Great Doctor Ling Ran

“Wipe my sweat off, please.” After Ling Ran completed suturing a few tendons and performed an examination on the nerves, several barely-visible beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

Nurse Wang Jia immediately stood on her tiptoes and wiped his forehead clean using a piece of gauze.

Even though Ling Ran’s movements were not huge, the level of activity during those ten or so minutes was high. To put it in the context of a Wuxia novel, Ling Ran must have exerted strength in the countless small muscles in his body.

It was especially so in consideration of Ling Ran’s suturing posture. Although the way he stood was not as tiring as performing in a horse stance, the properties of both were similar.

As the glasses he wore were surgical magnifying glasses, the suturing area would be beyond his field of vision if his movements were even a bit larger in the slightest. But he practically did not change his posture of bending over the table. His brain also had to maintain its constant state of excitement while his nerves had to be active, which caused him to sweat incredibly fast.

Most importantly, Ling Ran himself did not like to sweat.

Ling Ran liked to sweat abundantly after exercising vigorously. But the amount of sweat produced during vigorous exercises was the same for the forehead, cheeks, and nose. It would be alarming if there was no sweat after all that.

It was different when performing a surgery.

As of current, the temperature in the operating theater was being kept at constant. It made the situation of sweating like a pig uncommon, and at most, only tiny drops of sweat would surface on body parts that produced sweat easily.

What annoyed Ling Ran the most was when there was sweat on the upper half of his face; not only did it make him uncomfortable, the surgical magnifying glasses would also feel like they were slipping off.

If it were other junior doctors, they would most definitely not be able to act as wilfully as Ling Ran. Doctors who had yet to become chief surgeons would most likely never have their sweat wiped off by nurses. If they sweat, they could only move to the side and allowed the sweat to drip off their bodies. If they met nurses who were in a good mood, the nurses might give them a wipe. That would be a blessing, and they should be very grateful.

However, each man was born with a different fate.

Ling Ran had never needed to put too much consideration into interpersonal relationships since he was young.

When he wanted someone to wipe off his sweat, he would ask, and the nurse would help him with it.

By doing so, his surgery could go on smoother, and it would make his mood somewhat better. The nurse would also be in a better mood, and thus, perform her tasks even better…

“My condition today isn’t very good,” Ling Ran suddenly said, dragging the emotionally unstable Young Tie back to the present.

“What’s wrong?” Lu Wenbin let out a loud yawn while he operated the retractor.

Ling Ran also seemed to be affected by him. He yawned softly.

Nurse Wang Jia and the surgical nurse’s eyes brightened. They looked at each other in excitement. It was very rare for Doctor Ling to have such a cute image, but it was a pity that they could not take a shot of the occurrence to brag about what they saw to the other nurses at the nurses’ station.

Young Tie looked at Ling Ran nervously.

The person lying on the operating table was Department Associate Director Pan’s brother-in-law. The brother-in-law whom Department Associate Director Pan personally demanded Young Tie to make surgical arrangements for.

Young Tie suddenly regretted his decision of not looking for Department Director Huo in advance. If the surgery was made under Department Director Huo’s request, how would Ling Ran even dare put Zheng Qi’s surgery behind the other three patients?

Even if he was quick in performing surgeries on the first three patients, he would likely be tired by then. How could a normal person perform ten surgeries in a day? He would more than likely work himself into his own grave.

No, even if he wanted to die, he still would not be able to perform ten surgeries.

The correct way for Ling Ran to perform surgeries was to take adequate rest and recuperate while he waited for Zheng Qi’s preoperative preparations to be done. Then he could proceed to perform the surgery.

Young Tie’s head was filled with regrets at that moment. He really wanted to pour two cans of Redbull down Ling Ran’s throat.

“Widen the surgical field even more,” Ling Ran ordered.

Young Tie put his regrets aside and stretched his head out to take a look.

Retractor Warrior Lu Wenbin exerted more force in operating the retractor.

