Chapter 7: Grand Rounds

Gao stopped him in the pharmacy corridor at ten past seven on Thursday, with a clean white coat folded over her arm.

"Put this on," she said. "Yours has a coffee stain, and you are about to be looked at by a hundred and forty doctors."

"Thank you, Head Nurse."

"Don't thank me. Listen." She lowered her voice.

"Last month the deputy director asked the pharmacy for the department's prescribing audit. Printed copies, broken down by name."

"By doctor?"

"By patient. It was called a formulary review." Gao smoothed the coat sleeve. "I have run a formulary review. Nobody needs names for it."

Tong Yu looked at her. "Why are you telling me?"

"Because you remember boards," said Gao. "Go and be brilliant."

The main lecture hall held four hundred seats and was three-quarters full by half past seven.

President Qiu Wenhua sat in the front row, silver-haired and bored, with a notebook on his knee.

Han Zhiyuan sat in the third row, on the aisle, with his thermos on the floor between his feet and his hands folded.

He did not look at Tong Yu once.

Tong Yu presented case seven in eight minutes. A sixty-four-year-old man, a tumour in the left lateral segment, the scan, the plan, the outcome.

He did not stumble.

He had done it twice already in front of a mirror.

He had done it once in front of his roommate, who had cried at the end out of general loyalty.

When he finished, Deputy Director Lu rose at the lectern with a warm smile for the room.

"Thank you, Dr Tong. A clear presentation. I'd like to ask one question, if the president permits."

"Please," said President Qiu, without looking up.

"The resection was done under continuous inflow clamp, which is standard," said Lu. "Our own Director Han described it in his 2018 paper."

He turned a page.

"Dr Tong, would you use the clamp the same way, or would you do it differently? And if differently, why did the Director teach otherwise?"

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