"He’s awake! He’s awake!"
"Eldest Sister, Second Sister, Third Sister, Fifth Brother is awake!"
Amid the deafening shouts and a sharp, escalating pain in his head, Yu Zhiming’s consciousness began to clear.
He tried to open his eyes, but couldn’t manage it on the first attempt.
He tried again with more force...
After letting his eyes adjust to the light, Yu Zhiming saw four familiar, concerned faces through his narrow field of vision.
"Eldest Sister, Second Sister, Third Sister, Fourth Sister, I..."
Seeing his doting, loving family right before him, the newly awakened Yu Zhiming instantly felt a sense of security.
Like a deeply wronged child, his nose began to sting, and his voice quavered on the verge of tears.
But the moment the sound escaped, he remembered he was a twenty-six-year-old adult, not a child.
Yu Zhiming quickly suppressed his sobs and sniffled.
Unexpectedly, the sniffle tugged at the wounds on his face, making him grimace in pain.
"Fifth Brother, it hurts a lot, doesn’t it?"
His twin sister, Yu Xiangwan, looked at him with heartache and reached out to touch Yu Zhiming’s face, but their eldest sister slapped her hand away.
"Fourth Sister, don’t touch him!"
"Stop stating the obvious. Look at him, beaten black and blue, he can’t even open his eyes. Of course it hurts!"
Yu Xiangwan gave an embarrassed smile, then waved a finger in front of Yu Zhiming’s eyes.
"Fifth Brother, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"One!"
"And now?" Yu Xiangwan started waving two fingers.
"Two!"
"What’s one plus one?"
Yu Zhiming glanced at the three fingers she was now waving, ignored her, and looked toward his third sister, who was a nurse at the hospital.
"Third Sister, how long was I out?"
"Twelve hours. It’s almost nine o’clock at night now."
"Director Liu from General Surgery Department One said there’s no internal bleeding in your head or body, and no broken bones."
"Oh, Fifth Brother, do you feel dizzy or nauseous?"
Yu Zhiming shook his head.
Yu Xiangwan eagerly cut in, "Fifth Brother, the family that beat you up has been arrested. They’re at the police station."
"Don’t worry, we won’t let them off easy this time."
The head of the hospital bed began to rise.
Yu Zhiming adjusted his position, leaning back against the raised headboard, and noticed he was in a private room.
Near the window, by the wall, were seven or eight fruit baskets, along with crates and boxes of eggs, milk, honey, eight-treasure congee, and many other get-well gifts.
Yu Zhiming asked casually, "Eldest Sister, where are Mom and Dad...?"
"They’re still at home in town."
"We were afraid they’d get anxious and worried if they knew, and we didn’t want them running around in this heat. We haven’t told them what happened to you yet."
The eldest, Yu Zhaoxia, explained, then carefully straightened Yu Zhiming’s collar and hair.
Greatly relieved, she let out a soft sigh and couldn’t resist gently twisting Yu Zhiming’s ear.
"Oh, Fifth Brother, you really scared us this time. Thankfully, several department directors at the hospital said you only have superficial injuries and no serious harm to your body, at worst a mild concussion."
Yu Xiangwan chimed in again, "Fifth Brother, as for why you were unconscious for so long, Director Liu said getting knocked out was secondary. The main reason was that you’d just finished a long night shift and your body was exhausted."
"To put it simply, you just had a really long sleep."
Yu Zhaoxia shot her fourth sister a glare before turning her gaze back to Yu Zhiming on the bed.
"Fifth Brother, you need to learn your lesson from this. In the future, don’t go looking for trouble by casually diagnosing people outside of the hospital."
The third sister, Yu Xinyue, agreed, "Exactly. It’s hard to be a good person in this day and age."
"Fifth Brother, even though you’re a doctor, you should just stick to doing your job properly at the hospital."
Yu Zhiming defended himself, "I gave that guy a physical check-up and offered my opinion purely out of my professional duty as a doctor. I had no selfish motives."
"I never expected something like this to happen..."
Recalling the argument that morning and the beating he took from that family, Yu Zhiming was filled with frustration.
He really hadn’t expected to run into a family like that.
