The nephrectomy continued. Heimduller was finally able to complete his task, releasing Li Jianguo’s hands as he used an aspirator to drain blood while searching for the mutated blood vessel.

“I found it!” Heimduller exclaimed rather excitedly.

“Do you think I’m blind? Do you need to say it out loud!?” Li Jianguo retorted angrily.

Heimduller’s face reddened out of embarrassment. He didn’t dare to say anything. Heimduller’s previous thoughtless exclamation had really infuriated Li Jianguo.

Li Jianguo was the extra cautious type to begin with. This patient was also special due to having connections that Li Jianguo viewed as important. If Heimduller’s thoughtless remark which implied that Li Jianguo hadn’t performed the surgery properly was spread by anyone, the patient’s family wouldn’t know any better, and would definitely cause trouble for Li Jianguo. This was why Li Jianguo was so furious right now.

Now that the mutated blood vessel had been located, things were no longer so bad. Ligation and transfixion were performed to stop the bleeding, and then the patient’s abdomen was sewn up. The surgery was now complete.

Heimduller was rather depressed. He knew that he had severely angered the department director today, which meant that he wouldn’t have an easy time in the department anymore.

“It’s fine, Brother Heimduller. Today’s surgery was rather rushed. The director is in a bad mood now, but his mood will improve in a few days. He wouldn’t possibly keep a grudge over one sentence, would he?”

“Sigh! Brother Zhang, thank you so much for today. It’s all thanks to you that no major medical incident occurred. I was in a state of shock at the time, and couldn’t react. I need to keep a low profile for the time being and make it past this period when Director Li is in a bad mood. He’s the type to really hold grudges. I’m so worried!”

“It’s fine! Director Li wouldn’t mind something like that from a subordinate attending physician!”

“I really hope so! Brother Zhang, let me treat you to lunch. You’ve been busy all morning.”

“No need. I still have something else to do. No need to mind me. I’ll be leaving now.”

Heimduller remained to explain the necessities of postoperative care to the patient’s family.

Shao Hua and Jingshu were out touring Bayinbrook Grassland, so Zhang Fan took some dried lilies and went over to visit Li Xiao.

These lilies weren’t worth much money at all back when Zhang Fan was younger. Not many people ate lilies back then. The people of Lan City would maybe put a few lilies into their porridge at most. But starting from an unknown time, people in southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong suddenly popularized eating lilies. This caused the price of lilies in Lan City to multiply several times over. Previously, nobody was interested in eating lilies, but now, normal people couldn’t afford to eat them.

Yesterday, Li Xiao had called Zhang Fan to invite him over for lunch at her place today. Ever since Li Xiao’s back had been cured, she would call Zhang Fan almost every week and invite him over to a meal, but since Zhang Fan didn’t have much free time, he rarely went.

Li Xiao now viewed exercising with great importance. She would only work for two hours straight before getting up and performing the exercises that Zhang Fan had taught her. Perhaps due to the exercises or her good care for herself, Li Xiao’s complexion had been improving more and more recently. She seemed to be glowing.

Previously, Li Xiao had a bad temper due to her back pain, but now that her back pain was gone, she was such a happy person. When Li Xiao visited Raptor City recently, her older sister who lived there was incredibly astonished to see her like that.

Her older sister was also quite concerned about her. Li Xiao had always been single due to a romantic problem when she was younger. No matter how much her sister tried to convince her, Li Xiao was unwilling to try finding a boyfriend again. Li Xiao told her older sister about her back treatment massages, but her sister didn’t pay much attention. However, Li Xiao’s nephew, Ma Wentao, paid close attention to this.

Ma Wentao was a rather unique individual. Li Xiao’s brother-in-law was an incredibly high-ranking government official in the border province. However, Li Xiao’s nephew had no interest whatsoever in politics. Li Xiao’s brother-in-law had slowly climbed through the ranks, starting from minor government official.

Ma Wentao’s father only became a high-ranking government official when Ma Wentao was in middle school. Since Ma Wentao’s father was always busy with work, he didn’t pay much attention to his son’s upbringing.

As Ma Wentao’s father’s governmental position kept increasing in status, more and more sycophants started appearing around Ma Wentao. In high school, Ma Wentao would always get into fights, be a playboy, and even join gangs. He would do everything that he was forbidden from doing. In the end, Ma Wentao’s father was forced to send him studying abroad, and now that Ma Wentao was older, he had matured a lot, and kept a far lower profile.

Ma Wentao had studied abroad in England, then America, and then Europe. In the end, he somehow managed to graduate with a master’s degree in business management from a business graduate school in Europe. Ma Wentao then worked for several years at a Fortune Global 500 company, and rose to the impressive rank of district manager. But then, for some unknown reason, he resigned from his job.

