Great Doctor Ling Ran

Lu Wenbin felt like he was going to die from exhaustion.

To finish writing the medical records of the two patients from yesterday, he had to begin filling in the blanks of his medical record template as soon as the surgery ended. He only got off work at nine o’clock that night after he was done filling it. Even though Lu Wenbin had been writing medical records for three years, it was still a challenge for him to write twenty-thousand words’ worth of medical records including descriptions of all matters related to the patients’ conditions, whether they were important or trivial.

It was just like doing holiday assignments; all the children who could not finish copying their holiday assignments in one day were not doctor materials.

…Unless their families owned clinics.

Actually, Lu Wenbin would not have grumbled if he only had to write medical records. Work in the hospital was tiring anyway, and it was normal for resident doctors to write medical records that were more than ten-thousand words long on a daily basis. It was just that they did not have any blueprint for medical records of patients treated using the M-Tang technique, and it was quite taxing to write it from scratch.

However, the work that began since this morning depleted all of Lu Wenbin’s remaining willpower.

He arrived at the hospital at seven and made ward rounds to check on the patients from previous surgeries. At eight, Lu Wenbin memorized the medical records of all five patients who received surgery performed using the M-Tang technique. At around eight-thirty, he joined the high-spirited Department Director Huo as the director made his grand ward rounds, was asked questions, and answered all sorts of questions. On the bright side, this meant that the department director attached importance to the patients treated using the M-Tang technique.

At nine, Lu Wenbin entered the operating theater and started working with the circulating nurses to carry out all sorts of preoperative preparations. The M-Tang technique was quite a stranger to the Emergency Department, and the circulating nurses would not memorize the equipment and materials needed for it, nor would they memorize the equipment and materials that might be used during the M-Tang technique procedure. This, coupled with the fact that Ling Ran and Huo Congjun had their own habits in the operating theater, made it so that Lu Wenbin had to remind the circulating nurses about things. Or else, if the circulating nurses were to look for things in the middle of the surgery, the superior doctors might go crazy.

Even though Lu Wenbin had never seen Ling Ran enraged, he hoped that he would never have to. Ling Ran was already strict enough when he was not angry. Based on the principle of “surgeons will raise three levels on the bastard scale when they perform surgeries”, Lu Wenbin would rather work a little harder.

Then, starting from nine-thirty, Lu Wenbin was begging for mercy.

The first patient was a night-shift worker who was transferred from Cangping District. Lu Wenbin retracted the patient’s skin for sixty minutes and helped with the cleaning of the operating theater for fifteen minutes after the surgery. He did not even have time to go to the toilet before he rushed to receive another patient who was sent over from prison. It was said that he fell and hurt himself.

The contusion of the tendon was relatively serious because there was quite a long delay before the patient was sent to the hospital. Ling Ran only finished suturing the ruptured flexor tendon after eighty minutes. After retracting the patient’s skin throughout the duration of the surgery, Lu Wenbin continued with cleaning up the operating theater. He soon heard that the third patient was on his way.

At this moment, Lu Wenbin was falling apart.

He looked at his watch. It was already past one in the afternoon. Forget about the fact that he neither ate nor drank anything in over six hours, he did not even have time to excrete the porridge he ate in the morning.

When he thought about that, Lu Wenbin did not have the motivation to clean the operating theater anymore. He pleaded for mercy from a nurse. “Sister Niu, I need to go to the toilet.”

“Are you going to make me do this alone?” The circulating nurse from the Emergency Department was forty-two years old this year. She was a full-fledged shrew who was forged from knowledge, strength, and staying up late. More blood had touched her hands than what soldiers from the special forces had seen. She was of course unwilling to let Lu Wenbin leave. She straight away put down whatever she was holding onto the operating table and said, “I still have to prepare for Director Du’s surgery. If you leave, I won’t care about cleaning this operating theater anymore.”

Lu Wenbin had to suffer in silence. When it came to matters of excretion, talking about it was the equivalent of lifting the sluice gate; one word, and everything would rush out of him like a flood.

But when Lu Wenbin looked at the stern Sister Niu, he had no choice but to hold his bladder.

He did not actually need to clean the operating theater, but a resident doctor offending a senior nurse would be equal to a prisoner offending the prison warden.

Fortunately, Sister Niu did not really intend to send Lu Wenbin to the Department of Urology for a break. She only kept him for a few minutes and, after they had more or less cleaned the operating theater, said, “You may go first if you can’t hold it in anymore. Next time, remember to wear a diaper or something. You’ll be getting more than 200 RMB from the two surgeries today. No point in being so frugal.”

Lu Wenbin rushed out before he had time to retort.

At one-thirty, Lu Wenbin walked towards the small canteen.

There were five treatment groups in Yun Hua Hospital’s Emergency Department. Together with the endless supply of medical interns and postgraduate students, the small canteen had many customers and was doing quite well.

When Lu Wenbin pondered whether he should eat fried chicken or braised pork, he heard Huo Congjun’s dignified voice.

