary trouble…”
The anesthetist was stunned once again. He remained silent for a few seconds before looking at Doctor Ling and asking, “Should we administer general anesthetics?”
…..
Twenty minutes later, Ling Ran stared at the anesthetist as he reluctantly pushed the patient toward the recovery room.
Even from afar, Ling Ran could hear the cheers ringing out from the recovery room.
“Do their incisions really look the same?” Doctor Zhou thought about the two operations and said, “I think they were at the same position. How about the length?”
“They’re of the same length too.”
“Exactly the same?”
“Yup.”
“Wow, what a coincidence.” Doctor Zhou clicked his tongue in amazement and said, “You know, even though the young woman is a little pretentious, it’s really rare for a couple to suffer from appendicitis at the same time, with the position of their appendixes and the length of their incisions being the same too. I’m starting to believe in love after seeing this.”
“The young man’s incision could have been smaller. However, I respected the patient’s opinion and cut an extra 0.2 inch.” Ling Ran’s reply was extremely straightforward.
Doctor Zhou went silent for a few seconds and rephrased his words. “Even though the young woman is a little too pretentious, they suffered from appendicitis at the same time, and the position of their appendixes were the same too. This is still very hard to come by, and shows that true love…”
“It’s true that both of them suffered from appendicitis, but it might not be for the same reason.” Ling Ran cut Doctor Zhou off.
Doctor Zhou gave Ling Ran a strange look. “What else could it have been? The young man saw that his girlfriend suffered from appendicitis and decided to join her? Hahahaha…”
“What else could it be?” Ling Ran reminded him and raised his chin a little.
Doctor Zhou, who had played second fiddle to Ling Ran for half an hour, started to go along with Ling Ran’s flow for some reason. He racked his brains. “Maybe after the girl realized that she was suffering from appendicitis, she felt that it should be a couple thing, so she… What the f*ck?”
The two nurses who came over as Ling Ran and Doctor Zhou were talking were enthralled by the conversation.
“How did she do it?”
“If what Doctor Zhou said is true, she must possess some superpower.”
“Should we report this to the police?”
Ling Ran shook his head. “It’s impossible to induce appendicitis.”
Doctor Zhou got confused. “Then, what did you mean?”
“I merely stated a possibility.” Ling Ran’s expression was totally relaxed.
However, Doctor Zhou thought long and hard about it. “Even if she couldn’t directly induce appendicitis in her boyfriend, she could use all kinds of methods to increase the likelihood of appendicitis in him. If this were the case, the male patient could have suffered from other diseases such as acute pancreatitis and colitis. However, he suffered from appendicitis. Hm…”
“It’s true love…” The two young nurse clutched their chests.
Ling Ran quietly went to make a phone call to Lu Wenbin. He then showered.
When he exited the bathroom, the patient who was about to receive M-Tang surgery was already lying on the operating table.
The M-Tang surgery was followed by an Achilles tendon repair surgery and a knee arthroscopy surgery…
Now that the number of surgeries Ling Ran could perform was not limited anymore, his surgical volume rose rapidly.
Without including the two abdominal surgeries, Ling Ran carried out a total of eight surgeries throughout the day. The VIP Patient Division was finally starting to feel pressured.
Two days later, all the members of Ling Treatment Group stood in front of the newly-built ward area, and their eyes sparkled, as if there were countless stars in their eyes.
Ling Ran finally obtained all the newly-built wards in the Emergency Medical Center…
As there were other chief physicians and associate chief physicians in the Emergency Medical Center, the members of the Ling Treatment Group had to make a collective appeal for this to come true.
“New wards…”
“New hospital beds…”
“More patients…”
Now, half of the O-shaped ward area of the Emergency Medical Center belonged to Ling Treatment Group. The remaining quarter was still under renovation.
“It’s really huge.” Yu Yuan extended her hands and stood with her legs apart to gauge the size of the place.
“We’ll be able to fit in a lot more patients from now onwards.” Lu Wenbin observed the wards on both sides of the corridor with his hands behind his back. He was thinking about the amount of medical consumables needed and the manpower that would need to be allocated to them.
Zuo Cidian looked at Ling Ran and asked carefully, “Doctor Ling, three different companies have already disinfected the ward area twice. Is there anything else that needs to be done?”
“Hmm… Are all the hospital beds here already?” Ling Ran asked.
“They’re in the rooms already.” Zuo Cidian had a smile on his face.
“How about the additional beds? Are they enough?”
Zuo Cidian hesitated for a moment and said, “Department Director Huo purchased thirty new hospital beds for us to use as additional beds.”
“How is thirty beds enough?” Ling Ran immediately showed his disapproval.
“There are twenty new rooms. Thirty additional beds are enough…” Beside them, the cadre from the Medical Affairs Department panicked.
Zuo Cidian coughed a few times and cut him off. “Don’t you understand what Doctor Ling meant? The thirty additional beds are for the rooms. How about the ones for the corridors? Besides, don’t we need to put the wear and tear of the hospital beds into consideration?”
