Chapter 409: An Impossible Choice

“Kid, I’m afraid I can’t give you the remittance account right now. I’ll report this to my superiors tomorrow and gather the department heads for a meeting. Once it’s all settled, I’ll send you the account. Of course, it’d be best if you could come by in person—a signed agreement would make things a lot clearer.”

If you’re donating to an individual for charity, you can just give the money directly.

But if the donation has a specific purpose, you can also go through an intermediary department.

Donating to an institution, though, is a bit more complicated.

Being able to sign a written agreement sounded great to Zhou Can. It would protect both sides. What he really worried about was the money getting siphoned off by some leader in the institute.

He trusted Chen Guoli, but that didn’t mean he trusted everyone else in the department.

Especially those leaders in admin positions—they were experts at finding ways to pocket extra cash.

“That works, then. Just let me know after your meeting tomorrow. I’ve got work during the day, so I’d only be able to sign the donation agreement in the evening. If this donation really makes a difference, I’d be open to supporting you again in the future. Your spirit as a traditional medicine doctor, and how well you treated my girlfriend, showed me the potential and value of Chinese medicine. Watching it decline is honestly heartbreaking.”

After working things out with Chen Guoli, Zhou Can left with Su Qianqian.

“Take care!”

This time, Chen Guoli gave them a far grander send-off. He personally walked them to the door and when Zhou Can turned back, he quickly said, “Please, that’s far enough!”

……

Time flew by and in the blink of an eye, over half a month had passed.

Thanks to Zhou Can’s surgical skills, the Emergency Department’s performance skyrocketed. The number of official inpatient beds jumped from four to ten. The department took this so seriously they even cleared out another room from the IV area to make space for more beds.

The only reason they didn’t go past ten beds was the health administration’s strict rule: for every ten additional beds, you needed to add at least one doctor and four nurses.

And the Emergency Department was already stretched thin.

They’d just hired more people last month, but no matter how tough things got, they’d have to lay low for a while. Rise up too fast and you attract unwanted attention—then you’ll just run into resistance from every direction.

Now that they had ten official beds, plus some temporary ones, things were finally enough to cover their current needs.

Originally, there were just three attending doctors: two official resident doctors and one intern.

Now that there were over twenty hospitalized patients, Director Lou assigned another intern to help manage the beds. The nursing staff was just as strained—Head Nurse Niu Lan had to figure out how to cover the gaps.

All in all, the Emergency Department’s operating room and inpatient unit were running pretty smoothly.

Patients came in through the main hall, got tests done in the back, and if it was something the Emergency Department could handle, they went straight to surgery. After the operation, people either went straight home or got admitted for further treatment.

At this point, the whole process was pretty much seamless in the Emergency Department.

In fact, it had become one of their main sources of revenue.

The resuscitation room and critical care unit’s business chains were also bringing in healthy profits.

Other services in the Emergency Department, though, were pretty much just background noise.

As for Internal Medicine, most of their income came from running tests and prescribing drugs—not exactly a windfall, but good enough.

Even though Emergency always seemed to be the underdog, with the buzz brought in by Tuyu’s golden reputation, the sheer number of patients they treated each day was staggering. Over the years, under Director Lou’s lead, the medical staff had developed plenty of ways to keep the money coming in.

Sure, nobody’s getting rich, but they’ll never go hungry either.

Compared to those top departments, their situation felt pitiful. But put next to a deserted county hospital? They were much better off.

It just goes to show—you’re better off under the wing of a big institution.

That’s why graduate students and doctoral candidates took every chance to get their foot in the door at major hospitals like Tuyu—it’s just the smart thing to do.

One afternoon, right after Zhou Can finished lunch and was heading back to the OR, he heard a commotion in the Emergency Department’s reception area.

A patient lay on a gurney, pant leg rolled up almost to the knee, revealing a leg badly rotted, oozing fluid and some tissue already liquefied. The stitches were popping open in places.

Zhou Can recognized it at a glance—this was classic gangrene.

If you didn’t handle it right, it could cost the patient’s life.

Amputation to save the rest of the body was a common last resort.

But almost no family or patient is ever willing to accept amputation without a fight.

So they’d always beg the doctors for any possible alternative.

For wounds like this—infected, festering, with advanced gangrene—the only real hope was to cut away every trace of dead tissue, admit the patient to the hospital, hit them with antibiotics, and trust the professionals to nurse that wound back to health.

Usually, if you could control the infection, you could save the limb.

But sometimes things were just too far gone. If the patient’s immunity was weak, or if they had other health issues, sometimes even surgery wouldn’t help.

In the end, you’d still have to amputate to save their life.

