CH 1

Jihua Hospital affiliated to A Medical University.

It was not yet eight o’clock, and the early summer sun was already shining brightly, shining through the transparent windows and reflecting the spotless corridor.

Two groups of attending doctors, residents, trainees and graduate students stood distinctly on either side of the corridor, and the faint smell of sterile water was particularly clear.

In Doctor No.2’s office, Jiang Xu put down his cup of tea, put on the white coat that was on the back of his chair and picked up a thick stack of documents from the neatly tidied desk. He hung the deputy chief physician’s badge on his chest and put some black, blue and red fountain pens in his pocket.

At the workstation furthest from him, Shen Fangyu hurriedly drank two sips of coffee and clamped a dark blue folder under his armpit. As he quickly buttoned the white coat, he swiftly snatched a black pen from the pocket of the chief doctor at the next table, “Thank you brother Ha!”

“Hey-“

The innocent victimized colleague failed to grab Shen Fangyu with his usually deft hand. Jiang Xu lowered his head slightly and looked at Shen Fangyu who had suddenly squeezed himself before him and was now holding onto the door handle with one hand, “……”

“Excuse me, Dr. Jiang, I’ll go first.” A handsome face smiled a little mischievously as he casually opened the door and snapped his fingers at the row of students on the left, “Let’s go.”

Yu Sang, the resident doctor on the right, gave him an internationally acknowledged friendly gesture the moment he turned away, and Jiang Xiu, who was meticulously dressed, pushed the door open and walked out. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, and walked like the wind. He took a folder while walking and tapped it on a student at the end of the row on the right: “In the future, if there is anyone who can’t even button up his coat, they should just leave and join Shen Fangyu’s group.”

Only then did that student suddenly realize that his buttons were not properly done.

As a well-known teaching hospital, Jianghu Hospital had a large number of patients and various types of doctors. The obstetrics and gynecology department was mainly composed of several medical groups, with the chief and deputy physicians leading the teaching, while the attending physicians, residents, doctors in training and postgraduate students followed in a pyramid structure.

Generally speaking, the attending physicians and residents were responsible for the daily ward rounds, while the chief and deputy chief physicians conducted two major teaching rounds per week. However, Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu, as young doctors who had just been appointed as deputy chief physicians, led large ward rounds almost every other day.

The two graduated from the same eight-year undergraduate program in clinical medicine at A Medical University, and had been tangled up in the first and second place positions since their freshman year, with either the east wind overwhelming the west wind or the west wind overwhelming the east wind. During the doctoral period, the two entered Jihua Hospital that was affiliated to A Medical University together, and after the end of the rotation, ended up in the same obstetrics and gynecology department, and before the door of Professor Cui, the director of the obstetrics and gynecology department.

Professor Cui was a kind middle-aged woman and vice president of Jihua Hospital, with great qualifications and superb medical skills. When Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu first learned that they were going to be under the same professor and in the same department, they rushed into Professor Cui’s office together.

Jiang Xu: “There’s me without him, there’s him without me.”

Shen Fangyu: “I’d rather starve to death and jump from here than won’t work with Jiang Xu!”

However, Professor Cui just looked at the two of them with a smile on her face. She brought up her thermos cup and whispered, “It has already been entered into the system and cannot be changed. There is nothing that can’t be resolved overnight, just take a step back and let the sky be the limit. Come on, how about shaking hands?”

Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu obviously didn’t want to shake hands. The two looked at each other, flicked their sleeves and walked off with cold snorts.

So in the days that followed, Professor Cui happily watched the two rivals work tirelessly on their research in the lab, rush to apply to operate with her as if they had infinite energy and argue with each other at case study meetings until they rendered each other speechless.

One month, Jiang Xu would hand in a paper, and in the next month, Shen Fangyu was sure to contact her to revise his manuscript. Others say, ‘I won’t sleep if the moon won’t sleep’, but these two say, ‘I won’t sleep if he doesn’t sleep’.

