Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Like Yun Hua Hospital, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Beijing Medical University was a large hospital amid the lively city. There were bustling shops as well as residential areas around it. There were also stalls selling food and knick-knacks.
Ling Ran was having tofu pudding along with two fried dough sticks and a plate of salted vegetables at an alley not far away from the hospital, and he was enjoying the food quite a lot.
Compared to street food that owed its origin to Beijing, food like fried dough sticks and tofu pudding that could be found all over the county sold in Beijing tasted better. A person just had to visit any random shop to be able to enjoy a delicious breakfast.
Of course, there were quite a lot of customers in the shop. Even though it was only five in the morning, around 30% to 40% of the seats were occupied. This was contributed to the massive population of Beijing.
Ling Ran who possessed Master Level Physical Examination carried out a visual inspection of the customers around him and saw that one of them exhibited the typical symptoms of alcohol poisoning: flushing, thick and oily skin, dilated pores, pterygium, and rosacea.
*Boom!*
There was a sound of thunder, and everyone in the shop immediately panicked.
A few customers who had finished eating and a few more who were almost done immediately rose. They paid and were about to flee the shop.
Some of the customers who were not done hesitated as they stared at their half-finished food. Some of them whipped out their phones to call a cab, but of course, no driver was up for the job.
Ling Ran did not panic at all as he continued eating his tofu pudding. After working in the Emergency Department all night, he finally managed to make some progress on his mission. However, hunger was not something an Energy Serum could solve. He was worried that he would not be able to perform the surgery properly if he did not fill his belly.
Low blood sugar might cause his hands to tremble.
“Boss, can I have a bowl of soybean milk and one more fried dough stick?” Ling Ran finished the tofu pudding in his bowl and pushed it away. He had nothing to do as he waited for his fried dough stick, so he ate some of the peanuts in the plate in front of him in boredom.
“Hey… you look like you didn’t bring an umbrella.” A young woman who looked like a white-collar worker gathered her courage and sat across Ling Ran.
Ling Ran nodded. “Yeah.”
“I have an umbrella. We can leave together after you’re done. Where are you heading to?” The young woman was twenty-two or twenty-three years old at most, and she was glad that it was raining today.
Ling Ran smiled. “I’ll be heading to the hospital. There’s no need to trouble yourself, someone will be bringing me an umbrella.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” The young woman shook her head.
Ling Ran glanced at her umbrella and refused. “Your umbrella’s too small, and it’s not enough for both of us. I can’t go in the rain.”
“You can’t go in the rain? Not at all? Why?” The young woman started thinking about all kinds of illnesses male leads in Korean dramas suffer from.
Ling Ran said, “I’ll be going to the operating theater soon.”
Going under the rain might cause him to catch a cold, and it would give him a chill. This would definitely affect his performance. In conclusion, Ling Ran was not willing to take this risk.
The young woman was almost tearing up, and she blurted out without thinking, “I’ll wait for you no matter what surgery you’re receiving.”
The young woman’s mind had already run wild with romantic imaginations.
“The king asked me to patrol the mountains…”
Ling Ran’s phone started ringing. After he answered the call, he heard Zuo Cidian’s voice. “Doctor Ling, it’s raining. I’ll go and fetch you…”
“We’ll go!” The voice of a young nurse rang out through the phone, and the young nurse laughed boldly.
“All right,” Ling Ran answered and hung up.
The young woman opposite him widened her eyes and asked. “Is someone coming to fetch you?”
“Yeah.” Ling Ran placed the fried dough stick in the bowl of soybean milk and gobbled down the food.
Ordinary people would definitely look unbecoming if they were to eat like this.
But this made Ling Ran look graceful.
The young woman was conflicted as she gazed at Ling Ran.
‘Since he’s sick, the person coming to fetch him is definitely taking advantage of his sickness to get into his good books.
‘Should I fight for his heart?’
*Boom!*
Outside the window, the rain had become even heavier. The rainwater coalesced together and formed a small stream beside the road.
As Ling Ran stood at the doorway of the little shop and gazed at the streets of Beijing as well as the roaring wind, he was in a pretty good mood.
