Xu Qinghe did not stay any longer and left Shi Wenli’s office.
After leaving the hospital, she spotted the old woman who had been selling roasted sweet potatoes at the entrance of the alley diagonally across from the hospital. Whenever Xu Qinghe passed by after work and the woman had not packed up yet, she would buy one.
The old woman recognized her.
“Off work early today?”
Xu Qinghe smiled warmly. “Yes. It’s cold today. Make sure you keep your hat on and wear more layers. You need to take good care of your blood vessels.”
“Okay.” The old woman pulled the hood of her down jacket tighter around her head.
Holding the warm roasted sweet potato in her hands, Xu Qinghe walked along the sidewalk, eating as she went.
During her first year of working at the hospital, her father would come to pick her up whenever he had time. She never had a fixed time to finish work, so he often had to wait for a long time. The longest he had waited was more than five hours. That day, she had received an emergency surgery call just as she was about to leave, and the operation lasted five hours.
After that, she never let her parents come to pick her up again.
Fortunately, the hospital was not far from home, so she treated the walk home as exercise.
It took her less than twenty minutes to reach the entrance of her residential complex.
As she passed the building where Shi Wenli lived, she instinctively glanced at the entrance.
Strictly speaking, it was not really his home. He rented the apartment there because it was convenient for him and his younger sister to commute to work.
His actual home was in another district, quite far from the hospital.
The siblings had been renting there for many years, and they even spent the Spring Festival there every year.
All these years, the two of them had been each other’s only family.
Shi Miao was getting married next month. After the wedding, she would naturally move into the newlywed home. Xu Qinghe wondered whether Shi Wenli would continue renting in this residential complex or move somewhere closer to his sister.
Actually, even if he did not move now, sooner or later, he would.
When Xu Qinghe arrived home, both of her parents were waiting for her in the living room.
Hearing the noise from the entrance, Xu Bingduo instinctively glanced at his watch.
8:20 p.m.
This was the earliest his daughter had come home from work in the past year.
His wife, Chi Min, gave him a look, silently telling him not to say too much.
He was not a talkative man. He simply felt sorry for seeing his daughter exhausted every day, and he could never resist complaining about her department director.
“Dad, Mom, I’m home.”
“Have you eaten dinner? We saved some for you.”
As he spoke, Xu Bingduo stood up.
“I’m not hungry. I bought a roasted sweet potato on the way home.”
Xu Qinghe sat beside her mother and leaned against her.
Chi Min handed her some washed fruit. “The strawberries we bought today are really good.”
Xu Qinghe shook her head. “I can’t eat anymore.”
Chi Min put the fruit down and pointed toward the shoe cabinet.
“The Crocs you ordered arrived.”
She had not expected her daughter to buy three pairs at once.
She could not help asking worriedly, “Were you… reported three times this month?”
Xu Qinghe: “…”
Xu Bingduo picked up where his wife left off.
“Weren’t you the one who told me not to say too much? Why are you bringing it up yourself? Qinghe wasn’t wrong to stop those surgeries. Her surgical colleagues were looking at things from their own perspective and insisted the operations could go ahead, so they didn’t think they were wrong either. If they don’t get along, then so be it. By the time she retires, she’ll naturally stop worrying about it.”
Xu Qinghe smiled. “By the time I retire, I might already have a house full of children and grandchildren. Of course I’ll have figured everything out by then.”
Xu Bingduo snorted. “A house full of children and grandchildren? You really know how to dream. Find yourself a boyfriend first.”
Xu Qinghe: “…”
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to date.
She stood up. “I’m going to pick up some packages. There are a few waiting at the parcel station.”
“Why didn’t you pick them up on your way home?”
“I forgot.”
She had clearly walked right past the parcel station, but because she had been thinking about someone, she had simply walked straight past it.
Early the next morning, Xu Qinghe had just finished preparing the anesthetic medications and equipment when the elderly patient was wheeled into the operating room.
Before entering, the old man had argued with his eldest son again.
“Doctor, it’s spinal anesthesia, right?”
The old man was still worried. As soon as he came in, he asked Xu Qinghe again, afraid that his children might secretly sign another consent form and change the plan to general anesthesia.
Xu Qinghe reassured him.
“Yes, we’re doing combined spinal-epidural anesthesia. You clearly refused general anesthesia, so of course we’ll respect your wishes. However—”
The old man interrupted her immediately.
“I know. If it’s spinal… combined…” He stumbled over the medical terminology and couldn’t remember the name.
“Combined spinal-epidural anesthesia,” Xu Qinghe reminded him.
“I know. Anyway, it’s anesthesia for the lower half of the body. If spinal anesthesia doesn’t work, then we’ll have no choice but to use general anesthesia.”
