August's autumn winds blow chilly and drear,
Sister Wang sits in the northern tower,
Feeling utterly confined.
My second brother went to Nanjing for the imperial exams,
Six years have passed without his return.
Missing him, I can barely eat half a bowl of rice a day,
Or finish a single bowl of porridge in two days,
Half a bowl of rice, one bowl of porridge—
Sister Wang has withered to skin and bones.
The bracelets on my arms slip right off,
Rings slide loose from my emaciated fingers.
Northeasterners express emotions with raw directness, sometimes veering into folksy ramblings: To say "I miss you, I love you," they'll complain of sleepless nights; to describe gradual wasting away, they'll say rings slide like skating on ice. "Skating on ice" literally means gliding across frozen surfaces in winter. This emotional candor can't compare with the subtle grace of southern expressions like "light clouds just emerged from the peaks." Such plainspokenness often earns disdain from educated types like Liu Zhengliang, who consider it vulgar, uncultured, and lacking refinement.
But now that he'd returned home, he could no longer cling to intellectual pretensions. A doctor without a hospital or operating theater is like a policeman without a gun, a firefighter without a firetruck. A phoenix grounded is inferior to a chicken—every failed returnee from outside carries this shame.
Though Chen Junnan had been fired from the hospital, his family had connections everywhere in Fushun. They could pull strings to get him into another hospital to continue working.
When Liu Zhengliang saw Chen Junnan, he blurted: "You bastard, you've ruined me."
Chen Junnan replied: "Old Liu, I know I've wronged you. No words can make it right. What are your plans now?"
Liu Zhengliang smiled bitterly: "I don't know. Maybe head south to become a pharmaceutical sales rep?"
Chen Junnan scoffed: "Don't be ridiculous. You think any doctor can do sales? That's a completely different skill set—have you ever sold anything?"
Liu Zhengliang sighed: "I only know interventional procedures. What major hospital would take me now? This scandal's gone viral online. Small hospitals might hire me, but neurosurgery isn't a one-person show—what about equipment? Supporting staff? If they don't have the need, they won't keep idle personnel. I can't even get into Fushun Second Hospital near my home. Had I known this would happen, I'd have chosen dermatology. Even if fired, I could've posted ads on utility poles giving antibiotic shots to scrape by."
Chen Junnan grinned cryptically: "Not necessarily. Fushun Second is short-staffed—many doctors recently jumped ship, departments are either aging veterans or greenhorns with no middle generation. If you're serious, I'll talk to the director. We can get you in. Ride out this storm, then look for southern jobs later."
Liu Zhengliang set down his water glass: "How much would that cost?"
Chen Junnan laughed: "No money needed. With your qualifications and experience, this is like Zhou Yu beating Huang Gai—a perfect fit."
A month later, Chen Junnan settled everything. After all, Liu Zhengliang's medical license remained valid. The instigators of the medical dispute—the so-called Filial Son and Virtuous Grandson—were uneducated folks who dropped the lawsuit after receiving surgery compensation. Probably no lawyer would take their case anyway—suing a young doctor with no assets to claim? Who'd bother without money involved? Thus, Liu Zhengliang got his second chance to practice medicine.Several staff members had transferred from the emergency department of the Second Hospital, leaving it severely understaffed recently. The hospital administration temporarily assigned Liu Zhengliang to emergency care. When Grandpa heard this news, he was overjoyed—back when Liu Zhengliang signed his contract with Heping Hospital, he had only responded with a flat "oh" over the phone.
Grandpa said, "This is perfect. When my time comes, you'll be the one to see me off. How fitting—right in our hometown, just a five-minute walk to work, stopping to buy groceries on your way home, then slipping off your coat and sitting down to eat. Later, buy a nice apartment—you can get a hundred-square-meter place in Fushun for three hundred thousand. Then find a wife, someone practical who knows how to manage a household. A home isn’t a home without people. With the right person by your side, even a shack feels cozy; without anyone, would you really be happy living in the Forbidden City? What’s so great about Beijing? The price per square meter is almost a hundred thousand—what kind of family can afford that? Fushun is wonderful—we’ve got mountains and rivers right here. Let’s build our lives in Fushun. What is life about, after all? It’s about people. One person after another passes through your life—parents, grandparents, then a wife, later children, and eventually grandchildren. You’ve seen the world and gotten an education. Now come back, keep me company, and help me complete the circle of people in my life."
This was the hospital where Liu Zhengliang’s father was born, and where Liu Zhengliang himself was born. It wasn’t large—just two buildings, one for outpatient care and one for inpatient services—and it had no research projects. If not for the emergency department, patients usually avoided coming here. The neighborhood around the hospital was poor: restaurants hired servers starting at fifteen hundred a month, and a bowl of cold noodles had been priced at five yuan for ten years. One noodle shop raised its price to six yuan without consulting the others, and soon went out of business after losing all its customers.
Liu Zhengliang never expected that the most meaningful period of his life would unfold here.
Chapter 7
On Liu Zhengliang’s first day reporting to Fushun Second Hospital, Dean Long personally met with him. The old man beamed and said, "First of all, welcome, Xiao Liu. No matter what, you were trained at Heping Hospital. I know you made mistakes before, but it’s nothing serious—just some moonlighting surgery, right?"
Liu Zhengliang’s eyes widened in shock. At Heping Hospital, moonlighting surgery had to be done covertly, yet Dean Long spoke of it so casually.
Dean Long then grew serious and said to Liu Zhengliang, "Xiao Liu, you’re new here. Everyone else knows me, but you don’t know what I’m like. Fushun’s economy is struggling—it’s no match for Beijing or Shanghai. Our doctors’ salaries are low, with a base pay of just over three thousand a month. Sure, this hospital is small, but every department needs skilled physicians. How do doctors become skilled? Through treating patients, sometimes at the cost of their health or even lives. TV dramas talk about doctors having benevolent hearts, but let me ask you: Can you pick up a scalpel or a guidewire right after closing a textbook and save every patient like some reincarnation of Hua Tuo? Of course not. It takes practice—surgery after surgery, learning step by step through trial and error. It takes years of schooling and over a decade of hard work to become a competent doctor. So when a skilled doctor wants to move to Shenyang, Beijing, or the south to earn more, how can we stop them?"
Liu Zhengliang shook his head.Dean Long continued, "So, to be frank, my management style is turning a blind eye. Keeping good doctors here means, on a personal level, I can sleep soundly as dean; on a broader scale, in this poor area of Fushun, laid-off workers and retirees have a place to see doctors and reliable surgeons for operations—that's immeasurable merit."
A faint smile touched Liu Zhengliang's lips. He wondered if Dean Long was about to discuss workplace unwritten rules and recruit him. He asked, "Dean Long, how exactly do you turn a blind eye?"
Dean Long laughed heartily and said, "For example, there was a doctor who went to a township clinic to perform surgery and charged 500 yuan, saving farmers the cost of coming to the city for hospitalization. A bed in a township clinic costs only 5 yuan a day, while here in the city, even our hospital charges 70 yuan a day. Seventy yuan a day—a month's stay would cost a worker their entire monthly wage. Should I intervene in such cases? I could, and it's technically within my duties, but I can't bring myself to do it. Take last year: two patients were admitted to the cardiology department, and their families were completely unreachable—their phones were always off. The patients were critical, so we had to treat them, right? We spent hundreds of thousands and finally saved them, but a few days later, they slipped away without paying. Who covers that cost? As dean, I had to penalize their department financially. By the rules, fines are necessary; otherwise, everyone would come for free treatment, and no one could handle that—I'd be charged with dereliction of duty. When you enforce strictness in one area, you have to ease up elsewhere. As a leader, you can't expect the horse to run fast without feeding it."
Dean Long patted Liu Zhengliang's shoulder and said, "But I have my principles and bottom line. Some doctors treat a simple fever or cold with two IV injections—first an antipyretic like aminophenazone, followed by a traditional Chinese medicine injection like Chaihu, Danhong, or Xiyanping, claiming it's for detox and anti-inflammation. An illness that could be cured for 30 yuan ends up costing 300, with 100 yuan in kickbacks from the pharmaceutical company. If spending 300 yuan actually cured the patient, it might be tolerable, but we're medical professionals—we know how severe the side effects of these distilled herbal injections can be. One shot could even kill someone. That's absolutely unacceptable. From a public standpoint, it's exploiting knowledge barriers to endanger lives, taking advantage of people's ignorance; privately, it's leading the entire hospital's doctors down a corrupt path and sending me to prison. So, you must hold this bottom line in the future—no cutting corners. Don't randomly prescribe neurotrophic fluids to every patient you see, thinking I'm blind. Besides, Fushun is a small place. If you do this, you'll be dealing with neighbors you see every day, and your reputation will suffer. You've already made mistakes before and returned to your hometown—if you mess up again here, where else can you go? When you get old, won't you want to come back? Your roots are here, so don't cause trouble."Liu Zhengliang had gained new insight, and at this moment, his respect for Dean Long spontaneously arose. It's easy to spout high-sounding ideals, and it's also easy to go with the flow. What's most difficult is finding the critical point between good and bad people amidst these two extremes—being an ordinary person but not a pushover. China has only one Heping Hospital and a few other top-tier hospitals, but there are hundreds, even thousands, of Fushun Second Hospitals. You can't expect all doctors to hold themselves to the highest moral standards or demand that every doctor be a saint in their actions. If we truly enforced this, it would require an enormous cost to sustain. Medical services are not a commodity economy; there isn't much room for competition among peers. If you insist on bargaining with life, the King of Hell won't give you a discount. Therefore, don't expect to significantly raise others' moral standards to reduce your own cost of survival. This has been impossible from ancient times to the present, and it will remain so in the future.
Chapter 8
In Liu Zhengliang's emergency department, there were a few young colleagues he got along well with. Upon asking around, they discovered they were all high school alumni from within two or three graduating classes of each other. They were connected by mutual friends—some had fought with each other, while others had dated someone back in their school days. Thus, the colleagues quickly became familiar with one another.
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