Chapter 443: A Battle of Wits in the Cardiac Ward

This man had no shortage of connections and his social status was clearly nothing to scoff at. Yet here he was, waiting in the hallway with Dr. Zhuang for Zhou Can to finish his noon shift.

The first thing he showed Zhou Can was unmistakable respect.

After all, Dr. Zhuang was close enough to Zhou Can that he could’ve simply walked into his clinic any time. But they’d chosen not to.

It was a statement—deliberate, thoughtful.

Like those who climb a mountain on foot to pay respects to Buddha, even when they could’ve driven to the summit. The gesture matters.

This man, named Chen Shaoqiang, needed help saving his grandson and chose to ask Zhou Can with nothing but genuine sincerity.

He knew he wasn’t close to Zhou Can, so he specially asked Dr. Zhuang to mediate.

Every step—thoughtful, skilled—a perfect display of social finesse and worldly wisdom.

In the end, Zhou Can couldn’t bring himself to refuse, and the whole exchange left him feeling pretty good.

On the way to Cardiothoracic Surgery, Chen Shaoqiang kept sneaking glances at Zhou Can.

Maybe because Zhou Can looked so young, he doubted he could possibly outshine a Japanese cardiac expert.

“Hello, Dr. Zhou!”

“Dr. Zhou, good to see you!”

The moment they entered the department, Zhou Can was instantly at home.

Doctors and nurses greeted him at every turn, their respect for him obvious.

Chen Shaoqiang took it all in, watching Zhou Can with a changed expression. He’d heard of Zhou Can’s reputation but seeing the way so many doctors and nurses treated him with such deference was still astonishing.

“Where’s the child? In the ICU?”

Zhou Can turned to Dr. Zhuang.

“Yes. The child’s not doing well, so for safety, they’ve been kept in intensive care.”

Dr. Zhuang nodded to confirm.

“Who’s the attending doctor?”

“Director Xue!”

They reached the ICU doors while chatting—where unnecessary visitors were strictly forbidden.

Even family could only visit one at a time, and strictly controled, to keep all those inside safe.

Every extra person upticks the risk of bacteria getting in.

All ICUs were under strict sterile management, and even staff had to follow disinfection protocols to the letter.

“Oh, Dr. Zhou! What brings you over? Director Xue was just saying she wanted to call you in for a consult! She was worried you’d still be tied up in pediatrics and hadn’t even eaten. Said she’d ring you later.”

The nurse on duty at the window lit up when she saw Zhou Can.

“Well, looks like I showed up uninvited! Where’s Director Xue?”

Zhou Can smiled and asked.

“She’s inside, working on a patient! A transfer from another hospital—a child who already had heart surgery. It’s looking bad…” The nurse paused, glancing at Dr. Zhuang and the family standing behind Zhou Can.

“Dr. Zhuang, Mr. Chen, I’ll go in first to check on the child. You two go ahead and talk.”

With a quick nod to the others, Zhou Can waited as the nurse opened the door and let him through.

First, he washed up, then changed into protective gear in the dressing room, going through every step of the disinfection process before heading into the ward.

Right away, he spotted Director Xueyan leading a team by a bedside, treating a patient.

“Sis Yan!”

Zhou Can called out as he approached.

“So fast! I told Nurse Tang to call you later, but she just wouldn’t listen! You must be starving, huh?”

Concern was written all over Director Xueyan’s face.

“It’s not Nurse Tang’s fault. Dr. Zhuang and the family brought me here. This the child?”

Zhou Can’s eyes shifted to the bed.

The baby couldn’t have been more than six months old, face pale as paper, breathing with desperate, choking effort—like someone had put a plastic bag over his head, making every breath a fight.

You could see clear signs of retraction all over.

Even worse, his lower limbs were badly swollen.

They’d propped the baby up with a pillow to help. Severe heart failure like this? Lying flat would only make it worse.

For these patients, staying propped up helps the most. If they have to lie flat, the heart has to work overtime, the diaphragm gets pushed up, it all adds more strain and makes heart failure spiral.

“The child’s in extremely poor condition—severe heart failure. I’m honestly worried we may not pull him through.”

