Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The pristine white corridor was wide and tidy.
All the yellow wooden doors that lined up both sides of the corridor were scrubbed clean. Bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitizer that were the size of a palm were secured to both sides of the doors. A pot of devil’s ivy or money plant could be seen below each bottle of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Clad in long and billowy large white coats, a group of doctors walked down the corridor in style.
Every time they arrived before a wooden door, one of the doctors would go forward and check the room number as well as the patients who were inside before leading the other doctors into the wards.
“Doctor Ling is making ward rounds.”
“Doctor Ling wakes up really early.”
“Doctor Ling is leading a group now. So amazing!”
“But we are in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery.”
“But… the creases on Doctor Ling’s coat are perfect…”
The young nurses and junior doctors peeked at Ling Ran and his party in a relaxed manner before whispering to one another. However, all the doctors in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery who were ranked attending physician and above were not as relaxed.
“Zhang Anmin, that snitch!” One of the attending physicians cursed in resentment as he stood beside He Yuanzheng.
Even though He Yuanzheng was also unhappy about the situation, he merely chuckled and said, “What’s the use in scolding Zhang Amin?”
The attending physician, too, chuckled internally. ‘Sh*t, even the department director isn’t cursing Ling Ran. I’m only a junior attending physician and made the mistake of showing my dissatisfaction. I wonder if there are more of Ling Ran’s spies around us.”
He Yuanzheng snorted through his nose. He then turned and returned to his office. Out of sight, out of mind. Ling Ran was only checking on around twenty of the patients in his department, anyway.
All the doctors present sighed in relief in unison.
They looked at one another and smiled bitterly.
“Sigh, it would have only taken one sentence to stop Ling Ran from coming over.” The attending physician who spoke just now tried to explain himself. At the same time, there was no subject in his sentence. But of course, everyone knew that he was referring to Department Director He.
“There’s no need for that,” the only associate chief physician in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery said flatly. He did not seem emotional about what was happening
He was promoted after He Yuanzheng became the department director. Even though doctors were not usually too ambitious when they were attending physicians, the moment they were promoted to associate chief physician, they would start feeling an overwhelming desire to become the department director.
However, he was less than five years younger than He Yuanzheng. He would have to wait for twenty years for He Yuanzheng to retire.
But everyone was pretty optimistic that the first-in-command would either jump ship, get fired, or get cancer. This was because many second-in-commands in the past had risen to power under such circumstances.
This was their coping mechanism, which prevented them from suffering from a mental breakdown.
Another attending physician cleared his throat and said, “Didn’t Department Director He make things difficult for Ling Ran for a short while yesterday? Did you guys feel something?”
“Feel what?” The associate chief physician furrowed his eyebrows a little.
The junior attending physician glanced at the other doctors and said probingly in a hushed tone, “That you were being shunned.”
“By who?”
“By everyone.”
“Everyone?” The associate chief physician could not help but look at the other doctors.
“The Medical Laboratory Department only gave us the results of the tests we ordered at the end of the day. They prioritized all the other departments over us. The intern who went over grumbled for a bit.” One of the attending physicians recalled what happened the day before. “He was sent back twice before they finally gave him the results.”
“Yes. Our group’s intern was also scolded when he went there to submit an order form. The people over there said that he knew nothing.” Another attending physician laughed out loud as he spoke. “I think that he deserved it, though. He submitted the order form without even memorizing the patient’s medical record. It’s only normal that he got scolded.”
The attending physician beside him looked at him like he was an idiot. “Is it normal, too, that other people kept cutting the queue when we were in the Medical Imaging Department?”
“People do that to us all the time, don’t they?”
“Even the young nurses working in the operating theaters kept giving us the cold shoulder. We had to put on surgical gowns by ourselves.” A doctor who operated on a patient yesterday felt it too.
“Forget about surgical gowns. I was carrying out a spinal tap, and all of the nurses refused to assist me. I had no choice but to call a houseman over.”
After the doctors talked about it, they had a rough idea of what was going on.
“A just cause enjoys abundant support while an unjust cause finds little,” the associate chief physician suddenly said. The corners of his lips curled up a little as he turned and left.
The attending physicians looked at one another before they lowered their heads and left.
Inside one of the wards of the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery was Ling Ran, who was carrying out a physical examination on patients to check on their recovery progress as usual. Every now and then, when he encountered patients who were suffering from neck pain, he would even give them a massage.
Zuo Cidian followed Ling Ran closely. He could not help but to say with a smile, “Doctor Ling, if you were to do this every day, you wouldn’t have any more time left to operate on patients.”
“Patients receiving cholecystectomy need adequate presurgical and postsurgical care. Hm, I need to take a look at this patient’s CT scans.” The moment Ling Ran finished speaking, Yu Yuan who was standing behind him immediately walked over to him with a laptop.
