Liu Zhengliang nodded.
Dean Long continued, "Let me tell you, if you ever see your teacher again, you tell him this: I saved a little girl whose skull was shattered, and her family only spent thirty thousand yuan. I saved a patient with Brain Herniation, and the entire surgery plus rehabilitation cost just twenty thousand yuan. Let me tell you, I’ve been to hospitals all over the country—what haven’t I seen in my lifetime? When your teacher hears about this, he’ll regret it to death. Our rundown place here might not have strong departments, but it really trains people."
Countless times, Liu Zhengliang had imagined the scene of meeting his teacher again. He hoped this person, who had once held such high expectations for him only to be utterly disappointed later, would change his view. Liu Zhengliang opened his phone, looked at Wang Hao’s WeChat, and secretly opened his Moments feed. For over two years, he hadn’t dared to greet Wang Hao, not even daring to like his teacher’s posts. After a successful surgery, Liu Zhengliang would post on his Moments, briefly describing the case and mentioning a few key data points to let those in the field understand the difficulty of the procedure. Wang Hao had never liked any of these posts. It was as if this person had vanished—or perhaps he had deleted Liu Zhengliang.
Who told you to be such a petty-bourgeois bohemian? Who told you to be such a refined, self-serving opportunist in a hurry for success? But I can’t change the family I was born into, can I? I didn’t study so much just to resign myself to poverty. If studying meant being poor, who in the world would still pursue education? And if no one studied, how would society progress? On a smaller scale, economic conditions limited Liu Zhengliang’s awareness; on a larger scale, an unfair world had raised the bar for morality.
Liu Zhengliang had also privately resented Wang Hao. You stand high and mighty, preaching contentment in poverty, but how much do you earn in a year? How much does it cost to publish a paper in The Lancet? How much research funding do you have at your disposal? Dressed in a luxurious fur coat, you stand on the windswept moral high ground, pulling a shabbily dressed junior attending physician like me aside and telling me not to fear the cold—what gives you the right?
Love and hate, gratitude and resentment—the bond between this teacher and student was tangled and impossible to unravel.Dean Long took a sip of liquor and a bite of food before continuing, "Doctors shouldn't be poor by nature. In any country, doctors are wealthy people - they drive cars and live in big houses. Even nurses in the United States earn over a hundred thousand dollars annually. Why can't we offer the same? Because we're a developing country that needs primitive capital accumulation, we must practice austerity to fund development. The healthcare industry is a bottomless pit in every nation. America is rich, right? Yet they can't afford universal healthcare. Why? Doctors are too expensive. Training a crane operator takes two years; training a middle school teacher requires four years; training a chef takes just one year to start cooking. But how many years does it take to train a doctor? Not counting basic education, professional training alone requires at least twelve years. The cost is right there. So why can we afford universal healthcare? Because doctors are relatively inexpensive. In China, every era has its sacrificial industries. Who bore the burden in the 1950s and 60s? Farmers. To develop heavy industry, agricultural product prices had to be suppressed, using price scissors for primitive capital accumulation. A sewing machine cost over two hundred yuan, a bicycle over one hundred yuan - that was three to four months' wages! Back then, a worker's monthly salary was only thirty to forty yuan, completely different from today's one or two hundred, while grain cost just a few cents per jin. Who sacrificed in the 1990s? State-owned enterprise workers. With such heavy fiscal burdens and inefficient production capacity, either they sacrificed or everyone would be dragged down together. So Liu Zhengliang, you must understand: since you've chosen this profession, you're not here to make big money. This isn't an industry for getting rich. If this industry made people wealthy, Chinese people wouldn't just be unable to afford treatment for serious illnesses - even an appendicitis surgery could push the poor into desperate straits. The healthcare industry has an iron triangle: efficiency, quality, and price. You can only choose two of the three. If you want efficiency and quality, you have to pay high prices, like American private hospitals. If you want quality and affordability, you have to wait, like Britain's public healthcare system - you might wait months for surgery, with minor illnesses disappearing during the wait and serious conditions worsening fatally. If you want efficiency and low cost, that's our ordinary hospitals. Where in this world are there perfect solutions? Where are there flawless systems? Any system that can keep running is a good system. When there's no optimal solution, just give me an eighty-percent solution - that's enough."
After the gathering, Liu Zhengliang returned to the hospital for night duty. Lying in bed, he browsed through Wang Hao's social media feed. A post mentioned that several colleagues from Heping Hospital had just saved an extremely complex intracranial infection case. Wang Hao had taken some students to The Lancet Barbecue in Haidian for a celebration drink. The Lancet Barbecue was opened by a doctor who resigned, wanting to create a relaxed dining environment for medical professionals. Liu Zhengliang remembered how Wang Hao would joke during surgeries when using electrocautery, as the burnt skin emitted a charred odor: "Ah, this smell makes me want to go to The Lancet for barbecue tonight."
The assisting nurse would quickly interject: "Please stop, I'm about to be sick."
Back then, Liu Zhengliang felt such pride - he was a doctor at China's best hospital.He put down his phone and went to check on Zhang Jiao in the ward. She was already asleep, while Zhang Dexu was scrolling through Kuaishou videos in the hallway. Liu Zhengliang asked Zhang Dexu how his daughter had been lately. Zhang Dexu replied cheerfully, "Today my daughter used the squat toilet by herself and wiped herself clean. I was overjoyed."
Hearing this, Liu Zhengliang seemed to understand something. His pride didn't come from working at the best hospital. The source of his value was every patient he treated. At this moment, he felt quite fulfilled himself.
The Second Hospital officially joined the Shengjing Hospital Group, and Dean Long was finally demoted to a vice dean with no real authority, quietly waiting for retirement. The merger ceremony was simple - the mayor who was scheduled to give a speech had been taken away by the provincial disciplinary commission. A large crowd waited in the parking lot for a long time. Originally the mayor was supposed to cut the ribbon, but when the new dean couldn't reach him by phone, he announced the merger himself. It was later learned that the mayor was under investigation for corruption - the same election bribery case mentioned earlier.
Many young doctors transferred from Shenyang joined the hospital, though the nursing staff remained the same.
Among the new doctors was a recent graduate named Li Qingcheng. After completing her master's degree at China Medical University, she had been working as an obstetrics and gynecology intern at Shengjing Hospital. When Fushun Second Hospital was restructured into Shengjing Hospital Fushun Branch, she was transferred to the emergency department. The young woman was from Dalian and spoke with a distinct coastal accent. When Li Qingcheng first arrived at Second Hospital, she somewhat looked down on the local doctors, wondering what universities they graduated from and whether their technical skills were up to standard. It wasn't until one day when a patient came to the emergency room that her opinion of the emergency department staff changed.
Across the street from Second Hospital was Fushun First Middle School, the city's best high school where all the brightest students aimed to enroll. After three years of study, many students would test into Tsinghua and Peking University every year. Around 10 AM during morning exercises, a student suddenly crouched down clutching his chest during the routine. Overcome with nausea, he vomited everything he had eaten for breakfast, then slumped to the ground and collapsed. The homeroom teacher, terrified, immediately picked up the student and ran to the hospital. The school was so close to the hospital that there was no need to call an ambulance - just cross the street from the school gate and walk another hundred meters to reach Second Hospital's emergency department.
When Liu Zhengliang saw it was his own high school homeroom teacher Wang Bao, he asked: "Teacher Wang, what's the situation?"
Wang Bao was startled: "Liu Zhengliang, aren't you supposed to be at Heping Hospital?" Too anxious to inquire further, he directly explained that he didn't know what was wrong with his student.
Liu Zhengliang asked the student: "What's wrong with you?"
The student replied: "My stomach is throbbing with pain, I have acid reflux, and I vomited all my breakfast."
Seeing the student's brows furrowed in pain and his body trembling, Liu Zhengliang helped him onto the examination bed. While pressing different areas, he asked: "Does it hurt here? How about here?"
The student pointed around his navel, saying it hurt there. Liu Zhengliang then pointed to his chest - no pain there. Then he pointed below the ribs - no pain there either.
Liu Zhengliang pressed on the student's stomach and asked: "Does the pain get worse when I press here?"
The student answered: "No, the pain isn't that severe."
Liu Zhengliang asked again: "How long have you been in pain?"The child replied, "I started feeling unwell last night. I was uncomfortable during breakfast this morning and didn't go out for activities after the first class. After the second class ended, I wanted to move around a bit, but I couldn't handle it after just a few movements."
Liu Zhengliang turned to Wang Bao and asked, "Teacher Wang, what did the child eat this morning?"
Wang Bao said, "It was the school's standardized breakfast—there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with it. Both teachers and students eat it: two pork and pickled cabbage buns, a carton of milk, and a boiled egg."
Liu Zhengliang then asked the child, "Did you have diarrhea? Is your stomach bloated? Are you passing gas frequently? Do you feel short of breath? Are you dizzy?"
The child answered, "No diarrhea, no gas, breathing is fine, not dizzy either. I just feel some pain in my stomach."
Liu Zhengliang turned back to Teacher Wang and asked, "Have you called the child's parents?"
Upon hearing this, Teacher Wang realized—yes, he had been so frightened earlier that he forgot about this matter. He quickly took out his phone and called the child's parents, explaining the situation and urging them to come to the hospital immediately. After he finished, Liu Zhengliang hurriedly added, "Ask them if either of them is experiencing similar symptoms." Teacher Wang inquired, and the parents reported no issues at all.
This was strange. Usually, the students have all three meals provided by the school, and they don't leave until 8 or 9 p.m., only having a light snack at home. If there were a problem with the food at home, the parents should have shown symptoms. If it were the school's food, the other students and teachers should have been affected as well. This likely wasn't food poisoning.
Li Qingcheng and Che Mingming watched from the side as Liu Zhengliang continued questioning, "Have you ever had gastritis or gallstones before?"
The child shook his head.
Liu Zhengliang pressed further, "Do either of your parents have a history of stones?"
The child shook his head again.
Teacher Wang whispered, "Why are you asking about the parents when the child is sick?" Li Qingcheng explained on Liu Zhengliang's behalf, "Some doctors believe gallstones aren't hereditary, while others think there might be a genetic factor. There was once a case where a nine-month-old infant developed gallstones—a child that young couldn't possibly have developed them from dietary habits, since they weren't even weaned yet. Asking about the parents' medical history can help partially confirm whether the child's pain might be due to stones."
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