Chapter 33: Pitfalls are everywhere

Translator: imperfectluck  Editor: Kurisu

An entire family causing a commotion would be a much bigger problem for smaller city hospitals like Kuake City Hospital. There was nothing that Kuake City Hospital could do. In fact, patients with large and powerful families were capable of blocking off the entire hospital.

This particular angry patient had seven or eight brothers, and even more members in the extended family. Since this family had already finished harvesting the wheat, they had quite a lot of free time, so the entire family went to Kuake City Hospital to protest and stir up trouble.

Zou Pingshan was now in absolutely wretched condition due to the past few days. Although he tried to lecture the patient’s family about the law, they simply didn’t care, and acted like hoodlums. Since Zou Pingshan had just recently become the superintendent, he lacked authority. Kuake City Hospital’s security department wouldn’t listen to his orders. The female members of the patient’s family were allowed to come so close to him that they were practically poking him straight in the mouth with their fingers.

What else could Zou Pingshan do? He paid compensation to the patient’s family as well as helped the patient to transfer hospitals. Just some local village women were too much for Zou Pingshan to handle. He couldn’t deal with them, so he could only hide. He paid compensation to the patient’s family for loss of salary, hospital fees, and medicine fees, but the family was still dissatisfied.

After finally getting the patient and his family to leave, Kuake City’s government ended up calling Zou Pingshan. Someone had reported Kuake City Hospital to the government for medical malpractice. The patient’s entire family had already complained to the Kuake City Communist Party Committee, intending to make this into an even bigger incident.

Everything being quiet would be for the best, and having the government investigate would be no small matter. Kang Hua immediately called Zou Pingshan over to question him. Kang Hua had been in her position of Kuake City Leader for a bit more than a year now. The Batu incident couldn’t affect her too much, but it put her in a bad mood. Now, she was even angrier that something happened at Kuake City Hospital yet again. Meanwhile, the person who reported Zou Pingshan (Shi Lei) even directly stated that he was bullying the newcomer fresh college graduate, forcing Zhang Fan to stay in a countryside village. This angered Kang Hua even more.

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“What happened?” Kang Hua’s tone was extremely unfriendly.

“The surgical department didn’t do a good job. The patient became infected, so I helped him transfer hospitals.” Zou Pingshan felt incredibly aggrieved. Yet, he was unable to push the responsibility for this onto anyone else.

He had personally sent out the vice superintendent on a study program to his old city hospital. Nuar had recently sent in his resignation, claiming that he wanted to retire. Tu Xun claimed that he had hemorrhoids again, and was staying at a city hospital. As Zou Pingshan was previously a doctor of internal medicine, he couldn’t do anything related to surgeries at all. However, he couldn’t just ask doctors from other hospitals to come over every time that Kuake City Hospital received a patient who needed surgery. He would lose so much face otherwise.

Nuar had been scared by Batu being arrested. He thought it over and decided to retire as he was of advanced age anyways. That was why he sent in a retirement resignation. As for Tu Xun, he immediately ran off to the city hospital for hemorrhoids treatment when he heard that an incident occurred at the surgical department as he wanted to avoid any responsibility.

“Why didn’t you request vacation time?”

“I did!”

“With whom?”

“Our surgical department #2’s Director Nuar.”

“Why doesn’t he admit that he gave you vacation time, then?”

“He probably got drunk and forgot. Try asking him again when he’s awake!” This was the conversation that Zou Pingshan had with Tu Xun about the latter’s absence. Zou Pingshan was so enraged that he threw his cell phone down on the ground. What the hell was with all the people in this surgical department?

Kang Hua already didn’t like Zou Pingshan for having used backdoor connections to obtain the position of hospital superintendent, but now that Zou Pingshan couldn’t even manage the hospital properly and was found to be bullying Zhang Fan, it was time for Kang Hua to let the new superintendent know who the real boss was around here. Kang Hua was already reflexively treating Zhang Fan as one of her own.

“You’re in charge of a city level hospital. Yet, you had to ask for help from other hospitals’ doctors just for the sake of a simple bone fracture? And after that, an incident still occurred? What use is this hospital, then!! What use are you as hospital superintendent!? Can you do your job at all? If not, get out of here! There’s plenty of skilled people out there. Do you think that nobody other than you can be the superintendent?” Kang Hua’s office door was wide open. She was intentionally showing off her anger to others, trying to send the message that her being angry needed to be feared and respected.

Zou Pingshan was trembling as he left Kang Hua’s government office. He was regretting his decision to come here only for so many people to anger him. Why hadn’t he just been content with being a director of internal medicine?

Back at his city hospital, he’d had a respectable position. Even the superintendent there would treat him politely. Zou Pingshan hadn’t been so unlucky or angry in many years now. He felt like he was about to have a heart attack with how angry he was today. Kang Hua’s last sentence to him had especially made him lose a great deal of face.

