The Intern Memorized the Surgeon's Schedule novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The East Lift
On his first morning Tong Yu waits at the lift with two cups of tea, because he knows to the minute when the chief surgeon arrives; Han orders him transferred, he refuses, and an anonymous complaint arrives stamped half an hour after they met.
At 6:41 on his first Monday, Dr Tong Yu stood at the east lift on the seventh floor holding two paper cups of tea.
Director Han Zhiyuan would come out of the stairwell at 6:42.
On Mondays he took the stairs from the fourth floor to the seventh, because the east lift was slow.
He signed the surgical office sheet at 6:42, and he drank green tea with no sugar.
Tong Yu knew all of it by heart, and he had never told anyone why.
The stairwell door opened.
Han Zhiyuan was thirty-six, tall and lean, in a grey coat over his scrubs.
He carried a steel thermos in his left hand and a file under his right arm.
He stopped when he saw the cups.
"Dr Tong," he said.
"Good morning, Director Han." Tong Yu held out the second cup with both hands. "Longjing, no sugar. It's hot."
Han looked at the cup and did not take it.
"You are the new intern. Orientation is at eight, in the seminar room on five."
"Yes, Director," said Tong Yu.
"Then why are you on seven at 6:41?"
"Because you come out of the stairwell at 6:42," Tong Yu said. "On Mondays. Tuesdays it's the west lift, because the cleaners wax the stairs."
A cart rattled somewhere down the corridor and went quiet.
"Who told you that?" Han asked.
"Nobody. I did three years of clinical placement in this building. The surgical office is next to the stairs, so I could see the sheet."
"You could see the sheet. That does not explain my Tuesdays."
"On Tuesday you operate at eight with Deputy Director Lu at your left," said Tong Yu.
He ticked off the days on his fingers. "Wednesday is clinic. Friday is rounds and the afternoon list."
"And Thursday?"
"Thursday you operate until half past one, and then the block is closed for maintenance."
Han's face did not change at all.
Tong Yu had watched that face from the gallery for three years, and he had never once seen it change.
"Come to my office," said Han.
The office was small and very tidy, with a single chair for visitors and no photographs.
Han put the thermos on the desk and the file beside it, and then he stood with his hands behind him.
"I will say this once," he said. "I do not take interns who know where I will be."
"I understand, Director."
"There is a form on my desk. It transfers you to Deputy Director Lu's team."
Han looked at the form, not at him.
"He has more cases, he enjoys teaching, and you will hardly see me."
"I ranked your service first," said Tong Yu.
"Everyone ranks my service first. The lottery gave you to me, and I am returning you."
"The lottery did not give me to you, Director. I traded my slot with a classmate for a month of her night shifts."
For the first time Han's eyebrows moved.
"That is a violation of the placement rules," said Han.
"Yes. I'll report it myself, if you like. I'd rather stand in your gallery for a year than hold a retractor for someone else."
"Why?"
It was a flat question, and Tong Yu had prepared a hundred answers to it.
He had never prepared the true one, because the true one would turn him into a debt.
A man who has saved your mother does not need her son following him down a corridor with tea.
"Because your outcomes are the best in the province," he said. "Your complication rate is under one percent. I want to learn how."
That was true as well, and Han seemed to hear it.
He took a long breath through his nose.
"Gallery only," he said. "You will not scrub on my list. You will not touch a patient of mine. You will not bring me anything."
"Not even tea?"
"Especially not tea."
Tong Yu looked down at the cup in his hand.
"It'll go cold," he said. "I'll drink it. Thank you, Director."
He had expected to be dismissed, and instead Han crossed to the desk and unscrewed the lid of his own thermos.
It was empty.
Han stood looking into it for a moment, and then he held out his left hand, without a word.
Tong Yu put the second cup in it.
Han drank half of it standing up.
"Longjing," he said at last. "Not bad."
"It's the only kind you drink, Director," said Tong Yu.
"I told you not to know that."
"I'm sorry. I'll try to forget."
"Do not try," said Han, with great weariness. "You will only do it badly."
There was a knock, and the door opened before he answered it.
Head Nurse Gao Meilan came in, small and square, with a clipboard on her hip.
Her face had stopped being surprised a decade ago.
She had a single sheet of paper in her hand.
"Director Han," she said. "The president's office just forwarded this. It came through the complaints portal this morning."
"Read it."
"A trainee has been stalking the chief of surgery and bribing him with tea."
Gao looked over her glasses at the cup.
"Filed anonymously," she said. "The portal stamps it at 7:09."
Tong Yu glanced at the clock on the wall.
It was 7:20.
He had arrived at the lift at 6:41, and nobody had been in the corridor, and nobody had seen him.
"Director," he said slowly, "the office door was shut. Nobody else was on the floor. Who sent that in twenty-eight minutes?"
Han put the cup down on the desk, very carefully, with both hands.
"Someone else in this hospital watches my corridor, Dr Tong," he said. "You have just given them a reason to write."
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