After Yan Feifan started working at the Affiliated Hospital, he set a principle for himself.

If someone, knowing full well it would put him in a difficult position, still insisted on forcing him to help, then he should reject them outright.

There was simply no need to inconvenience himself just to please others.

As a doctor, sometimes you had to be a little impersonal.

Otherwise, he could easily get trapped in an endless cycle of such requests, unable to escape and seriously impacting his work and life.

“Mr. Guo, I can’t help you this time.”

Yan Feifan rejected him clearly over the phone, explaining, “Your relative’s child doesn’t need a specialist for treatment…”

He had barely gotten the words out when the BEEP-BEEP of the disconnected call sounded from his phone.

Yan Feifan put away his phone, looked at Yu Suye beside him, and spread his hands. “There goes another contact,” he said helplessly.

Yu Suye chuckled lightly. “Don’t worry, Feifan. If they need something, they’ll come to you again without a second thought.”

“The concept of feeling embarrassed doesn’t exist for them.”

Yu Suye added with a smile, “There’s a saying that if you want a smooth and convenient life, you should make a point of befriending useful people, like doctors, police officers, teachers, lawyers, and so on.”

“Feifan, as a doctor—and a future famous one at that—the number of people who want to be your friend will only grow.”

Yan Feifan scoffed. “It’s better to have fewer of those kinds of utilitarian friends.”

“Let’s go…”

After leaving the hospital’s south gate together, the two went their separate ways home.

Yan Feifan returned to his apartment. Seeing that it was still early, he went to the kitchen and cooked himself a meat dish, a vegetable dish, and a bowl of noodles.

After finishing this proper dinner and cleaning up the dining room and kitchen, he returned to his bedroom and began simulating surgery in his mindscape to prepare for the next day…

Around ten o’clock at night, Yan Feifan received a video call from Tian Yu.

“Mr. Yan, Ruoruo is mad at you!”

The light was dim on Tian Yu’s end of the video. The faint glow of lights could be seen behind her, and the WHOOSH of the wind was audible.

She was clearly calling from outside the cabin of the boat.

“Why is she mad?”

Yan Feifan asked casually, then chided her, “It’s already ten o’clock. Why are you still outside?”

“From what I can hear, the wind on the river is pretty strong.”

The yacht Wang Chuan had rented for them was over thirty meters long and had three decks.

The yacht had a master suite, a secondary bedroom, and two guest rooms, as well as a large living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. It was fully equipped and quite luxuriously decorated.

During the day, Yan Feifan had seen the photos and short videos his sister and Xiaoyu had posted, so he knew they were having a great time.

“This wind isn’t cold at all.”

On the video call, Xiaoyu smoothed down her wind-tousled hair and said in a low voice, “Ruoruo is mad at you because you haven’t called.”

“Ruoruo says you don’t care about us at all.”

Yan Feifan couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “You guys didn’t call me either, did you?”

Tian Yu pouted and argued, “But we’ve been posting pictures and videos the whole time.”

“You already know what’s going on with us, so we don’t need to call and explain everything.”

Frustrated, Yan Feifan said, “You guys always have a way to be right.”

“Xiaoyu, give the phone to my sister. I want to say a few things to her.”

“Okay, Mr. Yan, hold on!”

The screen shook, then the light grew brighter, and his sister appeared in the video, dressed in pajamas.

She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking down at her phone.

“Ruoruo, Mr. Yan is video calling.”

Hearing Xiaoyu say that, Yan Feifan quickly called out, “Sis…”

The phone screen trembled again, and suddenly his sister’s face filled half the screen.

“Finally remembered you have a sister?”

Hearing the sarcastic tone in his sister’s voice, Yan Feifan knew she was genuinely angry.

“Sis, you know I’ve been busy these past few days. I have an eight-hour surgery waiting for me tomorrow.”

Yan Ziruo scoffed. “No matter how busy you are, you always have time to make a single phone call.”

Yan Feifan gave a sheepish laugh and changed the subject. “Sis, I saw a lot of your selfies. You had fun today, right?”

On screen, Yan Ziruo shot him a glare, but then a smile appeared on her face. “It was alright. It was mainly the novelty.”

“Feeling the river breeze, looking at the scenery on both banks, watching the big ships pass by… It was a pretty nice feeling.”

The two chatted briefly before Yan Ziruo told Yan Feifan to get some rest and hung up the phone.

Yan Feifan placed his phone on the nightstand. After a moment’s thought, he turned it off completely, cleared his mind, and went to sleep…

An unknown amount of time passed. In a daze, Yan Feifan thought he heard someone knocking on the door…

His consciousness cleared slightly, and he tried to focus.

KNOCK… KNOCK…

There really was someone at the door.

Yan Feifan rolled out of bed, threw on a jacket, got up, slipped on his slippers, and strode out of the bedroom. He crossed the living room and opened the front door.

Standing outside was a petite woman in her pajamas.

She looked to be in her thirties or forties, her face pale and etched with a mixture of anxiety and forbearance.

Yan Feifan recognized her.

She was his downstairs neighbor, the wife of the man with the slicked-back hair—Xia Yan, the one with hyperacusis.

The woman rarely left her apartment.

Yan Feifan had only seen her once while leaving for work in the morning, walking with the man with the slicked-back hair, bundled up tightly against the world.

