Chapter 486: I Want to Stay in the Operating Theater

Ling Ran had always found it a rather pleasant thing to have people waiting for him outside the door to stop him in his tracks.

This was because every time it happened, he got to enjoy extra personal space. And within that personal space, even if he did things that would be unacceptable, others would choose to forgive him.

After all, he was stuck inside.

Since he was successfully stuck inside the operating theater, Ling Ran decided to do even more things that would be otherwise unacceptable.

“Good day, do you need help?” When Ling Ran, who was clad in scrubs, saw that an abdominoscopy was being carried out through the window, he immediately stepped on the sensor to open the door.

The chief surgeon who was standing on the patient’s left was a junior attending physician. His gaze was fixed on the screen which was around a foot and a half above the operating table. He shifted his gaze away from the screen for a moment to glance at the source of the voice and immediately froze when he saw Ling Ran. “Doctor… Doctor Ling?”

Ling Ran hummed and nodded. He glanced at the screen and said, “Are you performing a cholecystectomy?”

“Yes… It’s a cholecystectomy.” The junior attending physician’s voice trembled a little.

“Did you just get started?” Ling Ran smiled.

The junior attending physician did not feel like smiling at all. He put on a brave face and looked at Ling Ran. “Yes, I just got started.”

The resident doctor beside the junior attending physician criticized internally. ‘You saw everything when you were outside the door, didn’t you?”

At this moment, Ling Ran’s gaze had fallen upon the junior resident doctor. He said with a smile, “I’ll help with holding the endoscope.”

“I… I don’t want to trouble you…” The junior attending physician panicked. Even though he was almost ten years older than Ling Ran, in the hospital, age was just a number.

Ling Ran was becoming more and more influential in Yun Hua Hospital as the days went by.

Ling Ran did not hold any administrative position, and basically never appeared in any major staff meetings or occasions like weddings of colleagues where many of the medical staff of the hospital were gathered. He was not like Huo Congjun, who made a name for himself by forming relationships with other people through arguing with others, which was something that he had practiced hard. However, tales related to Ling Ran were brought up in almost every single occasion in the hospital.

In the beginning, people were only talking about how Ling Ran was extremely skilled in barehanded bleeding control even though he was only a medical intern. His good looks were also a topic of conversation. However, ever since Ling Ran became the chief surgeon for Liu Weichen’s Achilles tendon repair surgery, more and more local athletes, as well as their friends from overseas, had sought treatment from Ling Ran. Because of this, Ling Ran’s status in Yun Hua Hospital was greatly elevated.

Now that Ling Ran was frequently carrying out freelance surgeries and even led his own treatment group, everyone slowly started regarding him with reverence.

Doctors relied on their skills for confidence, and those who were qualified to carry out freelance surgeries had great confidence.

Why was Chief Physician Wang Haiyang from the Hand Surgery Department so concerned about the sum of money others were willing to pay him for a freelance surgery? This was because if a surgeon could charge 10,000 RMB for a freelance surgery, it meant that he was a very excellent surgeon, almost one of the top surgeons in the country, even. This was also the sum of money an attending physician from a top department should charge for a freelance surgery.

10,000 RMB for one surgery! For doctors, this was not just about the money. It was also about their status!

Right now, in China, if a surgeon was able to charge 13,000 RMB, 10 15,000 RMB for a freelance surgery, it meant that he was the cream of the crop. Only surgeons whose names had appeared in textbooks could charge this sum of money for freelance surgery.

Of course, for a surgeon to be able to use his freelance surgery fees as a status symbol, there must also be an endless demand for his services. Besides, those hiring him must also buy him business class flight tickets as well as pay his assistants appropriately. Last but not least, a surgeon would also be able to show his status if he could state how many freelance surgeries he wanted to carry out per trip.

But no matter what, a doctor like Ling Ran who frequently carried out freelance surgeries and could even carry out freelance surgeries as he liked since there was an endless demand for his services was definitely not a junior doctor anymore.

Theoretically, any hospital would be willing to establish a brand new department and make such a doctor the department director just so that he would stay.

