Chapter 308: I’ll pay for all your meals

It would be unavoidable for anyone who worked at a hospital to see their relatives and friends ask for treatment. Zhang Fan wasn’t a local from the border province, so this was less common for him, but as his fame increased, people who weren’t acquainted with him started using various acquaintances to contact him.

This was a good thing. This meant that Zhang Fan was receiving recognition from others. It wasn’t like a doctor could be annoyed about this, because the doctor profession was supposed to be about treating patients in the first place.

If an ordinary person had a friend or relative who worked at a Class A hospital, then that person would really take care of maintaining a good relationship with the person who worked at the hospital. For ordinary people, a Class A hospital’s doctor was also a type of resource. Knowing someone like that would be like having an extra insurance. Maybe such insurance would never be needed, but having it would still make one feel more reassured. Maybe this was about having a sense of safety.

Zhang Fan had the weekend off. He had immensely sped up the tempo of all three orthopedic departments right after he was permanently assigned to orthopedic department #1. The three departments’ medical teams were all competing with each other to their utmost. If one team took 30 patients, then the other teams wouldn’t rest, either. The hospital leadership wouldn’t care about such competition as long as things were still under control, as the hospital leadership would be more than happy to see the doctors working hard.

“How is it, have you eaten your full yet? You’ve been eating so much recently. Maybe you should go get a checkup?” Shao Hua asked worriedly as she watched Zhang Fan devouring meat with ravenous gulps.

“Haha, it’s fine. The more tired I am, the more I can eat. Sigh! At this rate, I probably won’t make enough money to cover my food expenses anymore,” Zhang Fan commented as he continued to eat meat.

Zhang Fan had been working far too hard recently. Not only did he work really hard at the department with taking as many patients as possible, he also studied English every day at home, and would always perform several surgeries in his System before going to sleep. This meant his energy consumption was tremendous. If it weren’t for the fact that his System was capable of swiftly transforming food into energy, he probably would have collapsed from fatigue already. Originally, Zhang Fan didn’t even like to eat goat meat, but now he was capable of eating several kilograms of goat meat during a single meal. His food intake was truly scary.

“Haha, it’s fine as long as you’re alright. I’m not afraid of you being a big eater. I’ll pay for all your food!” Shao Hua said with a giggle.

“Yes, you’re the best!” Zhang Fan went along with what she said.

“Slow down a little. Nobody’s fighting over the food with you.” Shao Hua pitied him as she wiped away some soup that had spilled out of his mouth onto his cheek.

Zhang Fan was finally able to rest for an afternoon on Saturday. Chinese doctors wouldn’t possibly receive both days off for the weekend. Saturday morning would still require going to work like normal. The doctor would have to return again on Sunday morning for the daily patient checkups. Unless a doctor had zero patients, it would be impossible for the doctor to get out of doing the daily morning checkups.

Basically, Chinese doctors would only get to rest on the afternoons in the weekend. If the doctor was unlucky and also had a weekend shift, then the doctor would have no time at all to rest for the whole week. No matter if a doctor was from internal medicine or a surgical department, they would all dislike having to work a night shift on Sunday more than anything.

Not only would a doctor likely have to stay up for 24 hours straight in order to deal with any emergency patients who might arrive in the night, the next morning would be Monday morning, which meant the department would organize the major weekly patient checkup. Although the surgical departments’ major weekly patient checkups would take slightly less time, Monday would have more surgeries scheduled than any other day. Doctors would be unable to go to sleep right after finishing the night shift. Nobody would care about your fatigue, because everyone had to go through the same thing. If you truly couldn’t do the work like this, then the answer was quite simple. You would have to quit your job! That was just how cruel things were.

“You should have a nap this afternoon. You haven’t rested well recently at all.” Shao Hua was full after eating just two small pieces of meat. However, Zhang Fan had been devouring meet for almost half an hour already. Shao Hua kept putting more noodles and vegetables on Zhang Fan’s plate so that he could eat more conveniently.

“I’m not going to sleep. Since I have time today, we should hurry and go look at some furniture and settle on what furniture we want for ourselves in the future,” Zhang Fan said while chewing on some bone marrow.