If it weren’t for his good memory, he truly wouldn’t have recognized her.

Speaking of which, after the man with the slicked-back hair had come to their door with his unreasonable request and been rejected, he hadn’t shown up again to ask them to be quiet.

Of course, ever since they learned they had a neighbor with hyperacusis downstairs, Yan Feifan and his sister had tried to be as considerate as possible in their daily lives.

Having been woken up just as he was falling asleep, Yan Feifan was very annoyed.

“I was already asleep! I wasn’t making any noise!”

“No, no…”

The petite Xia Yan waved her hands frantically, pleading in a fluster, “My husband’s stomach hurts terribly, he’s writhing in pain! You’re a doctor, please help us.”

Hearing this, Yan Feifan said urgently, “Wait here!”

He ran back to his bedroom, grabbed his first-aid kit, and ran back out, following Xia Yan down the stairs to the floor below.

As soon as he stepped into their home, Yan Feifan felt the difference.

The floor was extremely soft underfoot; the carpet was unusually thick.

Yan Feifan followed Xia Yan and hurried to the bedroom.

He saw the man with the slicked-back hair clutching his lower abdomen, curled up on the bed like a cooked shrimp, letting out muffled groans.

His face was ashen and covered in sweat, soaking his hair.

Seeing his condition, the location of his hands, and the lack of diarrhea, Yan Feifan’s initial assessment included several possibilities: acute appendicitis, intestinal obstruction, acute pancreatitis, or an abdominal arterial embolism.

However, none of these were conditions he could resolve on the spot.

“Did you call for an ambulance?”

“N-no…”

Xia Yan had just gotten the words out when she burst into tears. “I don’t know what to do!”

“He does everything… I’m so useless, so useless…”

Given the situation, Yan Feifan had no time to comfort the woman. He asked urgently, “Where’s the phone?”

“The phone… It’s, it’s…”

Xia Yan froze for a moment, then ran out of the bedroom. She quickly returned with a cell phone in her hand.

Yan Feifan took it and saw it wasn’t even on.

As he turned it on, he performed a quick examination of the man with the slicked-back hair and found that his consciousness was already fading.

“Can you drive?”

Xia Yan quickly shook her head.

Yan Feifan had Xia Yan unlock the phone, but instead of calling for an ambulance first, he called property management.

“Unit 601, Building 9, there’s a patient with an acute abdominal condition who needs to be taken to the hospital urgently. Please arrange for a car to come downstairs.”

“As fast as you can!”

After getting a positive response, Yan Feifan said to Xia Yan, “Come on, let’s help your husband downstairs and get him to the hospital!”

Xia Yan nodded hastily. “Okay, okay, I’ll listen to you…”

Together, Yan Feifan and Xia Yan supported the man, who was not light, on either side, half-carrying him out of the room and into the elevator.

As the elevator descended, Yan Feifan noticed Xia Yan’s face was filled with worry and fear. He comforted her, “Abdominal pain isn’t usually life-threatening. He’ll be fine.”

Xia Yan nodded vigorously, reached out to wipe the sweat from her nearly unconscious husband’s brow, and said, “You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine…”

She kept repeating it. Yan Feifan felt she was saying the words more for her own sake.

The elevator doors opened, and to Yan Feifan’s relief, two able-bodied property management employees were already waiting outside.

With their help, the man with the slicked-back hair was loaded into the sedan parked in front of the building.

Yan Feifan had originally planned to leave the rest to property management.

However, seeing Xia Yan in the back seat, clutching her husband’s arm tightly with a face full of fear and worry, his heart softened, and he got into the car as well…

Ten minutes later, the man with the slicked-back hair was admitted to the Affiliated Hospital’s emergency department.

Through Yan Feifan’s arrangements, he was taken over by Mr. Ya, the deputy chief physician on night duty…

As he watched the man get taken for an abdominal CT scan, Yan Feifan suddenly realized Xia Yan was gone.

He scanned the area and found her squatting in a corner, clutching her head.

Yan Feifan realized that the crowded, noisy emergency room, filled with the sounds of various monitoring machines, must be unbearable torment for Xia Yan.

He found a nurse and borrowed a pair of noise-canceling headphones, then walked over to Xia Yan. “Ms. Xia, please put these on.”

Xia Yan looked up and saw it was Yan Feifan. She stood, took the headphones, and put them on. The strained expression of forbearance on her face eased slightly.

“Thank you!”

Yan Feifan replied politely, “We’re neighbors. A close neighbor is better than a distant relative. It’s what I should do.”

Xia Yan looked toward the CT scan room and whispered self-reproachfully, “He’s always taken such good care of me, protected me so well.”

“Now that something’s happened to him, I’m acting like a complete fool, unable to do anything.”

Yan Feifan thought for a moment and comforted her, “You didn’t do nothing. You came upstairs, knocked on my door, and found me.”

Xia Yan gave a bitter smile…

The man’s diagnostic results came back quickly: mesenteric artery embolism. His blood work also showed an elevated white blood cell count, indicating a risk of intestinal necrosis.

The situation was extremely urgent. Without immediate surgery, it could lead to widespread necrosis of the small intestine.

The emergency department immediately scheduled an operating room to perform an interventional thrombectomy and thrombolysis on the man’s superior mesenteric artery…

P.S.

I had an urgent matter to attend to, so there’s only one update this morning.

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep