System Came When the Doctor was Thirty

Yao Xin and the others moved to the director’s office.

After each took a seat, Yao Xin let go of Lu Cheng, but his expression paused slightly, and he looked at Xiao Zhaoxi: ”Director Xiao, didn’t you say that Lu Cheng was supposed to be on shift tonight?”

Xiao Zhaoxi was also a bit confused: ”Lu Cheng, why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be on the night shift tonight?”

”Director Xiao, Dean Yao, I was called in early!” Lu Cheng explained the situation with Han Pingxiao from the orthopedics department.

There was nothing embarrassing about it that couldn’t be mentioned.

Xiao Zhaoxi then looked at Yao Xin and said: ”Dean Yao, you see, this is all unexpected. I always say it’s better not to talk behind people’s backs.”

”I originally thought Lu Cheng wouldn’t hear these things, but since you’re in the office right now, let’s clear everything up.”

”Dean Yao is also here, and his intention is to have you move over to their department for development?”

Upon hearing this, Lu Cheng smiled slightly: ”Director Xiao, are you trying to get rid of me too?”

Xiao Zhaoxi replied with some annoyance: ”It’s not that I want to get rid of you; it’s that Dean Yao has taken a liking to you. You know what our emergency department is like.”

”In my view, if both you and Dean Yao are interested, then transferring to General Surgery would indeed be a good move.”

If Xiao Zhaoxi were going to remain as director, he wouldn’t be so generous, but since he doesn’t know who might take over the director role later, he sees Lu Cheng moving to General Surgery as a good choice.

Yao Xin then explained: ”Lu Cheng, it’s like this. Our department, at the end of last year, admitted a batch of patients.”

Yao Xin scratched his head: ”It’s not really something embarrassing to say; these patients we can’t handle ourselves. Previously, we would admit them and then invite professors from Xiangya Hospital to come down and perform surgeries.”

”But recently, for some reason, several professors we frequently invited no longer want to come down. Originally, these patients could have been discharged by year’s end, but now they’re still piling up in the department, without any surgeries done.”

”I made quite an effort to find out, and somehow it led back to you.”

Lu Cheng exclaimed and laughed: ”Dean Yao, please don’t put such high praise on me, I can’t bear it.”

The fact that the patients in your department haven’t undergone surgery—what does that have to do with me?

”Professor Huang Gengwen and Professor Sun Weihua from Xiangya Hospital—they aren’t coming.”

”This makes things difficult for me, doesn’t it?”

”Can you guess why it has anything to do with you?” Yao Xin hinted rather subtly.

In the hospital of a prefecture-level city, experts are often invited for surgeries, which allows patients to receive better surgical quality at the State People’s Hospital, avoiding long journeys and saving money.

Flying in experts for consultations compensates for the relatively lower local technical level and is one of the necessary steps during surgical training.

There are many complex cases in hepatobiliary surgery, and prefecture-level city hospitals can’t treat all types of cases.

Lu Cheng was half puzzled: ”Dean Yao, I still can’t figure it out!”

Lu Cheng then carefully recalled what he knew about Professor Huang Gengwen’s background: ”Dean Yao, if I remember correctly, Professor Huang Gengwen and Professor Sun Weihua are from the Spleen and Pancreas Surgery department.”

”Why were you inviting him down for surgery?”

Yao Xin replied naturally: ”Spleen Preservation Surgery. And it’s not related to emergency trauma, but scheduled cases.”

”It’s not just the Spleen and Pancreas Surgery; Professor Wang and Professor Yang from Hepatobiliary Surgery were previously collaborating with us too, but now they’re also saying they don’t want to come down... this makes it even more inexplicable to me...”

Lu Cheng had met Professor Huang Gengwen briefly, but he hadn’t heard of the Professor Wang and Professor Yang mentioned by Yao Xin.

Lu Cheng felt a bit pressured: ”Are these professors saying it’s because of me, Lu Cheng, that they don’t want to come?”

”Dean Yao, you’re really praising me too much, aren’t you? I don’t even know these professors, and I doubt I’d even get the chance to meet them!”

Yao Xin pursed his lips and said: ”The exact words from these professors are that they’re afraid of making a laughingstock.”

”Exact words! I haven’t changed a single bit.”

”The surgeries for our department’s patients are ’falling’ into my hands, and it’s somewhat related to Xiao Lu, that’s why I’m here asking Director Xiao what’s going on?”

”Don’t you know what you have done?”

Lu Cheng felt somewhat wronged: ”Dean Yao, I really don’t know; I couldn’t have offended these teachers!”

Xiao Zhaoxi thought for a moment and chimed in: ”Dean Yao, Lu Cheng is quite honest, he knows how to manage relationships, so he couldn’t have offended these professors!”

Lu Cheng and Xiao Zhaoxi both felt that the professors’ fear of making a laughingstock was ironic—perhaps Lu Cheng had unknowingly offended them somehow.

Yao Xin shook his head: ”Initially, I thought it was Lu Cheng who offended these professors. Since he’s part of our hospital, if there’s a misunderstanding, I wanted to resolve it, so I asked around a bit more.”

”Turns out it wasn’t an offense. According to an associate professor with Professor Huang Gengwen, it was about a surgery case Lu Cheng did in our department not long ago, which was anonymously classified as a case example at a top academic conference and discussed and reviewed.”

”Of course, all critical information was concealed.”

”People from other provinces might not know the origin of the surgery and were asking around, but our professors from Xiang Province knew.”

”Once they found out the surgery was done at our hospital!”

Yao Xin clapped his hands: ”I was caught in the middle!”

”Oh... Director Xiao, it’s tough for me too.”

What Yao Xin did was developed behind Lu Cheng’s back, but it was also an established fact.