The cadre of the Medical Affairs Department did not dare to offend Ling Ran as he knew that Ling Ran was the darling of the hospital right now. He said tentatively, “Doctor Ling, the usual quota for twenty rooms is forty hospital beds, and for your department, the quota is sixty beds. With the additional thirty extra beds…”
Zuo Cidian coughed a few times again and said, “You don’t have to rack your brains over this. Doctor Ling, we just have to notify the pharmaceutical sales company by ourselves. I reckon that Department Director Huo left us some room for us to decide the number of hospital beds we want to add by ourselves.”
After Zuo Cidian said that, the cadre from the Medical Affairs Department wisely chose to keep quiet.
All the department directors disliked it when the Medical Affairs Department stuck its nose into the distribution of resources of their respective departments. They also really hated it when pharmaceutical sales representatives did things without consulting them beforehand. If Department Director Lei from the Medical Affairs Department were present right now, he might be able to give his two cents. But right now, the lowly cadre of the Medical Affairs Department just wanted to complete his task of serving Ling Treatment Group well.
Ling Ran nodded a little when he heard what Zuo Cidian said. “This is a good thing, as I’m not exactly sure how many additional hospital beds we can fit inside here either.”
“Doctor Ling always puts his patients first.” Touched, Zuo Cidian wiped the tears off the corners of his eyes and continued, “By the way, Doctor Ling, someone is going to send a silk banner as a gift to you later today.”
“A silk banner?”
“Yeah, it’s Xu Yongchang, the patient you operated on earlier. The one with AIDS combined with damage to the meniscus. He is getting discharged today, and he and his older brother mentioned that they wanted to bring you a silk banner as a gift.” Zuo Cidian was very good in livening up the atmosphere. He raised the topic at that moment and immediately roused everyone’s interest.
The cameraman (a staff of the hospital who did not have a fixed duty) who was tasked to take photographs of the initial completion of the Emergency Medical Center’s ward area immediately raised the SLR camera he bought with his own money. He turned around and requested strongly. “Doctor Ling, I’ll take some photographs of you receiving the silk banner!”
Ling Ran finally realized what was going on.
He had never gotten any Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chests from the Xu brothers. Now that he thought about it, he had a feeling that they were the type of person with slower emotional response. He reckoned that he would only receive a Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chest from them the moment they gave him the silk banner.
Ling Ran did not care one way or another. Of course, he preferred patients such as the young man from South Africa who cried all the time. However, Ling Ran was still able to understand that each patient had different personalities.
With Zuo Cidian as the emcee, Xu Yongchang, who had just recovered from his injury, and his older brother walked toward Ling Ran as more than ten people watched. They hold a silk banner that was the height of half an adult.
A few words were printed in gold on the bright red silk banner: An ethical doctor with superb skills. It was a very beautiful banner.
“Doctor Ling, thank you so, so much. Without you, I don’t know when I’ll ever be relieved of the pain in my knee.” Xu Yongchang’s expression was sincere.
Ling Ran smiled and waited for a treasure chest to fall on the ground. There was none!
“Yes, thank you so much.” Xu Yongchang’s older brother was also filled with gratitude for Ling Ran.
Ling Ran flashed another smile. There were no treasure chests, either.
“Doctor Ling, I’m really, really grateful to you.” Tears rolled down Xu Yongchang’s cheeks as he stared at the camera lens.
“Thank you, Doctor Ling.”
“Doctor Ling, please allow me to express my sincere gratitude to you through this silk banner.” Xu Yongchang finally mentioned the word “sincere gratitude”.
But Ling Ran still did not see any Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chest.
However, Ling Ran understood Xu Yongchang well. Perhaps, he had put all his emotions into this silk banner.
“Don’t mention it,” Ling Ran said as he continued smiling as he did not want Xu Yongchang to get sick from all that crying.
Zuo Cidian cheered as he clapped. “Doctor Ling, time to take a photograph!”
The staff of the hospital who did not have a fixed duty and who held a professional SLR camera immediately became excited. He commanded Ling Ran and Xu Yongchang. “Doctor Ling, hold one side of the silk banner, and Xu Yongchang, you hold the other side. Now, shake hands.”
Xu Yongchang listened to the cameraman’s command and extended his hand. However, his hand suddenly stopped midair. He had stayed in the Emergency Medical Center for quite some time, and knew that Ling Ran was a germaphobe.
When Ling Ran saw that, he extended his right hand in a very natural manner and gently shook Xu Yongchang’s right hand.
*Click.*
“Another.”
“Amazing.”
“Another.”
The voices of the staff of the hospital who did not have fixed duties were deafening.
*Click.*
A Sincere Gratitude Treasure Chest fell in front of Ling Ran.
“Doctor Ling, I’ll take my leave first, then.” Xu Yongchang looked downwards and left with his head lowered.
