Little Ye had no trouble sleeping—she slept like a log and didn't wake until broad daylight.
Ye Wushu didn't see Lu Junran's WeChat message until she arrived at the hospital in the morning. She frantically apologized: "I'm so sorry, senior fellow apprentice. My phone automatically switched to sleep mode at the set time, so I didn't see it. Sorry!"
"It's fine." Lu Junran's gaze shifted away from Ye Wushu and back again, his tightly pressed lips relaxing.
He found it truly strange—why was his junior fellow apprentice always so full of energy? Was this what they called the "newcomer phase"? He didn't think he'd ever been like that.
Just as he was about to speak, Ye Wushu warily stepped two paces to the side: "Senior fellow apprentice, you're not going to have something for me to do again today, are you?"
She laid her cards on the table upfront to avoid damaging their sibling-like bond too much: "I'm not writing any medical histories for you today!"
Lu Junran spoke cautiously and thoroughly: "Probably not."
Early in the morning, the on-duty doctor from last night, Ni Li, was giving the shift handover. When he got to Bed 24, Ye Wushu quietly perked up her ears.
She was still thinking about the patient who had gone into cardiac arrest, wondering how he was doing.
But Teacher Ni Li glossed over it with just one sentence: "The patient in Bed 24 was discharged automatically yesterday."
Ye Wushu was confused and asked on WeChat: [Senior fellow apprentice, what does 'discharged automatically' mean?]
amino: [It means the family gave up resuscitation and took him home.] When a person's life reaches its end, whether it's the patient or the family, they all want the person to return to their roots.
Ye Wushu felt a heaviness in her chest.
During rounds, this discomfort became even more pronounced.
Bed 24 had a new patient. The moment Ye Wushu stepped into that ward, she noticed her.
She had an endotracheal tube in her mouth, but her eyes were wide open. When she saw their group enter, she struggled to lift her head.
Unfortunately, her limbs were restrained, so the arc she could lift was minimal.
Ye Wushu was startled. She had assumed that patients with oral endotracheal tubes were unconscious, but she realized from those eyes that this wasn't the case.
"This is a patient waiting for a liver transplant," said today's attending physician, Geng Jie. She walked over and lifted the blanket. Ye Wushu saw two large tubes at the female patient's upper thigh—one red, one blue.
"These are dialysis catheters. This patient needs dialysis every day."
"Liver transplant patients come in different categories—some have malignant tumors, some have cirrhosis, which is further divided into alcoholic cirrhosis and hepatitis B cirrhosis…" Geng Jie said. "This patient is special—she has primary biliary cirrhosis. After liver-protective treatment showed poor results, her creatinine rose and urine output decreased, leading to a diagnosis of hepatorenal syndrome…"
After leaving the ward, Geng Jie let out a barely audible sigh. "But in her current condition, she can't undergo a liver transplant anymore. She's already lost her eligibility for transplantation."
Currently, all organ donations in the country come from donations after citizen death, which are scarce. The waiting list order is determined on one hand by the severity of the patient's condition; on the other hand, consideration is given to whether the organ can function properly in the new body once given.
If a patient's physical condition is so poor that they can't even get past the anesthesia stage, how could they endure a transplant surgery lasting over eight hours and make it through the numerous hurdles after the operation?
In the corridor, Ye Wushu gazed through the transparent tempered glass. The patient's body was swollen, from her face to her limbs, with blackened toes. Besides that, she looked as if she'd fallen into a vat of yellow dye—her sclera deeply stained…
She happened to look over and met Ye Wushu's eyes. Ye Wushu quickly averted her gaze.
Lu Junran noticed her mood and asked in a low voice: "What's wrong?"
Ye Wushu shook her head and fell silent.
The teacher led them to the next room. "This is a patient after liver transplant surgery. The tube has already been removed. Although Beds 31-40 are the designated liver transplant beds, sometimes they're also placed outside."
This patient looked completely different. Although his complexion was also yellow, it wasn't as severe. Most importantly, there was his mental state—it was a very strange feeling.
The male patient on the bed was skin and bones, so thin that his eyeballs seemed to bulge outward, yet one could sense he was gradually getting better.
"Liver transplant patients have dedicated on-duty doctors managing them, so generally we don't need to worry. However, for patients placed in outside beds like Bed 24, whose conditions are severe, we still need to pay attention."
Ye Wushu thought of the female patient's appearance and felt her heart tighten: "Then what should we do?"
As a clinical newcomer and rookie, having her handle emergencies was definitely out of the question. Ye Wushu just wanted to know what else she could do if a critical situation arose—like the patient's cardiac arrest last night—besides "calling for backup."
Geng Jie, who had long weathered storms in the ICU, said calmly: "Oh, you call your senior, then notify the liver transplant team. That's all."
Ye Wushu secretly breathed a sigh of relief, yet couldn't help feeling that she knew far too little.
Geng Jie walked ahead, and Ye Wushu watched her tall, commanding figure, feeling nothing but admiration for her spirited bearing. When would she ever become such a composed and confident superior?
Geng Jie had no idea what she was thinking—and if she had, she probably would have let out a cold laugh and retorted: No, it's exhaustion, it's weariness, it's a person dying a little inside.
Geng Jie continued her introduction: "Many of the patients here are post-surgical cases. Most won't stay long—once their condition stabilizes, they'll be transferred back to the general ward."
"This patient is a post-op case from ENT—oral malignant tumor, underwent a flap procedure. They transplanted nerves and blood vessels, and a tracheostomy was done after surgery…"
How could one describe this patient? Centered on the nose, two long suture lines ran across the entire face, extending from both sides to behind the ears. The vertical line looked like the chin had been split in two and then sewn back together.
