Chapter 152: Marriage

After the meal, Chen Qifa, Li Liang, and Xue Fei were now drunk. Wang Yanan was also beginning to feel dizzy. Still, everyone was really happy. The atmosphere was quite good.

Although Li Liang was drunk, he still kept insisting on taking Wang Yanan home as he grabbed onto her purse and refused to let go. He was the classical type who would become more daring when drunk, doing what he normally would never dare to do. He didn't care about the potential consequences. There was no helping it.

In the end, Chen Qifa was too drunk to drive, so his wife had to drive him home. The other drunk people also got rides with those who weren't drunk.

Zhang Fan and Shao Hua took Li Liang and Wang Yanan to their respective homes. After dropping off Wang Yanan, Li Liang seemed to wake up a bit. He was walking steadier. However, he remained really silent!

"What's the matter?" Zhang Fan asked.

"Brother Zhang, do you think I'll still have a chance with Wang Yanan if I go work at the private hospital?"

"You're not drunk?" Shao Hua asked in some confusion.

"He got drunk, but he probably woke up a bit by now!" Zhang Fan chuckled.

Li Liang's question was understandable. He worked at a smaller city hospital, while Wang Yanan worked at the best city hospital in the local area. Li Liang was also someone who lacked self-confidence. Normally, he would never dare to act like this. Since he was drinking alcohol, he pretended to be drunker than he really was so that he could sort of half-confess his love to Wang Yanan!

"No matter what, just try your hardest. If things really don't work out, pretend that it doesn't matter! Pretend that you've forgotten about her!" Zhang Fan said while looking at the lights in the distance.

"It sounds as if you have experience with such things!" Shao Hua pinched Zhang Fan's arm.

"Haha! I need to give Li Liang advice, right? I need to sound more passionate, otherwise he might give up! Li Liang was already getting afraid the moment that he saw Wang Yanan's apartment! Am I right?"

"Yeah! I'll see how things go, sigh! I'm fine now. Brother Zhang, Shao Hua, you guys can go back without me. I'll take a taxi the rest of the way!" Li Liang didn't give Zhang Fan a chance to speak as he instantly left.

Li Liang truly was in a bad mood today. He had no more hope of landing a job at Chasu City Hospital. When he saw today the luxurious place that Wang Yanan lived in, he felt even sadder! He had just turned 20 recently, but he felt really bad for himself today! He had so much energy, but had nowhere to use it! He hated how things were! He hated how he hadn't studied properly while he was in college! He hated why he hadn't worked harder before! Was it possible to turn time back by one year? That would be impossible! Could he really do what Zhang Fan said to, pretending that things didn't matter and pretending to forget about Wang Yanan?

After Liu Wenli was discharged, Zhang Fan was also finished with his rotation in the cardiothoracic surgery department. Director Liu really didn't want to let Zhang Fan go. He felt so happy now that there was someone else who could finally share the responsibility of being on call at night with him! He was unwilling to hand Zhang Fan the rotation paperwork and held onto the papers for quite a long while.

"How about you stay here for another month? There're many things you haven't learned yet. We didn't even receive a single heart surgery patient this month. Honestly, there's many challenging things to learn in this department. Most young people don't have the courage to join this department. You're sort of good enough, so how about it?"

"Director Liu, I'm officially going to join orthopedic department #1! You'll have to ask Director Gao and Superintendent Ouyang!" Zhang Fan could only bring out Gao Shijun to block Director Liu's directness.

"Orthopedic surgeries and surgeons are too rough and don't require skill. It's such a pity that you've chosen orthopedic surgery! Sigh, it's all because orthopedic surgery has good income! I won't stop you from making money, but if you ever change your mind in the future and decide that you don't want to do orthopedic surgery anymore, feel free to come find me, and I'll ask the superintendent to assign you to my department!" Director Liu was under the impression that Zhang Fan was young and hungry for money.

