Volume 1: Rise
Past
The first thing I used in my childhood was a scalpel
At noon, a medical disturbance incident was quickly posted online by someone with intent, and within two hours, the hospital entrance was completely blocked by swarming media. The Health Commission also sent people to verify the matter. All the doctors who participated in the rescue that day were called one by one into the office for a talk.
“An insane female doctor actually used an electric saw to cut off the legs of a child with cerebral palsy, leaving the mother heartbroken.”
“A resident doctor from the First Affiliated Hospital of Renji Medical University illegally practiced medicine and sawed off a child’s legs. When the mother came to seek an explanation, she was actually threatened by the hospital.”
“Where is justice! Give back my daughter a standing youth – from a mother of a child with cerebral palsy in Jinzhou, a tearful plea.”
For a while, various sensational headlines with incomprehensible pictures spread vigorously on major social websites.
Hao Renjie was outside the meeting room scrolling through his phone. The more he looked, the angrier he became, his lips trembling: “We save people, and still, we save wrong?”
Before he finished speaking, the head nurse came out and called him in. He quickly put his phone into his pocket and jogged inside.
A rectangular table, with hospital leaders on both sides, and at the top sat a person from the Health Commission. Behind them stood several men in suits, the whole room was serious, like an interrogation of a criminal.
Hao Renjie became nervous and carefully sat at the lower seat.
The other person picked up the information to verify: “Emergency department Hao Renjie, right?”
“Correct,” he nodded vigorously.
“Position?”
“Nurse.”
“Who is your superior doctor?”
“Deputy Chief Doctor of the Emergency Department, Lu Qingshi.”
He answered one by one, while the other party recorded on paper, suddenly stopping the pen: “Then why did you not follow your superior doctor that day?”
“Because…” Hao Renjie paused, and the Medical Director coughed heavily: “Speak truthfully, there must not be the slightest concealment to Secretary Wu.”
Sweat appeared on Hao Renjie’s forehead: “Director Lu instructed me to follow Yu Gui.”
“Is it because there was no assurance in Dr. Yu, a resident doctor, so you were told to follow her, correct?”
Hao Renjie was momentarily speechless, but since it was the fact, he could only brace himself and say yes.
“Who made the decision for the amputation?” The opponent posed an even sharper question.
“At that time, the patient’s lower limbs had been trapped for over five hours, and lifting them out would cause the necrotic muscle to release…” He attempted to explain, but the opponent forcefully knocked the pen cap on the table.
“Answer my question, who made the decision for the amputation?”
“It was… Director Lu…” He answered, dejected.
“Who performed the surgery on the patient?”
“Yu Gui,” he said, becoming less confident as he spoke.
“Was the consent of the patient’s family obtained?”
A long silence followed, and Secretary Wu slammed the notebook on the table with a thunderous noise: “Are you waiting for the police to come and ask you now?!”
Hao Renjie lowered his head in shame: “…No.”
After the questioning, he supported himself against the wall, walking unsteadily out, and the head nurse came out again to call: “Yu Gui—”
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Yu Gui went in with a bruised face and came out with red eyes.
“Next, Lu Qingshi, Director Lu.”
After waiting for a long time, no one came in the corridor, and Secretary Wu threw down his pen: “This is too outrageous, does the department director think they’re impressive! Daring to give our Health Commission the cold shoulder…”
Xu Qiankun quickly stood up to mediate: “Please calm down, calm down, Director Lu’s medical skills are unquestionable, and you know this in the industry. It’s just that her temperament… is somewhat peculiar. Xiaoxu, quickly go find her, see what she’s doing, and have her come quickly for a meeting!”
After another five minutes, the head nurse returned to report that Director Lu was in surgery and could not come.
Secretary Wu angrily slapped the table: “Old Meng! Is this how you manage your hospital! Look at the kind of people you have under you! Even our Health Commission is disregarded!”
Caught between the civilians and the officials, the elderly dean had to stand up and apologize to the middle-aged man. Director Liu’s throat moved, but ultimately he said nothing.
“Xiaogui, are you okay?” Yu Gui was sitting on the rooftop making a phone call with Fang Zhiyou. The moment she heard her voice through the waves, her eyes began to warm.
Yu Gui held back her sobs: “Mm… still okay.”
Fang Zhiyou thought for a moment and still asked nothing, only saying: “Xiaogui, I believe you won’t harm people.”