Even Yun Hua Hospital would establish a Foot and Ankle Surgery Department just for Ling Ran if they were forced to.

Many hospitals had a Second Division of General Surgery Department and Third Division of General Surgery Department. Some even had a Second Division of Gastroenterology Department and Third Division of Gastroenterology Department. At the end of the day, they had to do this to contain the surgeons’ arrogance, self-esteem, and status.

If a doctor was good at buttering up to his superiors, he might become a chief physician. But a skilled doctor would definitely become a chief physician.

Of course, there were hospitals that would not try their best to keep surgeons who were qualified to charge 5,000 RMB for freelance surgery. But there would definitely be hospitals out there that were eyeing those surgeons.

Any surgeon would feel extremely exhausted just from being watched by a doctor like Ling Ran in the operating theater.

Take a person who was trying very hard to solve a math question as an example. What would the person feel if the math genius in the class were to stand behind her and watch her while eating a packet of chips after he wrapped up his revision for the day, took a dump and wiped his arse, showered and changed into fresh clothes…?

Anxious? Embarrassed? Suffocated?

Every single cell of the young attending physician from the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery was screaming in pain.

He anxiously fixed his gaze on the resident doctor beside him.

The resident doctor smiled self-deprecatingly and offered his position to Ling Ran.

Right now, everyone in the Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, including the department director, let Ling Ran do whatever he wanted. The resident doctor was only a junior and did not want to risk his career just because he wanted to be an assistant in a cholecystectomy.

“I’ll hold the endoscope, then.” Ling Ran happily held the tiny tube which had one of its end in the patient’s abdominal cavity.

The hands of the junior attending physician who was the chief surgeon for the surgery started trembling.

“Doctor Ling, you shouldn’t be acting as my assistant…” The young attending physician had no idea what was in Ling Ran’s mind. After hesitating for a while, he said, “Why don’t you become the chief surgeon instead?”

“I’ve never carried out a cholecystectomy before. You go ahead.” Even though Ling Ran was tempted, he forcibly suppressed his urge.

Even though Ling Ran possessed Specialist Level Abdominoscopy and was also quite familiar with the structure of the gallbladder, he decided to spend some more time learning the ropes first.

The young attending physician realized that Ling Ran really did not have the intention to act as chief surgeon after he offered the position to Ling Ran once again. It was only then that he anxiously took a pair of forceps and got started.

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The abdominoscopy today was a classic one with three incisions.

One of the incisions was made on top of the navel for the insertion of the endoscope. A camera and a light source were attached to the endoscope, which enabled the surgeons to see what was going on inside the abdominal cavity. The assistant was responsible for operating the endoscope to ensure adequate surgical field and amount of light throughout the surgery.

Even though this sounded slightly technical, in reality, even a medical staff without much anatomical knowledge would be able to act as an assistant during an abdominoscopy as long as he familiarized himself with the steps of the surgery and read up a little on the anatomy of the abdominal cavity or watched a few similar surgeries.

Hence, it was relatively easy to act as an assistant during an abdominoscopy, especially when it came to minor surgeries like cholecystectomy. All the assistant had to do was to hold the endoscope and spin it in circles.

Meanwhile, things were a little more complicated for the chief surgeon.

The fact that Ling Ran was holding the endoscope made the chief surgeon even more stressed out.

“There’s no need to be anxious. Take your time.” Ling Ran flashed a slight smile. He wore a joyous expression as he looked at the patient’s abdominal cavity, which looked like a bomb shelter, on the large screen.

He felt relaxed whenever he got to carry out surgery, and this was not just limited to the times he got to act as chief surgeon.

Of course, the feeling of acting as the chief surgeon was much more exhilarating!

“I… I’m not anxious.” The chief surgeon sounded like he was consoling himself. He held a pair of forceps in his right hand and slowly lifted the patient’s tender liver.

“The patient seems pretty young.” Ling Ran could tell just from the color of the patient’s liver.

The number of human livers he had severed greatly exceeded the number of pig livers most people have eaten in their lives.

