Chapter 286: Like a Stray Dog

"Lao Liu, I see the old patient from before over at the Jiguan Lou, it looks like they're causing trouble," Lu Gang said immediately after seeing Liu Zhuren when he arrived for work. "A whole crowd of Family Members, some are even carrying hoes and pickaxe handles."

"Bai Chuzhang has already looked for me."

"What should we do?" Lu Gang asked.

Every veteran in Clinical knows how troublesome this matter is.

"Let it be," Liu Zhuren said coldly.

"The family is coming on aggressively, I think this trouble is especially big this time!" Lu Gang whispered, his expression slightly panicked.

His specialty is diagnosis, but he is not good at dealing with Family Members. Seeing a crowd of Family Members aggressively blocking the main entrance of the Jiguan Lou, Lu Gang had long since been scared out of his wits.

"We're going into surgery in a moment."

"!!!" Lu Gang was stunned.

Into surgery? He didn't react, staring blankly at Liu Zhuren, pondering for several seconds before realizing what the Zhuren meant.

Crazy! This was Lu Gang's only thought.

But then he had a second thought, his hands turning cold; what else could they do if they didn't go into surgery? It was just that they probably wouldn't be able to finish the surgery anyway, so he treated a dead horse as a living one.

Everyone says the relationship between Liu Zhuren and Bai Chuzhang is exceptionally solid, and seeing it now, it really is true.

Liu Zhuren is slippery and avoids trouble; whenever he encounters a Medical Dispute, he runs off to the side early on and never touches these things, but for Bai Chuzhang, he is willing to go through fire and water.

Although Lu Gang thought this, he still subconsciously took two steps back, as if Liu Zhuren were covered in the aura of bad luck.

"I'm taking Ji Xiang and Zhao Yisheng in," Liu Zhuren said. "You go find some ping-pong balls and bring two for me."

"Ping-pong balls? What for?" Lu Gang was surprised.

"Use the ping-pong balls to plug the fistula," Liu Zhuren said irritably.

"..." Lu Gang was speechless.

He looked suspiciously at Ji Xiang and Zhao Zhe, not knowing what kind of soul-stirring soup these two had fed Liu Zhuren.

"Lao Lu, hurry up," Liu Zhuren said coldly. "The Patient is going into surgery immediately."

"Liu Zhuren, really?"

"Or you go in!"

Lu Gang dared not question him and trotted off to the Duty Room to ask a doctor who usually plays ping-pong for the items Liu Zhuren needed.

After getting three ping-pong balls, Lu Gang ran into Wu Zong on his way out and hurriedly pulled Wu Zong inside.

"Xiao Wu, do you know that the Patient with the bladder-vaginal fistula has come back?"

"I know," Wu Zong said. "I just heard the Zhuren mention it, saying it's an old method, using a folk remedy from many years ago to solve it."

"Ping-pong balls?" Lu Gang didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Yeah, Doctor Xiao Ji explained it once, saying that when he was an intern..."

"Xiao Wu, I don't have much influence right now, you go tell the Zhuren that this surgery cannot be done," Lu Gang said, full of worry. "The Jiguan Lou has already been blocked by hundreds of people; if something goes wrong with the surgery, I'm afraid our Shen Ke won't be able to open for half a year."

"I think the surgical method Doctor Xiao Ji mentioned is correct," Wu Zong grinned. "Cure the disease, how the Medical Affairs Department handles it is their problem."

"What if it can't be cured? Won't Liu Zhuren be forced by them to jump off a building?"

"That shouldn't happen, I heard Doctor Xiao Ji explain the surgical process once, and I feel it can work."

"Doing surgery with ping-pong balls? Has your brain turned to wood from working night shifts?" Lu Gang knocked on Wu Zong's head, hating his lack of resolve.

"Hehe." Wu Zong didn't argue further. "It's not up to us to decide anyway. Bai Chuzhang is calculating and came straight to our ward early this morning to talk to the Zhuren face-to-face. Even if he knows the surgery can't be finished, it has to be done."

"..." Lu Gang sighed.