"Alright, Director Liu, I'll be leaving now!" Zhang Fan took his rotation paperwork and left. After one month here in the cardiothoracic department, there was no longer a sense of distance between him and the other doctors. Director Liu also truly liked Zhang Fan. Unfortunately for the director, Zhang Fan wasn't interested in this department!

Zhang Fan's next department was the neurosurgery department! This was the surgical department developed the worst in all of northwestern China! It could be said that the brain was the single most complex organ in the human body. It could be described as incredibly fragile, for lacking oxygen for just a few minutes would cause irreparable damage to the brain or even cause the person to die! But, the brain could also be described as tough, for the brain would still be able to barely manage to maintain basic life functions even with 25% of its total area damaged.

In neurosurgery, unless you had a doctorate degree in this profession, you would only be able to use already common knowledge to treat diseases that were well known. Yet, it would be common for the doctors to find it difficult to deal with diseases that deviated even slightly from what the textbooks said. China was already reaching the top of the world in orthopedic surgery, general surgery, and even heart surgery, yet China was far behind in performing brain surgery.

Most Chinese medical textbooks on neurosurgery would contain mostly direct translations of foreign theses. In order to truly have an excellent understanding of neurosurgery, one would first need to be able to understand the original language edition of the neurosurgery textbooks. Even the most accurate of translations would have the translator's subjective consciousness affecting the translation. It would be quite difficult to obtain the essence of high-level knowledge through reading only a translation.

Although Chinese doctors were plenty skilled at reading Chinese textbooks, the same couldn't be said for their English skills. Additionally, medical textbooks on neurosurgery and neurovascular surgery would always have lots of ridiculously long and esoteric vocabulary. Some such words would also require analysis in order to understand them. It would be considered fast for a Chinese doctor to be able to finish reading an English neurosurgery textbook in three to four years.

It was only natural for master-level orthopedic surgeons to have an excellent understanding of force in physics. As for master-level neurosurgeons, they would need to understand not only force, but also electrophysiology and proxemics. The first basic-level class on galvanic skin responses would be more than enough to convince 70% of medical students to give up on this field.

In the medical field, there was a saying that the experts with the best mastery of neural theory could be found in the dissection rooms of all the colleges. However, theory and clinical treatment were far too different. Just because you understood neural theory didn't mean that you would be able to treat a neurosurgery patient. Actual situations during clinical treatment were far too complex. Sometimes, an injury that reached one millimeter too deep might be fatal. One millimeter of difference might be the difference between life and death.

As always, Zhang Fan was given three days of vacation after his rotation in cardiothoracic surgery was finished. However, he wouldn't be able to deal with his own matters, because his friend Li Hui was getting married. He needed to get married soon because his girlfriend would soon start showing a baby belly. In northwestern China, it was still socially unacceptable to get pregnant before marriage. All the negative gossip would be bad for Li Hui's girlfriend. Moreover, since she was a teacher, she would need to pay even more attention to keeping a good reputation. That was why Li Hui arranged for the marriage date to be set in October.

Li Hui already asked for marriage leave from Chasu City Hospital. He had a medical license now, and was almost finished with his rotations in internal medicine. He applied to the hospital administration department to be permanently assigned to the respiratory department when he returned. The respiratory department was also willing to accept him. All that was needed was the superintendent's signature, which likely wouldn't be a problem.

Originally, Li Hui had wanted Zhang Fan to be his best man. However, there was a certain custom in the border province. When the groom went to the bride's home to receive his bride, the bride's family would make trouble for the groom. Blocking the groom until he gave them red packets would only be a minor issue. The biggest difficulty would be that all the family members would force the groom to drink alcohol. This was why most people here in the border province would find someone with tremendous alcohol tolerance as the best man in order for him to take all the drinks in their stead.