Yu Gui covered her mouth, tears silently streaming down her face: “Thank you… Zhiyou…”
“Don’t cry, don’t cry,” Fang Zhiyou panicked, wanting to hug her but could only embrace air as she reached out, her voice lowering: “Do you still remember what you promised me?”
“I remember,” Yu Gui sniffled, encouraging herself: “To be strong, to be brave, to become the best surgeon at Renji Medical University!”
A snort came from behind, and Lu Qingshi looked at her with an expression as if she were looking at an idiot.
Yu Gui quickly stood up, softly saying goodbye to Fang Zhiyou: “I won’t talk to you for now, Teacher Lu is here.”
Lu Qingshi, holding a can of coffee, walked to the railing and stood, the wind messing her hair, her tone faint and void of discernible emotion: “Why didn’t you come to my surgery in the afternoon?”
So it was to settle accounts, Yu Gui’s eyes dimmed, tears still at the corners of her eyes: “I was called in for a talk.”
Lu Qingshi turned to look at her, her eyes frosty, her expression cold: “In any situation, the patient is the first priority.”
Watching her at ease, while others were called in for a talk, she could perform the surgery she wanted to complete, Yu Gui felt a sense of powerlessness from deep within, realizing her small self had no strength to resist authority.
She gritted her teeth: “Not everyone can be like Teacher Lu, so carefree and independent…”
The young doctor’s white coat was dirty, with broken eggshells hanging from her hair tips. Her eyes were full of anger and unwillingness, along with the bitterness of not being understood.
Being backstabbed by a patient whom one trusts is something every doctor finds hard to accept.
As the sunset sank into the horizon, the wind on the rooftop gradually grew stronger. The city beneath her feet turned into a miniature, and the last bit of dusk fell on the shield-shaped emblem of her white coat. The green and white represent life’s renewal and eternity, while the rod of Asclepius is a symbol of Hermes, the wind god from ancient Greek legend who could resurrect, symbolizing the heritage of medicine.
Although modern medicine cannot bring back the dead, it can, through treatment, change some people’s fate to some extent, which is already very good.
The young doctor’s chest was empty, and Lu Qingshi walked over, returning her badge to its owner: “Don’t daze, follow me.”
As they walked past the triage desk, she casually picked up a bunch of fresh red grapes: “I’m taking these.”
Behind her, Hao Renjie was heartbroken: “That… that is what I just bought…”
Simulated operating room.
Lu Qingshi put on a surgical gown, prepared protection, and sat solemnly in front of the operating table. Yu Gui pressed the switch for the surgery navigation, and the microscope slowly rose to be level with her eyes.
Today’s surgery subject is a red grape.
With her left hand holding tweezers and her right hand holding a scalpel, she made a slit on the grape skin, not damaging the pulp at all, then fluidly peeled the entire skin off with a hemostat and placed it into the waste tray.
The stopwatch stopped at 00:05:00, and Yu Gui exaggeratedly opened her mouth into an “O” shape.
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In medical school, she had seen senior students use pigskin to practice, but this was the first time she had seen grapes used for dissection practice.
Lu Qingshi stood up and signaled her to try.
Yu Gui swallowed and nodded with difficulty, her posture quite standard, but with one move of the tweezers, she directly skewered the grape into a candied hawthorn.
“…Continue.”
This time, her left hand controlled the force very well, but being too cautious with the hemostat while peeling, it directly slipped off the skin and jabbed into the operating table. If it were a large blood vessel, it would have punctured a hole, causing blood to flow like a river.
Lu Qingshi frowned: “Continue.”
On the third attempt, Yu Gui’s hand started shaking as if she had chills, and the grape rolled around on the operating table. She flailed both hands trying to grab it back, causing the tweezers and hemostat to clash.
……
Lu Qingshi gave up; a rotten piece of wood cannot be carved.
Yu Gui, sweating profusely, finally understood that what seemed like an easy operation actually required the doctor’s hand control to meet almost harsh standards.
She stood up and called out to Lu Qingshi, who was about to leave the operating room: “Teacher Lu… why can you use the scalpel so well?”
“When you were three years old, what was the first thing you could use, a spoon or chopsticks?”
Lu Qingshi turned to look at her: “When I was young, the first thing I could use was a scalpel.”
Even today, there’s still a shallow scar in her palm, a remnant from when she played with her parents’ scalpel as a child.
While other little girls had Barbie dolls and pink dresses, her room was filled with realistic medical toys, various syringes, and plastic stethoscopes. Her childhood, adolescence, and even a long period after becoming an adult were spent growing rapidly under this kind of oppressive parenting.
