Chapter 757 - 376: Pure Personal Heroism! (2)

"Up to now, that's always been our way of doing things. Yes, we've missed some talent because of it, but we've never regretted it, and we're not going to start regretting it over something like that."

"But in your particular case, I really do regret it."

Lu Cheng said, "Teacher Gu, you're overstating it. From my point of view, you don't regret it, and you don't need to."

"Honestly, I can see it. Because I didn't run off, you've actually been at ease about it all along."

"So there's no need to regret anything, really."

"Huashan Hospital has Huashan Hospital's rules, and I have my own fate."

"The way things are now is pretty good. I'm not tied down by anything."

Professor Gu knew that constantly bringing up the past was just turning regret into a kind of wind—wind into the nose, across the mouth, into the lungs, and then breathed out again, still regret.

"Lu Cheng, this partial separation anesthesia of yours, can it really be turned into an anesthesia machine?"

"The kind of machine that lets a lot of people use it to carry out separation anesthesia?"

The anesthesia procedures Lu Cheng could perform were personal heroism.

If it became an anesthesia machine, then it would be a promotable new technology, a patent, a real carrier of science and technology, an actual clinical application.

Lu Cheng shook his head, his tone calm: "I don't know, Professor Gu. I haven't thought that far, and I didn't start out thinking along those lines."

"It's just that, in earlier conversations with other professors from anesthesiology, I felt there were traces to follow."

"But whether it can be made, that's not for me to guarantee, and I'm not going to brag about it!~"

Professor Gu glared a little. "Can't you just say a couple of insincere nice things?"

"Or at least say something pleasant? Do you have to cling to your personal heroism?"

"'All for your lover, all for your lover'—you think that sounds good if it gets out?"

Lu Cheng was downright open and at ease: "Professor Gu, how does that not sound good?"

"If I develop a bit of anesthesia and surgical technique for the sake of the woman I love, that doesn't stop me from pioneering surgeries for other patients too, does it?"

"How is that not good?"

"I actually do want to be a hero in my wife's eyes."

Xie Xiao quickly said, "Professor Gu, people like Lu Cheng—these post-90s—their way of thinking and habits are completely different from ours."

"Things we see as bad reasons, or bad behavior, they see as freedom, as romance."

"What we think of as romance, they see as old-fashioned junk…"

"Professor Gu, I'm a post-70s, and I married quite early."

Professor Gu lowered his head again to look at the rabbits. Their perception of pain had completely disappeared, but their motor function was still intact.

This could be confirmed from the differentially stimulated pain areas.

"The main thing is, saying it out loud really doesn't sound good. Think about it, Professor Xie, you're in the field too."

"What banners do people like us fly?"

"For the country, for the people, for the patients."

"We've been tinkering all our lives and never managed to tinkering anything truly impressive into existence."

"And him, he manages to get something out of it for his wife…"

"I'm just afraid he'll offend people." Professor Gu's mood was actually quite even.

At over eighty, he'd been through all sorts of things; there wasn't much anymore that he couldn't understand.

He'd lived through war, even if that had been when he was a child.

Lu Cheng explained, "Teacher Gu, I don't think that's something that offends people."

"Every era has its tasks and themes. We didn't go through what you did, so we can't fully grasp the 'ideals' you talk about."

"But I've gone through the pressures of our own generation."

"If a man doesn't look out for himself, heaven and earth will wipe him out!"

"Self-interest—looking to one's own. That has to come first, because we've hardly ever really been hungry."

"As for the public good, if within private motives there happens to be some public benefit, and others gain from it, that's an unexpected bonus."

"Maybe we just haven't had much exposure to things like being helped selflessly and for free, and the current environment is pretty harsh on our generation."

Lu Cheng let out a frank sigh. "Professor Gu, before I met my Nanshu again,"

"the girls I met, their questions were all: where do you work? How much do you make a month?"

"How much savings do you have?"

"For the wedding you'll need this and that and that much money."

"The peers I met all said things like: you're actually working in a County Hospital right now?"

"Aren't you from Han City University?"

"Aren't you a 985 grad?"

Now that Lu Cheng had come through all that, his mind was clear, so he could look back at those questions.

Whether it was humiliation or other emotions, they had all become past tense and no longer affected the present Lu Cheng.

"But she never asked about any of that."

"So, Teacher Gu, standing from where I am, don't you think my wife is worth being a reason?"

"This is about what I've personally encountered and gone through, and has nothing to do with anyone else, nothing to do with the broader environment or moral shackles."

"So no matter what others think, I myself think she's worth it."

"Of course, all of this is premised on us having the experiences we've had, all the luck and opportunity we've had."

"If it had been someone else, even if she'd said the exact same things Mu Nanshu did, if she'd said she'd been abroad… and that she's currently single…"

"I would definitely have turned around and walked away."

"I'm someone who wears tinted glasses myself. There are so many people who've gone abroad; all kinds of stories come out through the news and the internet."

"I'm not going to go rummaging through a pile of rotten fruit looking for a good one."

"Maybe she thought the same way."

"..."

After laying out those reasons, Lu Cheng concluded, "So I don't think it counts as some improper motive."

Lu Cheng noticed that Professor Xie Xiao's expression right now was somewhere between a smile and not, probably turned into that auntie grin by his blatant PDA.

He just didn't expect Professor Gu to suddenly say lightly, "So back when you came to our Huashan Hospital, it was just for your lover, then?"

Lu Cheng only flicked a glance at Professor Gu, his tone faint. "Teacher Gu, I scored 666 raw on the college entrance exam. I'm an ethnic minority, and in Xiangzhou we get a 20-point ethnic bonus."

"My file score was 686. My first choice was Fudan University—that's the school I'd always dreamed of."

"Back then I didn't know any better."

"Now I do, so I'm finally behaving like I know better."

When he finished, Lu Cheng's expression was also somewhere between a smile and not. "Teacher Gu, how else do you want to twist this? What kind of moral blackmail do you want to play?"

Fudan University's eight-year clinical medicine track is indeed badass; Lu Cheng admitted only a few people can get into it.

But would you dare open up the admission files?

And you stand here in front of me and play moral blackmail, saying I came to Huashan Hospital just for Mu Nanshu, not for learning?

Professor Gu ran straight into a soft nail.

From where he now sat, he knew all too well what kind of tricks went on inside: "This technique is very good. For our hand surgery department, it would be an enormous benefit."

"Future treatment of peripheral nerve diseases would be like riding a favorable east wind."

Professor Gu didn't dare gamble.

He believed that if Lu Cheng were just talking nonsense, his tone couldn't possibly have been that calm.

Leaving everything else aside for the moment, at the very least, in the era when Lu Cheng was in school, the main pathway for advancement was still strictly by gaokao score.

Lu Cheng was one of the partial beneficiaries of that grand avenue, but not one of the fully privileged.

"Professor Gu, right now, this technique is something I can carry out myself in clinical practice."

"As for an anesthesia machine, that'll probably take some time before we can slowly feel our way to a conclusion."

"But I do have some confidence."

Hearing this, Professor Gu replied, somewhat inarticulately, "Then me asking you for a few things wouldn't be exaggerating it, would it."

After chatting to this point, Professor Gu watched the rabbits for a while longer, then used the excuse that he was a bit tired and needed to rest to leave the operating room.

After Professor Gu left, Xie Xiao finally said, "Lu Cheng, Professor Gu is over eighty and still fighting on the front lines of clinical work and research."

"Couldn't you just humor him a little verbally?"

"You're a smart guy too."

Lu Cheng thought about it very seriously. "Professor Xie, maybe I just don't want to be a fake, hypocritical person."

"I'm really hypocritical."

"It's precisely truly hypocritical people who, once they have a bit of a name, start deliberately working to shed their 'hypocritical, bad' label."

"To say what people want to hear while harboring ulterior motives inside—that hurts people even more, doesn't it?"

"If it were going to be like that, I'd probably have to be a scumbag first, before I'd start thinking about pleasing old folks."

Xie Xiao's mouth instantly shut.

If you roll back a few months, if Lu Cheng had wanted to, he really could have been a scumbag.

And one of his possible targets would have been her daughter.