Director Xueyan frowned deeply, her voice heavy.

“Do we have his medical records?”

“Yes.”

“Judging by the incision, I’d guess it was minimally invasive or done by endoscopy. Those Japanese experts really are something. If it were us, there’s no way we could fix an atrial septal defect through endoscopic surgery.”

Zhou Can was genuinely impressed after seeing the scars left by the procedure.

For so long, he’d seen news stories of monumental heart surgeries at the Third Hospital: patients leaving in days, the team showered with flowers and thank-you banners.

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Praises everywhere.

He still remembered hearing how, just six hours after heart surgery, a patient could be back at work. It had sounded unbelievable.

He’d felt firsthand the power of foreign medical techniques.

But as time went on, he started seeing stories about post-op complications—or cases where patients relapsed soon after so-called “recovery” at the Third Hospital.

Some patients even died.

Yet, oddly enough, those negative news pieces vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

Maybe the Third Hospital’s PR team convinced families to delete the posts, or maybe there were other reasons.

Either way, it felt downright eerie.

If you searched for Third Hospital’s negative press online, you couldn’t find a single post.

Look up Tuyu Hospital, though, and you’d find plenty.

Especially on patient forums and message boards—complaints everywhere.

It’s like a country where all you hear is how wonderful things are. When that’s all you get, you know the system’s rotten to the core.

The Third Hospital’s shining, spot-free reputation? It gave Zhou Can the creeps.

Nobody in the business bought the fairy tale either.

“Let’s step outside to discuss.”

After the initial emergency care, Director Xueyan turned to Zhou Can, ready for a deeper strategy session.

Of course, she’d already talked things over with the department’s chief physicians.

But no solution had satisfied her.

In the on-call room, Zhou Can read through all the child’s case files from start to finish.

“These records seem edited—especially the surgical notes, post-op medication, and emergency interventions. You can see the touch-ups everywhere.” Zhou Can spotted the problems right away.

“We’ve already told the family, and they’re working to gather more genuine records. But you know how it goes—if a whole hospital wants to hide the truth, it’s easy. If the authorities don’t launch a full investigation, it’s almost impossible to get the real, full data. Even if they do, unless they press charges, nothing really comes out.”

Director Xueyan knew all too well how deep hospital coverups could go.

Especially with medical accidents, the doctors, nurses, admins—all their interests lined up.

No matter who you ask, you end up with the same old evasive answers.

“Since the family knows, we’ll handle it—do the bloodwork and test the samples so everything is on record. That way, if anything goes wrong, they can’t try to pass the blame.”

When it came to rotten people and messy situations, Zhou Can always had a trick up his sleeve.

Precautions were always a must.

No one wanted to take the fall for someone else’s disaster.

“The samples are done, and we’ve saved all the specimens. Honestly, I think they’re worried about the child dying in their hospital too, so they’re being careful. At least right now, the tests show no sign of overmedication.”

Director Xueyan showed Zhou Can the results of the three main tests they’d run.

On top of those core tests, they’d also done chest CTs and plenty more. The workup was thorough.

Clearly, Director Xueyan was no fool. She was on high alert for anything coming from the Third Hospital.

Any hospital would treat this situation with similar caution.

The fact that Tuyu Hospital even accepted this patient in the first place was practically a miracle.

Especially in today’s tense medical climate, doctors and nurses had to play it extra safe.

“Looking at the scans, the heart’s definitely enlarged, with clear heart failure. If they really had fixed the atrial septal defect, treatment would be simple. My mentor taught me how to handle cases like this back in the day.”

Zhou Can’s biggest worry now was whether the child’s cardiac defect had truly been repaired.

He studied the scans in detail.

When he finished, Director Xueyan said, “I checked with the other chiefs. Based on all the data—flow, CT, EKG—it seems like the defect is closed. No big problems that we can see.”

“So, why don’t we try medication first? Watch how the baby responds, then adjust?”

Zhou Can suggested, weighing options.

“That’s what I was thinking. I’ve already started symptomatic care, but it hasn’t done much.”

