Chapter 461: Warm Meals, Steady Hands

After rounds, he looked up and immediately spotted two women sitting in the lounge area of the emergency hall.

Su Qianqian, sunglasses on and wrapped in a loose coat, sat there quietly waiting for him.

“Qian Qian, Wei Fang!”

Zhou Can hurried over. Wei Fang stood up and walked away, giving the two some privacy.

“I knew you’d be working late tonight, so I brought you dinner. Three dishes and a soup. Give it a try!”

Since they’ve moved close to the hospital, Su Qianqian’s care for Zhou Can only became more meticulous.

Bringing him a homemade meal has already become her routine.

No matter how busy she gets, she always finds a way to ensure Zhou Can eats nutritious, tasty food. She considers the hospital cafeteria neither hygienic nor as nutritious as her carefully planned meals.

Truth be told, Zhou Can really loves her cooking.

“I’m going to wash my hands!”

He dashed off to scrub his hands clean before opening the food container and digging in.

“Slow down! No one’s going to steal your food!”

Seeing him eat with such gusto always made Su Qianqian nag a little.

Colleagues always looked on with envy whenever they saw this scene—Zhou Can’s girlfriend was just that considerate and gentle.

Together, they really were the picture of what true love should look like.

“It would be so nice if you had your own office someday. Then I could bring your meals directly there.”

Su Qianqian could feel the curious stares and the occasional odd looks from people around them. She felt a little uneasy, maybe because she was a public figure herself.

Besides, eating in the emergency hall wasn’t exactly hygienic.

Patients coming here carry all sorts of illnesses, plenty of them infectious.

“The only one in Emergency who gets that perk is Director Lou. Even Director Han and Niu Lan don’t have their own offices. I’d better not even dream about it.”

Zhou Can never cared much for those comforts anyway.

“By the way—did you take your medicine on time today?”

Last time, he went to a lot of trouble to gather all the herbs for her prescription and then decocted them for her.

With only about half a month left, she’d finish this course of treatment.

The medicine isn’t for daily use; it’s taken once every seven days.

“You’re so thoughtful! Even with your hectic schedule, you always remember exactly when I need to take my meds. No worries, I’ve taken it at home already.”

Su Qianqian’s kidney condition has always been their top priority.

“By the end of the month, we should know if it’s working. I really hope heaven shows you mercy, because you’re too kind and beautiful to deserve all this suffering.”

Zhou Can couldn’t wait for her to fully recover.

She might put on a calm face, but deep down she was tense and more than a little anxious. Zhou Can remembered after he finally found the primary herbs and prepared the medicine, she had trouble sleeping for nights afterward.

It wasn’t a side effect. She just wanted to be cured so badly that her mind was a flurry of worries and hope.

“Hehe, am I really as great as you say?”

His compliments made her squint in laughter, her eyes bent into happy crescents.

“Of course you are! To me you’re one of the most important people in the world, and the most beautiful, purest girl I’ve ever known. Pure thoughts, pure soul, pure heart, pure body.”

Zhou Can praised her with absolute sincerity.

“Alright, alright! Eat your food! You’re going to make me feel pregnant from all this sweet talk!”

All his relentless compliments left her completely flustered.

“Perfect! When you’re better, let’s have two kids!”

He said it casually but made her blush from head to toe.

“You’re impossible! Don’t say that here!”

She shot him a fierce look, so embarrassed she couldn’t even look up.

This kind of playful banter was part of their everyday life. Their relationship had always been steady. If they ever did argue, it never lasted more than a day—either Qian Qian would smooth things over, or Zhou Can would.

After the meal, Zhou Can stood up.

“Alright, you two should head back! I probably won’t get home until eleven or twelve tonight. Be careful on your way!”

He gave Su Qianqian a hug.

“Bye!”

After parting ways, Su Qianqian waved goodbye and left with Wei Fang, thermal container in hand.

……

Cardiothoracic Surgery. After dinner, Zhou Can headed for the OR.

The patient was already on the table, anesthesia complete.

Director Xueyan had already confirmed the schedule with him ahead of time. He arrived right on cue.

“Zhou Can, here’s the patient’s file. Want to take another look?”

Just yesterday, this patient’s troubling chest wall tuberculosis had Zhou Can called in for a joint consultation and to discuss surgical options. The patient had developed both an abscess and a sinus tract inside the thoracic cavity.

