Chapter 610: Choices and Farewells

“Class Monitor, you’re so beautiful and charming—who wouldn’t be drawn to you? I wouldn’t avoid you on purpose! I’ve just been swamped lately, so I haven’t had the time to focus on anything else. If I’ve neglected you at all, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Zhou Can put on a friendly smile as he explained.

That’s just how adults talk—everyone knows the truth, but you still have to deny it with a straight face.

Zhou Can’s wedding date with Su Qianqian was settled. How could he possibly flirt around or get tangled up with Yang Chan now?

Besides, trusting a man’s intuition, he was almost certain Yang Chan’s gaze toward him wasn’t quite normal.

Back then, that reporter Mu Qing looked at Zhou Can the same way, her eyes full of heat and admiration.

Sure enough, she ended up interested in Zhou Can, just as he’d expected.

In the end, it went so far that she had to move abroad.

Those deep lessons stuck with Zhou Can—he’d never hurt another woman again. Whether it was Qiao Yu or Yang Chan, he made his refusal clear from the start. He left no room for wishful thinking.

As for once pursuing Yang Chan, that was ancient history, back when he was young and clueless.

When he first entered college, naive as he was, he’d been absolutely dazzled by Yang Chan’s youthful energy and beauty. He did chase her for a while.

But after graduation, as his skills, status, and finances all took off—and after he met the love of his life, Su Qianqian—he’d put any thoughts of other women to rest.

“Hmph, don’t use being busy as an excuse.”

Yang Chan let out a cold snort, but her expression softened quite a bit.

“I watched your OB/GYN surgery earlier. Honestly, you were a bit sloppy and still lack skill in some areas. If you want to improve, you can always come to me. The hospital’s already planning to add you to the Elite Doctor’s Hall, and from what my mentor says, they want you to become Tuyu Hospital’s very first chief-level general practitioner.”

Some of those big decisions up top were still out of Zhou Can’s reach.

After all, he hadn’t made it that far yet.

Still, now that he was deputy chief of the Emergency Department, he was clearly getting access to a lot more of the hospital’s inner workings.

After seeing off Yang Chan and Director Zhao, Zhou Can was still mulling things over: at most, he’d thought he’d get promoted to attending physician—how was he already being considered for the Elite Doctor’s Hall?

Normally, to get your profile posted on the wall of famous doctors, you had to be at least an associate chief physician.

He was short in both seniority and title.

His papers had gotten some traction, sure—a few were selected by top international SCI journals and core medical journals in China.

For instance, his research on radical surgery for late-stage stomach cancer had gotten rave reviews from peers.

That paper made him a key figure in the field of gastric cancer.

Hospitals and organizations often invited him for lectures and trainings, but he politely turned them down.

Within the province, if medical institutions or health authorities asked him to speak, he’d gladly say yes if his schedule allowed. Out-of-province events were tough, though.

He was simply too busy.

Even taking three days off to go visit Su Qianqian’s family for the engagement was a huge ordeal.

He worked nonstop on surgeries, joined every rare and complicated case, and took shifts, always chasing the highest level of medical excellence. With all that effort, his surgical skills—especially suturing and anastomosis—were nearing mid-level chief physician standards.

His ligature technique, though, wasn’t catching up as fast, mostly since it’s used less often, and he rarely had the chance to earn those big one-thousand-point experience boosts. He was still a long way from a chief’s mid-level there.

So, Zhou Can had purposely started practicing ligature during different surgeries.

Still, the growth in ligature was lagging behind suturing and anastomosis.

On the bright side, his pathology diagnosis skills were improving at lightning speed, now almost at mid-level chief standard. For a skill that’s notoriously hard to improve, it might even be the first one he pushes through to that level.

That’s probably thanks to the tough cases he diagnoses every day.

In terms of his clinical ability, he was already qualified for the Elite Doctor’s Hall—especially his diagnostic and major surgical skills, which were on par with those renowned doctors.

But there’s a weird phenomenon in China’s medical field called the ‘Four-Only Standard.’

Publication, degree, awards, and ‘hats’—these are the four metrics for evaluating doctors’ titles.

The state was trying to break this ‘Four-Only Standard,’ but some habits die hard. It wouldn’t change overnight. It’ll take time.

