Great Doctor Ling Ran

With how fast Ling Ran sutured ten to fifteen fingers a day, he continuously renewed the limit to the number of surgeries he could perform in a day.

Huo Congjun also had four wards arranged for postoperative use. They were for patients who had their tendons repaired. Compared to some who underwent minor surgeries, patients who had their flexor tendons sutured had a longer recovery period and also stayed in hospitals for longer periods of time. The total of medical expenses would increase, but they would be reduced evenly if the patients paid by instalment.

Ling Ran was not too concerned about that. In fact, due to the excellent effect of his surgeries, the average recovery period of patients had been greatly reduced. However, the whole process of a flexor tendon suture (including the preoperative and postoperative treatment) had always been a complex subject. He could not control all the variables.

After he performed surgeries for more than half a month, the progress for Ling Ran’s [Practice M-Tang technique] mission had shot up to (100/10). It meant that ever since he received the mission, he had completed another one hundred surgeries using the M-Tang technique. The number of Energy Serums he stored increased to seventeen bottles.

Yes, the subsequent five Basic Treasure Chests he received only gave him Energy Serums.

When his one hundredth operation was completed, Ling Ran was originally rather excited. He opened the silver-white Basic Treasure Chest in the operating theater itself.

However, only a light green Energy Serum emerged.

‘You should just be called the Energy Serum Accumulation System.’ Even so, Ling Ran still liked Energy Serums very much. After using them twice, Ling Ran had already felt how amazing the Energy Serums were.

First of all, Energy Serums could be considered the one way that allowed him to recover to his prime condition. Of course, this “prime” meant that he would recover to his best, just like what the dictionary definition meant, and that alone made Energy Serums possess a great value.

Meanwhile, Energy Serums could also increase a person’s endurance, which was incredibly valuable to doctors. There were too many surgeries that lasted for long hours, and the more difficult the surgeries, the greater the temptation of Energy Serums were to surgeons.

Ling Ran constantly trained himself in order to have an opportunity to challenge those extremely difficult surgeries in the future.

Therefore, Ling Ran’s mindset was, “the more, the better” when it came to Energy Serums. However, only receiving Energy Serums from the ten chests he opened made Ling Ran rather upset.

‘This basically means that I didn’t manage to even get a Rare Item from ten consecutive draws. It feels rather embarrassing,’ Ling Ran spoke in gaming terms to the system. He then looked at Lu Wenbin and the others. “Forget it, I’m tired from performing so many surgeries. Let’s take a break for a while before we perform the next one.”

As Ling Ran spoke, he took his phone out, sat against the wall, and clicked on the Kings of Glory icon.

“Are you okay, Doctor Ling?” Nurse Wang Jia asked in a concerned manner.

“I’m okay,” Ling Ran answered without even lifting up his head.

Nurse Wang Jia was even more worried. She whispered to Lu Wenbin, “Haven’t you been working round the clock performing your recent surgeries? Did Doctor Ling ever take a break during that period?”

“How could there be a break?” Lu Wenbin pursed his lips and said, “Ma Yanlin and I took turns to be his assistant, and even then, we couldn’t handle it. Doctor Ling moved between two operating theaters, and he considered it a break when he went to the toilet in between surgeries. He had no time to eat pig trotters either.”

“If there was a delay when we changed operating theaters, he would criticize us,” the nurses at the desk also whispered. “When Doctor Ling’s serious, he’s really serious.”

Although the explanation was not very clear, Lu Wenbin and Wang Jia both nodded with questions in their hearts.

Su Jiafu, the anesthesiologist was much calmer as he sat by the side. He silently pushed the two extra stools to the door and prepared to take them with him. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were bright, and his smile was radiant.

“The enemy will reach the battlefield in five seconds…”

The sounds from the game were heard coming from Ling Ran’s phone.

“Is Doctor Ling sick?” Wang Jia asked worriedly. Yet, her lips could not help but curl into a smile. ‘O Supreme Bhāgavate [1], is this my chance to use the soup-brewing technique my aunt taught me?’

