Lu Junran glanced at his junior sister's small frame and didn't want to tell her anything frightening.
"It's nothing."
"Oh." Ye Wushu looked slightly disappointed and sat back down.
A few minutes later, Lu Junran asked, "Junior Sister, in the daily progress notes, how many attending physicians come before one chief physician?""
Ye Wushu had a flash of inspiration: "Senior brother, if you tell me about that patient, I'll teach you how to write medical histories." Deal?"
Lu Junran glanced at the remaining medical histories he had to write. Two people patching the sky was better than one, so he leisurely "negotiated": "Then you help me write half."
Ye Wushu: "??" She obediently sat back down. What kind of "priceless gossip" was this? She would immediately retract her curiosity.
Lu Junran let out a soft laugh and withdrew his gaze that had been drifting to the side. He first checked his phone—there was an unknown friend request. Neuro? Neurology?
He set it aside for now.
Lu Junran wrote medical histories with great composure, finishing one in five minutes. If asked how, he simply opened yesterday's progress notes, copied, pasted, and at most added in the intake-output record.
Rustling sounds came from beside him.
His junior disciple scurried over to him like a little squirrel: "Senior, how about I help you write two?""
Lu Junran pretended to hesitate: "Fine."
Ye Wushu perked up her ears.
"That new patient from earlier—after drinking, he rode an electric scooter against traffic and crashed into a large truck. He wasn't wearing a helmet. By the time he was brought in, his pupils were already dilated. The CT scan couldn't show normal brain ventricle structure anymore…"
Ye Wushu gasped: "That serious?"
"To put it simply, his brain has been smashed into mush." Lu Junran's voice was very calm, as if he was already accustomed to these things. "He'll last until tomorrow at most."
Lu Junran opened the CT report on the computer, and Ye Wushu shook her head, indicating she couldn't read it.
Lu Junran asked in confusion: "Aren't you from neurology?"
Ye Wushu got angry for a moment, then deflated, saying softly, "I'm only in my first year of grad school. This is my first month in clinical rotation. I just applied for the neurology graduate program—it's not like I've officially started the job."
"Right.Lu Junran's hand itched again, but he knew his junior sister was in a bristling state and couldn't be petted.
"His family situation is interesting too. This guy was on his second marriage. He had a daughter with his first wife. He didn't have more kids with his current wife, but there's a son who came over with her."
"So does his current wife want to save him or not?"
Second marriage, no shared children—giving up would be the natural choice.
"Of course she wants to save him."
Ye Wushu was moved to hear this: "True love exists in this world…"
But the next second, Lu Junran poured cold water on it: "His family thinks the truck driver bears primary responsibility. They're paying out of pocket and hoping to get more compensation."
"Huh?" Ye Wushu was dumbfounded: "But didn't he crash into the truck while drunk himself?"
Lu Junran analyzed: "The truck probably won't be judged as primarily at fault."
"Alright."Lu Junran said, "Junior Sister, you've had your gossip." Time to write medical histories."
Ye Wushu: QAQ.
Over the next hour, Ye Wushu felt like she was being taken advantage of.
"Junior sister, where do I print the controlled substance prescription?""
"Junior Sister, how many vials of ciprofol are in one group?""
"Junior Sister, what's the phone number for the gurney transport guy?"
…
"Stop, stop, stop!" Ye Wushu was somewhat breaking down. "I don't know either." She was just a new little rookie.
Lu Junran looked at her with a half-smile, with a hint of "you ate my gossip and now you're turning your back on me" energy.
The kind-hearted little Ye conceded: "How many medical histories do you still have left? Let's split them."
Years later, Dr. Ye would look back on this memory and feel that her first-time-in-clinical self simply didn't know how treacherous people's hearts could be, and that Lu Junran was truly detestable.
"Filling in medical histories" was truly a monumental task of moving mountains and patching the sky. By the time the two of them were almost done, they looked up and saw the clock across from them had already reached 9 PM.
