[7] What to do if there are no specialists?

"Dr. Cao, you're amazing, to diagnose such a rare disease so quickly!"

The interns and nurses buzzed around him, but Cao Yong stared at the CT report's conclusion, a bit stunned. In truth, it wasn't he who made the diagnosis immediately—it was that high school girl—

Who exactly was she?

Turning around, Cao Yong pushed through the crowd and quickly walked to the emergency room entrance.

There were no people standing in the small courtyard, where the hospital's ambulance was parked.

Could he have been dreaming, imagining a little fairy descending to tell him what was wrong with the patient?

"Dr. Cao, who are you looking for?" asked the nurse following him.

"Was there a girl standing in the courtyard just now, wearing a high school uniform?" Cao Yong asked, pointing to where Xie Wanying had stood.

"No, I don't think so." The nurse and intern doctors all shook their heads.

"Dr. Cao, I called our hospital's general surgery department, but our hospital doesn't have a specialized thoracic surgery department. They said they can't perform this surgery." The intern who had been tasked with calling other departments came running back, dripping with sweat, and reported to Cao Yong in urgency.

Cao Yong's face suddenly changed: Damn! He had forgotten; this wasn't the hospital where he used to work.

On the other end, Ding Yuhai was surprised to receive a call from his colleague: "Which young guy is this impressive, diagnosing an aortic aneurysm, a rather rare case."

"Not a young guy from our hospital. He's an old classmate of the dean and from Capital Hospital, borrowed by our Newly-built Neurosurgery Department for exchange guidance. They say he was already a top student in medical school, part of the Returned Overseas Faction, only arrived a week ago, surname Cao. Tonight, it seems he just happened to temporarily replace someone as the in-charge resident of our hospital, so he encountered the rare case."

"A talented student from Capital, impressive. The problem is, what can be done after making the diagnosis? It might be too late to transfer to the provincial hospital. We don't have anyone in this city who can perform that kind of surgery. Although our dean has been eyeing aggressively to surpass City One Hospital by building the most advanced surgery department in the city, introducing an extracorporeal circulation machine, he has yet to attract a thoracic surgery expert to our hospital." Ding Yuhai said this with a hint of pride slipping through his words.

Being a doctor, like cooking, is tough without the right ingredients. A doctor from Capital would still face limitations in their environment. Tonight, Cao Yong would have to admit defeat.

At the hospital, Cao Yong, on his way to the operating room, stripped off his white coat to reveal the green scrub underneath and phoned his old classmate from the thoracic surgery department of his hospital, Zhu Huicang, on his Motorola cellphone: "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it. No one here can."

"Have you gone mad? This isn't our hospital."

"What else can I do? Stand by and watch him die, when he has a wife and kids?"

In the area where the patient's family was located, there was a chorus of weeping.

"Sigh." Zhu Huicang exhaled and explained how difficult it was to train specialists in thoracic surgery; laypeople did not understand. Therefore, when relatives blamed the hospital for not having thoracic surgery specialists, it was perhaps fair to say that hospitals with a real thoratic surgery department were few and far between, and many prefecture-level cities didn't even have one such hospital.

Turning back, Zhu Huicang said to his old classmate, "I can tell you what to do, but you need to be extremely cautious because thoracic surgery requires an additional two years of specialized training after becoming a general surgeon."

"Okay, it's the same with neurosurgery. I have some memory of doing a thoracic surgery internship; I just want to confirm with you now."