Zhang Fan was someone who could become completely drunk from just three glasses of wine. This meant that he couldn't be counted on as the best man! Not only that, Zhang Fan was also frightened like how Li Hui had been when he saw the bride's incredibly muscular older brothers. He felt like he would die if all of them tried to force him to drink! Zhang Fan instantly refused Li Hui's invitation to be his best man. In the end, Zhang Fan's job was to drive his Jeep Grand Cherokee at the forefront with the cameraman on his car, acting as a camera truck for the wedding ceremony!

Li Hui's parents had long since arrived in the border province from S Province already. The bride's apartment included in the dowry was pretty nice. Although Li Hui didn't have much money at all, it didn't matter, as the bride's dowry was truly plentiful. Just the dowry's worth alone meant that Li Hui didn't need to spend money on purchasing new electronics and furniture for the apartment.

Li Hui's new wife had several older brothers who all had good jobs. Since the only girl in the family was getting married, each of the older brothers gave her 20,000 yuan as a wedding present. Her parents also paid for a new apartment and new car. Li Hui instantly reached middle-class economic status from this marriage alone!

The bride was a high school biology teacher. Ever since college, she had learned about how to manage naughty children. To her, Li Hui was simply a bigger version of a naughty student. Ever since the beginning of their romance, she had Li Hui completely under her thumb.

What was a successful woman? A successful woman wasn't about her job or status, as that would be a powerful woman instead. A successful woman was a woman who could successfully change her man. Although there wasn't anything such as who would be subordinate in a marriage in modern China, a family would always have someone who was obviously in charge of major decisions and worrying about the small things. If a family was unclear on who was in charge, then that would be terrible as there would surely be fights every day!

Li Hui's wedding venue would be at J Hotel. The border province was a place where many ethnic minorities gathered, and the owner of the hotel happened to be a Uighur Muslim. Since Li Hui wasn't from the border province, he didn't have any relatives here, so not many of his relatives were attending. Those in attendance were mostly coworkers from Chasu City Hospital. All of them were doctors of internal medicine or rotation doctors, apart from Zhang Fan.

Director Jumabieke of the respiratory department was the one who would officiate the wedding. He was especially energetic while wearing his suit and tie. Director Jumabieke loved activities where he could have good publicity. Li Hui had asked Director Jumabieke to officiate the wedding after Superintendent Ouyang signed off on his permanent department assignation, and Director Jumabieke had instantly agreed.

Only mid-level leaders of the hospital came to attend Li Hui's wedding. The hospital administration director, chairman of the hospital trade union, and hospital general affairs department director were in attendance. Superintendent Ouyang didn't personally come, but she did send the chairman of the hospital trade union to attend with a small money present on her behalf.

Li Hui's ex-girlfriend Wang Sha, who was still in Kuake City, had Li Liang bring a gift of 2,000 yuan for Li Hui's wedding. In 2010, the average wedding gift money amount was only 100 yuan, so 2,000 yuan was considered an astonishing amount! However, this money from Wang Sha also represented the end of anything between them, and that they would have nothing to do with each other from now on. Just let the past be blown away by the wind!

Here in the border province, marriage ceremonies were a big deal and incredibly lively. The hotel had a special band and dancers just for marriage performances. The band and dancers entered the ceremony halfway through, and the dancers started dancing with the wedding guests as everyone wished the newlyweds happiness.

Of course, Zhang Fan and Shao Hua were present at Li Hui's wedding. Shao Hua looked at the bride who was wearing a white wedding veil. Shao Hua held onto Zhang Fan's arm, and told him, "This is the day when a woman's at her most brilliant! She's a princess for today! Her life will definitely be wonderful in the future."

"Yes, she'll have a wonderful future, but how can you tell?"

"Don't you see how all her older brothers are helping her toast the guests? With Li Hui's stick figure, he wouldn't dare not to be obedient! Sigh, it's a pity that I don't have any brothers."

"Oh! There's no need. I'll treat you excellently without the need for any brothers-in-law to whip me into shape, I promise!"