Chapter 60: Confirmed, No Friends!
August 22nd, the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, Saturday, suitable for travel, cleaning, groundbreaking, planting… booking a room.
The sky was hazy, with a continuous drizzle like a curtain. Lu Cheng, tired from reading in the emergency surgery clinic, looked out the window.
The view outside, nestled in the mountains, was obscured by mist, and only the droplets clinging to the leaves of a few pine trees near the window were crystal clear.
Tian Duoduo appeared at the clinic door at some point, smiling and calling out, “Doctor Lu, do you want to order something together tonight?”
“Tian Duoduo, you’re on duty today? That’s quite a surprise!~” Lu Cheng looked Tian Duoduo, this wild rose, up and down, his expression shifting slightly.
The loose nurse’s uniform not only failed to conceal Tian Duoduo’s figure but instead added a certain “charm” to it. Tian Duoduo, with her somewhat delicate features, had a truly bombshell figure.
She hadn’t gone out to celebrate the festival today, which was quite unexpected for Lu Cheng.
“Xiang Yali was supposed to be on duty today, but she went to celebrate, so it’s just you and Zhou Zhou holding down the department.”
“Oh, and Doctor Lu and Doctor Du. Doctor Du said he’d eat after he got off work at 5:30, so he must have plans.”
“As for Zhuang Ge, I won’t bother calling him. He’s probably already eaten and is coming to work.” Tian Duoduo said calmly, her tone even.
On Qixi Festival, not only did everyone else try their best to avoid working on the holiday, but even Professor Chen Song had already returned to Shashi City yesterday afternoon.
There weren’t many people available in the emergency department right now.
Han Xiaoping, who is single, had just finished his shift yesterday, and Du Daihua would go home after his day shift in the clinic, leaving the single Fifth Brother to cover the entire night.
“What do you guys want to eat? I’ll treat you.” Lu Cheng said with a smile.
“Doctor Lu, we’ll definitely split it, how about you? What do you want to eat?”
Tian Duoduo calmly blinked her fox-like eyes twice: “Zhou Zhou’s idea is that we could order a claypot rice or spicy pot.”
“I’m fine with anything, they all come with meals, and I’m flexible with spiciness. You two choose.” Lu Cheng replied immediately.
He thought about it carefully, and it seemed that in the nearly two months he had been in the emergency department, Tian Duoduo was the only one from the nursing department who rarely accepted invitations for food and drinks.
Others, including the head nurse, generally wouldn’t refuse if someone offered to buy them milk tea.
“Then it’s spicy pot. I’ll order a set meal online, and then have the boss deliver it directly. It’ll be a little cheaper than ordering online,” Tian Duoduo said with a smile.
“That’s great, very economical.”
“Tian Duoduo, do you guys want milk tea or coffee?” Lu Cheng asked casually again.
Maintaining good relations with the nurses was very beneficial for Lu Cheng, as it allowed him to change medical orders frequently without them getting annoyed.
Tian Duoduo said, “If you want coffee, I can have a cup of black coffee with no sugar.”
“Deng Zhouzhou only drinks milk tea, let her go to ‘Sharpshooter’ by herself…”
After Tian Duoduo finished speaking, she efficiently completed her chat with the boss, then put away her mobile phone and asked, “Doctor Lu, what was the meaning of that sentence Professor Chen said that was rumored in the department yesterday?”
“Why did Professor Chen say you’d have no friends, Doctor Lu? He ran off right after saying it. Could it be, as Yali analyzed, that you offended Professor Chen Song somewhere?”
Lu Cheng’s expression faltered, his eyes instantly widening into uneven sizes: “Xiang Yali was on duty in the department yesterday? Then it’s over…”
Xiang Yali’s gossipy mouth had already spread this piece of information somewhere today, and the rumor had likely morphed into something else.
Tian Duoduo, with her hands behind her back and her red lips pursed, hesitated for a moment before saying, “Doctor Lu, if there’s really a misunderstanding between you and Professor Chen, it would be best for you to call and explain.”
Lu Cheng composed himself and said, “Tian Duoduo, thank you for your concern. There’s no misunderstanding between Professor Chen and me. What Professor Chen said was just a joke.”
Lu Cheng didn’t want to show off in front of Tian Duoduo, and tell her that Professor Chen Song’s words were likely born from his “learning efficiency” that made him doubt life.
Professor Tong Yuan’an had returned to orthopedics with some tendon suturing cases, and after dedicating himself to the teaching of hand surgery, Lu Cheng had immersed himself in spleen preservation and gallbladder preservation surgeries.
In truth, Lu Cheng had allocated most of his skill points to basic skills, only distributing a tiny bit to spleen preservation and gallbladder preservation surgeries…
This resulted in both skills reaching （Proficient 10/10）, not yet Mastery. Even so, Lu Cheng’s “progress speed,” which he considered very normal, had made Chen Song “furious.” He was like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, emphasizing all the way out of the operating room that Lu Cheng would have no friends, no teachers…
“Really?” Tian Duoduo scratched the side of her bangs, looking slightly confused.
Lu Cheng nodded: “Of course, it’s true. Otherwise, Director Lin and Brother Zeng would have already spoken to me privately.”
“There are no other misunderstandings. Professor Chen and I are even meeting for drinks tomorrow night to eat dry pot, cured meat, and stir-fried fungi.”
As he spoke, Lu Cheng’s phone chimed with a notification.
Lu Cheng quickly pulled out his phone to check. It was from Du Daihua: “Brother Lu, a patient with a tendon rupture just came in. Although it’s the 22nd, Professor Tong from orthopedics is on vacation.”
“Okay, I’m coming right over.” Lu Cheng replied to Tian Duoduo while typing a message: “A tendon suturing case just came in. You and Xiao Zhou can eat first when the food arrives.”
“I’m going to start an operation.”
Tian Duoduo chuckled upon hearing this, “Who’s on call for surgery today? Aren’t you afraid he’ll scold you?”
Lu Cheng turned around and efficiently went to the computer, starting to print the standard informed consent form for tendon suturing surgery: “It’s Brother Zhang on call for surgery today. There’s nothing I can do if he scolds me. When a patient comes, we have to operate if necessary.”
Doctors can celebrate Qixi, but doctors on duty cannot even have a peaceful Lunar New Year’s Eve, let alone Qixi or any other special occasion.
As expected, Zhang Tiesheng, who received Lu Cheng’s call, only teased him for a while but also agreed to rush over immediately.
Choosing to be a doctor means adhering to the most basic medical ethics and rules; this has nothing to do with being a well-connected individual.
The discussion and signing proceeded very smoothly. Even though orthopedics handled some of the tendon rupture surgeries, tendon rupture remained the flagship disease type and the most frequent surgical procedure in the emergency surgery comprehensive ward.
Cumulatively, it accounted for nearly 25% of the emergency surgery department’s performance metrics, all pioneered by Lu Cheng himself.
No matter how special Zhang Tiesheng found the situation, he wouldn’t dare not come.
“Doctor Lu, you don’t look very old. Can you really do this surgery for me?” asked the young man’s girlfriend just before entering the operating room.
Originally, with Qixi falling on a weekend, they had planned to prepare a dinner together with free-range chicken and duck brought from home. However, while slaughtering the chicken, they injured a tendon. Their delicious homemade dinner was gone, and so were the post-dinner stories.
Zhang Tiesheng happened to arrive at the department at that moment. Before he could even put on his work clothes, he said, “Technique is related to age to some extent, but not absolutely.”
“Doctor Lu in our department is a top genius graduate from Hanshi University, handpicked by a professor at Xiangya Second Hospital as excellent to the point of having no friends!”
“If the tendons in our county cannot be sutured well by Doctor Lu, you can directly go to Xiangya and skip Zhou Hospital altogether.”
Zhang Tiesheng’s direct and blunt words left the young couple’s minds completely stunned, staring blankly at Lu Cheng with bewildered expressions.
“Doctor Zhang is flattering me. I can do it, and my proficiency is decent, but it’s not as exaggerated as Doctor Zhang says. I’ve performed dozens of surgeries in the past two months with good recoveries.”
“Of course, if your requirements for postoperative recovery are extremely high, I suggest you transfer to another hospital.” Lu Cheng wasn’t greedy for surgeries.
In fact, what Zhang Tiesheng said was not wrong. Based on the data from animal experiments, the Tajima Suturing Method and the ‘Unnamed Tendon Suturing Method’ that Lu Cheng had mastered were indeed effective, along with the cross and modified Tang methods.
Essentially, they could handle most upper and lower limb tendon injuries.
