Zhang Fan and Shao Hua’s family really enjoyed their vacation together. Shao Hua’s parents indeed had fun, and Zhang Fan was really delighted because his relationship with Shao Hua had improved even further.

When he returned to the hospital, he was rotated to the respiratory department. Cough, cough, cough! He heard an endless amount of coughing the moment that he opened the door to the department.

…Actually, since the weather was turning warm, the respiratory department had much fewer patients in this season. If this had been late fall, winter, or early spring, the respiratory department would be absolutely filled to the brim with patients.

The respiratory department was a large department. Many older patients would often have to come stay here. The director of the respiratory department was named Jumabieke. He was a young man in his thirties, and was also the only doctor in all of Chasu City Hospital who had studied overseas before. Back when China had a SARS breakout, Jumabieke had been studying in Beijing. He risked his life together with other doctors there, traveling to the most seriously infected locations.

When the SARS outbreak ended, the border province rewarded Jumabieke by sending him to study abroad in England. When he returned, he could have easily gone to Bluebird City, but he refused, instead insisting on returning to his hometown: Chasu City.

At that time, he had been promoted to attending physician just before the SARS outbreak. Since he was still too young, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to reward him with the position of superintendent. Thus, he was promoted to being the respiratory department’s director. The previous director of the respiratory department could only aggrievedly be transferred to become the director of the geriatrics department.

Due to Jumabieke’s personal experience, Chasu City Hospital’s respiratory department was quite renowned in the border province. Not only that, since Jumabieke was of Kazakh ethnicity, many rich and powerful Kazakh people would also come visit to have Jumabieke treat them.

Director Jumabieke was young, experienced studying abroad in England, and had excellent future prospects in front of him. Thus, he managed his subordinate doctors extremely strictly. Not only was he strict about proper medical treatment for patients, he even managed doctors’ attire quite strictly. All the male doctors of the department were required to wear dress shirts and ties, while the female doctors were forbidden from anything more than light makeup. Sweatpants, flip-flops, and all other casual attire were forbidden.

Older veteran doctors of the respiratory department truly didn’t enjoy working here. Not only did the director manage everything really strictly, there was basically no hope for the veteran doctors of this department to get promoted. The two doctors with the second-highest level certification could only sit at their computers and type medical reports themselves.

But for the younger doctors, they considered the respiratory department excellent. Since Director Jumabieke was quite famous in the area, he received an incredibly high number of patients. Not only that, Jumabieke wasn’t at all satisfied with only being a department director. He had his sights set on even higher positions. Thus, he was quite generous to the lower-ranking doctors. He didn’t personally take most kickbacks in the department. Li Hui’s current goal was to get assigned to the respiratory department after his rotations were finished. Even while working temporarily in other departments, he would often come visit the respiratory department in order to make Director Jumabieke remember him.

Zhang Fan joined the respiratory department one week later than the other rotation doctors because Superintendent Ouyang had especially given him a seven-day May 1st vacation free of being on call as a reward for his previous teaching. Hence, all of the veteran doctors of the department had already received student doctors, and there was only one veteran doctor left without a student doctor. Zhang Fan was assigned to Zhu Qianqian, a young female doctor who had only recently been promoted to attending physician herself. Zhu Qianqian had a wiry figure.

After the respiratory department’s morning meeting were arterial blood gas tests for the patients. Here in the respiratory department, almost all the patients would have their arterial blood taken, and it was more than once for some patients. The nurses of this department were thus really busy. The head nurse of the respiratory department had mentioned this to Director Jumabieke, who thus commanded that the rotation doctors should take over the duty of drawing the patients’ arterial blood.

There were quite a few rotation doctors who weren’t skilled enough to draw arterial blood by themselves. They would have to ask the nurses for help. The nurses were willing to help the doctors who had better emotional intelligence and thus got along better with the nurses, but the doctors with lower emotional intelligence weren’t well liked, so no nurse would help them. A few months ago, Wang Yanan had spent a rotation in the respiratory department. It was really easy for her to draw arterial blood. Several male rotation doctors were unable to perform this task, and they all asked her to do it for them. She was more than happy to do so under one condition. Every time that she helped draw blood for someone, that person would have to write a medical report for her.

Zhang Fan started getting accustomed to the daily routine of the respiratory department. He would have to inspect the color of patients’ phlegm, ask patients about their symptoms, draw patients’ blood, write medical reports, offer medical advice, and check up on patients staying in the department. Luckily for him, since he already had his medical license, the other doctors and nurses gave him face. At the very least, they wouldn’t just order him about.

Although the weather was warmer now in early May, the respiratory department’s patient rooms were still completely filled. Zhu Qianqian was in charge of slightly more than 20 patients. Checking up on all the patients would take more than an hour. Zhang Fan would need to record the wetness or dryness of their coughs, their wheezing rales, and respiratory sounds.