It was a tricky case, an especially challenging surgery.

During consultation, Director Xueyan, Director Le and the others unanimously wanted Zhou Can as the lead surgeon.

A high-level cardiac procedure like this—removing an abscess and sinus tract—it’s perilous. If anything goes wrong, it could spark a thoracic infection or leave behind diseased tissue, causing relapses or worse.

And the rest of the surgical risks? There’s a whole list.

Like accidentally nicking a major blood vessel during incision, which could lead to massive bleeding. Or damaging a critical nerve, making the heart suddenly stop or beat abnormally. Sometimes a patient can’t handle the stress of an open chest, and their heart just stops.

There are just too many hidden dangers.

That’s why every open-chest surgery is classified as a level-four major operation.

No matter what part you’re cutting open, as long as you enter the chest, you inflict real trauma on the patient.

If something unexpected happens, there’s just no time to waste—the rescue must be immediate.

Forget about interns or residents—even most associate chief surgeons would panic in a tight spot like that.

Sometimes a patient’s heart stops out of nowhere, and the surgeon might have as little as two or three minutes to pull them back. If the lead surgeon doesn’t have nerves of steel, loads of experience, and deep expertise, there’s a high chance the rescue will fail—and the patient could die right there on the table.

Even someone as skilled as Director Xueyan has suffered this kind of setback, let alone an average associate chief.

Training a heart-and-chest surgeon takes at least a decade, no exaggeration.

Plenty of humble doctors in this field work over ten years and still see themselves as rookies. Most don’t get to lead operations until they’ve worked seventeen or eighteen, sometimes even twenty years.

Neurosurgeons take just as long to train.

But Zhou Can managed to reach an expert surgeon’s skill in just a few years—something unheard of at Tuyu Hospital.

“I’ve already read the records. Everything looks fine. Let’s stick to the usual: disinfect, drape up, and get started!”

Once it was settled he’d be leading today, Zhou Can didn’t hesitate at all.

He had zero stage fright about these things. After scrubbing up, a nurse helped him into surgical gear and sterile gloves. He took his place at the operating table.

Everyone knew his talent. They’d all watched him pull off near-miracles, turning the tide in countless major operations.

So seeing him take the lead felt completely natural.

Some even felt an extra sense of relief knowing Zhou Can himself was operating.

He’d always been rock solid in surgery—no matter what cropped up, he was quick to respond and could steer things back from the brink.

“Sis Yan, I’m planning to make the incision along the rib, centered on the abscess. Sound okay to you?”

“That’s perfect! Just go ahead. No need to ask my permission.”

Director Xueyan could only smile, a bit helpless.

When it comes to surgical skills, Zhou Can far outstrips her in many areas. Whether it’s creative techniques or practical know-how, he’s her superior.

Back then, both of them learned cardiothoracic surgery together under Dr. Hu Kan. She’d even spent more years studying.

But she simply couldn’t match Zhou Can’s adaptability in surgery, or his ability to grasp the critical details.

“Cardiothoracic surgery’s at such a critical stage right now. I just didn’t want any surprises, so I thought I’d check in first.”

He answered as he set his focus on the procedure.

Zhou Can quickly carved a fusiform incision centered on the abscess.

“Wait! There’s too much pus inside—need to drain it first to reduce the pressure! Hand me an empty syringe!”

Passing the scalpel back to the instrument nurse, Zhou Can took the syringe and tapped straight into the abscess.

Director Le stood by as first assistant.

He helped suction out the pus.

“Man, this is a classic ‘the bun’s got more filling than it looks!’ Judging from the outside, you’d think there wouldn’t be much, but it just keeps coming.”

Director Le exclaimed in surprise.

“Good thing Zhou Can caught the problem ahead of time. Otherwise, once we cut into the muscle, the pus would spill out and contaminate the incision.”

Director Xueyan felt a chill at the thought.

Pus contaminating the incision greatly ups the infection risk.

That’s a huge taboo during cardiothoracic operations.

“Director Le, is it almost done?”

Zhou Can kept a close eye on the lesion, gently pressing the area. He figured they were nearly finished.

“Give it a bit more. There’s so much pus—let’s get it all out; it’ll lower the chance of contamination.”