It was especially common for older diabetic patients—their legs would go black and die off in no time.

The family was in tears, kneeling on the floor, begging the nurses and doctors to admit the patient.

But the emergency doctors insisted that this case needed to go to a specialist department. The Emergency Department only handled simple, acute issues—they couldn’t treat wounds this badly infected, not when gangrene had already set in.

No way would Emergency dare take this on.

Just looking at the reception doctor’s terrified face—shaking his head like a rattle—you could tell how serious the case was.

The patient might look okay for now, but if things turned, things could fall apart overnight. Sepsis, or even worse—full-blown septic shock—could come on fast.

In hospitals, you’d often see limbs that didn’t look too bad at first glance. Families would think there was still hope.

But the doctors would insist on amputation, no question.

Even if you went to another hospital, you’d get the same answer.

It wasn’t because doctors didn’t care—it’s just that the consequences of letting necrosis spread were too severe. Where families saw only the surface, doctors, with their training and experience, saw the dangerous road ahead.

When it was clear there was no saving the limb, better to face the tough truth than risk the patient’s life for hope that wouldn’t pan out.

Zhou Can sometimes came off as heartless, but scenes like this always got to him.

No matter how many times he’d been let down by patients and their families, he still kept his compassion.

It especially broke his heart to see a little child—maybe three or four—kneeling next to his mom, pleading for a doctor to save his dad. No one could watch that and stay unmoved.

“Did the specialist department refuse to take the case?”

Zhou Can walked over and asked the nurse on duty.

“General Surgery won’t take him. Critical Care says it’s up to General Surgery, and we can’t handle him here either. So we’ve recommended that the family take the patient to Provincial People’s Hospital for more advanced care.”

These young nurses in the Emergency Department—nothing fazed them.

They’d seen every kind of patient and family you could imagine.

The ones who stuck around had all become masters at reading people and handling unexpected situations.

When stuck with a particularly tough case, the hospital wasn’t dumb. Once a specialist department kicked it back, the ER nurses would do everything they could to convince the family to go seek help elsewhere.

【To be honest, I’ve been using the Huanyuan app recently to read and check out updates. Swapping sources, variety of voice options—it’s awesome, works on Android and Apple.】

Small hospitals always dump patients on big ones. That’s just how it is.

If a critically ill patient shows up at a rural health center, they’ll tell you to hurry to a larger hospital for rescue. The families don’t hesitate—they agree to transfer right away.

But even big hospitals like Tuyu sometimes passed the buck.

There were regulations from above—hospitals weren’t allowed to flat out refuse a patient.

So instead, they’d use softer or more subtle methods. Like not prescribing any medication—just giving basic supportive care and little else.

The family would watch their loved one get worse, yet the hospital didn’t do anything. Of course, they’d start getting anxious.

After cursing the hospital out, they’d hurry off and transfer to another one.

Or the nurse’s usual trick—claiming some other hospital is more specialized and has a better shot at a cure, and urging them to seek treatment there.

In other words—they were begging the family not to become their hospital’s burden, but go be someone else’s problem.

“We’ve already been to the Provincial People’s Hospital. The doctors there said it was very serious, and their plan was amputation. If we want to save the limb, they said our best shot was coming to Tuyu.”

The patient’s wife was maybe thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. Judging from her outfit, demeanor, and general look, she seemed like a rural woman or a migrant worker scraping by in the city.

Now her husband’s life hung by a thread; of course she was terrified and desperate.

Zhou Can could only grimace.

These hospitals—always passing the buck back and forth.

“Did you get any tests done?”

He asked.

“No tests at our hospital—he had some done at the Provincial People’s Hospital.”

“Let me see the results.”

The wife, relieved that someone was finally taking charge, quickly got up, pulled the test papers from her bag, and handed them all over to Zhou Can.

“How did he get injured in the first place?”

“He crashed his motorcycle. My husband and I brought our child with us to the city to look for work. To save money, we went to a fairly well-known local clinic for stitches. But the wound got infected, and it ended up like this.”

She was definitely holding some details back.

It takes a long time for an infected wound to develop full-on gangrene. There’s no way this happened in just a few days.

Zhou Can didn’t bother pushing for the truth.

It was just the usual story—trying to save money, treating it at home after infection, hoping for a miracle.

And without proper medical knowledge, things just spiraled out of control.

The clinic hadn’t managed the wound well, and their suturing skills were lacking too. Looking at the family’s situation, there was probably no point in trying to sue the clinic for compensation.

It was hard to survive at the bottom of society.

“From the bloodwork and urine reports, there are signs of early sepsis. Amputation is almost certainly the best bet for survival.”

