Zhang Fan was really annoyed as he played Double Rise together with Kang Hua, Wang Qian, and Li Xiao. The three women constantly talked about beauty products and other similar topics, which really bored him.
Tang Jingjing and Li Xiao's assistant drank tea together outside the tea house's private room while Zhang Fan accompanied the three women inside for cards. Zhang Fan and Kang Hua were a team for this 2v2 card game. Even though they could have clearly won with their cards, they ended up losing. Zhang Fan immediately could tell that Kang Hua was intentionally losing on purpose, which made him even more bored with the card game. Li Xiao and Wang Qian often played together as teammates in the Double Rise card game. Meanwhile, Kang Hua was an expert card player with an especially powerful memory that allowed her to remember every single card that a player had or played. Zhang Fan was also pretty good at card games in general. Although Kang Hua was going easy on the other two women on purpose, she made it so that the card game appeared to be quite close.
Since this was Kang Hua and Li Xiao's first time meeting each other, Wang Qian had intended for this to first be an introduction without any detailed discussions. They played cards for a little more than three hours. If it weren't for the fact that Li Xiao's back hadn't recovered fully yet, it was likely that this card game would have lasted far longer. Before Kang Hua left, Li Xiao handed her a name card, and so Kang Hua was all smiles as she went together with Wang Qian for beauty treatments.
Old Huang Yun was retiring from his position as the superintendent at the end of the year. He was now an old doctor who had worked hard in the medical system for more than 30 years. Thus, everyone in the hospital was discussing who would become the new superintendent. Vice superintendent Ouyang Hong, who was also the director of internal medicine, had the most support within the hospital. She was a veteran doctor and a local. Her ancestors had come with General Tso's troops (of General Tso's Chicken fame) and settled down here in this border province. The other most likely candidate for superintendent was the other vice superintendent, Jiang Xingping—the director of general medicine. He had worked here in Chasu City for many years, and was acquainted with several high-ranking leaders.
The first snow arrived before Huang Yun's retirement. The Chasu City Communist Party Committee had learned their lesson from the previous year's major snowfall sealing off all the roads, causing the local smaller cities to lack proper medical care and medicine, and thus ordered all the bigger city hospitals to send some of their elite doctors to help the more rural areas in the winter.
Chasu City Hospital was thus filled with an aura of depression as nobody was willing to go to more rural locations. It was already inconvenient to return home for the holidays in the middle of winter, and if a major snowfall sealed the roads, it would be common to be trapped in the rural countryside for more than two weeks at a time. Nobody who had family was willing to go to a rural location. After the meetings on this topic, there were extremely few volunteers who signed up to go to rural locations. Huang Yun didn't worry about this, as he simply assigned this task to the director of each department, making the directors worry about it instead.
In orthopedic department #1, Xue Fei, Zhou Chengfu, and Cui Pingjun were all unwilling to go. Zhang Fan and Li Hongtu didn't really mind either way. Going to a rural location would definitely mean a temporarily reduced income, which was why nobody voluntarily wanted to go. Gao Shijun had a private discussion with each person individually, so Li Hongtu finally volunteered to go. Nobody else needed to make any arrangements—Zhang Fan, Li Hongtu, and Wang Yanan would go together as a team. No other volunteers were required from their department.
But, with them leaving for the time being, orthopedic department #1 no longer had enough members to cover all the shifts. Huang Yun used his superintendent authority for the final time, officially making all the medical specialist fresh graduate doctors who'd joined the hospital last year official doctors. This meant that Wang Yanan finally became an official member of orthopedic department #1. Huang Yun also added three additional people to orthopedic department #1. However, Zhang Fan didn't get to meet them at this time, because he had already gone to a smaller rural city.
Gao Shijun had chosen the people for this rural assignment, but Zhang Fan's team was allowed to choose where they wanted to go out of the four smaller cities around Chasu City. Li Hongtu didn't care, so he allowed Zhang Fan and Wang Yanan to decide. Zhang Fan chose to go back to Kuake City since he had been in Chasu City for half a year already without returning to visit there. He missed Kuake City.
He would need to tell Wang Qian that he was going back to Kuake City. He also needed to tell Li Xiao about it since he had already taken her money. Currently, Li Xiao had finished her first rehabilitative treatment program, but since her back pain was caused by the severe condition of a protruding lumbar vertebrae, she would require three successive rehabilitative treatment programs in total.
Zhang Fan decided to first call Wang Qian, but it turned out that she was currently together with Li Xiao.
"You're being reassigned to a rural city? It's fine, you don't need to go. I'll call your superintendent and tell him not to send you," Li Xiao stated.
Zhang Fan hurriedly stopped her. "Sister Li, I just started working here not long ago, and the list of names has already been decided. If you talk to the superintendent..." Zhang Fan left the rest unsaid. Actually, Zhang Fan was quite happy to go back to Kuake City because he wasn't allowed to perform anything but orthopedic surgeries at Chasu City Hospital.