Ling Ran frowned. “Perform aspiration. I can’t see the insides clearly now.”

Aspiration Warrior Lu Wenbin immediately performed aspiration as if he was doing spring cleaning.

Ling Ran continued to furrow his eyebrows. “Apply pressure on the gauze for a while. Is there a bleeding point?”

As he said that, Ling Ran used his hand to press down on the part inside the patient’s hand before he looked at the volume of bleeding. He said, “The small blood vessels have ruptured. Exert your force a little more evenly… Endotherm knife…”

“Yes,” Lu Wenbin replied obediently.

Young Tie felt his blood run cold. He knew the procedure too well, and he knew there was trouble.

‘When the chief surgeon starts scolding someone, what does that mean?

‘It means that the surgery isn’t going well.’

Performing a surgery was like driving a car. If the surgery was smooth, it would be similar to having a smooth drive without running into any obstacles. The driver may even be humming a song because his mood was good. There was no way he would scold anyone, right?

If the surgery was not smooth, it would be like being stuck in heavy traffic. Being stuck in heavy traffic for ten minutes was tolerable, and it was still somewhat bearable even if one had to wait for half an hour. But what would the driver feel if the traffic was so bad that the car could not even move, and when he managed to inch two steps forward, he ended up in heavier traffic? That was how chief surgeons felt when their operation did not go smoothly.

Road rage was nothing compared to a surgeon throwing a temper tantrum in front of an operating table. That was true horror.

When Young Tie saw how Ling Ran acted, he felt that he was about to bring about a storm in the operating theater.

He looked rather sympathetically at Lu Wenbin, who was pretending to be composed.

In an operating theater, when a surgery ran smoothly, the first assistant and second assistant surgeons would be the chief surgeon’s helpers. When the surgery did not go smoothly, they were the chief surgeon’s punching bags.

The responsibility of a punching bag was as important as a helper.

It was just like a driver’s compression release valve as he or she experienced road rage. It was the most important component in maintaining the safety of the operating theater.

Young Tie only hoped that Lu Wenbin could fulfill his duty as a punching bag well.

The patient on the operating table was currently receiving nerve anastomosis.

Although Young Tie was an attending physician of the Hand Surgery Department and the nerve anastomosis he performed was mainly on large nerves, his prognosis was never as good as he wanted it to be. He had even less confidence when it came to the small nerves in the hand.

“Something’s not right with this needle.” Ling Ran tossed away the needle holder he held and said, “Give me a smaller-sized thread.”

Nurse Wang Jia immediately said, “Okay.”

“Carry on with the aspiration,” Ling Ran said.

“Yes.” Lu Wenbin was super obedient, just like one of those good student. All he lacked right then was the bowlcut they sported.

“Stop for a moment.” Ling Ran took a deep breath and said, “Could it be that all these problems are happening because of the pork trotters we had for lunch?”

Lu Wenbin, who never had any opinions of his own and was incredibly obedient, suddenly stood up straight. “It’s impossible for the pork trotters to have problems!”

Lu Wenbin’s voice was loud and powerful. It seemed to reverberate throughout the operating theater.

Ling Ran looked at Lu Wenbin with a contemplative expression.

Lu Wenbin’s legs shivered slightly out of habit, but he instantly stood up straight and said with much conviction, “I personally buy the pork trotters in the morning from Donghu Market. The boss is an old friend of mine, and when I ask for thirty hooves, I inspect them one by one. I make sure that there are front hooves and that they’re absolutely fresh. When I cook them, I check the trotters thrice. I normally keep the stew in the fridge and I cook the stews I’ve kept for the longest once every three days. No matter how tired I am, I always scoop out all the stuff inside to make sure that the stew is clean…”

“That…” Young Tie gazed at Lu Wenbin’s flustered face and became afraid that he would do something irrational. So, he immediately said, “Let’s not get impatient, let’s not get impatient. If we want to chat, let’s just chat. Chatting relieves us of our stress, and it’ll do us good…”

Lu Wenbin panted harshly.

