"I-it's nothing…" Ye Wushu let out a long breath. "It's just too spicy."
Silence on the other end.
Ye Wushu realized how rude she'd been—who would want to receive a WeChat call from a colleague outside of work hours?
"Sorry, Senior Brother, I dialed the wrong number."
Ye Wushu hung up in a hurry, before Lu Junran even had a chance to stop her.
[The other party is typing…]
Ye Wushu was typing out a description of today's bizarre events.
Lu Junran stared at the message that read [Call Ended]. For some reason, he felt a knot in his chest.
After failing to suppress the urge, Lu Junran called her directly. The moment his junior sister picked up, the irritation in his chest dissipated.
"It's fine. Just tell me over the phone."
Phone calls between people of the opposite sex were a rather intimate thing, but given their status as "work partners," Ye Wushu didn't think twice about it. "Oh, okay! Senior Brother!"
"A patient ran off today…" Ye Wushu wasn't good at telling stories, and even she felt her account was flat and uninteresting.
She figured her senior brother would think she was making a mountain out of a molehill.
Unexpectedly, Lu Junran listened patiently. "And then?"
Ye Wushu described the scene of a whole crowd of people being mobilized to check the surveillance footage, her tone laced with frustration at the patient for wasting medical resources. "Then the patient came back on his own. He said the ICU was too stuffy and he wanted to go for a stroll."
Ye Wushu said, "I want to go for a stroll too!" Her tone was full of resentment. The weekend shift was a 24-hour one—Ye Wushu wouldn't be able to go home until 8 a.m. the next day.
Working at a hospital—wasn't that just a form of "life imprisonment"?
Lu Junran was silent for a moment, then, as if possessed, said, "Then… how about I come to the hospital and cover for you for a while? You go back and rest?"
"No, no, no." Ye Wushu was flustered. She absolutely did not mean to make her senior brother cover her shift. She was definitely not the kind of villain who skipped work and made her partner work double shifts.
Still, she expressed her sincere gratitude to her senior brother: "Thank you, Senior Brother! You're such a good person!"
Lu Junran: Good Person Card +1.
After hanging up, Ye Wushu still felt her stomach burning, so she ordered an iced milk tea to be delivered to the pickup locker downstairs.
As it turned out, drinking iced milk tea didn't help at all—it only made things worse.
2 a.m.
The nurse said the patient in Bed 6 was in severe pain. After consulting with her superior, Ye Wushu prescribed an intramuscular injection of pethidine.
After writing the prescription, Ye Wushu went to the bedside to reassure the patient: "Please relax. I've prescribed a painkiller for you—the nurse will administer it shortly."
By the time she said this, she had already made three trips to the bathroom, her lips pale and her forehead beaded with cold sweat. When the nurse came out after giving the patient the injection, she saw Ye Wushu in the hallway and jumped in surprise. "What's wrong with you?"
Ye Wushu gave a bitter smile. "I need a painkiller too."
The nurse said, "That won't work—pethidine is a Class I controlled substance. How about I give you flurbiprofen axetil instead?"
Flurbiprofen axetil was an intravenous medication, and it would require waking up a superior to prescribe it.
Among familiar medical staff in the same department, using a medication (except for major or controlled substances) was usually fine, but Ye Wushu was only a rotating student. The nurse didn't dare casually administer medication to her.
In the end, Ye Wushu didn't get an injection. She just asked the nurse sister for some ibuprofen.
By 8 a.m. the next day, Ye Wushu had made five trips to the bathroom and vomited once. She mixed herself some electrolyte water and barely managed to hold on until Lu Junran arrived for the shift handover.
The first words out of Ye Wushu's mouth when she saw Lu Junran: "Senior Brother, I can't go on."
Lu Junran: "?"
He looked at his junior sister—her body was swaying, her steps unsteady.
Was a 24-hour ICU shift really that terrifying?
Just then, their superior Wu Yue walked out. He took one look at Ye Wushu, who was too weak to speak, and spoke up for her: "This poor kid—she's got gastroenteritis. She pushed through the whole night. Why don't you take her to the ER for a blood draw? She can come back to work afterward. I'll explain the situation to today's attending."
Ye Wushu didn't want to trouble anyone. She'd barely gotten out the word "No" when her legs gave way and she nearly collapsed.
Lu Junran took his junior sister to the ER. He tried to cut in line, but Ye Wushu strongly objected—she didn't want to cause trouble for the hospital staff, and she definitely didn't want to be filmed and end up on Douyin the next day, labeled a "person with connections" by netizens.
"No need, Senior Brother. I can still hold on." Ye Wushu was already showing signs of dehydration. To reassure Lu Junran, she forced a smile.
Seeing her like this, Lu Junran felt a mix of anger and anxiety. He couldn't quite explain his own feelings.
Ye Wushu still had the energy to tell him a lame joke: "That maocai place near the hospital—can't eat there. Too spicy. I'm going to write that in the Standardized Residency Training Manual to warn the juniors next year."
The line was taking too long, and every now and then, critical patients would cut in—like the patient who accidentally took too many sleeping pills, or the one who got stabbed in the stomach during a brawl…
Ye Wushu had waited so long and felt somewhat better, so she said, "How about we just leave? I'll go back and take some levofloxacin, and I'll be fine."
Lu Junran frowned. "You're just taking medicine on your own like this?" Without basing it on test results?
Ye Wushu gave an embarrassed little smile. "I've had gastroenteritis before too. When it's really bad, levofloxacin clears it right up."
As a doctor, she would seriously tell patients not to take medicine casually, but in private, whichever medicine worked fastest, that's the one she took.
Under Lu Junran's insistence, Ye Wushu still waited for the doctor and happily received a bill for 1,200 yuan.
Specialized master's students in Haidu City received the same pay as hospital staff and enjoyed the corresponding social security, medical insurance, and five insurances plus one housing fund.
But Ye Wushu's medical insurance hadn't been issued yet, so she could only pay out of pocket. Fortunately, since it exceeded 500 yuan, part of it could be covered by Haidu City's unified medical fund.
The pharmacy also had a queue. Lu Junran told her to sit to the side while he went to pick up the medicine and handed it to her.
"Thank you, Senior Brother." Ye Wushu had no idea how pitiful and adorable she looked, clutching the medicine bag like a red-eyed little rabbit.
Lu Junran couldn't help but pat her head. "It's nothing."
"If it really gets too much, take tomorrow off and don't come in. I'll cover your work." Lu Junran said this naturally, as if it were the most ordinary thing.
"How can that be!" And besides, could Senior Brother handle all the work alone?
Lu Junran didn't know what she was thinking. He just felt she had a student's mindset, with too heavy a sense of responsibility. "The hospital isn't going to stop running just because you're not here. It's just a job. No need to joke around with your health."
But to her, this wasn't just a job… It also concerned her graduate student status and master's degree.
Ye Wushu also knew her senior brother meant well, so she didn't argue and obediently nodded. "If I really can't hold on, then I'll have to trouble you, Senior Brother. On Tuesday, I'll buy you milk tea!"
Lu Junran felt he didn't really want milk tea, but he also didn't know what he was thinking. Standing at the hospital entrance, he looked at his junior sister and said, "It's fine, no need to thank me."