Zhou Can gave his verdict after reading the results.

“Doctor… please, have mercy. Please save my husband! He’s our family’s backbone. If he loses his leg, how will we survive…?”

The woman burst into tears, sobbing.

Seeing his mother crying, the young child clung to her leg and started crying too.

Other patients gathered around to watch.

Everyone’s just worried about their own problems. No one really cares about someone else’s tragedy.

When disaster strikes other people, bystanders never take it too seriously. They’re just there for the spectacle.

Watching the mother and child sobbing was enough to break your heart. Zhou Can stepped forward to inspect the patient’s festering wound close up. The stench of rotting flesh hit him like a wall.

It was far worse than any rotten egg.

Trying not to gag, Zhou Can took a closer look—he could see some exposed, healthy red tissue under all that decay.

“Let me ask my teacher for advice!”

Zhou Can took the reports to consult Dr. Xu.

Taking on a patient this sick was no small thing. If things went south while under his care, then what?

He couldn’t make the call alone.

Dr. Xu’s clinical experience was extensive, especially in surgical injuries.

Best to have him check it out and see what he thought.

At that moment, Dr. Xu was in the operating room performing surgery.

“Teacher, let me handle the suturing. Can you take a look at a patient with lower limb gangrene? I want to know if his leg can be saved.”

“Do you know how terrifying gangrene is?”

Dr. Xu shifted aside—his way of agreeing to let Zhou Can suture.

Their teacher-student relationship was more like father and son.

In the Emergency Department’s operating room, Zhou Can was like Sun Wukong with a free pass—he could handle all sorts of surgeries and even serve as the main surgeon in practice. None of that would’ve been possible without Dr. Xu watching his back.

For a med student, finding a good mentor was nothing short of a lifetime blessing.

If you got stuck with a teacher who only knew how to shift blame, pocket money, or push the workload onto students, it could ruin your entire career. With one of those, you either quit or wait for them to leave.

Most of the time, it was the students who had to move on.

Those teachers rarely ever left, since they were doing just fine.

“This patient is the pillar of his family. Amputation would be devastating—his kid is still so little. Gangrene is tough to treat and risky, I know. That’s why I’m asking if you could take a look.”

Zhou Can talked while working efficiently.

His suturing was always meticulous.

If his work wasn’t up to par, Dr. Xu would scold him harshly. And if that happened, there was no way Dr. Xu would do him a favor.

Soon enough, he got the patient’s abdomen closed up.

“Please check my work, Teacher.”

“Looks fine! Send him out to wake up from the anesthesia.”

Dr. Xu checked and nodded—he was pleased.

He was always satisfied with Zhou Can’s skills.

“Don’t bring in the next surgery patient yet,” Dr. Xu told the nurse.

Zhou Can had two surgical nurses, but Dr. Xu only had one. Most of the time, the experienced nurse Liu Xia was assigned as his partner.

Though occasionally, they’d switch things up.

Dr. Xu was less demanding of his instrument nurse than Zhou Can ever was.

Zhou Can, though—he only liked working with Qiao Yu.

It wasn’t just her skill. They had such great chemistry it was like they could read each other’s minds. Plus, she was beautiful. Who wouldn’t want a pretty partner during surgery?

“You really want to try saving that patient?”

Dr. Xu stared at Zhou Can.

“If I can, I’ll give it my all. I’ve checked the wound thoroughly—even though it’s festering, there’s still fresh, red tissue. The patient’s under forty, healthy for his age, and doesn’t have underlying conditions. Give it a shot, and maybe there’s hope for saving his leg.”

His determination shone in his eyes.

But in the end, it wasn’t just up to him.

If Dr. Xu didn’t agree, there was nothing more Zhou Can could do.

“If you’re set on trying, then let’s give it a shot. I’ll talk to his family, make sure they understand all the risks, and get their consent and waivers signed. But after surgery, we’ll keep a close watch for twenty-four hours. If his toxin levels don’t drop or the wound keeps getting infected, we won’t hesitate—immediate amputation to save his life.”

Dr. Xu laid out the plan for Zhou Can.

The two of them were in sync, always working things out together.

“Sounds good. I’ll keep working in the OR. Once everything’s settled, send the patient my way and I’ll take care of him.”

Zhou Can agreed to the plan without hesitation.

People’s lives were on the line. He never dared to get careless.

“Do your job. I’ll talk to the family.”

Dr. Xu grabbed the medical records, went to the changing room, put on his white coat, and headed out.

With Dr. Xu taking charge, Zhou Can felt reassured.

Any hidden risks would be handled by Dr. Xu ahead of time.

So Zhou Can got back to surgery, waiting quietly for the news.