Chapter 262: Spring sandstorm

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Kurisu

A patient’s hospital discharge or death would always lead to much paperwork, especially the necessary discussion regarding the patient’s death. However, this patient was rather unique. There wasn’t really anything much to discuss. Only a few short sentences were mentioned regarding the AIDS patient before this entire matter was considered over. This patient and his affairs would be slowly forgotten. Hopefully, the world after death didn’t have HIV or any fatal diseases!

In March, the local area seemed as if the entire world had changed. The temperature and humidity rapidly increased. Small rain showers suddenly arrived and irrigated everything. The tall mountains in the distance even started to appear rather green due to vegetation. Chasu City was located in marsh land among the Tianshan Mountains. This entire border province was a place where water and vegetation were abundant.

In one of the villages under Chasu City’s jurisdiction, there was a mountain valley which was surrounded by many hot springs. The temperature in this area was slightly higher than everywhere else. Every March, wild peach blossoms would always start blooming here. Many people who had stayed home during all of winter would come here to view these early blooming peach blossoms. The peach blossoms here were probably the earliest bloomers in all of northwest China. Chinese people really should be grateful to Zuo Zongtang! They should be grateful to the countless soldiers from Hunan who died here! Without Zuo Zongtang and his army, this green pearl in the barren northwestern part of China probably wouldn’t have been part of China!

Zhang Fan finished his rotation in the infectious diseases department. Even though the infectious diseases department really lacked personnel, Superintendent Ouyang would never let Zhang Fan get permanently assigned here. However, the infectious diseases department still needed more personnel! Thus, Tong Lili was permanently assigned to the infectious diseases department by the hospital administration director! Her eyes were really red from crying when she heard this news!

Tong Lili was the rotation doctor who had previously wanted to give up on surgery after she saw firsthand how hard it was in Zhang Fan’s hospital.

“What’s the matter? You’re crying so much!” Zhang Fan asked out of concern when he saw her.

“I’ve been permanently assigned to the infectious diseases department!” Tong Lili had her head lowered. Her voice was really low and raspy. She had lost hope for her future.

“Oh!” Zhang Fan was completely unable to console her. What was he even supposed to say? “Work your hardest?” That would be impossible to say. Everyone in the hospital knew that the infectious diseases department was the worst department to be assigned to. He could only pat Tong Lili on the shoulder and keep walking past her.

Was Tong Lili unwilling to accept her fate? Of course she was. If she didn’t want to stay in the infectious diseases department, there were only two options left for her. She could either get a master’s degree, or get married to someone powerful. There was no other road left to her if she wanted to stay at Chasu City Hospital. Everyone had the right to choose their own path in life. There was nothing wrong with that. However, who would willingly go to work in the infectious diseases department? Only the heavens would know!

All rotation doctors would need to go and report to the hospital administration department after their current rotation was finished so that they could be assigned to their next department. However, Zhang Fan’s status was rather special. A staff member of the hospital administration department came quite early to discuss Zhang Fan’s next department assignment with him due to the hospital administration director’s command.

“Doctor Zhang, do you need to rest for a few days?” The staff members in the hospital administration department weren’t clinical doctors. They had graduated with degrees in either public health or preventive medicine. Although these staff members hadn’t joined the government, anyone who was capable of joining the best hospital in the area would still have a certain degree of ability.

“Sorry to trouble you. If you don’t lack personnel, then I’ll take a few days off to rest,” Zhang Fan told the staff member politely.

“Sure. How about you join the rheumatology department next week?” the staff member asked Zhang Fan. The staff member really was asking if Zhang Fan wanted to or not. This wasn’t treatment that any other rotation doctor would receive.

“Sure! Thanks then!”

“No problem!”

Zhang Fan wasn’t actually so tired that he wanted to rest. Work in the infectious diseases department wasn’t challenging at all. It was that he needed to start renovating his new apartment that the hospital gave him. After he finished renovating this apartment, his parents would be able to come to the border province earlier. He also needed a place to live after getting married to Shao Hua!

Last time, when Zhang Fan was renovating his own apartment, he had done one renovation at a time whenever he had the money. Now, his income was much better, so he directly took Shao Hua with him to find someone to take care of all the renovations. Previously, Zhang Fan had just randomly picked renovations on his own. After the renovations were done, the apartment was just a simple residence, without even a design style.

Zhang Fan intended to continue renovating his new apartment quite simply. This wasn’t a matter of money. It was that most Chinese construction materials these days were mass-produced using too many chemicals which were bad for health. That was why Zhang Fan wanted to keep things as simple as possible when renovating!

Jobs were all the same, as were levels. That was how things went in theory, but in reality, especially in smaller cities, things quite often didn’t actually work this way. The larger the city, the more fair many things would be, but the smaller the city, the more that connections would really matter!

For ordinary farmers, it would be likely that the previous eight generations of the family would all have been farmers or ordinary workers. If a farmer wanted to get treated for an illness, it really would be quite simple. They would go to the hospital, get diagnosed, and simply get treated by whatever random doctor was assigned to treat them.

People who had some slightly more influence would use connections to find a relatively more famous doctor. Those who didn’t have influence, but instead had money, would use a similar method. If a person had a lot of money, then they would have their own methods of getting treatment which were different from a poor person’s method of getting treatment.