Yu Yuan who was four feet and nine inches tall raised the laptop a little so that Ling Ran did not need to lower his head to look at the screen. It was very convenient.
When the patients and his family members saw that an entire group of doctors was checking on the patient, they put their full focus into listening to what the doctors said. It was impossible for a person not to feel touched when Ling Ran was sitting beside his bed, palpating him, and looking at his scans.
Ling Ran received two Basic Treasure Chests after performing a physical examination on only seven patients. Since he only possessed Novice Level Cholecystectomy, it was obvious that non-medical factors contributed greatly to his huge yield of “Patient’s Sincere Gratitude”.
And since Ling Ran was in the middle of a mission, the number of Basic Treasure Chests he received was double of what was actually given to him.
He basically obtained four basic treasure chests after checking on only seven patients. This was even more than what he got when he utilized his Master Level Hepatectomy. It was also more than what he got when he made use of his Perfect Level Achilles Tendon Repair Surgery and Perfect Level Finger Replantation Surgery.
“There’s no problem with the scans. He can get discharged tomorrow after we observe him for another night,” Ling Ran ordered Zhang Anmin after he looked at the CT scans.
Even though theoretically, Zhang Anmin was the one who facilitated the handover of these patients to Ling Ran, he was not completely in charge of them. If a person were to look at it that way, there was no point calling Zhang Anmin a snitch. He was more like the marketing executive of the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery.
Ling Ran managed to check on all his patients in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery without a hitch. There was no disturbance at all.
As even He Yuanzheng acted as if he did not see anything, no other doctor dared to speak out about it.
Departments of the same hospital often fought for patients for two reasons. The main reason was to earn more money. When they operate on a patient, they would get to profit from the surgery fees and medical consumables used. They also got a cut from the medical fees paid by the patients while they stayed in the hospital. These were the doctors’ main sources of income. The second reason was so that they got to put in more practice. If a surgeon operated on less than one hundred patients a year, he would lose his touch. And if he wanted to improve, he would need to operate on more than one hundred patients a year.
If a person were to take only these two aspects into consideration, Ling Ran’s presence was not actually much of a threat to the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery.
First of all, since all the patients he operated on stayed in the wards of the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, the doctors in the department would not suffer from any loss of income. They even got their work cut out for them. Furthermore, the cholecystectomy Ling Ran performed right now was not a surgical method the doctors in the department cared a lot about.
Instead, the department director was the one who was dealt the greatest blow.
He Yuanzheng, though, was not so impulsive that he would go head-to-head with Ling Ran.
…..
Jin Feng was sitting outside the office of the Emergency Medical Center. He quickly stood up when he saw Ling Ran and the doctors of his treatment group, who were walking over mightily.
Ling Ran still remembered this prison guard who gave him some pickled garlic. He nodded at Jin Feng.
Jin Feng immediately flashed a smile. When he saw that the other doctors had returned to the office, he quickly walked over to Ling Ran.
“Doctor Ling, my older brother has been doing pretty well. Thank you very much.” Jin Feng was smiling so brightly that his face was all crumpled up like that of a bulldog’s.
“You’re welcome,” Ling Ran said.
It only took one glance for Jin Feng to know that Ling Ran was not in the mood for small talk. He quickly said, “I brought a few more bottles of pickled garlic. I brought you a trinket as well. I hope you like it.”
As he spoke, he took out a large stainless-steel board.
The rectangular stainless-steel board was the width of a person’s arm and the length of half an arm. As Jin Feng was holding it out in front of his chest, it looked like a bulletproof armor.
Only when Jin Feng raised the board did Ling Ran notice that a drawing was delicately engraved into the board.
“Both of these drawings were engraved with a knife,” Jin Feng said, “I specifically looked for two pictures so that the artist could imitate them. This side shows Bian Que meeting Huan Gong, the King of the State of Cai. The other side shows Hua Tuo scraping poison off Guan Yu’s bones.”
“Who’s the…”
“He’s also one of the inmates. This really took a lot of effort. Even cross-stitching doesn’t take this much time. It looks better, too.”
The texture of the drawings engraved on the stainless-steel board was indeed extremely beautiful. It was very special.
“Please take it as my token of gratitude. You can hang it on a wall or use it as a decoration.” Jin Feng shook the board in his hands as he spoke.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but please take it home with you.” Ling Ran had learned how to reject gifts in a polite way since years ago. He firmly said no and sent Jin Feng off.
He then turned and saw the bottles of pickled garlic on the floor.
After hesitating for a few seconds, Ling Ran whipped out his phone and called Zuo Cidian. “Hey, can you ask those who are on the night shift today if they want to have dinner at the Shao family’s restaurant? I have some pickled garlic that goes really well with grilled meat. Pre-order two bamboo rats too.”
