Chapter 249: Special department

Love.

For normal people, as time passed, love would slowly become an intimate affection. Perhaps one's lover would be an intimate person who was closer to you than your own siblings. Perhaps it would be the familiarity between the left hand and the right hand. But once irregular factors became involved in love, then things would become truly complex. Irregular factors would be power, money, and so on.

President Li's way of thinking was unknown. Maybe she was venting her frustrations on Superintendent Ouyang, or maybe she had some other objective in mind. Ordinary people wouldn't be privy to her thoughts.

Wang Congzhong was quite lucky. His life was saved. Immediately after waking up, his first words were "Can I still have sex?".

Ridiculous. This whole thing was just so ridiculous. There was no way to really say who was in the right or wrong. The government could only hand out fines to deal with this incident. Since Wang Congzhong was still alive, the banks' higher-ups now felt reassured. The government officials also felt reassured. Everyone acted as if the fight at the hospital hadn't happened at all. It was quietly forgotten. The government had originally prepared some bonus money for the hospital as a reward, but that money was retracted!

Since it was around New Year's, most businesses gave vacation time to their employees. However, the hospital could only let the doctors and nurses take vacations in shifts. Not only that, they still might be called back in at any moment. Still, the hospital no longer scheduled any elective surgeries during this time.

Yet, there wouldn't be any fewer emergency surgeries during this time. New Year's was a common time for numerous stomach problems to explosively appear.

Zhang Fan was only able to rest for a few days before his vacation was interrupted by Chasu City Hospital. This was because a female doctor in the infectious diseases department had gotten pregnant. She was crying and making a ruckus while demanding to be transferred to a different department.

The scene was rather tragic. The female doctor held her belly which wasn't showing yet while crying endless tears at the hospital administration department. "When I joined the hospital, my leader promised me that I would only have to stay for half a year, saying something like the infectious diseases department really lacked personnel. I also understand that the leaders have hardships of their own, so I went to the infectious diseases department without saying anything. But, I've now stayed for six years here. Can the hospital please understand my hardships now?"

She was truly heartbroken. She kept stuttering because of all her crying. "Over the past six years, because I'm in the infectious diseases department, every single boyfriend that I've ever had has broken up with me or won't even give me a chance. They didn't even want to kiss me, because I'm an infectious diseases doctor!" Judging by her expression, it was obvious that all of this had truly hurt her heart.

"I finally managed to get one man to stay. Now that I'm pregnant, my husband is telling me to either change hospital departments or to resign. It's not easy for me! Waah! Waah! Waah!"

The hospital administration director couldn't do anything about this. He was unable to say anything that could convince the pregnant female doctor otherwise, as she kept crying and panting for breath. "How about you take some time off for now? You're now a pillar of your department. The department can't do without you!" the hospital administration director spoke in a soft tone. At this time, he could only try and console her and let her vent her anger that had piled up over the years.

"Director, please spare me from the infectious diseases department! Do you really want me and my husband to get divorced!?" Since she was saying things to such an extent, the hospital administration director really couldn't say much else.

"Please, stop crying for now and wipe your tears. You have an unborn child, so you must calm down and not be too excited. Let's do this. Have some rest for now as I report this matter to the higher-ups. Rest assured, I'll definitely give you a satisfactory response."

The hospital administration director finally convinced the female doctor to leave the hospital administration department. However, this left the infectious diseases department with insufficient personnel. The hospital administration director considered all his options, but felt rather helpless. The medical license exam results had only come out recently, so the rotation doctors for this year had yet to receive their medical licenses. This meant that most of the rotation doctors were unable to independently take shifts on their own. However, the hospital administration director suddenly recalled that Zhang Fan was free with nothing to do at the hospital.

"Zhang Fan, what are you up to?" The hospital administration director phoned Zhang Fan. What else would Zhang Fan be doing? He was incredibly busy with running his new hospital. Previously, it had seemed so easy to him when Ma Wentao was running the hospital, but there was nothing but trouble ever since Zhang Fan purchased the hospital. One day, this government bureau would come for an inspection. Another day, some other government bureau would come for some type of examination. On yet another day, the Health Insurance Bureau suddenly rescinded approval of medical insurance to be used at Zhang Fan's hospital. At any rate, there were all sorts of troublesome issues with the government every day.

"Oh, Director, I'm busy with personal matters." Zhang Fan was trying to say that he was too busy to come!

"Oh, I see. Alright then, set your personal matters aside for the time being. Our hospital's infectious diseases department doesn't have enough staff to open for the time being. Hurry and start a rotation in the infectious diseases department so that they can remain open!" The hospital administration director didn't care one bit about Zhang Fan's personal matters. He felt that someone as young as Zhang Fan wouldn't have any important personal matters to begin with!

"Eh! Director, I really do have my own affairs. I'm still on vacation—"

Zhang Fan didn't even get a chance to finish as the hospital administration director immediately interrupted him. "Are you working at hospitals again? You little brat, let me tell you, enough is enough. I won't accept any discussion on this topic. Immediately come back to the hospital! After this busy period is over, I'll give you the rest of your vacation days!"

Sigh! Zhang Fan really couldn't do anything about this. Would he really receive the rest of his vacation days? That was nothing more than a lie. The hospital administration director was using the issue of Zhang Fan working at other hospitals to pressure him! Since Zhang Fan didn't have any choice but to go, he left his hospital's management to Chen Qifa for the time being as he returned to working at Chasu City Hospital.

The infectious diseases department was truly the most unpopular department at any hospital. Nobody was willing to work here. The Chinese government had truly spent a great deal of effort on controlling infectious diseases. The national motto was that prevention was stronger than treatment. Older Chinese folk all knew about Chinese epidemic prevention stations. Younger Chinese people all knew about the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Establishing these places would cost just as much money as establishing a hospital.

Although there were epidemic prevention stations, hospitals still had to establish their own infectious diseases departments. China classified infectious diseases into three different classes: A, B, and C. Normally, when a person became sick, their first reaction would be to go to the hospital rather than an epidemic prevention station. The main job of epidemic prevention stations was to support hospitals in management and treatment. If there was a major infectious disease going around, the epidemic prevention stations would start to take the leading role as hospitals took the support role.

Why was it that no doctors were willing to work in this department? It was quite simple. Infectious diseases were far too vicious. The main trait of infectious diseases was obvious because of the name. Infectious diseases would infect others quite easily. That wasn't all. Even worse was that many infectious diseases would have incubation periods. Basically, there were those who were carrying an infectious disease without realizing it due to having no symptoms yet. Such people could still infect you, and it would be impossible to tell from physical appearance alone whether a person carried an infectious disease or not.

To give a simple example, the poorer a place was in China, the more common tuberculosis would be. Richer places wouldn't be able to have it easy, either. The richer a place was, the more common AIDS would be! As medical treatment advanced, antibiotics had been leveled up repeatedly over the years with countless new editions. For example, there were already four different generations of cephalosporins. However, the main medicine for treating tuberculosis were isoniazid and rifampin. These two main tuberculosis medicines hadn't changed over countless years already. Not only that, the tuberculosis medicine could only treat the symptoms but not the underlying cause. Once someone got tuberculosis, they would have it for the rest of their entire life. Tuberculosis would often rear its ugly head again if your body was in poor condition!

AIDS was even scarier. With current medical technology and equipment, it was still impossible to detect AIDS until antibodies to the virus were present in the bloodstream. Simply speaking, there would be a period of time after a person was infected with AIDS. It would be impossible for the hospital to detect AIDS until the body started producing antibodies. Modern techniques could only check for the anti-AIDS antibodies rather than directly detect HIV itself. Was this scary? This was incredibly scary. Thus, this author recommends that you stay far away from illegal drugs and that you should practice safe sex! This would be really important!

Most other doctors in other departments would typically wear a light blue-colored one-time-use facial mask. However, doctors in the infectious diseases department would have to wear a really thick facial mask during all seasons of the year. This was because many infectious diseases were capable of spreading by air or flying saliva particles.

The respiratory tract, digestive tract, blood, direct contact, saliva, and vertical transmission were the primary methods by which infectious diseases spread. Digestive tract transmission would be especially infectious, easily infecting large groups at once, such as at a school, a workplace cafeteria, and other such places where many people would eat together.

Shanghai was a top-level city in China with all sorts of the most modern facilities and equipment. However, during the 1990s, an incredibly serious hepatitis A outbreak had occurred in Shanghai. All the people from the nearby area should know about it. Blood clams were popular at the time. Since blood clams were unclean and contained viruses, they caused several tens of thousands of people in Shanghai to suffer from hepatitis A, jaundice, stomachaches, and so on.

This wasn't just a few dozen or a few hundred. It was several tens of thousands of people! For several tens of thousands of people in a mega city like Shanghai to simultaneously fall sick, without mentioning anything else, the panic alone would be enough to kill people!

These were actually some relatively gentler and softer infectious diseases. More explosive infectious diseases would be just like a magician's curse. For instance, the only two diseases that China classified as the most dangerous Class A infectious diseases, cholera and bubonic plague.

To put it quite bluntly, these two diseases were capable of destroying entire countries! In China, as long as either of these two diseases were discovered anywhere, the law was that it had to reported to the relevant agencies immediately within two hours. Not only that, the patient would have to be forcefully quarantined as soon as possible. What did forceful mean? No matter if you wanted to or not, you would be forced to enter quarantine. For instance, if a patient with cholera was discovered at Chasu City Hospital, then the entire infectious diseases department would be sealed off, and armed military police would stand guard. If the patient couldn't be successfully treated, then they could only die in the infectious diseases department. Nobody would want to meet with such a situation. If you did, then the rest would only depend on your own luck! The forceful quarantine would include even the medical personnel! The patient who had such an infectious disease was incredibly unlucky. What about the medical personnel, then? Were they also unlucky?

It was also common knowledge by now that infectious diseases could also spread by blood transmission. However, with current medical technology, it was actually impossible to identify many infectious diseases through the blood! So, even though blood transfusions could save lives, there would also be quite a bit of risk!

Direct contact would also be quite dangerous. For example, anthrax almost caused some western countries and Japan to shut down their postal systems. Countless anthrax incidents in the mail had happened in western countries back in the day. You would immediately be infected the moment that you opened the mail! This was directly classified as a terrorist attack! Many sexually transmitted diseases would also be spread by direct contact, such as syphilis and condyloma acuminatum, which was also known as genital warts!

Women would become far more courageous after becoming mothers. The female infectious diseases doctor who became pregnant had originally been a really soft and weak type of woman. However, she absolutely refused to continue working in the infectious diseases department now that she was pregnant.

This wasn't her fault at all. The hospital administration director had been unable to scold her in any way. It was human nature to want to avoid infectious diseases!

There was no helping it. No matter how busy Zhang Fan was, he still had to go to work.

The infectious diseases department almost seemed as if it didn't belong to Chasu City Hospital. It had its own independent building far away from the main hospital buildings. There were even tall walls around the infectious diseases building.

Not only that, the walls around the infectious diseases building had electrified wires running over the walls. Normally, the electricity was turned off, but when it was necessary, the infectious diseases building could literally be transformed into a prison. All of the windows in this building were equipped with thick steel bars. The third floor of the infectious diseases building mostly consisted of single-person patient rooms. The doctors and nurses' work area and offices were on the first floor, right at the entrance. Their offices' safety features were comparable to the hospital accounting department's security.

The infectious diseases department director was Yu Hai, a man in his mid-40s. He had transferred here from an epidemic prevention station. He could have originally become a department director at the epidemic prevention station, but he had a conflict with the boss of the epidemic prevention station. He then used connections to come over to Chasu City Hospital. Although he was a department director here, the infectious diseases department was severely marginalized at Chasu City Hospital. Due to his previous conflict with the boss of the epidemic prevention station, Yu Hai was nowadays someone who kept a very low profile. He was the calm type who was nice to everyone.

There were originally only two attending physicians in the infectious diseases department. The female attending physician had gotten pregnant and quit this department, so now there was only one male attending physician whose name was Yang Tao. He was in his 30s and still unmarried. He really loved to go out and have fun. He was mahjong buddies with Xue Fei from orthopedic department #1. Both of them were actually pretty bad at mahjong. Most of the time, they lost all of their income on the mahjong table.

There were also four resident doctors here. There was a certain trait about the infectious diseases department. Although it wouldn't be so for older doctors, any younger doctor who was transferred here would usually come because of either getting scammed by their boss or getting kicked here for making mistakes. For instance, Yang Tao had been kicked out of the respiratory department and transferred to infectious diseases for skipping work to go play mahjong too many times.

As for the resident doctors in this department, they were quite pitiful as well. They were either those who had failed the medical license examination for several times, finally only passing when they were older and getting sent here because they lacked any sort of connections, or those who had only barely got a passing grade on the medical licensing examination.

Although the overall situation for the doctors wasn't very good, at least the infectious diseases department had a friendly working environment. There wasn't severe hierarchical ranking where the director was far above the others here. Everything was done via group discussions. This type of friendly working environment would be really hard to find at a Chinese hospital. The hospital management would simply turn a blind eye to this. Otherwise, if Chasu City Hospital tried to enforce regulations more strictly here, it was likely that the infectious diseases doctors would simply quit and try to find jobs at private hospitals instead!

Yu Hai was very polite to Zhang Fan when the latter reported in for work. Yu Hai first gave Zhang Fan a personal set of medical equipment, facial masks, and hand sanitizer. "Doctor Zhang, you absolutely must make sure to protect yourself properly. We're a rather special department. I'm sure you understand, so I won't need to go into detail. With your skill level, you don't need to learn anything about this department. You can just start independently working your own shifts by yourself. If there's anything that you don't understand, feel free to ask me or any other doctor here."

What could Zhang Fan even say! Zhang Fan could only obediently start working here. It was really hot inside, and he had to wear a heavy facial mask. It was really uncomfortable.

There were very few patients currently in the infectious diseases department. There were only three patients in total. However, the three patients couldn't be underestimated at all. The disinfection standards for the infectious diseases department were stricter than in any other department. The disinfection would carried out as strictly as in an operating room.

The ultraviolet lamps' strength, blood samples, and physical checkups would all be checked at set periods of time. The protocols had to be followed with extreme adherence. That was because if any protocol wasn't followed properly, it was likely that a major medical incident would occur due to the nature of this department.