Tuyu Hospital aiming to fast-track Zhou Can into the Elite Doctor’s Hall was probably a move to lead the charge against this old standard.

After all, it was the way things were headed.

Honestly, unless the ‘Four-Only Standard’ was broken, it did no one any real favors.

Just think—if you ask one of those professors or experts, covered in academic glory, to treat a patient, they might be brilliant with research but barely touched a scalpel. Even their suturing skills might lag behind interns.

Some even have to sneak off with a clinical manual to figure out tough cases.

Meanwhile, truly gifted doctors who actually heal people get stuck in place because their degree isn’t high enough, or they lack academic papers and awards. With no hope for promotion or pay raises, many eventually quit medicine in despair.

Hospitals, especially the major ones, run like a one-in-one-out system.

When a skilled doctor leaves, someone new always fills the shoes.

But if that someone is just a high-achieving academic with no real ability to heal, the result is higher medical costs and possibly worse outcomes.

For patients, that’s a downright disaster.

Getting sick is already hard enough. If you end up with a doctor who’s all about research, you get flooded with tests, overloaded with meds, and never see any real improvement. No one wants that kind of tragedy.

That’s why breaking the ‘Four-Only Standard’ is so urgent.

So many great doctors have been driven out by bureaucracy and even logistics staff. It’s not rare—it’s actually quite common.

This should set off plenty of alarm bells.

Truth is, even if a doctor leaves medicine, they won’t starve.

But if patients lose doctors who can truly heal, survival gets a lot tougher.

Once Zhou Can sorted all that out in his head, he felt a lot less uneasy.

Joining the Elite Doctor’s Hall would be a huge opportunity.

All he had to do was keep working on improving his skills.

That’s what he’d been doing all along, but it’s just that reaching chief physician levels takes a mountain of experience, making progress slower than before.

That’s normal, though—almost every top chief physician is in their fifties or sixties.

Those under forty who make it are usually there thanks to fancy degrees, lots of papers, or tons of research—but their actual clinical skills? Huge question mark.

Now that the woman with the serious intraoperative bleeding was stable, Zhou Can headed back to finish his own surgery.

By lunchtime, he took a moment to visit the little boy with high-level spinal paralysis in the ward.

He still lay helplessly on the hospital bed, limp and unable to move his arms or legs.

Nothing below his neck would budge.

He couldn’t even turn his head.

But at least he could open and close his eyes and barely move his mouth, though no sound came out.

He could handle liquid food, at least.

But kids in this condition have to watch out for choking.

It’s far too easy for asphyxiation to turn deadly.

“Jiang Wei, what do you think of this kid’s condition?”

Whenever Zhou Can was diagnosing tricky cases or making rounds these days, he brought Jiang Wei along.

She was more than happy to have Zhou Can’s trust.

Rounding or handling tough diagnoses with Zhou Can had taken her nursing skills to another level.

Lately, Qiao Yu had been busy prepping to go study abroad.

Word was, everything was about set—she was just waiting for that overseas university to send the offer.

Of course, studying abroad is more than just getting a letter of acceptance—finances are another huge headache. Everyone knows 7 RMB is about 1 US dollar.

No matter which developed country you pick, life isn’t cheap.

Even if you only need twenty grand a year, that’s over 140,000 RMB when you convert it—and that’s just tuition.

Actually, $2,000 a month is considered low wage over there.

Entry-level supermarket clerks or restaurant staff make about that much.

Some states charge over $40,000 a year—three years of study means you’re shelling out at least $120,000.

If you’re paying your own way, you might get slapped with a sponsorship fee too. Three years abroad basically costs no less than two million RMB.

Right now, Qiao Yu was making two to three thousand a month.

That’s high for an ordinary nurse; she benefited from Zhou Can’s connections to earn that much.

Truth be told, when it comes to instrument nurses, Zhou Can still preferred having her by his side.

Neither Jiang Wei nor Ma Xiaolan reached that perfect level of teamwork he had with Qiao Yu.

Ma Xiaolan even messed up sometimes packing the surgical instruments.

She’d often leave the sets incomplete.

Qiao Yu was especially reliable and detail-oriented. More than that, she and Zhou Can always seemed in perfect sync in surgery. Their teamwork was pretty much flawless.