But as he squeezed them in his hand, the feel of the ping-pong balls made him feel exceptionally disgusted for the first time.

Using ping-pong balls for surgery, isn't this a joke!

"Don't worry, it'll be fine, it'll be fine," Wu Zong said, comforting Lu Gang as he saw him looking worried.

"Fine? Heh, fine." Lu Gang muttered, and helplessly sent the ping-pong balls to Liu Zhuren.

The shift handover ended hastily, and Liu Zhuren took Ji Xiang and Zhao Zhe into surgery.

Other professors also knew that today's Patient was extremely troublesome and that they were using ping-pong balls, but although they wanted to watch, they had their own surgeries to attend to and could only go get busy.

Only Lu Gang and Wu Zong were free, so they followed along to the operating room.

"It's really unreliable, Xiao Wu," Lu Gang muttered in a low voice. "Using ping-pong balls for surgery, this is the biggest joke I've heard in my life."

"Tell me, how do you write the surgical record for a ping-pong ball surgery? If the Medical Record is sent to the Medical Dispute committee, we'll lose our standing even if we were originally in the right."

"If reporters and the media find out, it'll be a disaster. There are so many self-media outlets now, everyone writes as sensationally as possible, and now we've given them material. Things like 'Hospital stuffs ping-pong balls into patient's body,' the gossip-loving public just loves to watch this kind of nonsense."

Lu Gang rambled on; Wu Zong didn't say anything at first, but hearing him go on endlessly, he also became a bit annoyed.

"Lu Zhuren, do you remember the ureter rupture from a few days ago? At that time you... anyway, I didn't see it." Wu Zong's words were harder than stone, slamming directly into Lu Gang's throat.

"..."

Lu Gang was choked up.

Wu Zong was being polite, but he himself hadn't seen the Patient's ureter rupture that day either, and he seemed to have made some snide remarks back then too.

The situation seemed a bit like today's.

But, could that be the same! Lu Gang thought to himself.

"Xiao Wu, that day it was a ureter rupture, there was still a three-in-ten-thousand chance. But today, have you ever heard of anyone doing surgery with ping-pong balls?"

Wu Zong didn't want to listen to Lu Gang's endless nagging like a widow constantly repeating her tragic story, so he simply went to help the Circulating Nurse disinfect the ping-pong balls.

Lu Gang sighed, looking like a stray dog.

The surgery seemed absurd to him, yet he had no way to stop it, and Lu Gang was anxious.

Tang Yan finished counting and paused as she looked at the three yellow ping-pong balls added to the table. "Xiao Ji, what kind of procedure are you planning to do?"

The Patient was under Continuous Epidural Anesthesia, so Tang Yan was very restrained in her speech.

"Repair the fistula." Ji Xiang was laying out the drapes and said a very straightforward, redundant sentence.

Tang Yan was extremely curious; although she hadn't been working for long, she had never seen a ping-pong ball appear on an operating table.

What kind of nonsense was Ji Xiang up to this time?

However, having experienced the diagnosis of the Tetanus patient, Tang Yan was quite curious about the surgery.

After Ji Xiang finished draping the sheets, Zhao Zhe stood directly at the position between the Patient's legs below the operating table.

Liu Zhuren knew that a Clinical veteran like Zhao Zhe would certainly not do anything extra; it would be good enough if he could just finish the work at hand. As for the surgery, it would still depend on a greenhorn like Ji Xiang.

"Xiao Ji, you come here, I will be your assistant," Liu Zhuren said, standing in the First Assistant position opposite Ji Xiang.

Ji Xiang did not stand on ceremony either, reaching out to begin disinfection.

The incision was from the center of the abdomen to the pubic symphysis; after disinfection was complete, Ji Xiang handed the forceps and the Iodophor Gauze to Tang Yan, then reached out a hand.

"Scalpel..."

Before Ji Xiang could habitually finish that sentence, the scalpel handle was slapped into his palm.

The coordination seemed to be getting more and more tacit; Ji Xiang vaguely had the feeling of having returned to the System Operating Room.

(End of this chapter)