From the moment she could understand words, the sentence her parents said most often was: “You cannot lose face for the Lu family.”
Falling down meant no crying was allowed; she had to get up herself—because crying would be shameful.
Exam scores not being ideal—brought shame to the Lu family.
With the rank of provincial science top scorer, she entered Peking Union Medical College Hospital — to continue striving and not let the Lu family lose face.
At that time, everything Lu Qingshi did, even her purpose for living, had only one goal — not to let the Lu family lose face.
Because she has a grandfather who is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, renowned both at home and abroad, whose name is still printed in all medical students’ required textbooks as one of the editors, and her parents are experts and scholars who have made significant contributions to modern medicine development.
But all this did not bring her any preferential treatment. She lived cautiously, attending ordinary kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and international high school, but her parents required her to have extraordinary grades.
She even couldn’t sit in the front row because of poor eyesight.
It was in such a perverse and oppressive environment that Lu Qingshi grew up, and after shedding those gentle pretenses, from the moment her only child died on the operating table, she returned to her inherent cold and sharp nature.
Yu Gui was stunned; she saw her teacher’s eyes as deep as the sea, those pitch-black pupils revealing a hint of azure, appearing so unreal under the shadowless lamp in the operating room.
She said: “Even if starting much earlier than others, having resources many dare not even dream of, ultimately, people — still have to rely on themselves.”
After finishing peeling two pounds of grapes in the operating room, it was already late at night. Yu Gui rubbed her sore neck, stretched lazily, and placed the peeled grapes in front of Hao Renjie.
Hao Renjie was overjoyed, pinching one and stuffing it into his mouth: “Wow! The skin is all peeled for me, it’s worth following you through thick and thin, so sweet! Where did you peel these?”
Yu Gui, without turning her head, plunged into the office: “Peeled with a hemostat on the operating table.”
“Ugh!!!” Hao Renjie thought about the grape he just swallowed, which was peeled on a patient-used operating table with an organ-dissecting hemostat, and immediately leaned over the trash can, nauseated.
“Yu Gui, you dead pervert!!!”
In the dean’s office, an internal meeting with only four people was being held.
The office was dimly lit by a half-open desk lamp, with the dean’s nameplate on the table: Meng Jihua.
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A gray-haired old man sat hunched in a sofa chair, his expression indistinct, silent.
The vice dean hesitated for a moment but spoke: “Director Lu is a hard-to-recruit outstanding talent. My suggestion is…”
Xu Qiankun, anxious, interrupted him, disregarding the superior-subordinate relationship: “But her actions are too arrogant and domineering! We must give her a lesson. Ever since she came to the emergency department, it’s been three days to a complaint and five days to a small disturbance, severely disrupting the internal work order!”
Director Liu thought: Didn’t you consider how much trouble she saved you since she came, and how much the pre-hospital emergency success rate has increased?
This was his thought as a peer, but as the medical director, his greatest responsibility is to consider the hospital’s best interest.
“Not obtaining the consent of the patient’s family is the biggest problem. Even if this goes to court, we cannot win. My suggestion is to terminate the employment contract of the involved doctor, Yu Gui, revoke the practice certificate of the involved nurse, Hao Renjie, and dismiss them. For Lu Qingshi, initiate internal party criticism and suspend her practice activities for six months to observe the outcome.”
Only six months…
Xu Qiankun unwillingly curled his lips, thinking he could completely drive her out of Renji Hospital. But… who can predict what will happen after half a year? He glanced at the aging dean, who was said to have trembling hands during surgery last time. Retirement seemed imminent, and without Lu Qingshi as a threat, he could sit more stably in the department director’s position. There might even be opportunities to climb higher.
“This… is too much. I can understand dismissing Yu Gui, but suspending practice activities for half a year is equivalent to indirectly revoking the practice certificate,” the vice dean insisted on keeping a talent like Lu Qingshi.
“Alright,” Dean Meng slowly turned around, wearing reading glasses, his face full of wrinkles: “Everyone leave, let me think about it. Handle what needs handling, compensate what needs compensating, and ensure a satisfactory explanation is given to the family.”
After everyone dispersed, he shakily stood up, took down his white coat from the hanger, and saw an old photo in the showcase.
It was a keepsake from forty years ago when he was further studying at Peking Union Medical College Hospital’s Hepatobiliary Surgery. He wore a big red flower on his chest, in a Zhongshan suit, and beside him stood his unsmiling teacher, Lu Xucheng, the number one in domestic hepatobiliary surgery, now the esteemed Academician Lu.