Honestly, Chinese people really should be grateful for the Chinese government’s great support and management of its medical system. No matter who the patient on the operating table was, the doctor had to take responsibility to the end. There wouldn’t be a difference in treatment based on who was richer or poorer. In any surgical department, if the required surgery was a more difficult one, an expert doctor in the department would be the primary surgeon. Acting ridiculously would be impossible because of the law.

However, if you wanted to choose a specific doctor from a specific hospital to perform surgery on you, that would require you to have connections or money. If you didn’t have either, then you would only be able to let the medical system take care of you on its own.

Hiking was an activity that had only recently started gaining popularity in China. Most ordinary people would at most maybe find a small forest to walk through around their city.

However, a certain group of people in China found it fun to conquer various dangerous mountain peaks and barren deserts for fun. Although the people in this group weren’t professional hikers, hiking suddenly became immensely popular in this social circle. That was because a super business owner from Hong Kong had started this hiking group.

Normally, it would be quite difficult to establish a connection with someone like a super-rich business owner. You would only be able to get a connection by sharing a hobby. So, in this hiking group, even a rich business owner who was worth tens of millions of yuan would be nothing more than an ordinary member! No matter if the hiking group members truly loved hiking or not, they would always pay the membership fee every year.

Near Chasu City’s snowy mountains was a rather complex primeval forest. This forest’s environment was complex because it contained cliffs, lakes, rivers, and swampland. However, it didn’t have any large carnivores. There also weren’t any special venomous snakes, as Chasu City wasn’t a tropical area. Over time, a certain business owner in the border province discovered this to be an excellent place for hiking.

This business owner then contacted others and organized a group of rich hikers to come over for adventuring. Since these hikers were rich as well as non-professional, the business owner had chosen a place for adventuring that looked rather dangerous but was actually relatively safe.

Since these rich people wanted to hike, it also meant that they didn’t want to be bothered by others. So, apart from hiring a few locals as guides, they ventured into the forest with only the people they came with.

The planned hiking route through the forest was a bit more than 10 kilometers. The hiking route would also go over rivers, over mountains, and through the wilderness. Only rich people with lots of energy would enjoy such a hobby. Ordinary people wouldn’t choose this as a method of having fun even if they were paid… if the pay was insufficient.

No matter how you looked at it, city dwellers were weaklings compared to the wilderness. The really powerful Hong Kong business owner, who was in his mid-40s, the prime of his life, needed to go to the bathroom, so he left the hiking path that the guides had blazed.

Right when he walked over to a large tree, he suddenly fell into a deep pit! This large pit had likely been dug by poachers trying to hunt wild deer. Unluckily for the business owner, this pit also had sharp wooden stakes, one of which pierced him right through the anus! In a way, the business owner was also quite lucky as he probably wouldn’t have survived if he had fallen into the pit stomach-first!

“AAAAH!!!” The businessman’s scream of pain sent a flock of birds flying in fear! The businessman’s subordinates were quite skillful. They immediately went down and rescued him, cutting off the wooden stakes and carrying the rich man on a simple makeshift stretcher as they ran out of the forest.

This location was close to China’s border and far away from any major city. Even a rich man like this businessman wouldn’t be able to do anything with money here. They could only leave the forest using the most primitive method: running. Some of the businessman’s subordinates had basic medical knowledge, and knew that it would be dangerous to just pull out the wooden stake. Originally, they wanted to help bandage the businessman’s injuries, but when they saw that the injured location was rather special, bandages wouldn’t be required!

These people really did have good hiking equipment. They were wearing highly durable clothing which shouldn’t have been easily penetrated. However, due to the pull of gravity and how the businessman’s body had reflexively tensed up during the fall, a wooden stake coincidentally managed to penetrate through his pants and directly into his anus. Luckily, the hiking pants really were of high quality and durability, which helped to cancel out a large portion of the impact. Otherwise, the businessman still would have instantly died.

The border province business owner who had organized this hike really felt like he wanted to die. He had caused the most powerful businessman in the hiking group to become like this. Even though the border province businessman was also worth several tens of millions of yuan, he ran as fast as a marathon sprinter together with the makeshift stretcher, to the point where his face became red! His face was so pale that it almost seemed as if he was the one who was constantly bleeding.

The local businessman first contacted a medical expert in Raptor City. The closest major city to this forest was Raptor City, which was still a whopping 800 kilometers away.

“Immediately take him to the local hospital,” the medical expert recommended.

“Can we instead transport him to Raptor City by helicopter?” the local businessman asked.

“That will probably be too difficult. It’s likely that the patient has major bleeding. You should first take him to Chasu City Hospital.”

The roads in this area weren’t paved. The SUVs that the hiking group came in should have been able to drive super fast on these dirt roads, but they didn’t dare to drive too fast with the Hong Kong businessman’s condition.

The local businessman from the border province, as well as the Hong Kong businessman’s subordinates, started using every connection that they possibly could. If this powerful Hong Kong businessman died such a random death here, they would all be in serious trouble.

They contacted Chasu City Hospital as well as experts in Raptor City.

At this moment in spring, the sandstorms of the border province also arrived on schedule.

The majority of locations in northwestern China would always be colored dirt-yellow in spring. Raptor City was no exception. Today, Raptor City was dark yellow. There was a tremendous sandstorm, reaching the extent where it seemed like dirt was raining from the sky. All planes were grounded!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep