This Doctor Is Too Wealthy

”Stop overthinking. If it doesn’t hurt anymore, that means it’s getting better.” Du Heng adopted a slightly more serious tone. ”Listen to the doctor and the nurses; we must maintain this progress.”

”I’ll definitely listen to the doctor. I’ll go back and lie down now.” Seeing Du Heng’s stern expression, the old man grew a bit flustered.

However, the old man’s reaction left Du Heng speechless. ”I didn’t say you should go lie down. You still need to move around a bit, just not for too long, and avoid vigorous activities. When you feel uncomfortable or tired, then you can go back and rest.”

Du Heng reassured the old man and then went into his office.

Just as he entered, Cao Binghe walked in. ”Director Du, the patient with the bone tumor has been recovering well these past few days. Do you think we should change their prescription?”

As Du Heng changed his clothes, he spoke softly, ”There’s no need for a change if the current one is effective. They’re recovering well, so let’s not interfere. Besides, our goal is to nourish kidney yin and kidney yang, so why change the prescription?”

Cao Binghe nodded. ”Then I’ll issue the medical advice based on the current prescription.”

”Yes, but change it from three doses a day to one. The elderly are often weak and can’t handle such rapid replenishment.”

”I understand.”

After Cao Binghe left, Du Heng sat in his office chair and began to feel bored.

Ever since he arrived at Good Friend Hospital, aside from the busy outpatient service, he was usually quite free.

Especially when compared to his previous job at the Municipal Maternal and Child Health Hospital... Well, there’s no comparison. Here, besides drinking tea, reading books, and flipping through medical records, he really had little else to do.

Writing disease records and prescriptions were tasks eagerly snapped up by the interns and standardized training doctors at Good Friend Hospital, so Du Heng rarely got a chance.

As for medical advice and ward rounds, Cao Binghe handled those, so Du Heng wasn’t needed for them either.

So now, when he wasn’t on outpatient duty, he could be incredibly idle.

Today was no different. He didn’t have outpatient duty in the morning and would only take over Director Wu’s consultation in the afternoon, so he was as idle as ever.

However, as the Deputy Director of the department, when Director Wu wasn’t around, he had to shoulder the responsibility of overseeing the department and also handle consultation tasks.

In fact, since Du Heng had come to Good Friend Hospital, he’d noticed some slight changes in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department compared to the previous year.

It was only after he officially started that he suddenly realized he was now the sole Deputy Director in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department.

Previously, he knew the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department actually had two other deputy directors. One of them had even been promoted to Senior the previous year, meaning there should have been three directors in total: two Chief Chinese Medicine Doctors and one Deputy Director.

However, at the end of the previous year, that newly promoted Chief Chinese Medicine Doctor had unexpectedly received hospital approval to establish a new Traditional Chinese Medicine Spleen and Stomach Department.

What was even more surprising was the new department’s location. It was right next to the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department within the hospitalization department, as if half of the latter’s area had been directly allocated to the new Traditional Chinese Medicine Spleen and Stomach Department.

Now, in the entire corridor, the hospital rooms for the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department were on the west side, and those for the Traditional Chinese Medicine Spleen and Stomach Department were on the east.

Moreover, for some unknown reason, just a month before Du Heng’s arrival—right after the New Year—the other remaining Deputy Director of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Internal Medicine Department had directly jumped ship. He moved to the neighboring Traditional Chinese Medicine Spleen and Stomach Department, relocating his office from the east side of the corridor to the west.

Perhaps people in Jinzhou were more concerned about appearances, or maybe Du Heng simply had limited experience, but during his time in Jinzhou, he had never encountered anything like this.

Even when departments split, they would at least be on different floors.

He had never seen or heard of a situation where two such departments ended up on the same floor after a split.

Seeing each other every day, wouldn’t it be awkward?

They even shared the same group of nurses; weren’t they afraid of gossip?

Anyway, Du Heng felt he wouldn’t be able to do such a thing.

But on the other hand, this perhaps also showed that Du Heng wasn’t ”professional” enough.

Lan Changhua had told him this, but Du Heng still couldn’t accept it. Professionals are still people; how could they be so shameless?

Especially that Deputy Director who jumped ship, what was he after?

Was he just after the supposedly better feng shui of a west-side office compared to an east-side one?

The Chief Chinese Medicine Doctor was somewhat understandable; at least he was now a top leader, and his words carried weight. But what about that Deputy Director?

He would still have to follow others’ orders and arrangements.

Moreover, seeing his old colleagues and leaders every day, everywhere—wouldn’t he feel awkward deep down, and wouldn’t it show on his face?

He mulled over many things, but the one possibility he didn’t consider was that the deputy director’s departure might have been, more or less, related to his own arrival.

In the end, he even concluded: The human connections in this place are so weak!

Du Heng took a sip of tea, silently labeling the workplace culture in the Capital as ’indifferent.’

However, these were just things he pondered while sitting alone in his office. After all, he wasn’t familiar with the two directors who had left.

He had only met them briefly when he came here to study the previous year, so seeing them daily wasn’t a particularly big deal to him.

Du Heng shook his head, adjusted his mood, and began to review the materials Wu Buwei and Li Shuxun had sent over the previous evening.

Meanwhile, Director Huang of the First Department of General Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery was frowning deeply.

”Director Huang, please, take a look at my daughter! What’s happened to her?”

Director Huang was very familiar with the crying, panicking woman in front of him; she was his wife’s colleague.

He was also very familiar with the girl lying on the hospital bed, as she had just been discharged from his department half a month prior.

Moreover, this girl had undergone two surgeries, both performed by him.

The reason for her hospitalization had been simple: a car accident resulting in a ruptured spleen.

As for who was responsible for the accident? It was the girl herself.

A nineteen-year-old female motorcyclist who, after drinking a little alcohol late one night, had then... ridden recklessly and ended up in the hospital.

In theory, a car accident and spleen rupture should only require one surgery: a spleen repair. Was it because Director Huang’s skills were lacking, or was the injury so severe that it necessitated a second repair?

Neither!

This young lady had unfortunately experienced an intestinal torsion a few days after her spleen repair surgery.

She had just undergone surgery and suffered a severe injury, placing her in the category of those with significantly depleted original qi. Her twisted intestines simply couldn’t recover on their own.

So, with no other choice, Director Huang had to perform a second surgery to resolve the intestinal torsion.

Director Huang had great confidence in both his surgeries; there had been absolutely no issues with the operations themselves.

Moreover, the girl’s initial recovery had supported this; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been discharged half a month ago.

But now, seeing the girl’s entire abdomen swollen and bulging, with her upper left abdomen protruding even more noticeably, Director Huang was completely dumbfounded.

What happened? Where did the problem lie? Did I overlook something in my previous work?

Looking at the girl on the hospital bed, Director Huang suppressed his doubts and directly asked the sobbing woman, ”Don’t cry just yet. First, tell me what happened.”

The woman wiped her tears, managed to stop crying, and said, ”We were discharged two weeks ago, and everything was fine at first. But after a few days, my daughter started complaining of pain below her left rib cage.

”At first, I thought it was just the incision hurting, so I didn’t pay much attention.

”But then the pain grew steadily worse, and her belly swelled up too.

”My daughter also said she felt very constricted in her chest, as if something was stuck there, making it hard for her to breathe. When she lay down, her stomach became so bloated and unbearable, she said it felt like it was about to burst.”

Director Huang looked worried and said, a little angrily, ”Your daughter just recovered from such a serious injury. When you discovered these problems, why didn’t you bring her to the hospital sooner? Why wait until it got this bad?”

The woman, both frightened and aggrieved, sobbed, ”I did come! But the doctors here said it was normal, just some intestinal bloating, and that it would be fine once she passed some gas.”