“You guys go ahead with the abdominal wound closure. I’ll head downstairs with the patient first.” Relaxed, Zheng Ren left the operating theater after ensuring that their surgery was uneventful as well.
The moment he stepped out of the operating theater, he suddenly realized something and decided to take his time by chatting with the patient instead. The conversation continued until Su Yun and Yang Lei’s surgery was complete before the patients were wheeled out together.
All family members were pleased to see that the patients were transferred out simultaneously without any problems noted. What else could they complain about when it ended perfectly?
Zheng Ren noticed that Su Yun appeared downhearted upon their return to the ward, but he was too lazy to entertain that guy. Who knew what happened to the arty man?
…
…
The weather became colder each day. When the last leaves had fallen, it signified the official arrival of harsh winter.
Admission, resuscitation, surgery and hospital discharge… Everything was the same as the days went by.
Zheng Yunxia was discharged from the hospital, but her disease was not entirely cured.
She would have to return for a consultation in thirty-five days, and she most likely required another interventional radiological treatment for her condition.
Fortunately, the patient with tetanus did not have respiratory arrest due to timely treatment, and she had recovered after ten days and was discharged from the hospital.
The family members were very thankful during the hospital discharge.
Poverty restricted their ability to show appreciation with financial rewards, so they purposely purchased a pack of candy for Zheng Ren before leaving the hospital.
Zheng Ren ate a candy, which tasted sweet, before putting the precious gift into the cabinet.
Normal days were like a tranquil sea, peaceful but dull, and every rescue operation would disturb this calmness like a storm sending monstrous waves crashing in all directions. Zheng Ren, like a boat rising and falling amongst the mountains of angry waves, would use his knowledge and proficiency in surgery to turn the tide and regain peace every single time.
Su Yun gradually believed that Zheng Ren’s surgery skills were definitely superior to his. Perplexed, he started reading the Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery book that Zheng Ren had been reading as if trying to find an answer to his doubt.
Half a month had passed, and the continuous side mission One Tree Does Not Make A Forest had long been completed. Zheng Ren, who had obtained the Master rank in the 3D image reconstruction of CT scan skill, had also gone to the CT room to get acquainted with the staff and assist them during his free time while trying to find any possibility of applying this technology on emergency treatment and surgery.
However, Zheng Ren had disappointingly found out that the System was as slippery as an eel.
This skill had nothing to do with the emergency department at all.
Come to think of it, all emergency cases required speedy treatment, but 3D image reconstruction of CT scan required around one day on average.
Argumentative haters may provide a counterexample, but that probability was lower than one-thousandth or even one-ten-thousandth, completely insignificant.
Anyhow, Zheng Ren did not care much about it. Nobody could predict the future, and he could not perform emergency surgery for the rest of his life either. There were so many elective surgery cases in the world, why would he abandon them all for emergency cases?
‘The skill will be useful someday.’ Zheng Ren comforted himself.
After half a month of hard work, he had accumulated 3223 points in his general surgery skill tree, and had saved 1939 skill points in his inventory. He had earned dozens of skill points in interventional radiology as well, but it was getting increasingly difficult to obtain more points by performing simple surgeries at the Master rank.
Thus, he was glad that he did not rashly upgrade his general surgery skill to the Master rank.
Even when he flawlessly completed a tier-three surgery, he could only obtain a few points in his Master ranked interventional radiology skill tree. However, the same surgery would award more than ten points to his Expert ranked general surgery skill tree.
The difference was humongous.
Therefore, Zheng Ren resisted the temptation to do it the easy way and was prepared to lay a solid foundation for his general surgery skill tree.
In his inventory lay two skill books that could raise a random skill to the peak of the Graduate rank. He had also accumulated 231260 experience points, which could be converted to approximately 64 hours of surgery intensive training time.
Zheng Ren was greatly satisfied as he now possessed the ability to cope with any trouble that came his way.
He turned a blind eye on the three silver chests that he had thrown into the System.
The troublemakers and cheaters had taken turns to hold the silk banner high in the air outside the emergency building for three days without even taking a rest at night. It had been an agonizing experience for them.
In the end, the incident had attracted lots of attention and had become a unique scene in Sea City General Hospital.