Slightly stunned, Ling Ran said, “I actually wanted to say that I ate too few of the pork trotters this afternoon, and perhaps it caused my blood sugar to be low…”

Lu Wenbin was taken aback for a moment, and his pants instantly ceased. His defensive stance immediately disappeared, and he gently said, “I never thought Department Director Huo would want to entertain our guests with my pork trotters. I got ahead of myself and gave him two more in my excitement.”

“Give me some dextrose.” Ling Ran had the nurse to take off his mouth mask. The nurse placed a tube into his straw, and he drank the dextrose while he performed the surgery.

Ling Ran regained his focus, and his movements became faster as well as more stable.

Doctor Tie Bei cheered up. He focused and looked at Ling Ran closely, but everything he saw made him dizzy.

Perineurium anastomosis had always been meant for the extremely fine perineuria. Anyone could see them clearly if they looked at them using surgical magnifying glasses. They would not find it difficult to differentiate the perineuria from each other. But if they looked at them with their naked eyes, it would basically be impossible for them to differentiate each individual perineurium.

However, Young Tie was an attending physician who had been in the Hand Surgery Department for nearly ten years. He could tell just by looking at Ling Ran’s actions that Ling Ran was indeed highly-skilled.

‘What does it say for such a young doctor to be so skilled in perineurium anastomosis?’

Doctor Tie Bei dared not ponder the matter too extensively.

He observed Ling Ran’s operation for a brief moment before he remembered Ling Ran’s tendon suture. The more he thought back on it, the more he found it interesting but also terrifying.

It made Young Tie think deeper, ‘Is it truly due to the fact that this is his brother-in-law that Department Associate Director Pan asked for Ling Ran to perform the tendon repair?’

Naturally, Department Associate Director Pan only forwent his pride and asked for help because that person was his brother-in-law. However, he could have also just gone and searched for other doctors in the Hand Surgery Department to perform the surgery.

‘Yun Hua’s Hand Surgery Department is known as an elite department. It’s only natural that there are skilled doctors in it. True, there’s no one else in the department who can use the M-Tang technique. Nevertheless, who should Department Associate Director Pan Hua have chosen when comparing the standards of an intern’s M-Tang technique to chief physician’s Kessler suture technique or an associate director’s double Krackow suture technique?

‘If none of the doctors in the Hand Surgery Department can do it, Department Associate Director Pan could have also easily asked one of the many M-Tang technique experts he knows to come in as a freelance surgeon, right?

‘If Department Associate Director Pan stated that his brother-in-law required surgery and requested for Tong Xuehai from the capital to come over, the man should be able to reach the hospital after seven or eight hours once he’s paid a sufficient amount of money.

‘Unless…’

Young Tie observed Ling Ran’s operation, but he found it difficult to continue with his train of thought.

Tong Xuehai was a person recorded in textbooks, and even if he was a bit too old, the students he brought up should be old and skilled enough to be Ling Ran’s grandmasters.

Young Tie continued to think about all kinds of nonsense until nerve anastomosis was achieved. Once he saw that Ling Ran was about to leave, he snapped out of his contemplation.

He slapped his cheeks hard and shouted, “Doctor Ling, could you help close the incision? My relative’s a businessman so he needs to have a hand that looks a little nicer when he’s out conducting business…”

“Sure.” Ling Ran was not bothered by it. He asked for the needle holder again and he did not need Lu Wenbin’s assistance anymore. His hands started to fly over the wound to perform the suture.

Ling Ran had already gotten used to suturing while using the surgical magnifying glasses. As he performed the suture on the skin, he found it relatively relaxing. Ling Ran zoned out and seemed to rediscover the same joy he had when he was in the debridement room in the past. So, it was no surprise that he asked the following question, “Do you want to me to leave a big scar or a small scar?”

“Huh?”