“Immediately set out to tell Zhang Fan to come back. The leaders need him back to treat more patients.” Zou Pingshan finally allowed Zhang Fan to return.

After Shi Lei finished reporting Zou Pingshan to the Communist Party Committee, he immediately went out drinking together with his friends in the city. Shi Lei had intentionally wanted to cause trouble for Zou Pingshan so that the latter would lose authority. He couldn’t allow Kuake City Hospital to remain like it was under Batu’s rule, where the superintendent was single-handedly in charge of everything. Otherwise, his position of vice superintendent would become useless!

Meanwhile, back at Sumutai Health Center, Zhang Fan finally received his first patient on this day. He had been here for more than one month now, but apart from the time when Li Liang and Li Hui visited, not a single person other than the local superintendent had come over.

Here in Sumutai, most residents were Mongolian, and believed in Tibetan Buddhism. This patient was a Buddhist monk staying in Sumutai Village. He had apparently graduated from a Buddhist university. Today, something was wrong with the Buddhist monk, and he was in such pain that he had been rolling around on the ground. Luckily, some worshipping locals discovered him, and brought him to Sumutai Health Center.

“He has an intestinal obstruction. This is a closed loop intestinal obstruction. Surgery will be necessary.” Zhang Fan made this diagnosis after performing a checkup.

“Shall we take him to Kuake City?” Superintendent Munk of Sumutai Health Center asked. He was in charge of many different roles at the health center, including superintendent, surgeon, and anesthesia. The other doctor assisting here specialized in internal medicine, while the two nurses were primarily midwives.

“We can do the surgery here. It’s so troublesome to take him to Kuake City. Can you administer the anesthesia? What about this patient’s relatives?”

It turned out that the Buddhist monk was a distant relative of Munk’s. “I can administer the anesthesia. He doesn’t have many relatives here, I can make the decision for him.”

“Hey, even if you’re still angry, you can’t joke around with your career like that. We’re orthopedic surgeons,” Chen Qifa said worriedly. All intestinal blockages were medically known as intestinal obstructions. They were some of the most common emergency problems related to the digestive system.

It would be difficult to accurately diagnose acute intestinal obstructions. Intestinal obstructions also often worsened rapidly, along with commonly causing the patient’s death. A lack of balance between water, electrolytes, acids, and bases, or the patient having poor organ functions or advanced age were all common reasons for death.

“While you may be an orthopedic surgeon, I never claimed to only be an orthopedic surgeon. This is a simple surgery. Hold the surgical retractors for me. Relax, I’m not foolish enough to risk my career.”

The surgery proceeded quite smoothly. Excision, separation, removing the intestinal obstruction, side-to-side intestinal anastomosis, sewing everything back up… it all went perfectly. Although Chen Qifa hadn’t done anything related to general surgery for many years already, he was still a capable surgical assistant.

“You even know how to perform general surgeries!?” Chen Qifa was truly astonished.

The Buddhist monk woke up one day after the surgery. He barely spoke any Chinese, so Superintendent Munk translated for him. The Buddhist monk was especially grateful to Zhang Fan, and said that the latter possessed a great root of wisdom. The Buddhist monk then gave Zhang Fan a gift—an amber bracelet.

Apparently, this amber bracelet had previously been blessed by a well-renowned Tibetan monk. Munk was jealous to the point of drooling as he stared at the amber bracelet.

“We came here so wretchedly, so we absolutely can’t return wretchedly,” Chen Qifa angrily stated when news arrived that they could return.

“Forget it, we’re leaving now. Besides, the medical license exam written portion is in one week. You were the one who told me not to be angry, but you’re being angry now. Let’s just go.”

“It’s not the same thing. This is about face.” Chen Qifa kept complaining, but he certainly didn’t stay behind at Sumutai Village.

“Are you coming back next year? My family would love my assistance with shearing wool next year as well!” Munk said goodbye to Zhang Fan and Chen Qifa as they took a car back to Kuake City.

All of Zou Pingshan’s arrogance had been splashed with cold water by Kang Hua’s lecture. He also discovered that asking someone like Turxun, who was completely unknowledgeable about how hospitals worked, was useless, and even a slap in his own face. In that case, Zou Pingshan decided to talk to everyone individually. He started with internal medicine, his specialty.

After talking to many people individually and learning more about Kuake City Hospital, Zou Pingshan finally understood why Batu valued Zhang Fan so much. Zhang Fan was basically the unofficial director of surgical department #2 despite only being an intern doctor. Zou Pingshan prepared himself to properly apologize to and assuage Zhang Fan and Chen Qifa’s feelings after they returned. It wasn’t like he could continuously request doctors from bigger city hospitals to come here to perform surgeries. In fact, Zou Pingshan was afraid that one day Kang Hua would get even angrier at him and have him fired from the position of hospital superintendent. He no longer had his previous position of director of internal medicine to fall back upon.