Jiang Wei took a close look at the boy and checked his test results, then shook her head.

“This looks like a classic case of high-level spinal paralysis. His cervical spine is probably badly damaged. Even abroad, this is nearly impossible to cure.”

She’d studied and worked at medical centers overseas and had plenty of clinical nursing experience there.

Truly worldly and experienced.

If she said it couldn’t be healed abroad, sending him would be pointless.

She’d once seen a malignant liver tumor patient—after the tumor spread to the bile duct, Jiang Wei judged there was no surgical hope.

Zhou Can had studied that case carefully at the time.

He’d thought that partial liver and full gallbladder removal, plus chemo and radiotherapy, might still bring good results.

But the patient, trusting that foreign technology was more advanced, picked overseas treatment in the end.

Overseas, the proposed treatment plan was nearly the same as Zhou Can’s.

Of course, the bills abroad were nowhere near what ordinary people could afford.

That patient was an entrepreneur and very wealthy.

He spent several million yuan but didn’t even make it five months.

He stayed nearly four months overseas, but as his condition worsened, he wanted to return home. With his final bit of strength, he came back to China.

Zhou Can still remembered the patient’s family, crying as they brought him into Tuyu Hospital.

The patient was nothing but skin and bones, stomach swollen like a drum, his voice faint like a mosquito’s.

Admitting him to Tuyu Hospital was just for palliative care at the end.

Both he and the family knew he didn’t have long left.

Not long after moving in, the patient fell into a coma. The family followed his wishes and gave up on resuscitation.

He passed away in the end.

That case made Zhou Can think far more highly of Jiang Wei’s ability to judge tough cases.

After that, every time she said something was near impossible to cure, she was right.

Those patients’ outcomes almost always turned out badly.

Now, with her not optimistic about this little boy’s prognosis, Zhou Can couldn’t help feeling heavy-hearted.

Still, he went ahead and ordered some further necessary tests for the child.

His mind kept spinning through possible causes and treatment options.

After work, Zhou Can decided to really dig into that boy’s case.

The family had come all the way from the Imperial Capital—he owed it to them to give his best.

“Can, I’d like to discuss something with you.”

Qiao Yu called out to him.

Most surgery team members called Zhou Can “Boss.” Qiao Yu used to address him as Dr. Zhou, but switched to ‘Director Zhou’ when he got promoted.

It felt too stiff to Zhou Can.

He and Qiao Yu had been close ever since their resident training days.

It was one thing for others to use his title out of respect, but it made him uncomfortable when Qiao Yu did it too.

So in the end, she started calling him ‘Can’ instead.

Plenty of other familiar nurses and young doctors at the hospital used the same nickname.

“You don’t even need to say it—I know. You’ve settled your plans to study abroad, haven’t you?”

Seeing the happiness on her face, Zhou Can guessed most of it.

She must have gotten that dream offer from a top overseas university.

“The admission letter arrived. I’m leaving next month—around the 12th—for three or four years of study. Thank you for always supporting me, nurturing me, and being there. Knowing you and working by your side has been the greatest blessing of my life. I’ll always remember it. You can go ahead and look for a new nurse to replace me.”

Qiao Yu was nothing if not sincere.

That was just her honest way of speaking.

If Zhou Can hadn’t started dating Su Qianqian, he might’ve seriously considered marrying her.

But fate has its own plans, sometimes turning things all upside down.

Life is full of imperfections, and things can never go exactly as we wish.

“Hey, are you telling me you’re not coming back for good? Is that what you’re saying?”

He stared into her eyes and asked.

“I’ll definitely return after my studies.” She brushed a strand of hair from her brow and gave a self-mocking little smile. “Honestly, you’ll probably laugh, but I grew up surrounded by patriotism. No matter how great life is abroad, I won’t get attached. I’ve always wanted to see the world and another big reason I’m going is Jiang Wei—seeing her knowledge and super-strong skills made me really admire her.”

Jiang Wei’s presence had definitely influenced Qiao Yu a lot.

She was already smart and driven. Falling behind just wasn’t her style.

“If you’re coming back, don’t make this sound like some final farewell. There’ll always be a place for you on my team. You know who’s the highest authority in the operating room?”

Zhou Can shot the question back at her.