Chinese people were much simpler back in 2010. Large-scale complaints against a hospital were extremely rare in the border province. The patient’s husband had invited over all his friends and relatives to help himself work up the courage to complain. He wouldn’t have thought of complaining at all if it hadn’t been for the advice he’d received.

Although Ouyang Hong took a severe attitude, she softened up significantly afterwards. The husband instantly realized from this that the hospital was indeed at fault. Otherwise, the superintendent of a Class A hospital would be able to totally suppress him. An ordinary commoner like him wasn’t able to challenge a hospital, but everyone had friends.

The husband used what friends and connections he had to contact reporters and a lawyer. If the hospital dared to take a hard-line approach against him tomorrow, he would sue the hospital and make this into an even bigger incident. He had already spent a significant amount of money on his wife’s medical fees over the years, and the current medical incident cost even more.

Ouyang Hong’s meeting with the three vice superintendents and the department directors began. In a passionate tone, the surgeon vice superintendent claimed, “Not treating human lives responsibly and toying with a patient’s life? We are Chasu City’s largest hospital, not some tiny rural hospital! We can’t just act as we please. We absolutely must be responsible for the patient and her family. We absolutely must severely punish those responsible!”

The surgeon vice superintendent was simply here to watch the show as he wouldn’t care if this became a major incident. In fact, if this became a major incident, it would even cause trouble for the superintendent.

The pediatrics vice superintendent, who was surnamed Song, was relatively inexperienced, and she offered a relatively neutral opinion. “The most important thing right now is to assuage the patient and her family’s dissatisfaction. As long as they don’t request anything unreasonable, it should be alright to compensate them appropriately.”

The third vice superintendent was from logistics, and he understood very little about hospital administration. At a hospital, where skills were the most important, he actually had less influence than the department directors despite being higher in rank as a vice superintendent. However, he had to at least offer his opinion in this meeting. “I agree with Vice Superintendent Song. Give them appropriate compensation; quieting down this incident as quickly as possible would be for the best.”

Ouyang Hong then glanced at the department directors, and said, “Are there any other opinions?” She also wanted to deal with this incident as quickly as possible. The more time passed, the more ideas the gastrointestinal department traitor might give the patient’s family, sabotaging the hospital. The larger this incident became, the worse it would be for Ouyang Hong.

“Since nobody has any other opinions, then we shall discuss the compensation for the patient’s family.” In the border province, several tens of thousands of yuan would be a gigantic expense for any normal family. However, that amount of money would be nothing more than spare change for a Class A hospital.

Ouyang Hong was a skilled leader. She didn’t want to have an antagonistic relationship with the surgeon vice superintendent, and believed that development of a Class A hospital couldn’t be done successfully by solely focusing on internal medicine or surgery. They needed to be developed together. Additionally, since she had already won against the surgeon vice superintendent in the competition to become the superintendent, she was confident that she could tame him.

The next day, the patient’s family arrived with their relative who was a lawyer to discuss the matter of compensation in the superintendent’s office. Chasu City Hospital agreed to three conditions. First, the hospital would compensate the patient for all of the medical fees stemming from this incident, including the expert doctor’s treatment fee. Second, the hospital would compensate the patient for loss of wages for her extended hospital stay. Third, the hospital would compensate the patient’s family another 30,000 yuan.

Both sides were satisfied with this agreement. The patient’s husband was satisfied because he knew that asking for more would be impossible. The hospital was no charitable organization. If the hospital truly took a hard-line approach, it would become quite difficult for him even if he caused a large ruckus and sued the hospital.

The hospital was quite satisfied because this incident was resolved before it could become any bigger. Now, it would be time to punish those responsible. Ouyang Hong was definitely not a magnanimous person who would forgive and forget. First, she demoted Zhao Cheng from his position of vice director, and took away his bonuses for an entire year. He was also transferred to one of the hospital’s associated clinics.

Ouyang Hong then cleaned out the gastrointestinal department. It was quite obvious that one of the other two vice directors of the department had been advising the patient’s family. Although it was unknown who had been the traitor, Ouyang Hong didn’t care. She punished both other vice directors together—they were both demoted. One was sent to an affiliated clinic just like Zhao Cheng, while the other was assigned to the endoscopy operating room, and would no longer be given any administrative duties in the department.

Why were the punishments for the other two former vice directors so severe? This was all because of Zhao Cheng. Since one of the vice directors had backstabbed Zhao Cheng and the entire hospital, he felt incredibly aggrieved. Zhao Cheng knew that it would be impossible for him to dream about becoming the gastrointestinal department’s next director anymore. He understood the other two vice directors quite well as they had all been coworkers in the same department for more than a decade. He definitely didn’t want one of those two bastards to become the director when he himself could no longer!

Zhao Cheng started going through the old account books. He knew exactly when, how much, and how many illicit kickbacks the other two vice directors had taken before. Zhao Cheng then contacted the gastrointestinal department’s representative in the hospital administrative department, forcing the representative to turn all the gastrointestinal account records to him. Otherwise, he would report the department to the government for corruption.

Either the gastrointestinal department representative was truly scared, or he intentionally wanted to strike a blow against the other two vice directors for some reason. At any rate, Zhao Cheng successfully obtained the detailed account books of the other two vice directors.

Since Zhao Cheng knew that he no longer had a chance at becoming director, he left a copy of the account books for himself, and then turned them in to Ouyang Hong. Basically, Zhao Cheng ruined the other two vice directors’ chances by showing the evidence of their corruption to Ouyang Hong. However, Zhao Cheng only dared to show the account books to the superintendent. He didn’t actually dare to show the account books to the government, which would start an investigation. This was because Zhao Cheng was also corrupt himself, having taken many illegal kickbacks of his own.

Ouyang Hong trembled with anger when she learned of all this, unable to even speak. She waved her hand, indicating that Zhao Cheng should get the hell out. Ouyang Hong had originally wanted to settle things as quietly as possible because she had approved the endoscopy band ligation surgery for the patient in the first place. Making too much of a big deal would be the equivalent of slapping her own face. She didn’t expect that Zhao Cheng would spoil her plans on everything.

“It will be toxic to leave any of them around!” Thus, Ouyang Hong ended up demoting all three vice directors. “I’m going to advertise a high-salary job opening for gastrointestinal department director at a Class A hospital. Hmph! I refuse to believe that we can’t fill that job position without those vice directors!” Ouyang Hong spoke in a vicious tone at next Monday’s hospital meeting.

The conclusion of this incident was that everyone at the hospital lost out in the end. Zhao Cheng silently left for his new demoted position at the clinic. He would have no good future there, so it was likely that he would resign after just a few more months. As he was still a former vice director at a Class A hospital, it would be easy enough for him to find a job elsewhere with his credentials.

Zhang Fan’s life entered a routine. He mainly worked the day shifts, and only took the night shift when he was scheduled for it. Otherwise, he would return to his apartment. After his day shifts were over, he would go give Li Xiao a massage. He also visited the sports school once every two weeks to give the children checkups. He had also been making some progress with Shao Hua—she would now occasionally respond to his text messages.

Zhang Fan was in no hurry. He figured they could slowly learn more about each other as they were still young.

Zhang Fan had purchased his new home for the price of 170,000 yuan. He did some research, and found out that he would easily be able to sell it for over 270,000 yuan at market price. This meant that he had received more than 100,000 yuan by being able to purchase the house at base price from Li Xiao. Zhang Fan felt really awkward about this.

When he mentioned this to Li Xiao, she simply chuckled. “I told you to buy one of the larger homes from me, but you were unwilling to spend that much money. Are you regretting it now?”

“I’m not regretting anything. I’m already feeling like I’ve received too much from you.”

“There’s no need to be like that. I asked my original doctor about the cost of surgery for my back, and was told that it would be far more than 100,000 yuan. And even without regards to the money, isn’t it worth 100,000 yuan to be able to skip the pain of surgery? Feel reassured about living in that house, it’s what you deserve.” Li Xiao was highly satisfied with Zhang Fan’s attitude. She felt that he hadn’t gotten greedy just because of the gift.

Obviously, Zhang Fan was still delighted to have his own home. Chinese people were obsessed with the notion of owning a home, just as if they would die without one.

The house was roughcast and still unfinished. Zhang Fan had no intention of hiring anyone to design it, as he didn’t want to spend the money to do so.

In that case, how was he going to finish renovating the home? The answer was quite simple. He would copy designs from other homes, and keep everything he felt was practical while eliminating everything he felt was useless. After he made his own design, he asked about home design and renovation prices, and found that it would cost him 60,000 yuan at the very minimum.

After hearing this, Zhang Fan stopped having any thoughts about renovating the home for now. He was in no hurry to finish the home regardless, as he had an apartment he could live in.

Zhang Fan’s work in the gastrointestinal department was slightly easier than in the cardiovascular department. Although he had to literally interact with patients’ feces on a daily basis, at the very least the gastrointestinal department’s patients weren’t at risk of dying at any moment.

In the cardiovascular department, you had to be constantly vigilant during the night shift. However, such vigilance was unnecessary in the gastrointestinal department. As long as there were no patients with major bleeding or cirrhosis with esophageal varices, then it would be alright to sleep for the entire night shift. Patients whose stomachs hurt really badly could simply be taken over to the general surgery department.