My Medical Skills Give Me Experience Points

Chapter 1303: Chapter 514: Ruthless Refusal, Shock and Sorrow (Part 2)

After he finished speaking, Deputy Director Lu said goodbye and directly hung up the phone.

Hearing that sorrowful voice of Deputy Director Lu, Zhou Can also felt a bit uncomfortable inside.

After all, they had been colleagues working together for several years.

They were comrades-in-arms, too.

Especially in the operating room, everyone fought side by side for a common goal, cooperating with each other.

This kind of bond can’t be diluted by just one or two incidents.

The most unforgettable friendships in this world are between classmates, comrades-in-arms, and those forged in adversity.

Seeing Deputy Director Lu end up like this because he was momentarily blinded by profit and desire, Zhou Can only felt a tight, suffocating pressure in his chest.

Maybe talking to Director Xue Yan about this and seeing her attitude would be the right thing to do.

Zhou Can thought that after he got off work in the afternoon, he would go over to Cardiothoracic Surgery and bring this matter up with Director Xue Yan then.

It wasn’t really to plead for Deputy Director Lu, just to tell Director Xue Yan the truth—that those former colleagues who had been poached to the Third Hospital were treated very badly.

The Third Hospital, having climbed up by relying on such despicable tricks, was doomed not to go far.

...

All day long, Zhou Can was busy.

The number of patients seeking treatment in the Emergency Department was rising extremely fast, and had even exceeded the department’s maximum capacity.

Right now, the medical staff in the Emergency Department were operating in overload mode every single day.

Everyone was exhausted to death.

If nothing unexpected happened, Zhou Can’s surgical team should be able to expand again.

It was Director Lou who personally came to talk to him, asking him to recruit another medical assistant and one more OR nurse.

A real surgical team needs at least three scrub nurses, three medical assistants, and one lead surgeon.

If it’s a top-tier surgical team, then it’s really formidable.

It may have dozens of members, including some lead surgeons who specialize in certain subfields and have been brought into the team and integrated as assistant chief surgeons. For example, in a top-tier cardiac surgery team, some assistant chiefs specialize in Orthopedics, some in cardiovascular, some in separation, some in anastomosis, some in neurosurgery... Only such a team can be called truly top-tier.

So for Zhou Can’s team to reach that level, there was still a long way to go.

By the time he got out of the operating room after work in the evening, Su Qianqian had already brought him his meal and was waiting for him outside.

Every time colleagues saw this scene, they would show envious smiles.

This kind of love really was enviable.

While eating, Zhou Can checked the missed calls and WeChat messages on his phone.

Anyone who could add him on WeChat was either an acquaintance or a relative.

For ordinary people now, it was actually very hard even to get hold of his private number.

But in this world, there are always some people with great "connections" who can find out his number through various channels and then call him.

At the beginning, when he wasn’t busy, Zhou Can would still answer or call back to ask what it was about.

Now, as long as it was an unfamiliar number without a saved name, he simply ignored it.

He had no choice, because he was just too busy.

Returning a call and talking for five or six minutes would be considered very short, right? The key point is that problems are rarely solved over the phone.

If those patients really needed him to see them, they could just come to Tuya Hospital and register.

As for asking him to help arrange a hospital bed or schedule surgery—honestly, only his friends or relatives had the qualification to ask for that. Or a very small number of particularly pitiful patients whom he happened to notice.

He’d say a word to someone and help arrange it.

Director Xue Yan had called him and also left a message.

Clearly something urgent had come up.

Among the missed calls, there was one unfamiliar number that had called nineteen times.

Even though no one picked up, that number kept tirelessly dialing his phone.

This person was either crazy, or they really had an emergency.

He decided to first listen to the voice message from Director Xue Yan on WeChat.

He could only handle them one by one.

"Zhou Can, Lu Xiangbei jumped off a building to commit suicide. He’s currently in critical condition and being resuscitated in the hospital."

Hearing this news, Zhou Can felt as if his heart had been pierced by needles.

The pain was overwhelming.

He hadn’t expected Deputy Director Lu to choose suicide.

Deputy Director Lu was the type who often killed the mood in conversation and wasn’t good with social niceties. But in both academia and surgery, he was a real expert.

If he hadn’t been so capable, the Third Hospital wouldn’t have sent Vice President Zhang personally to poach him and offer such tempting terms.

Adults are often very realistic in what they do.

