“Shen! Fang! Yu!”
Jiang Xu stood up straight away, knocking over the chair behind him with a bang.
Yu Sang carefully picked up the chair, and almost all the doctors who were chatting were shocked into silence, looking at Jiang Xu and then at Shen Fangyu.
There wasn’t going to be another fight today, was there? Who told them to sit face-to-face? Wasn’t this tempting people?
Wu Rui glared at Shen Fangyu. He knew something bad would happen sooner or later with that stupid mouth of his. He patted Jiang Xu’s back and said, “Calm down, calm down.” He said, “It’s my brother’s fault. I was just telling Fangyu about my wife’s pregnancy symptoms, and he was joking with you.”
However, Jiang Xiu, who had been staring at Shen Fangyu, suddenly trembled at his words.
The words “pregnancy symptoms” slammed into his ears, taking over his mind at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The dizziness and fatigue, the aversion to grease, nausea, and vomiting were all textbook pregnancy symptoms. He was a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology, so he was familiar with these symptoms, but he had never thought in that direction.
Wu Rui was ready to persuade him not to fight and didn’t expect things to calm down with a sentence, Jiang Xu actually… quietly sat down.
Although his complexion didn’t look good, the smell of gunfire had dissipated. Wu Rui looked at him incredulously, and suddenly said to himself: “So my eloquence is so good? Should I quit and become a mediator at the police station?”
“Yes, the next Nobel Peace Prize goes to Brother Wu.” Shen Fangyu spoke up in a very cooperative manner; he was also a bit puzzled, Jiang Xiu was too cooperative today.
However, Jiang Xu suddenly stood up again, and when everyone thought he was ready to fight with Shen Fangyu, he suddenly patted Yu Sang’s shoulder and walked out of the lounge.
Yu Sang looked at him in confusion and looked at the others for help, only to find that almost all of his colleagues looked at him with encouragement and expectation, as if they had a line written in big letters, “Go for it, you can definitely stop a war.”
So Yu Sang’s troubled eyes gradually became determined. He followed Jiang Xu out with his head held high and full of faith, like a people’s hero.
Then he saw Jiang Xu leaning against the wall with one leg slightly bent. His head was bowed, and he was pressing the bridge of his nose. He looked tired. The miserable white light of the corridor hit him, and Yu Shang noticed that Jiang Xu had lost a lot of weight recently, even the shirt he was wearing looked empty.
Seeing him coming, Jiang Xu beckoned and waited for him to approach before lowering his voice and asking, “If a patient who had sex two months ago is now experiencing nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, fatigue, and dizziness, what is the cause?”
Yu Sang had long been accustomed to Jiang Xu’s sudden questions whenever and wherever he wanted, but he was just a little surprised at how basic the question was. Although it was strange, he still blurted out, “Pregnancy.”
Jiang Xu took a deep breath, as if he were trying to suppress some kind of impulse, and continued to press the question, “What if this patient is a male.”
“……” The question was a bit over the top.
“How about,” Yu Sang said tentatively, “first getting an HCG check?”
Jiang Xiu: “?”
Yu Sang was sure that after he said that, Jiang Xiu looked like he was going to throw him into the sea and feed him to the sharks in the next second, so he changed his words at lightning speed and said, “I just said it off the top of my head, it’s probably a digestive tract disorder.”
Jiang Xu pinched his brow and waved his hand at him, “Tell them I’m not feeling too well, I’ll go back first.”
“Oh ……” Yu Sang watched Jiang Xu leave in confusion.
He had been following Jiang Xu for many years, but this was the first time he had seen Jiang Xu show such a look. He looked at Jiang Xu’s thin back, as if a gust of wind could blow him away, and suddenly wanted to advise him to eat more and not work so hard.
However, the obstetricians and gynecologists, like the surgeons, were always on the move because of the large number of operations, so they walked very fast, as if they were in a hurry to be reincarnated. So by the time he opened his mouth to say something, Jiang Xu had already walked away, so he sighed and walked back to the lounge.
The office was empty as everyone had gathered for dinner. Jiang Xu was staring at the document on the computer in a daze. Ten minutes, he was still reading the first line. He turned off the computer with some annoyance and prepared to leave work.
It had gotten dark outside, and when he looked up, he could see the moon.
Outside the department was a very tall balsam fir, and deep in the fork of the fir was a bird’s nest. The mother had just given birth to a nest of baby birds and was feeding them at the moment, chattering lively.
Jiang Xu’s gaze paused on the bird’s nest, and then looked towards the hospital building behind the tree.
He closed his eyes, as if he had made up his mind, and dialed a phone number: “Test department duty room?”
His voice was faint, as if the wind was blowing in the night.
There was an “mmm” on the other end. “What is it?”
“Are you busy there at the moment?”
“Not really.”
Jiang Xu turned his work badge over, and he looked at himself in the photo, “I’m sending a urine sample up now, please help me take an hcg test, and charge it to my personal account, Jiang Xu of the obstetrics and gynecology department.”
It was quite common for doctors in the same hospital to go through the back door to send either their own or their friends’ and relatives’ samples and do tests, usually to save money.
The various departments were all colleagues, so they always turned a blind eye to this. They usually don’t ask for names or record patient information for such tests, and give the results directly to the doctor who brought them in.
Although he was a bit surprised that Dr Jiang had to pay for the test himself, the doctor on duty at the testing department didn’t ask more questions and just gave him an affirmative answer: “The results may come out later, don’t wait, get up in the morning to see them.”
Jiang Xiu: “Mmm.”
However, Jiang Xu failed to sleep, but he didn’t want to admit that he had lost sleep because he was waiting for the results of the testing department.
It was obvious since he was a man that even if he had symptoms similar to those of pregnancy, it couldn’t be pregnancy.
The indicator he had the laboratory check for was the human chorionic gonadotropin, a common indicator in early pregnancy, but even if it was really elevated, it didn’t necessarily mean that he was pregnant, there could be pituitary dysfunction or some kind of malignant tumor.
Jiang Xu even gave some serious thought to which was more devastating, cancer or pregnancy.
Shen Fangyu’s face appeared in his mind countless times, and even many of the details he had forgotten from that night slowly came back to his memory.
He was annoyed as he waited for the test results and felt downright sick.
A professional obstetrician and gynecologist who couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night because he was wondering if a man could get pregnant, would be laughed out of the room by his peers.
Yet when his phone beeped, he still violently unlocked it and opened the file sent by the test doctor.
The fresh examination report was in black and white, with only one indicator.
Jiang Xu’s eyes seemed to burn a hole in the checklist as he stared unblinkingly at the familiar indicator and the soaring values that followed, drawing an obvious conclusion.
Either the instrument was broken or the world had gone mad.
He practically jumped out of bed in the night and dialed Tang Ke’s number.