The chief surgeon was a little less anxious by now. He said, “He’s pretty young, but the gallstones are pretty large.”

Ling Ran hummed in acknowledgment and asked, “Is cholelithiasis his only diagnosis?”

“Yeah.” The young attending physician stole a glance at Ling Ran and continued, “The patient is twenty-eight this year. One year ago, he started feeling pain in his upper right abdomen for no reason…”

The chief surgeon was totally acting as if he was reporting things to a senior doctor.

Not every chief surgeon was as confident as Ling Ran.

It was very common for chief surgeons who were not confident to take directions during surgery.

Ling Ran merely listened to what the chief surgeon said and did not say anything else. He merely fixed his gaze on the screen and did his job as an assistant.

During a cholecystectomy, an assistant’s tasks were to hold the endoscope and maintain a proper surgical field. Talking to the chief surgeon and keeping the chief surgeon in a good mood were only side tasks, and there was nothing the chief surgeon could do about Ling Ran’s refusal to carry out those tasks.

However, with Ling Ran around, the chief surgeon had no choice but to put his full focus on the surgery. He definitely was not in the mood to chit-chat.

“The gallbladder is in pretty good condition. It’s not too large and isn’t ruptured either.” The chief surgeon carefully lifted the liver, just like how he did during practical examinations years ago.

He looked carefully at the liver and continued, “There’s adhesion between the gallbladder and the liver, but it’s not serious…”

As he spoke, he looked at Ling Ran.

Ling Ran nodded and said in agreement, “So, should we perform a separation of the adhesion first?”

“Yes.” The chief surgeon breathed a sigh of relief before carefully looking at the liver again. He then took a pair of separating forceps and said, “I’ll get started, then…”

Right now, the patient’s abdominal cavity was full of carbon dioxide.

The carbon dioxide caused the patient’s abdominal cavity to expand, providing more space for maneuver and a better surgical field.

Right now, the liver looked like a red and soft mushroom in the patient’s abdominal cavity, which looked like a bomb shelter. It lay at the bottom of the abdominal cavity, and the pale-yellow gallbladder could only be seen after lifting it up.

The patient’s gallbladder was the size of a fist.

The chief surgeon had no choice but to adjust his position before he found a suitable angle. He then inserted the pair of separating forceps and cut the gallbladder off part by part…

After solving the problem of adhesion, the chief surgeon could not help but breathe a sigh of relief. He then looked at Ling Ran, and his expression was also a lot more relaxed. “Doctor Ling, don’t you have any surgery scheduled for today?”

“Yup, but many of Meng Xue’s fans are waiting for me outside the door. I don’t plan to get out of here within the next few days.”

“The next few days?” The attending physician was shocked. “Don’t you need to sleep?”

“I’ll just sleep in the anesthetists’ on-call room or the waiting room.” Ling Ran actually did not feel like sleeping. But after he thought about it, he realized that other doctors might not want to play along with him if he were to operate on patients in the middle of the night. He might as well save those two bottles of Energy Serum for later.

The attending physician had a bad feeling about this. He asked, “Then, how about your own surgeries?”

“Since I can’t get out of here, I wouldn’t be able to make ward rounds. I guess I’ll have to operate on them later.” Truth be told, Ling Ran did not feel like operating on patients with liver cancer immediately, either.

The attending physician was so shocked that he was at a loss for words. He only asked after he removed the patient’s gallbladder, “Then, over these next few days, you’ll just be… watching surgeries like this?”

“I’ll play second fiddle to you guys every now and then,” Ling Ran said humbly, “I can also act as the chief surgeon in a few surgeries. Cholecystectomy sounds pretty good.”

Since he possessed experience in performing one hundred abdominal anatomical dissections, Perfect Level Hemostasis by Heat, and Specialist Level Abdominoscopy, he could basically carry out a cholecystectomy now that he had acted as an assistant in one.

However, Ling Ran planned to watch more surgeries and spend some more time acquiring knowledge.

As the chief surgeon gazed at Ling Ran’s face, he suddenly had the urge to take leave for a few days, and this urge was so strong that he was almost unable to suppress it.