“I don’t know,” Lu Wenbin said while he closed the incision. His muscles were relaxed. In his mind, he was not thinking about Ling Ran being forced to rest because of falling sick. He was thinking about gym. Although the hospital provided a free gym room for its employees, in Lu Wenbin’s point of view, there was no soul in a gym if it had no squat racks. He missed the smell of sweat in the gym and the grunts people made when they pushed themselves to their limits. He even missed the taste of boiled chicken breasts…

Su Jiafu was the calmest. Anesthesiologists were the prime example of people who treated the hospital as their homes. Every tertiary grade A hospital had at least one or two anesthesiologists who left their names in the hospital after dying from overworking. Occasionally, there were also those who found joy in their work, some who died of terminal illnesses, and others who resigned due to serious illness. To sum it up, Su Jiafu had to work overtime in the hospital’s operating theaters whether Ling Ran did one or six operations.

Su Jiafu just sat on one of the round stools while his feet were placed on its stand. He played with his cell phone and was neither anxious, nor worried.

Ling Ran shook his phone left and right for a few minutes before the system notified him in his mind.

[New Mission: Treat Patients]

[Mission Details: Perform two treatments using barehanded bleeding control; reduce the amount of bleeding by 1,500 CC.]

[Mission Reward: A Basic Treasure Chest]

[Progress: (0/2)]

Even though it was still just a Basic Treasure Chest, Ling Ran immediately took action. He stood up in an instant and said, “I’m going to perform surgery.”

“Huh? You’re not resting anymore?” Lu Wenbin looked down. He was not even done with closing the incision yet.

Ling Ran nodded and said, “I have things to do in the afternoon, and surgery has to be done in the morning.”

“You’ll be penalized if you drop out midway in a game,” Nurse Wang Jia deliberately reminded Ling Ran.

“Help me play,” Ling Ran said as he handed his phone to Wang Jia.

Nurse Wang Jia’s eyes instantly became unfocused…

Ling Ran completed four surgeries in the morning before he informed the nurse’s desk to suspend all subsequent referrals. He then went straight to the Emergency Department’s hall and stayed in the resuscitation room.

The system mission required him to reduce the amount of bleeding by 1,500 CC, which meant that he had to reduce the amount of bleeding by 1.5 liters.

It was not a small amount. If a person tried to fill a Coke bottle up with 1.5 litres of water, that person would find that even a 1.25 liter Coke bottle would not suffice.

If a person lost so much blood, he or she would naturally need to be sent to the hospital.

However, even after Ling Ran waited for two hours, he did not find a patient he could help stop the bleeding using his bare hands.

There were several patients who had external injuries, and some had bled a lot.

Despite that, most of them had bled seriously while they were outside the hospital, and the bleeding was not as serious once they were sent to the hospital. If Ling Ran wanted to get the ones with serious cases of blood loss, it would not be easy.

Instead, Doctor Zhou caught Ling Ran and dragged him to his side. He gave him the backlog of the four debridement and suturing patients in one go.

Nowadays, when Ling Ran performed debridement and suturing, he would do so with the familiarity of a professional cyclist riding a bicycle. As long as the lock on the bicycle was opened, he could ride in any way he wanted. His stitches were beautiful, the tension of the stitches was balanced, the alignment was neat, and the knots were firm…

The Hand Surgery Department was the one department that placed emphasis on sutures the most. Fifty percent of their skills lay in their suturing techniques. Ling Ran had done more than a hundred surgeries using the M-Tang technique. He had also swiftly improved his skills in the Master Level Appositional Suturing Technique, which was his starting skill.

Unfortunately, patients did not understand sutures. However, when they saw Ling Ran’s extremely quick suturing, they did not worry.

Doctor Zhou was a little embarrassed. He smiled as he said, “If I want to pay you based on the quality of your work, I’d give you 2,000 RMB for debridement and suturing.”

