Great Doctor Ling Ran

“Who allowed you to suture the tendon?! You just needed to handle the wound! The Hand Surgery Department was supposed to perform elective surgery on the patient’s tendon!” Zhao Leyi frowned tightly. Debridement and suturing were within the job scope of the Emergency Department, so it was fine for anyone to stitch up the wound. But theoretically, it was unacceptable for them to perform tendon suturing and anastomosis because both were beyond their job scope.

“You just said…” Ling Ran paused for a moment before he continued as if he was quoting a certain someone, “‘Stitch up the entire arm for me.’”

“I said ‘stitch up the entire arm?’” Zhao Leyi was slightly perplexed. He then immediately said, “Even if I mentioned the entire arm, it doesn’t include the hand!”

“The hand’s not included?” There was a puzzled tone in Ling Ran’s voice.

“Of course it doesn’t include the hand,” Zhao Leyi said in agitation. “I wanted you to perform debridement on the wounds, not stitch up the flexor tendon.”

“Ah… But I’ve already started to stitch it, though.” Ling Ran stopped speaking for a moment, but he did not stop moving his hands. He still carried on at that familiar pace, and his movements were stable.

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?!” Zhao Leyi was a little angry, but his panic outweighed his anger. After all, he was the chief surgeon of the surgery, and he was also the one who ordered Ling Ran to perform the suturing. If anything happened, he would be responsible for it. He did not want to bear any consequences, which could result from this.

His instincts as a pale, skinny, middle-aged man, who was a fake and a despicable suck-up of an attending physician, told him that Ling Ran must have done it on purpose.

This was because, if Zhao Leyi had suturing skills that were basically cheats, he would also try his best to look for opportunities to perform tendon sutures and anastomoses.

Doctors knew how hard it was to fight for opportunities.

When he was an intern, he served tea to his clinical mentor, helped him write his medical records, ran around doing his chores, and bought food for him. He obeyed everything his mentor said, remained obedient, and always had a smile. What was his reward for all of this? An opportunity to perform abdominal closure.

No one would just let you get your hands on a surgery like how they would let you live your life—they would not let you perform surgery without guidance like how they would throw you out into society and let you experience the world on your own. When Zhao Leyi first attempted an appendectomy, he took three hours. One hour was utilized for cutting open the abdomen to look for the appendix. Two hours were used to look for the gauze. To be more precise, the last hour was utilized by his clinical mentor to help him look for the gauze.

Zhao Leyi was greatly impacted by that surgery. On that day, his clinical mentor did not get mad. At least, not as mad as he usually got when Zhao Leyi made mistakes. This was due to the fact that his clinical mentor had foreseen arising complications when he decided to let Zhao Leyi be the chief surgeon for the appendectomy. It was better to have gauzes missing from the operating theater than to have an entire caecum missing.

Zhao Leyi’s next appendectomy was much smoother than his first. He was even slightly more experienced when it came to looking for the gauze. He did not take as long as he did in his first operation.

The key was, as long as the junior doctors seized their first opportunity well, there would be a second chance and a third chance for them to perform surgeries. Then, there would be countless surgeries of the same type thrown at you until you grew tired of them.

The first surgery was always the most challenging surgery. Patients would not want to become your lab rat, and your clinical mentor would not trust you entirely either. However, the hospital also needed you to prove their worth before they allowed you to perform surgeries.

Every patient, every leader, and every hospital wanted such a doctor…

They wanted a doctor who was nearly forty years old, and an energetic PhD graduate from a prestigious university. He had to be well-versed in his theories, have thirty years of background in research, and have a broad point of view. He should have more than forty years of clinical practicum and a lot of experience in the field. He should be reasonable and have more than fifty years of studies in humanities. He had to have the curiosity of a ten-year-old child; the determination of a twenty-year-old youth; the reliability of a thirty-year-old adult; the wisdom of a forty-year-old, middle-aged man; the maturity of a fifty-year-old quinquagenarian; the calmness of a sixty-year-old old man; and not be bald.

Zhao Leyi had managed to enter Yun Hua Hospital with a lot of help on his side. This outside help allowed him to clear many of the technical obstructions, which would have otherwise prevented him from performing his first abdominal closure and appendectomy.

