August 23rd was a Monday.
It was also the day of Professor Deng Yong's surgery.
Professor Deng Yong had finished his rounds early and led his team into the operating room.
At the operating table, Professor Deng Yong stood confidently in the lead surgeon position. Associate Professor Xie Jinyuan was in the first assistant position, while Yuan Weihong and Qin Geluo took the second and third assistant positions respectively. Fang Ziye, as the attending physician, could only hover at the edge in the fourth assistant position.
He could only twist one retractor, looking at the side of Qin Geluo's ear, barely able to see much of the surgical field.
Below the operating table, Sun Shaoqing, a third-year PhD student, stood on the highest step stool, towering above the others like a crane among chickens. He was still on tiptoes, carefully observing the surgical procedure.
Next were Dr. Gu Yi and Li Yuanpei, who had the best views.
The two second-year master's students, Shu Lang and Gong Ziming, were squeezing through gaps, trying to look inside. They kept shifting positions, hoping to get better angles of the different operating fields.
Jie Han and Zhu Yunwei, the newbie master's students, along with Lan Tianluo, another newcomer, didn't even have a view. They now stood under the operating room timer panel, looking up at the shadowless lamp with eyes full of anticipation...
As the surgery was nearing its end, Professor Deng Yong glanced at the operating room timer panel: "Hey, that very pale one with thick eyebrows, stop blocking the timer."
Unable to remember Lan Tianluo's name, Deng Yong could only refer to him by his pale skin.
Lan Tianluo immediately ducked down, then plopped onto a stool, his face turning even paler!
"Today's surgery was quite fast. We'll be done in an hour and forty minutes. Little Yuan, our team is becoming more and more mature, huh?" Deng Yong said with a goofy expression.
Associate Professor Xie Jinyuan squinted his eyes, looking rather embarrassed. But he nodded and laughed along: "It's Professor Deng's technique that has become even more superb."
"Nonsense, for high-difficulty surgeries, there's no such thing as a solo performance."
"But speaking of improved skills, Sun Shaoqing, did you notice that our little Fang's suturing technique has somewhat improved?" Deng Yong asked.
"Why are you standing so high?"
Sun Shaoqing nodded and quickly stepped down from the step stool, stepping on his junior Gong Ziming's foot. Gong Ziming's eyes widened, but he didn't dare make a sound.
Sun Shaoqing retracted his foot: "Master, I wanted to see more of the surgery. My height isn't enough."
"Ziye can now suture tofu well. I saw it with my own eyes." Although Fang Ziye wasn't his own student, they were part of the same team.
"That's great. Let's see what tricks our little Fang, who's so good at suturing tofu, can pull off when he's not playing with tofu?" Deng Yong nodded at attending physician Qin Geluo, who was about to start suturing.
Qin Geluo immediately understood and swapped positions with Fang Ziye, moving back-to-back.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xie Jinyuan, as the team's second-in-command, let out a sigh of relief and tried to lighten the mood: "I guess he won't be able to draw blood or play with plasma[1]."
With the surgery quality assured and the serious atmosphere dissipating, it was time to relax and pick up the pace of banter.
Deng Yong, the controller of the team's banter speed, asked Xie Jinyuan: "Little Yuan, are you sure you're always just poking?"
Xie Jinyuan said with a straight face: "Well, it can also be water droplets on a food window..."[2]
The two senior experts played their wordplay game to the fullest, while Fang Ziye, with a slightly flushed face and reddened ears, began to suture steadily, focusing entirely on the task at hand.
After all, as everyone knows, food windows are never proper[3].
However, as Fang Ziye's suturing gradually closed the surgical incision, the group brought the topic back to seriousness. Professor Deng Yong said: "He's got a good grasp on controlling the force when suturing fat. The fat bubbles aren't rupturing and leaking. His skills have indeed improved."
"Later, we'll reward little Fang with another suturing opportunity, see if he's really that clever."
This was a rule within the group.
As long as there was improvement, they would test with one case, and then reward with an extra case, to see if it was just luck or if you truly had that level of skill.
Fang Ziye had just completed the second-to-last stitch of the skin suture. After tying the knot and holding up the suture for attending physician Qin Geluo to cut, he said, "Thank you, Professor Deng."
Professor Deng Yong and Associate Professor Xie Jinyuan had already left the operating table. They were now walking out of the operating room with their hands behind their backs, clearly quite satisfied with the quality of this high-difficulty surgery.
The others were somewhat envious of Fang Ziye's operating opportunity, but it was manageable.
The opportunity was right there, a kind of inheritance. It wasn't given to Fang Ziye because he was Fang Ziye, but because Fang Ziye's operating skills had improved. Everyone could strive for it; the senior PhD students had also enjoyed such preferential treatment before.
Even Gong Ziming, a second-year master's student, had been rewarded before when he managed to suture orange peel well.
Naturally, for the first-year master's students who had just joined the department, Fang Ziye's performance today was considered outstanding.
[Knowledge Points +3!]
After finishing the suture, Fang Ziye saw the value on the panel jump even more.
Fang Ziye was secretly shocked, but quickly realized.
Perhaps it was because the improvement in his suturing ability had reduced the occurrence of wound complications and scarring, thus increasing his contribution.
...
After two surgeries led by Professor Deng Yong, Fang Ziye's Knowledge Point balance had shot up to 8 points.
The suturing for the second surgery had a smaller incision, so he only got 2 points, but with the improvement in his suturing technique, Fang Ziye had gained 3 Knowledge Points from admitting new patients during his Sunday shift.
Thus, he now had 8 points.
But this wasn't the end.
There were still two more surgeries after this, with his teacher Yuan Weihong as the lead surgeon. What would that mean for him?
However, during Yuan Weihong's surgeries, to train the newly arrived junior Jie Han, Yuan Weihong actually handed over the suturing opportunities to him after seeing that Fang Ziye's suturing technique had matured.
Only in the last surgery did Yuan Weihong let Fang Ziye try cutting a small lesion and suturing, as a way of spreading the benefits evenly without showing too much favoritism.
By the end of the surgeries, 14 Knowledge Points, with 11 points of knowledge gain, was Fang Ziye's harvest for the day - quite substantial indeed.
...
After the surgery, Yuan Weihong said, "Let's go eat together later. I'll send you two the location."
Both Fang Ziye and Jie Han were delighted and didn't stand on ceremony: "Thank you, Master."
"I'm going to pick up your master's wife and my daughter..."
Fang Ziye and Jie Han first went back to the ward together. Although this surgery's patient was Jie Han's, Fang Ziye still wanted to carefully ponder over the post-operative orders for today's surgery patient.
Right after the surgery, to save time, Fang Ziye could only use a template and hadn't particularly analyzed the detailed pharmacological mechanisms.
This was just standardization, complying with guidelines, not considered a mistake, but not necessarily the best.
When there was time, he could slowly make corrections. This would not only improve his pharmacology-related knowledge, but also allow for more precise control of post-operative medication. He might even gain Knowledge Points - killing three birds with one stone!
"Senior, is this set of medical orders okay?" Jie Han asked after opening the medical orders.
Fang Ziye scanned it up and down, then nodded: "Jie Han, your level is fine. Just grasp the principles."
He wanted to meticulously refine the medical orders to improve his understanding of medication mechanisms and gain Knowledge Points.
But Jie Han didn't need to do such painstaking work. As long as there were no mistakes, there was no need to make everything perfect.
Even if there were flaws, that would be a problem with the guidelines. Guideline issues were for experts to consider revising, not for junior doctors. With that time, Jie Han could read more articles and look for ideas for papers to write - that was the right path.
Hearing this, Jie Han nodded and clicked to submit the medical orders, then said, "Senior, Li Yuanpei went to the intensive training camp for procedural practice."
Fang Ziye glanced sideways: "Oh, that's fine."
The pursuit of opportunities for doctoral studies was indeed a case of "the Eight Immortals crossing the sea, each showing their unique powers"[4]. As long as he didn't resort to reporting others or fabricating facts to distort and affect his competitors' normal performance, he had his own various abilities - these were his assets.
If Li Yuanpei had powerful connections, like relatives in the provincial committee or something, then Fang Ziye would accept his fate and pursue his doctoral studies at another institution. It wasn't a big deal.
Translation Notes:
[1] This is a play on words. "戳不出血" (chuo bu chu xue) means "can't poke out blood", and "玩不出浆" (wan bu chu jiang) means "can't play out plasma". It's a joke about Fang Ziye's suturing skills being so good that he won't cause bleeding.
[2] This is another play on words. "水滴食窗" (shui di shi chuang) sounds similar to "水到渠成" (shui dao qu cheng), an idiom meaning "when water flows, a channel is formed" - things will work out naturally.
[3] This is continuing the wordplay. "食物的窗户都不正经" (shi wu de chuang hu dou bu zheng jing) is a humorous way of saying that "food windows" (a made-up concept from the previous joke) are not proper or serious.
[4] This is a Chinese idiom meaning everyone displays their unique talents to achieve a goal.