Chapter Three: Bound to the System. Could it be that Heaven had finally opened its eyes?

Bordertown’s capital was a desert city, scorching in summer and freezing in winter. The moment Zhang Fan stepped off the train, a blast of heat struck him in the face. He had already contacted the office of the Quark County Hospital in advance. Both the train ticket and the long-distance bus ticket had been arranged by the hospital, a small benefit of joining the staff.

The bus was scheduled to leave at six in the evening. Zhang Fan had never traveled abroad, and he was too afraid to wander around and get lost, so after grabbing a bite near the bus station he simply lay down on a bench in the waiting hall to rest.

After boarding, Zhang Fan nearly threw up. It was midsummer, the bus was air-conditioned and the windows could not be opened. The stench of all sorts of body odor and athlete’s foot mixed together, along with the fragrance that local men loved to spray on themselves, made the sour, pungent reek churn the lamb skewers in Zhang Fan’s stomach over and over again.

The expressway to Quark County was still unfinished, and the road was full of potholes. He was jolted all night long, so badly that it felt as if his kidneys might be shaken out of him. After enduring the whole night, they finally reached Quark County. Zhang Fan was met by Wang Hongmei, the director of the hospital office, who was unfailingly warm and enthusiastic.

The county hospital stood on the edge of the city: just one four-story building and a small two-story building used as staff dormitories. Zhang Fan had arrived a little late; the other newly hired graduates had already checked in. There were seven of them in all, four men and three women, and Zhang Fan was the only one without a partner. The others were all paired off.

The newly arrived graduates came from different medical schools in S Province: the Ethnic University Affiliated Medical College, the College of Traditional Medicine, and Zhang Fan’s own medical school. The others had arrived a day or two earlier. Led by Wang Hongmei from the hospital office, they went to the dean’s office. The dean, Batu, was a Mongol and looked somewhat like Putin.

“Now that all our colleagues have finally arrived, tonight, after Zhang Fan has settled in, let’s hold a welcome banquet in the restaurant of Quark County Hotel. We’ll welcome our new colleagues who have come from far away.” Batu spoke with a flushed face. Then he turned to Wang Hongmei and said, “Tonight, notify the heads of each department and the head nurses, and bring along a few of the new nurses as well. Tomorrow happens to be the weekend, so take our graduates out to the grasslands and let them experience our beautiful prairie.”

Batu spoke with great force and made large, animated gestures. He seemed to be the strong, domineering type.

Zhang Fan and Li Hui were assigned to the same dorm room. Guo Qiliang and Jiumabieke shared another. Guo Qiliang was from the Xibe ethnicity, Jiumabieke from the Kazakh ethnicity, and both had graduated from the Ethnic University. Li Hui was Han Chinese and had graduated from the College of Traditional Medicine. During college, the person he had been dating wanted them to stay together, so they had agreed to sign on in Quark County. As for the several girls, since each of them already had someone in her heart, Zhang Fan did not pay them much attention; he was busy staring at the dean and thinking.

Li Hui was tall and thin, and very warmhearted. He helped Zhang Fan make the bed, the quilts and bedding all newly purchased by the hospital. As soon as they were done, Li Hui took out a pack of Snow Lotus, a famous local cigarette, and offered one to Zhang Fan.

Although Zhang Fan did not smoke, this was their first meeting, and since they would be living and working together, he did not refuse. Li Hui lit the cigarette for him, then sat down on his own bed and said, “Brother, you’re a graduate of a top university, and yet you’ve come all the way out here to this frontier wilderness?”

“What top university? Outsiders wouldn’t know, but you graduated from Lanzhou, so how can you not know?” Zhang Fan replied with a grin. “Enough teasing me. Are you in traditional medicine, or integrated medicine?”

Li Hui laughed. “Integrated medicine. Neither fish nor fowl, honestly. It’s a headache. You have to take the licensing exam for integrated medicine, but in actual practice almost everything you use is Western medicine, and all you learn from both sides is just a bit of superficial knowledge.”

“It’s all the same. We Western medicine graduates only know a little superficial stuff too.”

“Which department are you planning to go to? I heard from people at the hospital yesterday that every department is short-handed right now. We won’t have to rotate through departments; we’ll go straight into one. I’m thinking of internal medicine. How about you?”