Two Saturdays ago, Yu Zhiming had attended the wedding of a high school classmate.
As an attending physician who had worked at the county hospital for four years, Yu Zhiming had a bit of a reputation among his classmates and friends in the county seat.
Egged on by a few classmates, and feeling an itch to show off his skills, Yu Zhiming started giving people on-the-spot physical examinations right there in the banquet hall.
The man who had brought his family to the hospital to cause trouble this morning was the bride’s maternal grand-uncle.
On that day, Yu Zhiming had given him a preliminary check-up, sensed a potential problem with his stomach, and advised the man to go to the hospital for a detailed examination when he had time.
The man had been surprisingly obedient, going directly to a major hospital in the provincial capital.
He ended up spending over ten thousand on a whole battery of tests, including an endoscopy, a CT scan, and an MRI, not to mention the money he claimed to have spent on gifts and connections to consult with medical experts.
The problem was, the test results concluded there was nothing wrong with his stomach.
At that, the man felt he had wasted his money. The expense pained him deeply, and he decided that Yu Zhiming bore an undeniable responsibility.
So this morning, the man brought his brother-in-law and his two sons to find Yu Zhiming, demanding that he cover the examination fees, along with various related expenses and compensation for emotional distress.
Naturally, Yu Zhiming refused.
The argument escalated, and in the end, the furious family beat him unconscious in the hallway...
"Fifth Brother, I heard that man’s father died of stomach cancer a few years ago."
Yu Zhaoxia sighed softly. "And at the hospital, you have the nicknames ’Human CT Scanner’ and ’Little Diagnostic Expert’."
"He was probably terrified by what you said, which is why he rushed off to the big hospital in the provincial capital for tests."
Yu Xiangwan snorted. "Eldest Sister, don’t tell me you’re starting to feel sorry for him?"
"Even if Fifth Brother misdiagnosed him, they had no right to beat him up, especially not this badly."
"Eldest Sister, look at him! In his current state, he’s the spitting image of a pig’s head. No makeup required."
Yu Zhaoxia shot Yu Xiangwan a sidelong glance and explained, "I don’t feel sorry for them. I’m just analyzing the situation objectively."
"So, Fifth Brother, would this be considered a misdiagnosis?"
Yu Zhiming said thoughtfully, "It’s not a misdiagnosis."
"At the time, I felt that the surface of his stomach’s greater curvature wasn’t smooth and natural. I suspected a lesion and recommended he go to the hospital for further tests to rule it out."
"Since it was a test to rule something out, there were naturally two possible outcomes: yes or no."
Yu Zhaoxia nodded and said softly, "Exactly. Just because the results came back negative doesn’t mean you misdiagnosed him."
"Besides, if they had actually found a lesion, or cancer, would they be happier than they are now?"
Just then, Third Sister Yu Xinyue came to the bedside holding a bowl of fragrant millet congee.
"Fifth Brother, you haven’t eaten all day. You must be hungry, right?"
But Yu Zhiming nimbly got out of bed. "Third Sister, I need to use the restroom first..."
After he had "freed up some memory," the doctor on duty gave him a check-up. By the time he finished eating, it was almost ten o’clock at night.
The four sisters conferred. The second sister, a middle school teacher, had class tomorrow. The eldest, who had rushed over from town, would go back with the third sister to rest. That left the fourth sister, who didn’t have much to do, to stay the night and look after their fifth brother.
After the three sisters left, Yu Xiangwan deftly flopped onto the hospital bed and groaned in comfort.
"Fifth Brother, you’ve been sleeping all day. You’re definitely not going to be able to sleep tonight, right?"
"I’ve been worried sick all day and I’m exhausted. Your injuries don’t need constant attention, so I’m going to sleep first."
Yu Zhiming watched his sister kick off her shoes and dive under the covers. He wanted to roll his eyes but found he couldn’t.
He flattened the hospital bed and sat down on the small cot meant for visitors.
Just then, Yu Zhiming heard a set of footsteps approaching in the hallway.
He recognized the familiar tread, a surprised expression on his face, and stood up to greet the visitor.
He saw Dean Wu—a man who usually vanished the moment work was over—walk into the room, accompanied by an unfamiliar man and woman...