She brought up her prescription for Zhou Can to review.

“Change to inotropics and diuretics—cover both fronts, stick with treatment and see.”

Zhou Can offered a new suggestion.

“I’m already using inotropics. Why do you want the dosage lower? Is there a reason for that?”

She was a disciple of Dr. Hu Kan too, but nowhere near as flexible as Zhou Can when it came to emergency strategy or surgical improvisation.

It’s like the teacher gives everyone the same math formula—some get full marks and can extrapolate further, others only figure out addition, then teach themselves subtraction.

Some pick up the basics, even do well, but can’t take it to the next level.

Zhou Can’s gift for out-of-the-box thinking has always been a clinical advantage.

Everyone has their own way of looking at a problem.

Show a person a streetlamp—one just sees light, one sees the road, another sees electrical energy turning into light.

“Lowering the dose is because the child’s tolerance is weaker. Your approach is more like an all-out charge—overwhelm the disease as fast as possible. Mine is a marathon; we’ll fight heart failure stroke by stroke, pace by pace. Lowering the drugs forces the heart to adapt to more stress over time, training it and hopefully leading to a real recovery.”

Zhou Can explained his strategy.

Director Xueyan fell silent, then her eyes gradually brightened.

In the end, she looked up at him with utter admiration.

“No wonder our mentor wanted you to carry on his legacy! You really are a genius—the way you see the big picture is amazing. When the child first arrived, all we could think of was saving his life and fixing things fast. We never considered fighting a long, quiet battle like you do.”

Her approach, and the others’ too, was much more conventional.

But Zhou Can’s thinking was deeper—wiser, steadier.

Honestly, that’s the inevitable result of strained doctor-patient relations these days—doctors forced to pick options that give instant, visible results.

Because if families don’t see improvements right away, they get suspicious, complain, ask for transfers, or lose confidence, all of which give doctors major headaches.

Everyone tries to minimize trouble, after all.

So doctors naturally lean toward whatever gets approval and support from families.

“I’ll update the orders and try your approach.” Director Xueyan was convinced, letting go of her previous hard-hitting plan.

“Make sure you really communicate this to the family. This marathon could take over three months, maybe more, since the child’s condition has already dragged on. Of course, we have to be prepared for the worst—if we can’t save him, we’ll at least know we gave it our best shot.”

After going over every detail, Zhou Can hurried off.

He still hadn’t eaten and needed a quick meal before his afternoon clinic duties. Once those ended, he’d be stuck in the ER operating room until midnight.

The double shift’s exhaustion was something only he could truly understand.

As for the afternoon clinic, that passed in a blur.

By six in the evening, Zhou Can had wrapped up clinic, grabbed dinner, and headed straight to the Emergency Department.

As he passed the resuscitation room, he spotted a familiar figure.

“Isn’t that the mother with the son who fell and hurt his arm—the one who’s always impossible to deal with? What’s she doing here in the ER?”

Zhou Can was baffled.

Suddenly, a thought struck him—had the boy ended up with a head injury and a brain bleed after all?

Maybe he’d watched her a little too long, because she spun and caught sight of him.

Zhou Can quickly looked away.

She was trouble and the last thing he wanted was to get tangled up again.

Now her son was in the ER—if she decided to take it out on him and make a scene, it’d be a nightmare.

“Dr. Zhou!”

Her eyes were sharp. She recognized him instantly and called out.

People like her never forget a face, so no surprise she picked Zhou Can out right away.

Not wanting anything to do with her, Zhou Can pretended not to hear and picked up his pace. He still had plenty of surgeries to get to.

Most ER surgical cases needed to be handled that very day.

There was no room for delay.

“Dr. Zhou, I was wrong this morning. I’m truly sorry! I regret my foolishness—now my son’s in the ER. You know everyone here; could you please say a word, make sure they do everything to save him? I’m begging you!”

This woman was shameless.

Just that morning in the pediatric clinic, she’d turned on Zhou Can faster than flipping a page.

Her face at the time had been pure menace.

Now that her son was in the ER, she had the nerve to ask Zhou Can for help.

Who did she think she was?