After some effort, Director Le finally drained the last of it.

“All done. You can move on now.”

Zhou Can motioned for Director Le to pull out the needle, then called out over his shoulder to the instrument nurse, “Hemostatic forceps!”

The instrument nurse had a good bit of OR experience herself, having helped with plenty of cardiothoracic surgeries.

She hesitated for a second at Zhou Can’s request. “You want hemostatic forceps?”

She just wanted to double-check with the lead surgeon.

In her mind, what was needed now was a scalpel—to keep cutting through skin and muscle over the lesion.

“That’s right!”

Zhou Can confirmed.

The Attending Nurse explained quietly to her, “Dr. Zhou’s going to blunt separate the muscle layers to enter the abscess cavity now.”

“Oh… I see! For a second, I thought I’d heard wrong. I mean, there wasn’t any obvious vessel injury, so why would we need forceps?” The instrument nurse couldn’t help but grin—she’d just learned something new.

The interns and nurses watching from below all tried to learn as much as they could, some hastily jotting down notes.

A few even tiptoed, hoping to get a clear look at Zhou Can’s technique.

For many nurses, interns, and trainees, this was their rare chance to observe surgery firsthand in the OR. That opportunity might never come again in their entire careers.

Picking up all these details now would definitely help their future work.

The instrument nurse admired not just the Attending Nurse’s expertise, but especially respected Dr. Zhou Can. He was about her age, maybe even a bit younger, yet he could already lead major operations.

Calm, poised, and full of grace.

The gap between people can be staggering.

Zhou Can didn’t have a second to spare for the nurse’s opinions. He took the hemostatic forceps and started bluntly separating the muscle layers at the lesion.

[Tissue Separation experience +1. Bonus: Tissue Separation experience +100.]

Using such a unique separation technique, Zhou Can got a pleasant little bonus.

A whole 100 experience points—a very nice haul.

Ever since his two medical skills reached level six, he’d noticed those needed a million points to upgrade again. So the 100,000 points needed for his level-five skills didn’t seem so daunting.

Especially in complicated surgeries, he often got 10 or 100 points at a time, which made progress feel much easier.

The largest reward he’d gotten in one go so far was…

Still, that sort of luck—getting a huge prize—is pretty rare.

Forget about a ten-thousand-point windfall; even a thousand-point reward was hard to come by.

Holding the forceps, he carefully teased apart about a centimeter of muscle until he broke through into the abscess cavity.

“Suction!”

This time, the instrument nurse didn’t hesitate—she swapped out the forceps for the suction right away.

Director Le could have done the drainage, but Zhou Can was hungry for more Debridement Technique experience, so he insisted on handling it himself.

He cleared the pus out of the abscess cavity—and as expected, 101 experience points in Debridement Technique popped up.

During surgery, he’d found Debridement Technique to be one of the easiest skills to rack up points in.

[Announcement irrelevant to the story removed.]

[Your Debridement Technique has reached level six!]

To his surprise, Debridement Technique upgraded at this crucial moment.

It became his third medical skill at attending physician level.

He could feel the perks of level-six Debridement Technique, a deep happiness welling up inside him.

Compared to level five, level six gave him an almost magical sense—like for this abscess and sinus debridement, he instantly knew exactly where to cut, how deep, and how wide—his brain mapped it out automatically.

Every blood vessel, nerve, and structure around the wound stood out crystal clear in his mind.

It felt like his brain had gained an extra feature—a high-precision scanner.

He could visualize the diseased tissue and all its surroundings almost as clearly as an MRI.

He could even estimate the direction and depth of the sinus tract pretty accurately.

Maybe, since he’d just reached level six and was still at a junior attending level, he couldn’t yet judge all the twists and turns of the tract.

With further advancement, he’d probably gain that ability.

Even so, right now it was already a terrific advantage.

“This Debridement Technique upgrade couldn’t have come at a better time! It’ll help me finish this operation flawlessly.”

With the pus fully drained from the cavity,

he switched to the scalpel, making a careful, steady incision through the muscle and abscess wall along the original opening.

Here, level-six Debridement Technique gave him enormous confidence.

Every cut was precise—he didn’t worry about removing too little, or slicing off the wrong way.

His hands moved as steadily as a machine.