Ling Ran had just stitched a large 2.3-inch-long wound, and it only took him a few minutes. He then said, “My clinic performs stitches with absorbable sutures. It’s 500 RMB for 0.3 inches.”

Doctor Zhou could not help but take a sharp breath. “How can your family be so money hungry?”

“The doctor who stitches the wound gets half the fees.”

“Actually, I can suture those wounds.” Doctor Zhou’s gaze immediately changed.

The patients in the treatment room came and went. The ones the doctors spent most of their time on were normally debridement and suturing patients. With Ling Ran around, those patients were almost immediately treated. The other treatment groups even handed over their patients who required debridement and suturing.

Doctor Zhou routinely ordered an intern to fill in various reports for Ling Ran.

Ling Ran took some time and used the opportunity to perform one or two more strange surgeries. By the afternoon, he had extracted a fish bone from someone’s throat, a bone from an anus, and a defective nail from a prostate. He had also treated a person with gasoline poisoning, one with insecticide poisoning, a patient who suffered from heatstroke, and he even participated in a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) session as a reward for his hardwork.

Naturally, under circumstances where all the drugs were ineffective, some patients did not survive even with Ling Ran’s involvement. The patients’ families requested the doctor to continue to rescue the patient, but it was only because they found it hard to accept reality.

In such cases, attending physicians usually made young doctors go and talk to the family members. It was also a rare moment for interns and housemen to come into contact with CPR.

Once they declared CPR on the patient to be unsuccessful, the patients’ families would cry, while the doctors would appear solemn.

Compared to other departments, the deaths in the Emergency Department were often the ones that people could not accept the most. Even the doctors who were used to death found it quite uncomfortable to see patients who were in the prime of their lives pass away from accidents because they did not manage to save them.

Doctor Zhou stared at Ling Ran’s expressionless face. He could not help but pat him and ask, “First time?”

“Hm?” Ling Ran was stunned for a moment before he slowly nodded his head and said, “I think so.”

“Don’t think too much about it. Death is common. Doctors are like the ones who open and close the door. If we are able to send one back from Death’s door, we can consider ourselves lucky. We can’t possibly block the door. If the door is blocked, the world will become chaotic.”

Ling Ran pursed his lips and said, “If only you just took my place for the CPR—”

“There would have been no difference,” Doctor Zhou immediately interrupted his foolish thoughts. “The patient was already dying when he was on the road. His heartbeat stopped for more than seven minutes, and if he had survived, which was a one in a million chance for him, he would have been in a vegetative state. And even if he wakes up from his coma, which is also something that only happens in a blue moon, he won’t be able to live like a normal person.”

Doctor Zhou comforted Ling Ran kindly. “Don’t think that real comatose people can live like normal people once they wake up like what they show you on TV. You’ve read articles before. There are too few vegetative people who are able to wake up and recover basic physical function. Most people can’t even control their bowel movement…”

Doctor Zhou could not continue, so he changed the topic. “There was no problem when you performed CPR just now. It would have been the same if I had taken your place. Do you know why Department Director Huo always says, ‘You must first get rid of the disease completely if you want to save a life.’?”

“Why?”

“Because a lot of lives can’t be saved,” Doctor Zhou said as he hugged Ling Ran. When he saw that his expression remained the same, he could not help but say, “What are you thinking about?”

“Earlier… The patient, his neck was sunburnt.”

“What?”

“He was likely a person who was often outdoors.” Ling Ran stretched his hand out and pointed at his neck. Three buttons near the collar of the dress shirt under his white coat were buttoned up neatly.

Doctor Zhou was dumbfounded. He was silent for a while before he sighed. “Let’s go to the Shao Family’s restaurant after work. We can have a drink and go back to sleep.”

“Surgeons shouldn’t be drinking…”

“Oh, f*ck off.”

Translator’s note:

[1] Supreme Bhāgavate: A religious Buddhist title, originated from Brahmanism.