“What about tomorrow? Are you going to have to work overtime tomorrow?”

“There’s nothing for the department tomorrow apart from the daily morning patient checkup. However, a special patient is going to arrive for me at my hand and foot surgery hospital,” Zhang Fan explained to Shao Hua.

“What patient? What’s special about them?” Shao Hua inquired for the sake of inquiring. She was slightly disappointed that Zhang Fan wouldn’t be able to accompany her for the whole weekend, but she didn’t allow herself to display it, because she didn’t want him to feel guilty. He was quite tired already, so she didn’t want to pressure him any further. To her, love was about mutual understanding. Only one person giving while the other person only asked for things would cause the relationship to fall apart sooner or later.

“Apparently, the patient is a foreign basketball player.”

“Really? Little Rock, you’re amazing! Your name is even known in other countries!” Shao Hua said as she caressed his ear. Normally, Shao Hua often grabbed Zhang Fan’s ears whenever they were flirtatiously playing around with each other. Even though Zhang Fan’s ears weren’t very large, they were slightly stiff. As Shao Hua said, a man who had stiff ears wouldn’t be obedient towards his wife, so Shao Hua would often squeeze Zhang Fan’s ears, wanting to make his stiff ears slightly softer.

“Haha, that’s not it at all. Wang Yongyong introduced this patient to me. Apparently, it’s a foreigner who came to China in order to make money playing in the Chinese Basketball Association,” Zhang Fan explained.

“Oh, that’s still really amazing. Little Rock, you need to be obedient and listen to me in the future.” Shao Hua didn’t care that much about the professional details of Zhang Fan’s work. She would always get bored after hearing about such things. She would then play with Zhang Fan’s ears as if she was toying with a puppy. She would even use the same tone that she would with a puppy.

“Haha!” Zhang Fan laughed foolishly as he ate more meat! His and Shao Hua’s feelings for each other was just like a warm soup. Things weren’t passionate between them, but there was a warmth to things.

That afternoon, Zhang Fan and Shao Hua went furniture shopping since he finally had some free time. As the standard of living improved, people’s belongings would improve as well. Back when China’s government first opened up the borders again in 1978, the slightly richer families would start purchasing all sorts of European style furniture. Such furniture would seem really outdated by today’s standards, but no ordinary family would have been able to afford such furniture back then.

Zhang Fan’s standard of living had improved significantly together with his finances. However, he still hadn’t gained much of a so-called aura of being rich. His requirements for furniture weren’t high at all. He only cared that the furniture had as few chemicals as possible. Some furniture stores would make claims about high-tech synthetic materials, nanomaterials, and so on, which Zhang Fan didn’t understand at all. However, he did know that such Chinese materials contained a great deal of industrial glue which would emit gasses for even up to 10 years, not just one year. As a reminder, the first group of people to start getting leukemia on a large scale were people who worked all the time with such industrial glues. Any Chinese person who was getting married or had a small family would do best to renovate as simply as possible. Paint might smell bad, but glue would be fatal!

“Little Rock, I like that one!” Shao Hua whispered into Zhang Fan’s ear. He took a look, and immediately replied, “No. All that plywood is glued together. It’s shoddy quality.”

Shao Hua’s strength was that she would never pretend to understand what she didn’t. She also never argued back. “Oh, okay!”

Finally, they finished picking out their furniture. All of their furniture was completely wooden. It was just regular pine wood produced locally rather than some local wood. The price wasn’t expensive, and it would be much healthier than other Chinese-produced furniture. However, the color was rather heavy. It was deep red! Shao Hua pouted slightly. “Why is your taste so similar to my father’s? With such a set of furniture in our home, those visiting for the first time will think that our home is a temple!”

“Haha, it’s fine. There’s plenty of good lighting in our future home. Besides, this is healthy! It will be good for the baby once we have it!” Zhang Fan was willing to compromise on matters apart from his family’s health. Since he understood such things, he would definitely pay attention.

Shao Hua embarrassedly pushed Zhang Fan slightly when she heard this. The furniture store’s salesmen were chuckling as they watched this!