It was at that moment that a sharp alarm sounded from deep in the ICU corridor, and almost everyone's gaze turned toward it.
Ye Wushu instinctively wanted to walk over, but Lu Junran grabbed her.
She turned around and saw his calm face. His eyes, like his surgical scrubs and white coat, belonged to the cool color spectrum—with a certain metallic quality she couldn't quite describe.
"Don't go," Lu Junran said. "We're off duty now. The on-call attending will handle it."
Along with the alarm came the nurse's raised voice: "Bed 24's heart stopped!"
Ye Wushu rushed over without hesitation.
The on-call attending tonight, Ni Li, was already in that room. He jumped directly onto the bed to begin chest compressions. "Push 1 amp of epinephrine IV, open the crash cart, bring the SABO machine over!"
For critically ill patients who could deteriorate at any moment, before entering the ICU, the primary physician would have already discussed with the family whether to aggressively resuscitate or to let go in case of an emergency.
After Ye Wushu rushed over, she realized she was indeed superfluous.
The ward was already filled with doctors and nurses who had participated in the rescue. She silently stepped back a pace, then precisely stepped on Lu Junran's foot.
Lu Junran let out a sigh and steadied her stumbling body just in time, watching her apologize in a fluster: "Sorry!"
"It's fine, get off work." Seeing her still standing there in a daze, Lu Junran reached out and pulled her along, walking forward without changing his expression: "This is how the ICU is. We're still students, we can't do much. The most important thing is to protect ourselves."
Ye Wushu nodded, half understanding.
But when they were in the elevator, Ye Wushu still seemed distracted. She recalled the scene she had rushed in to witness earlier. The heart rate at "0," emitting a sharp alarm, oxygen saturation and blood pressure both unmeasurable, and the person lying on the hospital bed, face cyanotic, extremities purple… She couldn't help but shiver.
When they reached the hospital entrance, Lu Junran pulled out his phone. "Junior, want to add me on WeChat?"
"Oh, oh!" Ye Wushu took out her phone and scanned his WeChat QR code.
"Neuro?" Lu Junran read it aloud.
So the unknown friend request from this afternoon was from his junior.
Ye Wushu looked at him in confusion: "What's wrong?"
For the first time, Lu Junran made an unnecessary explanation: "I was busy this afternoon and didn't see your friend request."
The truth was, back in his student days, people had added his WeChat because of a photo he posted on the school's official account during military training. His roommate had gone even further, directly selling his WeChat ID to others, and had gotten a beating from him for it.
So Lu Junran rarely added unknown WeChat accounts.
"Oh, oh! No problem, no problem!" Ye Wushu waved at him, hopped onto her little electric scooter, put on her helmet, and said, "Bye-bye, senior~"
His smile didn't fade the whole way home.
The school had arranged dormitories for them, but they were too far from the hospital, so Lu Junran had rented a place near the hospital himself—180 square meters, three bedrooms and two living rooms, in the prime downtown area of Haidu City. His classmates called it "a young master slumming it to experience the hardships of life."
He had just gotten home when his mother's video call came through. The main point was clear: she wanted to arrange a blind date for him.
Lu Junran politely declined: "I'm only 23, no rush."
His mother was anxious: "What 23? After the New Year you'll be 24, and by nominal age you're 25—practically 30. Good young women are in high demand these days, you know? Once you're older, it'll be harder to find someone!"
Lu Junran brushed it off: "Got it. If I meet a girl I like, I'll pursue her myself."
His mother said: "You have your head in the clouds! Who could you possibly fancy?"
Lu Junran hung up the phone. Headache.
Is 23 really that old? Aren't doctors supposed to get better with age? And once you leave the hospital, who still treats a 30-year-old you as a young man?
His finger paused on the WeChat page, and he sent a message to Ye Wushu: [Junior, did you get home safe?]
Ye Wushu had already turned on Do Not Disturb mode and was fast asleep.