"I see." Li Xiao understood what Zhang Fan meant. In order to thrive at a workplace, you would have to give face to your boss. Having someone ask for a reassignment after the assignment was already decided would make the boss feel like you truly didn't understand how society worked. Why wouldn't you ask your connections to help you earlier? Why ask only after the list was already decided and officially approved? Changing the members afterward would be a slap in the face to the boss. Li Xiao mulled things over, then asked, "Which city are you going to? How long will you be there for?"
"I'll be at Kuake City Hospital. I'll probably be there for about a month."
"That's not very far from Chasu City. Let's do this. I'll have my personal driver go pick you up every day, and then bring you back after the treatment. Will that work for you?"
"There's an easier way. Just loan a car to Zhang Fan. He can drive over at noon and drive back in the afternoon after treating you. Besides, your business is slower in the winter, and there's not that many patients at the much smaller Kuake City Hospital. Moreover, Kang Hua is also the head of the Bureau of Culture, Education, and Health there." Wang Qian immediately offered a different suggestion.
Li Xiao glanced at Wang Qian before speaking to Zhang Fan again. "That works as well, although Doctor Zhang might find it slightly tiring."
Zhang Fan hurriedly waved his hand. "It's no trouble at all. I happen to love driving, so I'll treat it as having fun with my hobby." Zhang Fan would be quite bored if a driver came to pick him up and drive him between the two cities every day. He was far happier driving himself.
"Okay, then. What type of car would Doctor Zhang like to drive? I have several different company cars you can use in the garage. Will a Mercedes Benz be alright?"
Even though Zhang Fan knew almost nothing about cars, he had heard of Mercedes Benz before as this car brand was far too famous. Thus, he instantly shook his head. "That won't be necessary, an ordinary car will be good enough."
"An SUV will be fine. It would be bad if others saw Zhang Fan driving a Mercedes Benz. The roads are slippery in winter, so driving an SUV would be safer too. What was the name of that car you were driving before?" Wang Qian was quite familiar with Li Xiao, so she didn't act reserved around her friend.
"That was a Toyota Cruiser Prado which belonged to a medical equipment merchant in Kuake City," Zhang Fan hurriedly explained. He didn't want Li Xiao to think that he already had a car but still wanted to borrow one.
Li Xiao stood up and stretched her back. She then spoke to her secretary, saying, "Do we have any Toyotas in our garage?"
Her secretary came over, and answered, "We don't have any Toyotas."
"What SUVs do we have in the garage?"
"We have a Jeep Grand Cherokee that's 90% new. Less than 500 kilometers on the odometer. The Qinghua company gave it to us in lieu of money payment."
Li Xiao then turned to talk to Zhang Fan. "Doctor Zhang, will a Jeep Grand Cherokee be alright with you?"
"Sure, I'm happy as long as I have a car to drive."
"Then I'll be troubling you to come visit me from Kuake City."
On the next day, Chasu City Hospital sent out four teams of doctors to the four neighboring smaller cities to support them. The team going to Kuake City consisted of Zhang Fan's three-person team from the surgical department, two attending physicians from internal medicine, one pulmonologist, and one cardiologist. All of the smaller city hospitals sent cars over to pick the doctors up. Wang Hongmei from Kuake City Hospital's administrative office and the ambulance driver Old Zhou came to pick up the five doctors.
Zhang Fan was astonished to see that Wang Yanan was bringing two large suitcases. "What are you doing, moving?" Zhang Fan only brought a few changes of clothes and a set of toiletries.
"None of your business. You're not even going to help me out? I can hardly carry them anymore." Wang Yanan put down her suitcases. She truly wasn't able to carry them anymore. Zhang Fan had already placed Li Hongtu's bag in his borrowed Jeep Grand Cherokee. This SUV had more than enough space for Wang Yanan's two large suitcases to fit in the back.
Wang Yanan saw that Zhang Fan placed her suitcases in the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee, so she dashed over to Zhang Fan's side to comment, "As expected of your skills. Even the car you drive is at higher level. Everyone else has to ride in ambulances to their rural assignments, but only you have so much face." After more than half a year of working in surgery, the originally icy Wang Yanan had become far friendlier and more open.
Wang Hongmei was especially polite to Zhang Fan, for Zou Pingshan had especially told her to treat Zhang Fan well. She wasn't surprised even in the slightest that Zhang Fan was driving his own, better car to Kuake City. Back in Kuake City, everyone knew that Zhang Fan had been driving around a Toyota Cruiser Prado. Since two ambulances had already been brought over to take the doctors to Kuake City, Zhang Fan didn't want to take anyone else with him so that he could enjoy driving. He decided to explain things to Li Hongtu and simply drive to Kuake City by himself.
When Wang Yanan learned that Zhang Fan had driven off by himself, her mouth opened so wide that an egg could be inserted in it. "That bastard is so selfish. He drove off by himself?"
"He has some personal business to take care of, so we'll be leaving first, and he'll arrive afterward." This was Li Hongtu's excuse for the two internal medicine doctors so that they wouldn't think that Zhang Fan was too arrogant.
Personal cars were still relatively few in Chasu City of 2009, but starting from an unknown time, it seemed like everyone started buying personal cars. Traffic jams thus became far more commonplace!