After wrestling with the thought all night, he had finally managed to convince himself that if the doctors could not perform the spinal procedure, he would accept general anesthesia.
He couldn’t exactly refuse the surgery altogether.
After confirming the patient’s information, Zhang Xun helped connect the monitoring equipment.
He had just reviewed the man’s medical history and physical condition. The spinal degeneration was severe, making neuraxial anesthesia extremely difficult.
After disinfecting and draping the patient’s back, Zhang Xun stopped talking, afraid that even the slightest distraction might affect his senior’s concentration.
Xu Qinghe repeatedly pressed along the old man’s back, searching for the correct space.
After precisely locating the site, she inserted the needle through the skin. She immediately encountered significant resistance.
Relying on her sense of the needle’s position, she carefully adjusted its direction.
“Sir, do you feel anything like an electric shock shooting down your leg?” she asked.
“No. Doctor, don’t worry. Just keep going. It doesn’t hurt!”
Zhang Xun kept his eyes fixed on the monitor, continuously watching the man’s blood pressure and heart rate.
When he looked back at his senior again, cerebrospinal fluid was already flowing smoothly.
The puncture had succeeded on the first attempt, and the patient’s blood pressure and heart rate had barely fluctuated.
The entire surgery lasted a little over an hour.
Afterward, remembering that the old man had been worried that anesthesia would make him mentally impaired, Xu Qinghe smiled and asked, “Sir, do you still recognize me?”
The old man slowly nodded.
After sending him to the recovery room, Xu Qinghe immediately hurried off to prepare for her next surgery.
By the time the second operation ended, it was already noon.
She had back-to-back surgeries scheduled that day, with no time for a break. Zhang Xun went to eat first, hurriedly finished his lunch, then rushed back so Xu Qinghe could go to the cafeteria.
Unfortunately, it was right during lunchtime, and the cafeteria was packed.
The surgical center had more than eighty operating rooms, with at least four or five hundred medical staff working each day.
Even with staggered lunch breaks, almost every table was occupied.
Xu Qinghe had long since become numb to the cafeteria food and casually picked two dishes.
Everyone wore the same scrubs—either green or blue—and their surgical caps looked similar too. It was not easy to spot someone familiar at a glance. She did not have much time to eat anyway, so she did not bother looking for someone she knew and simply found an empty seat nearby.
Not long after she sat down, Shi Wenli also finished his surgery and came to the cafeteria.
He was able to spot her immediately among all the green scrubs, entirely thanks to her surgical cap.
Today she was wearing a navy-blue cap with little bears on it.
Xu Qinghe had her head lowered, eating while checking messages in the group chat, so she did not notice Shi Wenli.
In the work group, several senior attending physicians were discussing the assignment of anesthesiologists to permanent teams.
Over the past few years, they had participated in various types of anesthesia and systematically rotated through different subspecialties. After the Spring Festival, they would be permanently assigned to one anesthesia team.
At a top-tier comprehensive hospital like theirs, there were more than a dozen anesthesia subspecialties, including cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, hepatobiliary surgery, orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatric surgery, and more.
Among them, the most popular were cardiac anesthesia, neurosurgical anesthesia, orthopedic anesthesia, and critical-care anesthesia.
Of course, popularity also meant fierce competition.
She was the only person in the department who had proactively requested, early in her attending career, to specialize in both neurosurgical and cardiac anesthesia.
These two fields had significant technical barriers and were difficult to master simultaneously.
Very few people could become proficient in both cardiac and neurosurgical anesthesia.
For this reason, Xu Qinghe had sacrificed almost all of her personal time over the past few years, wishing there were forty-eight hours in a day.
Back then, her director had told her:
“You have talent, and you’re willing to work hard. You have the potential to become one of our department’s key multidisciplinary anesthesia specialists.”
For those words alone, she had given everything she had.
At present, there were only two top specialists in the entire anesthesia department who were highly skilled in both neurosurgical and cardiac anesthesia: the department director and one deputy director.
She wanted to become the third.
A colleague tagged her in the group chat:
[Dr. Xu, since you’re on the specialized multidisciplinary training track, your permanent assignment this time won’t take one of our slots, right?]
She was following the cross-specialty multidisciplinary path, so her selection would not conflict with their regular team assignments.
Xu Qinghe replied:
[Yes, it won’t.]
Her colleague responded:
[That’s great. We don’t have to compete with you for a spot on the same team. ]
The anesthesia department had more than 140 doctors. The final team assignments for younger anesthesiologists were determined by the department based on their rotation evaluations and day-to-day performance.
There were nine anesthesiologists in their current group competing for permanent team assignments.
The number of positions in the most popular subspecialties was extremely limited every year. This year, the neurosurgical anesthesia team had only one opening, and the cardiac anesthesia team also had only one.