He always performed better than his other classmates in surgeries. And after that, when he became Yun Hua Hospital’s doctor, he really did become better in surgeries compared to the majority of his classmates, especially those who went to city hospitals, district hospitals, and even provincial hospitals. He was definitely better than those classmates of his who gave up on becoming doctors.

Zhao Leyi knew the value of opportunities, hence the reason why his anger was even more prominent.

He was not willing to be like Doctor Zhou, a kind old man who always gave medical interns opportunities. He was more concerned about the consequences and he was more ambitious than Doctor Zhou.

‘I didn’t expect that the moment I let my guard down…

‘This Ling Ran would go straight for the tendon!’

Zhao Leyi thought, ‘Even I’ve never performed sutures on tendons before!

‘Where is my respect?

‘Where is the servile disciple?

‘Where is the obedience?’

“I’ve taken care of the wounds. There are a few bleeding wounds that don’t need suturing for now,” Ling Ran was in the middle of his operation when he demurely said, “I’ll try my best to get the hand tendon sutured to preserve hand function. I won’t delay…”

Zhao Leyi needed to spend a long time to deal with the wounds on different parts of the patient’s body anyway. There were also two resident doctors acting as his assistants, so Ling Ran’s act of suturing the tendon would not delay the operation in any manner. As for the patient, the sooner his primary recovery was, the better his hand function could recover.

“I…” Zhao Leyi was so agitated that he could not speak. Was he worried that there would be a delay?

‘Yes, I’m worried!

‘But I’m more worried about bearing responsibility!’

No matter how well the flexor tendon was sutured, he would not get any bonuses. But if complications arose, he would get into trouble.

As for hand function recovery… that was the patient’s own problem.

To Zhao Leyi, Ling Ran was absolutely getting his priorities mixed up.

“Ling Ran, you should stop first.”

“I’m using the M-Tang technique. If I stop halfway, the patient’s tendon will definitely be damaged.”

Zhao Leyi’s eyelids twitched, and he said, “You know how to use the M-Tang technique? No, I mean, who gave you the permission to use the M-Tang technique?”

“The patient’s Zone II flexor tendon is ruptured. It’s the best place to use the M-Tang technique,” Ling Ran explained reasonably. He had thought about it carefully before he sutured the patient. If the condition of the patient’s flexor tendon was not suitable for the M-Tang technique, he would have used simple interrupted sutures. After all, both of these skills he had in his disposal were at Master Level.

The flexor tendons of a person’s hand were divided into five zones. Zone II was the area from the middle phalanx to the distal palmar crease. It was the most complicated area known as no man’s land. The name was given because no one could recover well from an injury there during the early days until Professor Jin Bo Tang from Jiangsu Nantong University invented the M-Tang technique.

It was the true results of a master of his craft. The technique could almost perfectly solve the problem in no man’s land. But based on Ling Ran’s experiments in the simulation training space, he did not even need to use the Master Level M-Tang Technique to solve the problem. He could achieve an excellence rate of about 70% to 80% with just Specialist Level skills.

Nevertheless, compared to other techniques, the M-Tang technique had an obvious advantage.

Ling Ran was very confident. His reply was extremely brief, but he stunned Zhao Leyi with one sentence.

Even though he was the chief surgeon and also a chief surgeon whose rank was far higher than Ling Ran’s, Zhao Leyi could not continue the conversation.

Doctors earned their money through their skills.

On the surface, senior doctors had great control over junior doctors. That control was not built purely based on their titles, but also their skills.

If a junior doctor made a mistake, the senior doctors would point it out, and naturally, he could reprimand the junior as much as he wanted to.

Once they were done reprimanding the junior doctors, the senior doctors could also correct the junior doctors’ mistakes. They could also cut down on the junior doctors’ responsibilities by taking over their work. The junior doctors would have no other choice than be f*cked when the seniors chose to do so.

In other words, the power that senior doctors had over junior doctors was built on their skills and the responsibilities they had at hand.

When Zhao Leyi could not take over Ling Ran’s operation, he lost his control of the operating table.

When Ling Ran saw that Zhao Leyi no longer opposed his actions, he lowered his head and continued with the operation.

The nurses, resident doctors, and doctors who were waiting to enter the “battlefield” could not help but lift their heads to look at Ling Ran and Zhao Leyi. Their need to gossip was piqued. They felt entertained like they were watching a drama series. They were as delighted as someone who just had a snowball thrown in his face on the hottest day of summer, and that snowball was later stuffed against his chest.