The "flap" the teacher mentioned was that patch of skin on the right cheek that was clearly different in origin from the surrounding facial skin.
If you leaned in closer, you could also see that the patient's teeth had all been extracted.
Ye Wushu had never imagined that ENT surgeries could be so bloody.
"I always thought…" Ye Wushu said, "ENT surgeries were all about removing tonsils, vocal cord polyps, things like that…"
"Nonono…" Geng Jie corrected her: "Wrong. Their surgeries are actually quite brutal. ENT and neurosurgery were one and the same department thousands of years ago—they also operate on acoustic neuromas and do nerve decompression. The current chief of ENT used to be a junior fellow student of Professor Shao Hua!"
Lu Junran also showed a look of confusion upon hearing this.
"Ahem, I've digressed…" Geng Jie brushed it off: "But they fell out later. Over a romantic matter."
Ye Wushu's eyes widened: "Huh?" Was this something she was allowed to hear? "But aren't they both men?"
Geng Jie turned around, saw the look in the young girl's eyes, and knew she had misunderstood.
"Stop right there! They were rivals in love, of course! Apparently they both had a crush on their junior fellow female student back in the day."
Ye Wushu was thoroughly entertained: "So who ended up with the girl?"
"The current chief of ENT."
Lu Junran raised a timely question: "But I heard the chief of ENT has already been married three times?"
Ye Wushu: "…" So the crimson mole on the heart had still turned into mosquito blood—no wait, damn that heartless bastard!
Though not her own superior, he was still the head of another department, so Geng Jie couldn't openly badmouth him. She said instead: "Well, when people rise to high positions, temptations multiply. We're all just ordinary folks."
But Lu Junran chose that moment to interject: "I beg to differ."
Ye Wushu and Geng Jie's gazes snapped over simultaneously.
Lu Junran said calmly: "My teacher, Professor Shao Hua, is celebrating his 30th wedding anniversary with his wife this year."
Lu Junran strongly disagreed with the so-called "unspoken rule" that achieving worldly success entitled one to pick and choose partners at will. A person must honor loyalty and righteousness—otherwise, they were no different from beasts.
Ye Wushu nodded vigorously. "Senior brother speaks the truth."
"Haha." Geng Jie looked at these two young students and didn't wish to say more. "You two have only just started clinical work. You'll understand in time."
Clinical medicine was never simply black and white. Perhaps many people who became doctors ended up in deep suffering precisely because they couldn't accept the gap between reality and their ideals.
"Let's get back to this patient. He's breathing on his own now and is on sedatives. We're planning to stop the medication soon—if he regains consciousness and can cooperate, he'll be transferred back to the general ward."
Geng Jie led them to the last room. "Xiao Ye, a new patient will be admitted soon—a post-cerebral infarction case. Take their history and write up a brief note."
"Yes, teacher!"
After the tour, Geng Jie returned to the office. The department's doctors would be doing another round later; the initial walkthrough was mainly to "assign tasks" and get them working early.
10:30 AM.
A nurse tagged them in the group chat: 【Bed 13 is agitated after stopping medication, requesting to see a doctor】
Bed 13 was a co-managed patient—the ENT case that Teacher Geng Jie had mentioned during morning rounds would be transferred out in the afternoon.
So Ye Wushu acted as a dutiful "messenger," forwarding the message to the ENT doctors' communication group.
About half an hour later, Bed 13's family arrived—his wife and daughter. The ENT doctor said to let the family in to soothe him.
But it seemed to have the opposite effect.
The patient grew even more agitated.
Sitting in the outer work area, Ye Wushu could hear the patient's frantic shouting and screaming. After hesitating repeatedly, she went over to check.
In the ward, the daughter was trying her best to calm him: "Dad, please, just listen to me this once! You barely made it through the surgery—if you keep moving around like this, the operation will have been for nothing!"
Beside her, an elderly woman was wiping away tears: "He's in pain, he can't speak, he's in pain…"
The nurse stood to the side, exchanging a helpless look with Ye Wushu. "Maybe we should just prescribe the sedative again. At this rate, I'm afraid he'll pull out the tracheostomy tube."
Ye Wushu looked at the emotionally agitated family member. "Ma'am, please don't cry. It's not good for the patient…"
But the next second, Ye Wushu watched in shock as the elderly woman deftly untied the patient's restraint straps.
The patient immediately tried to leap out of bed.
Several nurses quickly pressed him down and shouted toward the door, "Hurry, we need more help in here!"
Ye Wushu tried to re-secure the restraint straps to the bed frame, but the old woman shoved her back, nearly making her stumble. "This isn't your family member—how would you know what it feels like to care!"
She threw herself onto the bedside, wailing at the top of her lungs: "He's suffering! He's suffering!"
The ward instantly descended into chaos.
Ye Wushu could only turn to the "daughter," hoping she would be reasonable, but the "daughter" only moved her mouth, not her hands—she made no effort to stop her mother and instead pushed Ye Wushu aside.
Fortunately, Lu Junran, who had just walked in, caught her before she fell.
Lu Junran had long since learned not to meddle in other people's business, but the commotion here was impossible to ignore, especially with the nurses calling for backup.
Lu Junran moved Ye Wushu behind him. He was tall and broad, and with a single forceful motion—veins standing out on his hands—he re-secured the patient's loosened restraint straps.
The orderlies from outside also rushed in to help, re-fastening the patient to the bed.
Seeing that he wasn't someone to be trifled with, the family member resorted to verbal attacks: "Why are you tying him down? Don't you know he's in pain?"
Lu Junran ignored her completely. He turned to Geng Jie, who had just arrived, and said, "Teacher Geng, perhaps we should escort the family out first, then notify the oral and maxillofacial surgery doctors to handle this."
"I'm not leaving!" The old woman plopped herself down on the floor.