As the corresponding author, Professor Cui would happily receive the bonus money, and to some extent, enjoyed the thrill of being carried by her students. The biggest winner looked at the two people with satisfaction, and said leisurely, “Young people are motivated by competition.”

In the end, under the intense competition of “I’ll kill you if you don’t kill me first”, the two were appointed as deputy chief physicians in the same year, and have since become two young and sharp knives in the obstetrics and gynecology department of Jihua Hospital.

However, the rapid progress in their careers did not change the incompatibility between the two. It had become a daily practice for the two doctors to compete, for example, who is the first to leave the office for ward rounds, and also…

“You’re going too far, Juang Xu!” Shen Fangyu looked at the operating schedule the head nurse had handed over, “You have already taken the first operating table next Tuesday, but you’re still taking up so many spots, do you want to do all six surgeries in one morning? You can’t jump so many platforms, do you want me to end up staying in the hospital tonight and not leave work?”

The hospital had a limited number of operating theatres, and generally speaking, high-level and difficult surgeries were scheduled first. As the first surgeries of the day, they are usually scheduled in a step-by-step manner and are not very chaotic.

After the first one, the next would immediately get called in, and getting to operate on the first table depends on seniority and the relationship with the head nurse.

No one would wish to do operations in the middle of the night, so the first operating table has always been a battle of strategies. Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu were very civil to other people, but the moment they faced each other, they couldn’t wait to fight to the death.

“What’s wrong with that, I’m fast.” Jiang Xu didn’t even look at him as he went on to sign the schedule, his thin lenses reflecting the cold white light of the corridor.

Usually, a surgery is not done by one doctor, the main surgeon would do the most crucial part, while the skin preparation, subsequent suturing, and other things were handed over to the younger doctors.

With so many patients at the hospital, it was not uncommon for the main surgeon to do the critical part and then leave for the next operating theatre, also known as jumping platforms.

With a snap, Shen Fangyu slapped a spa card onto the table and said in a soft voice to the head nurse, “Sister Zhang… look at Jiang Xu, he’s too domineering, why don’t you rearrange the schedule?”

He was a good-looking man, and a sweet talker that knew how to act coquettish as well as how to coax people. Add on his extraordinarily beautiful fan-shaped peach blossom eyes, it was not too much to say that he was suave. No matter how late he stayed up, those eyes would remain bright and starry, which was simply the kind of man girls loved.

“Sister Zhang, my mother has been going to this spa and their results are always good. You are already good looking, if you go for maintenance, you are guaranteed to look ten years younger.”

No woman didn’t like to be complimented on her beauty, and Zhang Fang, the head nurse, was falling for his coaxes. However, she still had the shopping card Jiang Xu had given her in her pocket, so she looked at the two doctors, who were at odds with each other, with some embarrassment, and tried to persuade, “Dr Jiang, why don’t you give away some?”

In fact, the two of them don’t usually fight for the first table so fiercely, but for some reason, both of them were rushing to finish their surgeries in order to free up time on Tuesday as if they were in a hurry to be reincarnated.

Jiang Xu gave Shen Fangyu a cold look, “Don’t even think about it.”

“Jiang Xu,” Shen Fangyu raised his hand to hold down his pen, “I promise not to make trouble next time you and Zhong Lan have surgery together.”

Zhong Lan was an attending doctor in the same department, a sort of junior sister of the two, and one of the reasons Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu’s relationship became even worse – both of them were chasing Zhong Lan.

The rivalry became so extreme that whenever Jiang Xu was working with Zhong Lan, Shen Fangyu would come to Jiang Xu’s operating theatre as long as he wasn’t too busy and hinder them.

Some doctors liked to chat while they were operating, and some even played music and told jokes in the operating theatre. Shen Fangyu was very talkative and funny, unlike Jiang Xu, who was quiet and dull when he was operating, so Zhong Lan liked how Shen Fangyu livened up the atmosphere.