There were also tasks such as checking on the patients’ antibiotic medication, sputum cultures, and so on. There really was a lot of different types of small tasks in the respiratory department. Not to mention, the patients’ lungs weren’t good, and they struggled with breathing difficulties, so it was common for the patients to have a bad temper. There were many elderly men and women hospitalized in the respiratory department who had hair-trigger tempers that would go off at the slightest provocation. It was common for them to curse at the nurses to the point of causing the latter to cry.

Patience would be required when dealing with such patients. Even the slightest hint of impatience or an improper explanation from the doctor would result in the patient’s temper flaring up. Also, most of the older patients in the respiratory department were on the skinnier side. Why was it? They lacked the lung power to expel their phlegm. Chubbier people would have stronger lung power and more powerful coughs. Since respiratory diseases usually had a big toll on the body, most patients in the respiratory department were on the skinnier side.

Zhu Qianqian had a toddler who was just slightly older than one year old. Thus, she had significant child-rearing expenses, especially because she also had high requirements. She wanted to feed baby formula to her child until six years old. However, she distrusted the safety of Chinese baby formula, so she only purchased imported German baby formula, which she viewed as the safest for some reason. Zhu Qianqian was especially hardworking because of this. She actually had more patients than any other doctor in the respiratory department.

It was likely that Zhang Fan was the only person who could grind more work than her! Zhu Qianqian often voluntarily worked overtime, and would write medical reports until eight or nine p.m., having her husband pick her up from work then. During her night shifts, she would often have to pull all-nighters writing medical reports. Since she had many patients, it was common that she would make small mistakes in the medical reports that she would then have to fix. Her medical reports were often rejected for these mistakes, so she would then have to revise them again. Hence, Zhu Qianqian was especially happy to receive Zhang Fan as a student doctor at first. However, when she heard a little more about him from the other rotation doctors, she could no longer be as happy.

First of all, Zhang Fan already had a medical license. Basically, this meant that if Zhu Qianqian acted too overbearing towards him, he could simply refuse to do the work. Even Director Jumabieke of the respiratory department wouldn’t be able to hold too much sway over Zhang Fan. He had plenty of other departments he could choose to work in instead of the respiratory department.

Not to mention, Zhang Fan was known to be really wanted by the surgical departments. This meant that he would care even less about what the director and doctors of an internal medicine department like the respiratory department thought. Basically, she would be completely unable to exert any authority over Zhang Fan, and would instead have to spoil him in order to make him work for her.

Zhu Qianqian was working on the day that Zhang Fan first arrived in the respiratory department. She had more than 30 medical reports to finish as those were her accomplishments from the past week. She truly was working her hardest.

After Zhang Fan finished his first day’s work in the respiratory department, Shao Hua called and offered to bring some dinner over to him, but Zhang Fan refused. He didn’t want to trouble her, not to mention that it would be easy to get infected by something in the respiratory department. So, he didn’t allow her to come.

Zhu Qianqian had a smile as she asked, “Doctor Zhang, what are you eating for dinner tonight?”

She was the type who wanted others to work for her without paying them anything in return. For typical rotation or intern doctors, it would be common for their teaching doctor to at least pay for a meal. This would be more than enough to have the student doctor work properly because none of the student doctors would have a high income. They would all be grateful.

However, Zhu Qianqian would never do such a thing as pay for a meal for a student doctor, because she was the type who wanted to save as much money as possible for herself. Well, Zhang Fan didn’t know about Zhu Qianqian’s personality, so he said, “I don’t know yet. Doctor Zhu, what are your plans for dinner?”

“I brought a rice pilaf from home. How about this, you don’t need to go out to a restaurant. Not only will that be a waste of time, restaurant food isn’t clean. How about you eat my rice pilaf? I usually don’t eat dinner.”

“It wouldn’t be proper for me to eat your dinner. I’m already used to eating dinner outside.”

“I really don’t like to eat dinner at night, honest. It would be a waste of good food. Please don’t think that my food is dirty! Relax! My husband disinfects our home every day! I have a young toddler, so we pay special attention to cleanliness. Rest assured and eat it.” Zhu Qianqian didn’t allow Zhang Fan to refuse as she brought out an especially small lunchbox.

Zhang Fan was unable to refuse with how direct she was. Although Zhu Qianqian was miserly about money, she really was willing to work hard. She even washed her chopsticks for Zhang Fan while also bringing him some napkins and pouring him a cup of hot water, which made him feel rather awkward.

“Have a taste. This rice pilaf is really good. My husband even took classes on how to make it. It will taste just as good as any restaurant’s.”

Actually, the taste was just average. This Uzbek-style palov cooking style for pilafs was rather greasy, and the rice had gotten cold already, so it was difficult to determine how tasty it might have originally been. Also, the food had been prepared for the skinny Zhu Qianqian, so there wasn’t much to begin with. Zhang Fan finished in just a few bites.

“Was it good?”

“It wasn’t bad!”

Zhang Fan was about to go and wash the lunchbox, but Zhu Qianqian grabbed it and washed it first.