Maybe it was her imagination.
But Ye Wushu couldn't help feeling that ever since she agreed to Lu Junran's request, his questions had multiplied.
"Junior sister, how do I write the insulin order?"
"How do I write the medication request?"
"How do I write the special order?"
Teaching him once wasn't enough. Later, when she saw the nurses posting about it in the group chat, she simply wrote them for him.
So Ye Wushu was too busy to chat with her crush, and by evening, she hadn't even replied to his greeting message.
Lu Junran was feeling rather sour about that when his junior sister scooted her chair over to sit beside him. "Senior brother, can you help me figure out how to reply?"
Lu Junran took her phone and saw the contact name: Zhao Hongxi, Surgical Master's Student, Class 22. He silently noted it.
Aside from the self-introduction, all there was from Zhao Hongxi was a 【hi】sticker.
What was there to not know how to reply to? Lu Junran simply copied the other person's sticker and sent it back.
Ye Wushu pondered for a moment and also felt her senior brother's reply was perfectly fine. She was deeply grateful. "I'll come ask you again next time, senior brother. If I manage to find a boyfriend, I'll definitely treat you, my strategist, to a meal!"
Lu Junran felt like he was developing internal injuries from work, but he had to respond, so he just said, "We'll talk about it later."
By all rights, their shift should have ended at 5 PM, but just as it was approaching quitting time, today's attending on duty, Feng Duo, sent several pages of notes to both Ye Wushu and Lu Junran on WeChat, telling them to revise the medical records according to what was written.
Ye Wushu naturally assumed it was because her medical history notes weren't well written, so staying behind to do the work seemed perfectly normal.
Lu Junran let out a cold laugh. He was already in a bad mood today. "Let's go. Why bother with it? It's already past our shift. We can fix it tomorrow."
Ye Wushu felt that wasn't right and insisted, "Senior brother, maybe we should finish revising before we leave. What if there's even more to do tomorrow?"
Lu Junran said, "Work is never finished anyway. Is this your patient? Is the medical history written under your name? Do they pay you for this?"
Ye Wushu blinked. On that last point, she had a disagreement. "Senior brother, I'm a professional master's student. They do pay me."
Haidu City had long advocated for equal pay for equal work between professional master's students and standardized residency trainees—base salary + perfect attendance bonus + performance pay (some departments gave it, some didn't) + Haidu City government subsidy + year-end bonus. All told, it came to about 8,000–10,000 RMB per month in internal medicine departments, and some bases like surgery, anesthesiology, critical care, and emergency could go above 10,000.
Lu Junran: "…" He was a doctoral student, purely doing clinical work out of the goodness of his heart, without a single cent.
Lu Junran said, "But it's not the ICU paying you. Aside from the base salary, most of it is subsidies from the Haidu City Health Commission."
Ye Wushu didn't like arguing with people. She just said, "Senior brother, honestly, I don't think it's about the money. I just feel like we should be conscientious with our patients."
Lu Junran looked at her sincere eyes and suddenly realized she truly meant it. At some point, the classmates around him had gradually lost the original aspiration of studying medicine. He couldn't blame them—the environment nowadays was simply too harsh, dousing people's genuine passion.
Ye Wushu was a considerate young woman. She didn't think Lu Junran was bad or anything. She just said, "Senior brother, since you're doing a PhD, is it tough that your supervisor doesn't pay you?"
It seemed his junior sister had misunderstood.
But Lu Junran didn't explain. "It's fine."
Lu Junran stayed after all.
His justification to himself was: he didn't want to be mistaken for someone who "doesn't care about patients."
Lu Junran just felt there was no need to be so "hypercritical" about medical histories. It was like how, if he were to become a surgeon in the future, would patients want him obsessing over writing more perfect medical records instead of honing his surgical skills?
Anyone could do paperwork—a college graduate could be trained in a day. A major reason Lu Junran chose surgery over internal medicine was his aversion to internal medicine's long, tedious medical histories and ward rounds.
Of course, his blacklist now had one more department: Critical Care Medicine.
Writing and revising medical histories was a painstaking process. It wasn't just about accurately recording the patient's admission status and treatment course—it also meant following every single rule from the medical insurance office. When inspectors came, it bordered on "nitpicking every word."
For example: Why is this patient on antibiotics? Did infection markers rise? Is that reflected in the daily notes? Why was the antibiotic upgraded? Is there clear culture result support?
Don't write it?
Ha. The medical insurance office would fine you without fail. And if you ran into a medical dispute on top of that, you'd be looking at paying out big money.
After finishing the medical histories, it was 9 PM again. The two walked out through the main hospital gate, and Ye Wushu's stomach growled loudly.
There was a Yuan Ji Dumpling shop directly across from the gate, so Ye Wushu suggested, "Senior brother, let me treat you to some dumplings."
Lu Junran said "no need to thank me" with his mouth, but his feet honestly followed her inside.
The shop was open 24 hours. Because it was located at the hospital entrance, family members of patients often came to eat here, and even at this hour, the place was packed.
Ye Wushu had sharp eyes and spotted two empty seats in a corner, pulling Lu Junran over. The shop was crowded with people, making everyone unusually close to one another. Ye Wushu grabbed Lu Junran's wrist, which was like pressing a pause button.
What came with it was the scent of his junior sister.
He didn't have time to wonder what brand of perfume it was; he only felt that in that instant, amid the surging crowd, his heart seemed to skip a beat.
Ye Wushu scanned the QR code first, then handed her phone over. "Senior brother, what do you want to eat? My treat."
Her stereotype of him was locked firmly onto "poor PhD student."
Lu Junran naturally wanted to refuse, but the next second, Ye Wushu seemed to read his mind and said, "Senior brother, don't be polite with me. I'll need your help with relationship matters in the future."
Lu Junran: Fine.
He didn't know that those who have their first awakening always take a little longer to come around.
They say that bonds between people begin with a meal. After finishing the dumplings, Ye Wushu shook his hand as they parted: "Senior brother, from now on we're revolutionary comrades. Take good care of me!"
Lu Junran: Shouldn't have eaten.
That evening, his high school classmates called him to play games. Lu Junran was restless and distracted, so he didn't refuse.
As soon as he joined the voice chat, he was warmly welcomed by his classmates:
"God Lu hasn't played games with us in ages. What have you been up to?"
"God Lu must be busy with something important!"
"No matter how busy, you can't just stop playing games."
Everyone chatted while playing, but Lu Junran rarely interjected.
They asked one of the guys: "Why do you have time to play games today? Not accompanying your girlfriend?"
"We broke up."
"Huh? Really?"
"Forget about it. A couple rounds of games and you'll forget soon enough. Let's grab a meal this weekend—celebrate your return to single life."
Lu Junran never used to care about these things, but it was true—once his own feelings changed, he started paying attention to other people's relationship dynamics.
Perhaps to learn, perhaps to take warning.
The guy they were teasing sounded down and didn't want to respond.
After one round of the game, Lu Junran found it boring and left the group voice chat.
Before going to sleep, Lu Junran checked WeChat. There was no message from his junior sister.