Jiang Xu’s gaze slowly moved from the pressed pen to Shen Fangyu’s annoying face, “Deal.”

On Tuesday, Jiang Xu left the operating theatre and glanced at the electronic clock hanging on the wall.

Good, he could leave work on time today.

He finished the coke his assistant handed him in a few gulps and threw it in the trash, then went to the dressing room to change into his regular clothes. Today, he had brought well-ironed black trousers and a white shirt which he buttoned to the top of the button. He was doing his tie when a certain incongruous figure suddenly appeared.

“Yo, Dr. Jiang, so formally dressed today?” Shen Fangyu was wearing a black, white and blue vertically striped silk shirt, with the two top buttons undone. The hem of his shirt was casually tucked into his trousers and his hair was brushed back from his forehead, looking extra dazzling.

He held Jiang Xu’s tie flirtatiously, “Where are you going?”

Jiang Xu pulled back his tie and rearranged it in the mirror, too lazy to answer him.

Shen Fangyu leaned against the wall with his elbows in his hands, watching him do his tie as he asked, “Do you know why I grabbed the first operating table from you that day?”

Jiang Xu didn’t care what Shen Fangyu did, he only knew that he(Jiang Xu) had fought for the first table because Zhong Lan had asked him out to dinner tonight, which was why he had deliberately put on a formal suit.

Shen Fangyu followed him out, his face full of provocation, “So what if you got to have surgery with Zhong Lan, she chose me anyway,” he said, “To be honest, Zhong Lan asked me to dinner today.”

Oh, no wonder he was dressed like a peacock in heat.

Wait a minute—

Jiang Xu suddenly looked at Shen Fangyu with a blank stare, “What did you just say?”

“Zhong Lan asked me out to dinner.” Shen Fangyu sighed, “Don’t be envious, Dr. Jiang, your destiny is yet to come.”

“……”

After a moment of silence, Jiang Xu spoke, “She asked me out too.”

He watched Shen Fangyu’s proud face turn stiff with relish, and sneered, “Wishful thinking.”

“Holy shit,” Shen Fangyu was dumbfounded, “why did she ask you out? What does she see in you, the mysophobia, deadpan face or frigidity?”

“You’re the one who’s rigid, your whole family’s frigid,” Jiang Xiu said, “you’re like a peacock opening up its feathers, who’s blind enough to like you.”

“You two ……please stop arguing.” A gentle and pleasant female voice interrupted the quarrel between the two. Dr. Zhong stood in front of an SUV with her hand awkwardly raised to indicate to the two to calm down, “Get in.”

The two deputy chief physicians, who had just been at loggerheads, instantly switched to courteous expressions, nodding and smiling at Zhong Lan at the same time, “Thank you.”

The SUV was large and the back seat was big enough for the two doctors to sit comfortably, but well water does not interfere with river water. One big man with a round belly could fit in the middle, and the two looked out the window, as if a breath of the air exhaled by the other could kill them.

Zhong Lan sighed.

She didn’t want to get involved in these two people’s feud anymore, and after much deliberation, the best way to say no was to just come clean.

So in the ornately decorated restaurant, Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu saw a sharply dressed woman with a high ponytail take Zhong Lan’s hand intimately as she said to the two doctors, “I’ve heard that you two have been taking good care of my Lanlan in the department, I’ve always been grateful to you.”

“No need to thank me, it’s what I should do.” Shen Fangyu naturally thought of the woman as Zhong Lan’s friend and smiled at her, “We are looking after each other.”

Jiang Xu glanced at Shen Fangyu, who had finished his flatters, and eventually just smiled politely at High Ponytail, “Hello.”

High Ponytail took in the two doctors’ reactions and smiled meaningfully at Zhong Lan before she raised her glass, “So as her girlfriend, I’m treating you two to a casual meal as a token of my appreciation.”

Jiang Xu and Shen Fangyu: “?”