47 That bastard (1/2)

Zhang Fan was really annoyed as he played Double Rise together with Kang Hua, Wang Qian, and Li Xiao. The three women constantly talked about beauty products and other similar topics, which really bored him.

Tang Jingjing and Li Xiao's assistant drank tea together outside the tea house's private room while Zhang Fan accompanied the three women inside for cards. Zhang Fan and Kang Hua were a team for this 2v2 card game. Even though they could have clearly won with their cards, they ended up losing. Zhang Fan immediately could tell that Kang Hua was intentionally losing on purpose, which made him even more bored with the card game. Li Xiao and Wang Qian often played together as teammates in the Double Rise card game. Meanwhile, Kang Hua was an expert card player with an especially powerful memory that allowed her to remember every single card that a player had or played. Zhang Fan was also pretty good at card games in general. Although Kang Hua was going easy on the other two women on purpose, she made it so that the card game appeared to be quite close.

Since this was Kang Hua and Li Xiao's first time meeting each other, Wang Qian had intended for this to first be an introduction without any detailed discussions. They played cards for a little more than three hours. If it weren't for the fact that Li Xiao's back hadn't recovered fully yet, it was likely that this card game would have lasted far longer. Before Kang Hua left, Li Xiao handed her a name card, and so Kang Hua was all smiles as she went together with Wang Qian for beauty treatments.

Old Huang Yun was retiring from his position as the superintendent at the end of the year. He was now an old doctor who had worked hard in the medical system for more than 30 years. Thus, everyone in the hospital was discussing who would become the new superintendent. Vice superintendent Ouyang Hong, who was also the director of internal medicine, had the most support within the hospital. She was a veteran doctor and a local. Her ancestors had come with General Tso's troops (of General Tso's Chicken fame) and settled down here in this border province. The other most likely candidate for superintendent was the other vice superintendent, Jiang Xingping—the director of general medicine. He had worked here in Chasu City for many years, and was acquainted with several high-ranking leaders.

The first snow arrived before Huang Yun's retirement. The Chasu City Communist Party Committee had learned their lesson from the previous year's major snowfall sealing off all the roads, causing the local smaller cities to lack proper medical care and medicine, and thus ordered all the bigger city hospitals to send some of their elite doctors to help the more rural areas in the winter.

Chasu City Hospital was thus filled with an aura of depression as nobody was willing to go to more rural locations. It was already inconvenient to return home for the holidays in the middle of winter, and if a major snowfall sealed the roads, it would be common to be trapped in the rural countryside for more than two weeks at a time. Nobody who had family was willing to go to a rural location. After the meetings on this topic, there were extremely few volunteers who signed up to go to rural locations. Huang Yun didn't worry about this, as he simply assigned this task to the director of each department, making the directors worry about it instead.

In orthopedic department #1, Xue Fei, Zhou Chengfu, and Cui Pingjun were all unwilling to go. Zhang Fan and Li Hongtu didn't really mind either way. Going to a rural location would definitely mean a temporarily reduced income, which was why nobody voluntarily wanted to go. Gao Shijun had a private discussion with each person individually, so Li Hongtu finally volunteered to go. Nobody else needed to make any arrangements—Zhang Fan, Li Hongtu, and Wang Yanan would go together as a team. No other volunteers were required from their department.

But, with them leaving for the time being, orthopedic department #1 no longer had enough members to cover all the shifts. Huang Yun used his superintendent authority for the final time, officially making all the medical specialist fresh graduate doctors who'd joined the hospital last year official doctors. This meant that Wang Yanan finally became an official member of orthopedic department #1. Huang Yun also added three additional people to orthopedic department #1. However, Zhang Fan didn't get to meet them at this time, because he had already gone to a smaller rural city.

Gao Shijun had chosen the people for this rural assignment, but Zhang Fan's team was allowed to choose where they wanted to go out of the four smaller cities around Chasu City. Li Hongtu didn't care, so he allowed Zhang Fan and Wang Yanan to decide. Zhang Fan chose to go back to Kuake City since he had been in Chasu City for half a year already without returning to visit there. He missed Kuake City.

He would need to tell Wang Qian that he was going back to Kuake City. He also needed to tell Li Xiao about it since he had already taken her money. Currently, Li Xiao had finished her first rehabilitative treatment program, but since her back pain was caused by the severe condition of a protruding lumbar vertebrae, she would require three successive rehabilitative treatment programs in total.

Zhang Fan decided to first call Wang Qian, but it turned out that she was currently together with Li Xiao. Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

”You're being reassigned to a rural city? It's fine, you don't need to go. I'll call your superintendent and tell him not to send you,” Li Xiao stated.

Zhang Fan hurriedly stopped her. ”Sister Li, I just started working here not long ago, and the list of names has already been decided. If you talk to the superintendent...” Zhang Fan left the rest unsaid. Actually, Zhang Fan was quite happy to go back to Kuake City because he wasn't allowed to perform anything but orthopedic surgeries at Chasu City Hospital.

”I see.” Li Xiao understood what Zhang Fan meant. In order to thrive at a workplace, you would have to give face to your boss. Having someone ask for a reassignment after the assignment was already decided would make the boss feel like you truly didn't understand how society worked. Why wouldn't you ask your connections to help you earlier? Why ask only after the list was already decided and officially approved? Changing the members afterward would be a slap in the face to the boss. Li Xiao mulled things over, then asked, ”Which city are you going to? How long will you be there for?”

”I'll be at Kuake City Hospital. I'll probably be there for about a month.”

”That's not very far from Chasu City. Let's do this. I'll have my personal driver go pick you up every day, and then bring you back after the treatment. Will that work for you?”

”There's an easier way. Just loan a car to Zhang Fan. He can drive over at noon and drive back in the afternoon after treating you. Besides, your business is slower in the winter, and there's not that many patients at the much smaller Kuake City Hospital. Moreover, Kang Hua is also the head of the Bureau of Culture, Education, and Health there.” Wang Qian immediately offered a different suggestion.

Li Xiao glanced at Wang Qian before speaking to Zhang Fan again. ”That works as well, although Doctor Zhang might find it slightly tiring.”

Zhang Fan hurriedly waved his hand. ”It's no trouble at all. I happen to love driving, so I'll treat it as having fun with my hobby.” Zhang Fan would be quite bored if a driver came to pick him up and drive him between the two cities every day. He was far happier driving himself.