The county hospital had two internal medicine departments. Internal Medicine One combined respiratory, gastroenterology, and cardiology, while Internal Medicine Two combined endocrinology and infectious diseases. No one knew why the hospital had not put respiratory and infectious diseases together. Li Hui had already asked around yesterday. He wanted to go into internal medicine, and if Zhang Fan also chose internal medicine, he planned to take whichever department Zhang Fan did not choose. After all, even if only in name, Zhang Fan was a graduate of a top university.

“I want to go into surgery. Orthopedics would be best.” Zhang Fan’s foundation was average, and internal medicine demanded a stronger academic base than surgery.

They chatted for a while before Guo Qiliang and Jiumabieke came in as well. The few of them talked for a bit, and then Li Hui’s girlfriend Wang Sha walked in.

“You’re still chatting? Why haven’t you packed up yet? Director Wang just called and told us to go downstairs. Dinner’s about to start. Hurry up.”

Wang Sha was not tall, but her voice was very pleasant.

Hearing this, the group hurried downstairs. The hospital’s two ambulances were already parked beneath the dormitory building. Director Wang waved to them from inside the car. “Hurry up and get in. The dean has already set off.”

Batu’s car was a Hyundai Elantra. When the hospital occasionally had to pick up a leader or some other VIP, it was generally treated as the dean’s private car.

Quark County Hotel was the county’s designated official hotel, so whenever subordinate units held banquets, they usually did so in the hotel restaurant. After Zhang Fan and the others entered, they saw that quite a few people were already seated at the tables in the private room.

They were all fresh graduates, inexperienced in society and lacking participation in such banquets. Standing at the doorway, they felt somewhat at a loss.

Batu stood up, smiled, and said to Director Wang, “Our housekeeper, please start arranging the seats. Men and women should be seated separately, and make sure the couples are not split up by mistake.”

Everyone laughed in agreement.

The dishes came out quickly. As soon as the cold dishes were served, the hot dishes began arriving as well. No one lifted their chopsticks before the dean spoke. After the first hot dish was set down, Batu raised his wine glass and said, “Whether you are veterans of the hospital or newly arrived graduates, the fact that we can all sit together today is a bond bestowed by fate. I hope our senior colleagues will help the newcomers, and that our graduates will settle into their roles quickly and become part of our county hospital family as soon as possible. Tonight, let us use this humble cup of wine to welcome our graduates and wish them smooth work and a happy life.” With that, he drained the glass in his hand.

Zhang Fan stared at the small cup of liquor before him and felt uneasy. He rarely drank, and when he did it was only beer; he had never touched hard liquor.

At Quark County, the custom was to drink three rounds before eating. After those three rounds, Zhang Fan felt as though the room had already begun to spin. He picked up his chopsticks, intending to eat a few bites and steady himself, but before he could even extend them, his vision went black and his body went limp. He collapsed under the table.

Since everyone there was in medicine, no one panicked. They lifted Zhang Fan out and checked his pulse. Li Chengjun, the director of Internal Medicine One, smiled and said to Batu, “The boy’s drunk. He’ll be fine after we take him back to the hospital and give him an infusion to sober him up.”

“Looks like our graduates still haven’t truly entered society yet. They have to work hard, and they need to keep up when it comes to drinking too.” Batu laughed. “Xiao Chen, take Zhang Fan to the emergency room first.”

Xiao Zhang was the ambulance driver.

Then Batu raised his glass again and said, “Come on, our young men and ladies, let’s have another drink. The amount of alcohol you can drink is the amount of work you can do.”

That night, the graduates were all defeated.

Zhang Fan was simply the first to fall.

Batu and the others had deliberately made the graduates drink themselves under the table. He rather believed in the idea that alcohol revealed a person’s true nature.

Zhang Fan had never drunk strong liquor. He had drunk too much too fast, and he sobered up just as quickly. When he came to, he found himself lying on a bed in the emergency room, surrounded by emergency equipment. Though he was awake, he was still terribly dizzy. He was about to get up and go to the restroom when a screen suddenly appeared before his eyes.

“Binding to the Super Medical Assistance System. Beginning transmission of system data.”

Zhang Fan’s vision blurred, and he once again lost consciousness.