Following the group’s quiet disappearance three days later, Little Six informed Zheng Ren that the troublemakers had gone to visit another hospital.
Zheng Ren naturally did not have the heart of Saint Mary. He would not care whether the professional troublemakers, who had nearly cost him his future, would live a healthy and prosperous life.
One day, when it was already past four o’clock and almost time to get off work, Old Chief Physician Pan suddenly called Zheng Ren and asked him to come to the office.
Old Chief Physician Pan looked serious when Zheng Ren entered the office, but the joy underneath his solemn expression was clearly detectable.
“Sit, Little Zheng,” Old Chief Physician Pan said, cutting straight to the point, “I just received a call from Professor Pei, saying that a new scientific research in Imperial Capital requires the participation of young, talented interventional radiologists.”
“Imperial Capital? Scientific research?” Zheng Ren was in doubt.
“He didn’t mention any specific details, and I’m not in the right position to inquire for more information too. Perhaps a new surgical technique has reached the final phase and can be applied in clinical settings,” Old Chief Physician Pan smiled and said, “People who can devote their lives to research are really rare nowadays.”
“I’m a chief resident. The emergency wards—” Before Zheng Ren could finish the sentence, Old Chief Physician Pan interrupted him and said, “Will the Earth stop spinning in your absence? Once you’re gone, I’ll make a request to promote either Su Yun or Yang Lei to chief resident.”
Zheng Ren thought about it and knew that his words made sense.
Any hospital that depended only on one individual would surely meet its doom in the end.
“When will I go?” asked Zheng Ren.
“He said it’s up to you, you can go whenever you feel like it. You also know that scientific research can’t be finished in one night, so don’t worry too much about it. Besides, a lot of experts will be present, so there is nothing you can possibly do over there, but don’t forget to expand your social network. They can help you greatly in the future,” replied Old Chief Physician Pan.
“Okay,” Zheng Ren said, “I’ll depart in a few days. There’s no rush anyway.”
“Alright.” Old Chief Physician Pan nodded in response. In his opinion, the best moment would be the next time when Professor Pei called him to urge Zheng Ren for a speedy departure.
However, he seriously thought that Zheng Ren’s participation would serve no purpose in Imperial Capital and merely considered it as a vacation awarded to Zheng Ren for his recent diligence and hard work.
They continued chatting for a while. Then, a phone call interrupted them while Zheng Ren was reporting some difficult surgeries which he had performed these past few days.
“Chief Zheng, there is an emergency case of hemorrhagic shock,” said the caller briefly and immediately hung up.
“Let’s check it out.” Old Chief Physician Pan immediately stood up and walked out of the room.
The emergency resuscitation room was in chaos. The nurses were measuring blood pressure and attempting venous cannulation, and a doctor was examining the patient while instructing a nurse to inject drugs from time to time.
However, the patient was obviously suffering from a severe hemorrhagic shock as there was no flashback of blood noted after several attempts at cannulation.
“Let me.” Zheng Ren quickly walked forward, opened a sterile pack of central venous catheterization equipment and began the procedure.
“Chief Physician Pan, Chief Zheng, the patient was sent here via an ambulance four minutes ago. The systolic pressure at that time was 50mmHg and the diastolic pressure was undetectable. He has a thready and rapid pulse with a rate of 163 beats per minute,” The doctor on duty quickly reported the medical history. “Physical examination revealed that the patient has board-like rigidity of the abdomen, so a visceral rupture is suspected.”
A doctor in charge of ultrasonography hurried over with a B-scan ultrasonography machine.
A diagnosis was written on the System panel floating on the upper right corner of Zheng Ren’s vision—ruptured hepatic aneurysm complicated with hemorrhagic shock.
An aneurysm was a common… Not really a disease, but an abnormal dilatation of an artery due to a weakened vessel wall.
Since the capillary network was dense, any rupture would lead to a huge amount of blood loss.
No one knew what had caused the aneurysm in this patient to rupture in the first place and result in a massive hemorrhage.
The central venous line was established at the first attempt as evidenced by the flashback of a small amount of deoxygenated blood.
“Replace lost fluids, collect blood samples and prepare for surgery!”
