As expected, many people in the lecture hall had bruises on their faces. When they saw Luozi and Xu Ze walk in, they nodded with a smile, exuding a sense of pride.
Luozi, with a rather cocky attitude, patted Xu Ze on the shoulder and said smugly, “See? Our brothers are pretty awesome, right? Xu Ze, how about joining our warm, big family and having some fun?”
Rubbing his slightly sore arm, Xu Ze raised his delicate eyebrows and replied helplessly, “You know I’m not really into sports, and besides, I have work. Where would I find the time to play basketball?”
“Alright, alright…” Luozi sighed, looking at Xu Ze with regret. After scanning him up and down, he added, “Xu Ze, you really should give basketball a try. It’s the only sport that truly showcases a man’s charm. With your potential, surpassing Zhang Tianyu from the school team would be a piece of cake.”
“Zhang Tianyu?” Xu Ze chuckled bitterly. He couldn’t compare to the school’s basketball prince, who was adored by all the girls. Not only did Zhang Tianyu have a face that girls loved, but he was also an excellent basketball player, making him extremely popular. In two years, he had gone through seven or eight girlfriends. It was said that the only person who had ever rejected him was Sun Lingfei. Xu Ze knew he couldn’t compete with that.
After finally getting through a day of classes, Xu Ze, feeling the pinch of having spent too much on meals, had no choice but to start working again to fill his stomach.
The business at Huimin Clinic seemed to be booming lately. By the time Xu Ze arrived, there were already three or four patients waiting in the chairs.
Sister Luo was bustling around in the injection room, and when she saw Xu Ze, her face lit up with relief. “Xu Ze, come quick and help! I’ve been running around all afternoon without a break.” Xu Ze nodded, quickly put on his work uniform, and started assisting Sister Luo with preparing medications and administering IVs.
Just as things were starting to calm down a bit, Xu Ze heard Old Doctor Zhang call out from the front, “Xu Ze, come and do an ECG for this elderly gentleman!”
Hearing this, Xu Ze quickly secured the IV needle with tape, reminded the patient not to move the hand with the needle, and then went over to help the old man, who was leaning on a cane, slowly make his way to the examination room at the back.
After helping the old man lie down on the examination bed and waiting for him to undo his clothes, Xu Ze took the opportunity to pull out his stethoscope and carefully listen to the old man’s chest.
“There’s a slight wheezing sound in the lungs, and the heart rhythm seems a bit irregular with some murmurs. The old man is also short of breath, so it’s likely he has coronary heart disease with heart failure.” Having a rough idea of the old man’s condition, Xu Ze then brought out the clinic’s new ECG machine from the cabinet.
Every time he saw this new machine, which was half the weight of the old one and cost over ten thousand yuan, Xu Ze couldn’t help but mutter to himself, “Western medicine really does make more money than traditional Chinese medicine. The most expensive piece of equipment in my family’s clinic is just a quick blood glucose meter that costs a couple hundred yuan. Meanwhile, Old Doctor Zhang has been buying cars and upgrading equipment over the past two years. Who knows how much money he’s made? The difference is like heaven and earth.”
Xu Ze muttered a bit more to himself before starting the ECG. He carefully attached the leads to the old man’s thin wrists and ankles, then instructed the family to help the old man undo his shirt. He moistened a cotton swab with water and dabbed it on the old man’s sternum before attaching the six chest leads in the order of red, yellow, green, brown, black, and purple. After pressing a couple of buttons on the machine, the familiar “beep-beep” sound started, and the long strip of ECG paper slowly rolled out.
“New machines are definitely better than the old ones,” Xu Ze thought as he adjusted his glasses and carefully examined the ECG readings. He quickly came to a conclusion: “Hmm… there’s a significant ST-segment depression in leads V4, V5, and V6, exceeding 0.05 mV. There’s myocardial ischemia, but no obvious signs of a heart attack. There’s also a slight arrhythmia.”