This morning, Deputy Director Lu had called Zhou Can for help. After being turned down, he might have become unable to see a way out.

At the time, his tone did sound truly desolate.

As for whether he called anyone else afterwards, Zhou Can didn’t know.

In any case, hearing that Deputy Director Lu had tried to kill himself still made him feel deeply pained.

If Deputy Director Lu hadn’t chosen to jump ship, perhaps by now he would already be a highly placed core figure in the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department of Tuya Hospital.

One wrong step, and you’re damned forever.

This punishment was a bit too heavy for Deputy Director Lu.

"Which hospital is Director Lu being treated in? I just got off work; I’ll go see him."

Zhou Can replied to Director Xue Yan with a voice message.

What’s done was done; now it was a question of whether there was any way to save him.

He really couldn’t understand why Deputy Director Lu would choose suicide. With his level of surgical skill, even if he couldn’t stay at the Third Hospital, he could’ve completely gone to another hospital to develop his career!

Even if he just stayed in the provincial capital and joined a slightly weaker tertiary hospital, he’d immediately enjoy the待遇 of a chief physician.

Tuya Hospital’s medical status in the province, and even in the whole country, was very high.

Hospitals on the outside all recognized doctors from Tuya.

Just like doctors from Imperial Renhe Hospital, when they go looking for jobs elsewhere, they’re also highly regarded in the industry.

To put it bluntly, that’s what "gold content" means.

Director Xue Yan was probably busy and didn’t reply to Zhou Can’s message.

In this situation, calling her would most likely not get through either.

When doctors are doing surgery, their phones are usually on silent, not even on vibrate.

Especially for lead surgeons like Zhou Can and Director Xue Yan, who needed extremely high levels of focus during operations. If a call came in at a critical moment in surgery, it could easily distract the surgeon.

Zhou Can decided to first call back that unfamiliar number which had called nineteen times.

It rang twice and was immediately picked up.

"Hello, may I ask what you needed when you called me?"

Zhou Can asked politely.

"Hello, is this Dr. Zhou Can?"

On the other end came a slightly hoarse young woman’s voice, sounding like she had just cried bitterly and was still emotionally unstable. Or maybe it was just a naturally raspy, smoker’s voice.

"Yes, this is he."

"Hello, Dr. Zhou, my name is Lu Fen. My father is Lu Xiangbei..." When she introduced herself, the woman’s voice choked up and broke off for a moment.

So she was Deputy Director Lu’s daughter.

"Around a little after two o’clock this afternoon, my father sent me a text message, telling me to take good care of myself, and telling me that he had written a suicide note and left it in the study. I sensed something was wrong and immediately called my father, but I couldn’t get through at all—his phone was turned off. I immediately notified my family and we started searching together. Not long after, we got calls from the police and the hospital saying my father had jumped off a building..."

When she spoke of her father jumping, the woman broke down in tears.

"Miss Lu, I fully understand how sad you must feel. May I ask which hospital Director Lu is being treated in?"

"My father is in the Provincial People’s Hospital being resuscitated. He’s still in a coma, and the hospital has already issued several critical condition notices. There’s severe intracranial hemorrhage, and his spleen also seems to be ruptured. His condition is very bad. I’m calling you because, in my father’s suicide note, he clearly stated that if anything happened to him, I should give a letter to you. He said you would seek justice for all of them."

That was why Lu Fen had kept calling Zhou Can.

Her father had jumped off a building to kill himself; anyone in her position would feel grief and anger.

What had driven her father to suicide?

She might know a bit, but not the full story.

Now, although her father was still alive, he could die at any moment.

The only thing she could think of was to fulfill his wish and help him get justice.

Zhou Can hadn’t expected that, on the brink of death, Deputy Director Lu would ask him to help seek justice. It was a kind of trust, and also a kind of hope.

When a person is about to die, his words are kind, and his heart is as clear as a mirror.

Perhaps, in his final moments, Deputy Director Lu had figured out many things and seen through the deceit and coldness of the world.

The only person he could trust turned out to be Zhou Can.

He believed that Zhou Can would definitely be able to get justice for him.

Maybe it was because back then, Zhou Can had stood up for all the medical staff in the hospital, demanding that the personal safety of clinical medical staff be guaranteed, and had fought against the security department chief and the deputy director of general affairs, who both had strong backing.

This righteous, upright image had taken root deep in Deputy Director Lu’s heart.

That was why he entrusted this to him before he died.