“Oh dear, don’t be anxious. It’s always like this when patients from smaller hospitals are transferred here. It’s very normal for there to be a delay from half an hour to an hour. There might also be a traffic congestion in the urban districts.”

It was followed by Ling Ran’s voice. “I can do another surgery with all that delayed time.”

“Oh dear, you are as addicted to performing surgery as I was when I was young. I also did five surgeries a day in the past. Even though I was tired after that, it was a great feeling.” Huo Congjun let out an animalistic laughter.

Lu Wenbin felt goosebumps on his skin when he heard that.

“Can I do five surgeries too tomorrow?” Ling Ran’s reply echoed beside Lu Wenbin’s ears. Lu Wenbin did not feel good at all even though he had correctly guessed what Ling Ran was going to say next.

“Five surgeries is too much. Even though you’re still young, and two surgeries seem like nothing, three or four surgeries would be a different story. After performing five surgeries, you would feel like your whole brain is empty.” Huo Congjun’s laughter was still creepy.

Lu Wenbin placed his hand on the handle of the canteen door and hesitated on whether to go in.

Ling Ran’s calm voice slowly drifted over, “If I can’t finish them during the day, I can continue at night.”

Lu Wenbin opened the door resolutely. Internally, he was wailing in grief, ‘Doctor Ling, Mister Ling, I know that your liver is in a good condition, but it’s not the same for me. The college entrance examination was hard enough, and I had to do all sorts of things like stay up late. Medical school was even more tiring, and housemanship was exhausting, too. Even though I look like I’m twenty-five, my liver is already like that of a forty-five-year-old…’

Lu Wenbin organized his words and used all his wisdom to think of how to dissuade Ling Ran.

Meanwhile, the glass door across from him, and the side door which faced the Inpatient Department, were opened simultaneously.

“Ah, Doctor Ling, what a coincidence. Department Director Huo is here, too.” Ma Yanlin the houseman flashed an exceptionally bright smile.

“Doctor Ling, Doctor Ling… Ah, Department Director Huo.” Zheng Yuhan the nursing intern was only seventeen this year. Her hair was tied into a ponytail, and she was young and beautiful.

Ling Ran turned to look at both of them and nodded slightly as a greeting.

Department Director Huo hummed loudly in acknowledgement, showing off his magnificence as a department director.

“Um, Doctor Ling, I brought some fruits. You can have them for dessert.” Zheng Yuhan pouted a little and placed on the table a beautiful little basket she had specially bought. There was a bright red peach at the bottom of the basket, with loquats, jujubes, and kumquats on top of it. There were also some longans scattered among the other fruits.

After she had placed the basket on the table, Zheng Yuhan smiled at Ling Ran and scurried away like a little squirrel.

Huo Congjun and Ling Ran naturally shifted their gaze to Ma Yanlin the houseman.

“Um, I brought some special local products from my hometown, and would like to give everyone some.” Ma Yanlin felt the stress, and stuttered a little as he spoke. He quickly put down the paper bag in his hand and took out…

…Two salted fish encapsulated in plastic. One of them was bigger and its eyes were protruded. The other was smaller and its eyes protruded as well.

Huo Conjun fiddled with the salted fish for a while and looked at Ling Ran.

Ling Ran asked, “How do you eat this?”

“Ah, you just have to braise it,” Ma Yanlin said quickly. “It will also taste very good if you stew it with peanuts. You can also stew it with tomatoes, tofu or soybeans. It tastes even better if you stew it with pork belly…”

“What do you want?” Ling Ran decided to skip the complicated probing process, just like what he did before.

Ma Yanlin froze for a moment and immediately blushed. It was a little difficult for him to loosen up in front of Huo Congjun.

Nevertheless, a few seconds later, Ma Yanlin made up his mind and said, “I would like to become your assistant and participate in surgeries performed using the M-Tang technique.”

All the doctors in the department could see how good Ling Ran was when it came to the M-Tang technique. Even though the attending physicians and resident doctors were rather embarrassed by the thought of themselves being assistants to Ling Ran, Ma Yanlin did not care. He was a houseman from the Orthopedics Department, and after he was in the Emergency Department for two months, he would be rotated to another department. But the skills he learned here would not go away.

After saying that, Ma Yanlin relaxed and said, “I have watched all the videos of you performing surgery using the M-Tang technique from a few days ago. I can be a good assistant. Surgeries performed using the M-Tang technique take quite a long time. Lu Wenbin looked like he was going to die from exhaustion…”

“I’m not tired!” Lu Wenbin felt that he could not stay quiet anymore. He strode towards the table Ling Ran sat. He then looked at Ma Yanlin and said, “Before I die from exhaustion, I’ll give you a call and take your salted fish—”

He glanced at Ling Ran through the corner of his eye and seemed to realize something.

Lu Wenbin paused for a moment, then coughed and said, “I’ll take your salted fish home to make stewed pig trotters.”

He smiled at Ling Ran and said, “Salted fish pork trotter stew are fresh and tender. They are also al dente.”