The tofu pudding was quite delicious, the fried dough sticks were pretty good, and the soybean milk was okay too. The air would become extremely fresh after the rain, and the weather would become more humid. There were not many cars in the streets of Beijing at five in the morning, and the place seemed more homely right then.
Two young nurses headed to the little shop from the inpatient building. One of them was holding a large umbrella, and the other was holding another large umbrella up. Throughout their journey, they were so elated that they were almost jumping with joy.
“Doctor Ling, we heard that you don’t like pocket umbrellas, so we bought you a full-sized one.” A young woman passed Ling Ran a long and large umbrella that looked like it could be used either as a walking stick or a weapon to Ling Ran, and she was trying to earn praise from Ling Ran.
“Thank you very much.” Ling Ran took the umbrella, shook it a few times, and raised it in satisfaction. He then easily opened it, and his movements were extremely cool.
The two young nurses felt like they were falling in love.
The young woman who had butterflies in her stomach was super jealous.
“Let’s head to the hospital.” Ling Ran nodded at the young woman before he sauntered to the hospital while holding the umbrella.
The two young nurses immediately followed him.
In the little shop, the young men who did not bring umbrellas felt a cold chill of despair blow at them.
One of them gathered his courage, went beside the young woman who was fantasizing about a romantic story and said in a soft voice, “Hello, I heard that you’re willing to—”
“Were you eavesdropping? That is so indecent!” The young woman was fuming, and she unleashed all the anger she had ever felt in her twenty-two years of life at that very moment.
*Boom!*
The sound of thunder rang again and again.
Ling Ran was in a pretty good mood, and he observed his surroundings.
When he first came to the Second Affiliated Hospital of Beijing Medical University, he did not like its surroundings. He arrived in the afternoon, and the streets were jammed with cars. The hospital was also extremely crowded with patients’ family members. Even though the place was modern, it was a mess. The place looked much better at night.
Ling Ran could not help but ponder over the wonders of his bottles of Energy Serum. He got to evade the traffic in the afternoon when it was at its heaviest and enjoy the city in the middle of the night when it was at its quietest. When Ling Ran thought of this, he could not help but summon a bottle of Energy Serum and drink it on the spot.
“Let’s head to the operating theater.” Ling Ran closed the umbrella to enter the inpatient building.
Fifteen minutes later, Ling Ran was standing before Department Director Xu Jinyi, who was lying on the operating table.
“Have you guys prepared the blood?” Even though Ling Ran knew that Zuo Cidian and Zhang Anmin had inspected all the preoperative preparations, he needed to make sure that there was no error when it came to the most important parts.
“The hospital prepared 67 ounces of blood for the surgery with 101 ounces more as a backup.” Zhang Anmin grimaced a little as he spoke.
Even though Ling Ran had carried out an emergency hepatectomy where the patient experienced 169 ounces of blood loss before, the patient was bleeding all the way to the hospital. It was not normal for patients to lose 169 ounces of blood during an ordinary hepatectomy.
Of course, this was not an impossible occurrence. The patient with portal hypertension who Feng Zhixiang encountered that day did bleed this much.
“The hospital said that they can send two associate chief physicians over as assistants.” Zuo Cidian deliberately raised the point.
“Is there any attending physician who’s willing to help out and operate the retractor?” Ling Ran carried out freelance surgery all the time, and he had no trouble ordering attending physicians from other hospitals around at all. To him, it was just like ordering dogs around. He had no intention of giving the attending physicians working in tertiary Grade A hospitals in Beijing special treatment.
After a while, an attending physician volunteered himself obediently as the department director of the General Surgery Department in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Beijing Medical University stared at him.
“Zhang Anmin will be the first assistant, and Zuo Cidian will be the third assistant.” Ling Ran did not dwell much on the designations of his assistants. He only asked an attending physician of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Beijing Medical University to join the surgery as he was worried that he might encounter instruments that he was not familiar with. Of course, it was also a possibility that the hospital only provided strange instruments. In fact, the scene where hospitals provided strange instruments practically always happened.
“I’m ready.” Ling Ran nodded at the anesthetist and gestured at him to get started.
“Department Director Xu, hang in there.”
“Keep fighting, Department Director Xu.”
“Department Director Xu, we are waiting for you!” the crowd outside the operating theater yelled.
