Are they still waiting outside? The elderly director then rembered that Zhou Daping and the villagers were waiting outside the operating room.
"Send them back to the ward, keep up with the blood transfusion and fluid replacent, I’ll personally follow up," Li Min instructed the doctors.
The door of the operating room opened.
The town chief imdiately approached, shaking the elderly director’s hand, his voice trembling:
"Dean Li, how is the injured person? The county hospital said they sent the surgery departnt director with a team to support, the vehicle is almost here!"
The elderly director stepped aside slightly.
The town chief saw Li Min beside him and paused for a second.
"Dr. Li? What’s this...?"
"The surgeries are done!" The elderly director’s voice was calm, "Four of them, all perford by Dr. Li as chief surgeon. Zhou Fusheng’s heart repair, Chen Dongxiu’s splenectomy and liver repair, Xu Dehou’s chest exploration lung repair with rib fixation, Zhao Qiulin’s femoral open reduction with internal fixation. All patients are stable, they’ll be transferred to the ward soon."
The town chief opened his mouth, as if he didn’t understand.
"...Done?"
The elderly director didn’t repeat himself, he just stood there, watching the disbelief on the faces of the town chief and Zhou Daping.
When Zhou Daping saw the operating room door open, he almost jumped up, he rushed to the door. The town chief spoke first, he was listening on the side, now it was his turn to speak.
"The surgeries went smoothly," he said, "Zhou Fusheng’s pericardial tamponade was relieved, the myocardial tear was sutured. The next 48 hours are critical, requiring close monitoring. If the infection hurdle is overco and cardiac function recovers, there should be no major issues, the others have all been rescued as well..."
Zhou Daping looked at him in a daze, like the town chief, as if he didn’t understand.
"Dr. Li," his voice was floating, "you an... Zhou Fusheng and the others..."
"They were saved," Li Min said.
Zhou Daping’s knees nearly buckled, and he almost knelt down. The two villagers beside him quickly supported him, and he kept muttering, "Saved... saved..."
Then he suddenly looked up, giving Li Min a look he had never seen before. In that look, there was surprise, awe, and an almost unfamiliar, admiring reverence.
"Dr. Li," his voice changed tone, "you... you..."
He couldn’t find the words to say.
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what the Sanbo Research Institute was, didn’t know who Yang Ping was, didn’t know how many surgeries Li Min had gone through there, how many all-nighters he had endured, or how many stitches he had sewn. He only knew that just two hours ago, he watched with his own eyes as a dying person was forcibly pulled back from the gates of Yama Hall.
Right here in Guandu, in the new hospital they built with their own hands, yet had never truly trusted.
"Dr. Li," he finally regained his voice, "you’re even more amazing than the experts from the county hospital."
"Secretary Zhou," he said, "please don’t say that, the experts from the county hospital are more experienced than I am, I just happened to have learned these types of surgeries during my further training."
Zhou Daping shook his head, stubbornly like a persistent child:
"I only know that it was you on the operating table who saved him, it was Guandu Hospital that saved him."
His voice was loud, and the villagers gathering around in the corridor all heard. No one spoke, but the way they looked at Li Min changed from the past.
Previously, when they looked at Li Min, it was with familiarity, trust, and kindness. He was the doctor who had treated them for ten years, knew every family’s chronic ailnts, and never prescribed expensive dicines needlessly.
Yet at this mont, as they looked at Li Min, he was still soone familiar, trustworthy, and kind.
But there was sothing more.
It was a reverent, almost instinctive admiration. Like mountain people looking up to a mountain peak that still stood tall after crossing eighteen ridges.
They never knew that this Dr. Li, who had stayed in town for ten years, could actually be such a person.
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