Great Doctor Ling Ran

Ling Ran operated on a patient after dinner. He then headed home in a leisurely manner.

At that point, only 120 beds were assigned to him. However, he could also occupy some hospital beds that belonged to other treatment groups or other departments such as the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery. So, he actually had access to around 150 hospital beds. If he were to emulate other hospitals and only keep patients for a short time, he was supposed to have enough hospital beds to go around.

However, most of the surgical methods Ling Ran carried out did not allow the patients to stay in the hospital for a mere fifteen days.

Take hepatectomy, finger replantation surgery, and Achilles tendon repair as examples. For optimal recovery, they had to invest a lot of time in the patients. It was normal for those patients to stay in the hospital for a total of twenty days or even thirty days.

Aside from this, the other members of the Ling Treatment Group were also acting as a chief surgeon in more and more surgeries. So, it was unavoidable that the Ling Treatment Group was experiencing a shortage of hospital beds.

It was impossible for them to procure more hospital beds to solve this problem, as the Ling Treatment Group was already in charge of the most number of hospital beds in Yun Hua Emergency Medical Center. Even if he were to fight for that, he would not be able to get many more hospital beds. With the number of hospital beds that were assigned to him right now, some smaller secondary hospitals might have even fewer hospital beds than that. Of course, in reality, most secondary hospitals did not even carry out as many surgeries and had as many patients as the Ling Treatment Group.

This was how things were like in the field of medicine right now. It was normal for a secondary hospital to be inferior to an excellent treatment group from a tertiary Grade A hospital.

This phenomenon was not only seen in the Ling Treatment Group. The biggest treatment group of the General Surgery Department of Yun Hua Hospital had five associate chief physicians and two chief physicians alone. They also had around four or five attending physicians and a herd of resident doctors. This treatment group could carry out ten surgeries simultaneously, and it was not a problem for them to perform as many surgeries in a month as a secondary hospital did in a year. Of course, things were even more extravagant in the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, which was a massive hospital. They performed 35,000 surgeries in a year. There were around two thousand hospitals in Canada, and this was basically one-third of the total surgeries carried out in Canada annually. In other words, if the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou Hospital were to be placed in Canada, it would theoretically provide an instant fix to the shortage of medical providers in Canada.

Unfortunately, Yun Hua Hospital could not expand indefinitely. The wards there were crowded, and there was not enough space. Additionally, the mental stress that nurses and doctors in charge experienced whenever there were too many patients was self-evident.

The most suitable choice would involve lowering the number of surgeries performed every day so that there were more medical staff members to go around.

As for Ling Ran, he reduced the number of surgeries where the patients would have to stay in the hospital for a long time and carried out more surgeries whereby patients could be discharged after a short stay.

Correspondingly, he got more time to rest because of this.

When Ling Ran arrived home at Lower Groove Clinic, Ling Jiezhou was already done cooking. He was setting up the table.

Ever since Lower Groove Clinic was renovated, not only was it larger, but the boundary between their living space and the clinic had become clearer. Now, the members of the Ling family could enjoy having their meals in a secluded dining room. They no longer had to worry about their neighbors asking them for food, or feel embarrassed because they did not offer their neighbors any food.

“Wow, dinner is very scrumptious today.” Ling Ran looked at the dishes on the table. There were fish, chicken, pork, and beef. There was even Japanese-style sukiyaki. It was obvious that his father had put in a lot of effort.

Ling Jiezhou laughed with his hands on his waist.

Ling Ran furrowed his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me that you guys are going on another vacation.”

Ling Jiezhou sprained his waist, and he almost cursed. “You brat, can’t your father make you guys some good food?”

“Did you piss mom off again?” Ling Ran continued inquiring.

“No!” Ling Jiezhou was so pissed that he raised his voice.

Ling Ran was not intimidated, and he continued inquiring. “Are we having a guest?”

“No…”

Ling Ran immediately understood. He nodded and said, “Then, that means you didn’t cook these.”

“How can you taint my innocence like that?” Ling Jiezhou was so pissed that his lips started to quiver, and he even quoted a line from Kong Yiji. [1]

Ling Ran wore a calm expression as he waited for the drama to unfold.

Finally, Ling Jiezhou sighed loudly and said tiredly, “Son, you don’t even know how to act dumb. After you become a member of the society, you will be at a huge disadvantage.”

“I’m already part of the society.”

“Being a doctor isn’t the same, especially when it comes to doctors like you. So many people are attending to you that you can no longer tell the wheat from beans.” Ling Jiezhou seemed to be truly worried.

Ling Ran looked suspiciously at his father, but he suppressed the urge to ask him what was going on. He merely looked quietly at Ling Jiezhou.

As expected, a few seconds later, Ling Jiezhou could not hold it in anymore. “For example, today, two pharmaceutical sales representatives from medical companies came over. They offered to help out with chores and stuff, but in the end, they almost started fighting. What else could I do?”

Ling Ran nodded and asked, “Which companies are they from?”

“Changxi Medical Company and Yunli Medical Company, I think. They looked very proactive, so they should be from normal medical companies.” Ling Jiezhou glanced at his son and continued, “I didn’t make them do much. I merely asked them to buy some groceries at the wet market and make them wash those vegetables. I then asked them to cook a few dishes. I paid them for the meat and vegetables.”

Ling Ran looked at the dishes on the table. There were eight dishes and a pot of soup. It seemed that one of them had cooked four dishes, and the other one had made five dishes.

“Alright, go and tell your mother that it’s time for dinner. Both of the pharmaceutical sales representatives have left. I asked them to stay for dinner, but they were against it.” Ling Jiezhou still felt a little guilty. When he said this, he reminded Ling Ran of something. “Don’t tell her that I asked them to cook. She insists on not allowing this sort of attitude, but I was really too busy today.”

Ling Ran flashed his father a meaningful smile.

He left the dining room and headed to the tea room to relay his father’s message. All the neighbors who were sitting around Tao Ping’s tea table excused themselves. They either went for a fluid transfusion or retrieved medications before they went home for dinner.

For a very long time, that was how Lower Groove Clinic sustained its business. If Tao Ping did not hold her tea and embroidery sessions as well as the book club, the neighbors might have headed to the competitors of Lower Groove Clinic that were better equipped instead.

“Juan Zi is on a diet and she’s not eating, so she can stand guard at the clinic. Doctor Xiong is here, so do go ahead and ask him to join us.” Tao Ping made arrangements, and Ling Ran acted accordingly.

Since there were no resident doctors and medical interns at home, he could only do everything by himself.

Soon, Doctor Xiong entered the dining room and sat beside the dining table as he fanned himself with a paper fan.

Ling Jiezhou greeted him enthusiastically. “I was having a headache over having made too much food. I got bored today…”

Doctor Xiong did not buy it at all. He fanned himself and smiled, “Someone else is coming, isn’t it?”

“No. Since Juan Zi isn’t eating, it’s just the four of us.” Ling Jiezhou smiled.

Doctor Xiong shook his head. “You pissed your wife off again, right?”

Ling Jiezhou put an arm around Tao Ping and raised his chin.

Doctor Xiong furrowed his eyebrows and pondered earnestly. “If that’s so, there’s only one possibility…”

Ling Jiezhou immediately got anxious. During this old man’s sixty-fifth birthday, his granddaughter gave him a fan. She said that it was befitting for him, as he was as intelligent as Zhuge Liang. Ever since then, he carried the fan and liked to act like a detective. Ling Jiezhou did not hide the fact that the pharmaceutical sales representatives were around today.

“I know!” Doctor Xiong slapped the fan onto his palm, and the pain made him shiver. “You want to ask me for a favor, right?”