Ma Wentao then had fun vacationing around the entire world while constantly having a stream of different girlfriends by his side. The longest relationship he had with a girlfriend lasted for only half a year. Ma Wentao came from a powerful family, and he was even quite handsome. Even without mentioning his family, just being as handsome as he was would attract quite a number of women! There was no helping it. Perhaps part of his playboy personality could be blamed on his handsomeness.

However, maybe Ma Wentao had gotten tired of his playboyish, lavish vacationing lifestyle, or maybe he wanted to settle down. He had now returned to China for half a year already, and no longer associated with the same people he used to. Ma Wentao would now either always stay at home or go to various places to look around. His father wanted Ma Wentao to enter politics, but he refused. His father was unable to force him to do so.

Ma Wentao had been unprepared for how his father had gone from minor government official to high-ranking government leader back when he was still in school. All sorts of people with various motives surrounded Ma Wentao back then, turning him into a classical example of a spoiled rich boy. However, Ma Wentao slowly changed due to studying abroad for several years.

This was due to several factors. Ma Wentao didn’t have a bad personality to begin with, and his family had indeed tried their best to bring him up well. Also, Ma Wentao’s father had decided to go hard on his son while sending him abroad. No matter if Ma Wentao became successful or not, his father wanted him to first become a successful person. Ma Wentao’s father only provided him with enough money for school expenses, and refused to provide even one cent extra. This made Ma Wentao experience working society. His father’s plan had indeed succeeded, for Ma Wentao succeeded quite well on his own.

Ma Wentao had wanted to start a company of his own after he worked for several years at the Fortune Global 500 company, but his father only wanted him to join the political world. Ma Wentao refused, so his father became angry, and refused to provide him with any financial support at all. His father’s goal was to have Ma Wentao experience failure due to insufficient capital, and then admit defeat and join him in the political world.

However, Ma Wentao was quite stubborn!

Ma Wentao still had some cash saved up from his previous job at the Fortune Global 500 company. Plus, his mother would secretly give him some money as well, which was roughly enough for him to start his own business. Even if he didn’t have enough money, he still had Li Xiao, his really rich aunt!

Ma Wentao had been quite interested in Zhang Fan’s supposed medical skill level. This was because Ma Wentao felt that the Chinese medical field had great business potential. It was currently 2010 in China. The private hospital industry was quite undeveloped, while many Fujianese ¹ were running unlicensed private clinics and hospitals. A truly powerful private hospital industry had yet to appear.

Ma Wentao wanted to gather a group of highly skilled doctors to help him break into this industry.

His several years of living abroad, along with his experience, had already shaved off much of the spoiled rich boy part of him. Thanks to his previously working at a Fortune Global 500 company as a district manager, he was quite adept at both management and judgement. Ma Wentao believed that China’s future was with the citizens, not with the government. If he did a good job in the business industry, he felt that it wouldn’t be any worse than joining the government at all.

In China, private hospitals typically took various shortcuts. There were incredibly few private hospitals which were completely independent and looking to develop all by themselves. Most successful private hospitals would usually be associated with a public hospital, contracted to research organizations, or be contract hospitals.

Private hospitals which lacked experts with sufficient medical skills would then focus on providing services of only a single type, such as andrology, gynecology, proctology, hand and foot surgery, and so on. These would all be major medical fields where medical incidents were rare. Or, the private hospitals would specialize in department specialties that were unpopular in the major public hospitals. There were also private hospitals which specialized in some embarrassing or humiliating diseases that patients would find difficult to talk about.

The lowest-level private hospitals would basically have just a group of retired doctors who wouldn’t do anything but give patients physical examinations! They offered nothing apart from physicals! This would have almost zero risk. The main income for such hospitals came from scamming patients into performing ridiculously expensive checkups that were mostly useless anyway.

There were very few large and successful private hospitals in China. But, were hospitals profitable? They definitely were! To use Chasu City in the border province as an example, Chasu City Hospital’s profit would definitely rank in the top three of all businesses in Chasu City.

In order for a hospital to be successful, having good doctors and nurses would absolutely be necessary, but in comparison, doctors were slightly more important. This was why Ma Wentao was already preparing to find a group of highly skilled doctors.

Ma Wentao had followed Li Xiao to Chasu City instead of staying in Raptor City with his mother. He came here because he felt like Chasu City was a good place to start his planned hospital business. He also came here in order to meet Zhang Fan as his aunt Li Xiao had praised him to the heavens. Ma Wentao didn’t quite believe how skilled Zhang Fan was, as he felt that his aunt was exaggerating, but he did believe that this Zhang Fan fellow at least had to have some skills.