The other anesthesia teams also needed people, but most doctors’ first choices would naturally be the popular teams.
The intensity of the competition was easy to imagine.
Her colleague asked again:
[Which team is your first choice? Cardiac or neurosurgery?]
Xu Qinghe was concentrating on replying to the messages when someone sat down across from her.
Only then did she look up.
Shi Wenli smiled. “Reading a case again?”
“No. I’m checking the group chat. We’re going to be permanently assigned to teams after the Spring Festival.”
When Shi Wenli first met her, she was already an anesthesia specialist being specially trained across departments. Now she had mastered the core skills of both neurosurgical and cardiac anesthesia.
He asked, “Do you also have to choose between neurosurgery and cardiac surgery?”
Xu Qinghe nodded. “I have to choose one as my primary subspecialty.”
He asked out of simple curiosity, “Which one are you planning to choose?”
Xu Qinghe answered honestly.
“Definitely neurosurgery.”
Neurosurgical anesthesia had always been her favorite field.
She had liked it even before meeting him. After meeting him, she had to admit that she liked it even more.
Although she would choose neurosurgical anesthesia as her primary subspecialty, she would continue developing her expertise in cardiac anesthesia as well, hoping to become a core member of the cardiac anesthesia team as soon as possible.
She continued, “This year I focused mainly on neurosurgery, so I was assigned fewer cardiac cases. They even joked that I was abandoning cardiac surgery. I really like the atmosphere in cardiac surgery.”
Shi Wenli said, “The atmosphere in cardiac surgery is pretty good. Once you officially join our neurosurgery team, you should experience our atmosphere too.”
The neurosurgery department already had a good working environment, and Xu Qinghe naturally had an extra soft spot for it.
She smiled.
“I don’t need to experience it. I already know what it’s like.”
Tonight was New Year’s Eve, so she casually asked, “Do you have any plans tonight?”
“No plans. After New Year’s Day, I’m taking a full week off, so I volunteered to be the second-line on-call doctor tonight.”
The moment he finished speaking, Xu Qinghe’s phone, which was lying on the table, vibrated repeatedly.
She opened the messages.
It was from her colleague Fang Yu.
[I can’t believe Director Jiang is playing matchmaker now!]
Fang Yu continued:
[Guess who he’s trying to set up with a girlfriend?]
Seeing the question, Xu Qinghe had a faintly bad feeling.
Fang Yu couldn’t wait and answered her own question:
[Director Jiang introduced Chief Shi to a blind date! I heard she’s the daughter of one of his friends, and her family is extremely well-off.]
[If Chief Shi gets a girlfriend, I wonder how many people in our hospital will have their hearts broken.]
Xu Qinghe: “…”
Fang Yu joked:
[Luckily I’m married. Otherwise, I’d definitely be bawling my eyes out!]
[You and Chief Shi are close. Did the blind date Director Jiang arranged actually work out?]
[I have several friends in the laboratory, radiology, emergency department, obstetrics and gynecology, and medical affairs who are all dying to know!]
Xu Qinghe: “…”
Fang Yu laughed:
[Now you understand why I’m so anxious, right? ]
Xu Qinghe replied:
[If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t even have known about it.]
Fang Yu was surprised:
[Even you didn’t know?]
Xu Qinghe:
[If you asked me about his projects, there’s probably nothing I wouldn’t know. But when it comes to his personal relationships, I really don’t know much.]
She and Shi Wenli rarely discussed personal matters, and he had spent the past year abroad.
Fang Yu:
[You’re busy. I won’t bother you anymore.]
[When you get a chance, help me find out what’s going on. ]
Xu Qinghe also wanted to know whether Shi Wenli would actually go on the blind date.
He had once told her that he had no plans to get married for the next few years.
But circumstances had changed.
Back then, he had not yet been promoted to deputy chief physician, had not gone abroad for further training, and Shi Miao was not dating anyone.
Things were different now.
Xu Qinghe put down her phone and occasionally glanced at Shi Wenli across from her.
He noticed her staring.
“What is it?”
Xu Qinghe asked, “I heard Director Jiang introduced you to someone for a blind date?”
After finally asking, she felt inexplicably relieved.
“Word spread that quickly?” Shi Wenli smiled helplessly. “I actually heard from someone else that Director Jiang wanted to introduce me to a girlfriend. Even I, the person involved, didn’t know about it.”
According to what Jiang Yang had told him, Director Jiang had asked whether he was single and wanted to introduce him to the daughter of one of his friends.
Director Jiang’s intention was not to rush things. He wanted to wait until Shi Wenli finished dealing with Shi Miao’s wedding before making any arrangements.
Jiang Yang had even joked about his own father:
“My dad is surprisingly considerate.”