The Intern Memorized the Surgeon's Schedule novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Gallery Seat Three

Head Nurse Gao tests him on the ward roster, Deputy Director Lu offers him a faster path, and from the gallery Tong Yu watches Han's long case end at the same minute it always does; Lu says to bring him anything he notices.

Head Nurse Gao did not believe in coincidences, and she tested Tong Yu before the orientation had finished.

She caught him at the seventh-floor nurses' station with the whiteboard behind her and her clipboard under her arm.

"You know the chief's Tuesdays," she said. "Let's see what else you know. Who is on nights this week?"

"Two nurses on seven and a float nurse from six," said Tong Yu.

"Dr Jiang Tao is the senior resident on eight. He covers both floors after midnight."

"Beds on seven that are post-op day two?"

"Four, nine and fourteen," said Tong Yu.

"Who has the drain in bed nine?"

"Nobody yet," said Tong Yu. "It comes out tomorrow if the output stays under thirty."

Gao turned her head and looked at the whiteboard, and then at him.

"I wrote that on the board an hour ago," she said. "You were in the seminar room."

"I passed it on the way to the toilet."

Gao raised her pen. "And you remember the roster for two floors."

"I remember what's on boards, Head Nurse. It isn't a talent. I can't remember where I put my keys."

Gao looked at him a moment longer.

"That is either very useful or very sad," she said. "Go and eat something. The chief starts at 8:30 and you are in the gallery."

He found the canteen, and a large untidy young man in a cap printed with cartoon ducks fell into the seat across from him.

"Anesthesia, second year," said the man. "Your roommate in the hospital dormitory."

He unwrapped a bun. "Is it true you went up to the seventh floor with tea?"

"Who told you that?"

"Everybody. It's on three group chats."

The roommate leaned in, delighted.

"I have twenty yuan that says he throws you out by Friday," he said. "The ward nurses are on Thursday. Pick a day."

"I don't bet on this."

"Everybody bets on this. You've just made the best gossip of the autumn."

Tong Yu finished his rice and did not answer, and the roommate took that as a yes to Wednesday.

At eight o'clock, as he was heading to the lift, a warm voice said, "Dr Tong."

Deputy Director Lu Chengfeng was forty-one, impeccably groomed, with an easy, affable smile.

"I heard about your morning," he said. "Ranking Han's service first. Brave."

"Thank you, Deputy Director."

"He won't let you scrub for months. You know that," said Lu. "He thinks trainees should earn the right to be seen."

Lu spread his hands.

"I'm easier. Come to my list and you'll hold a scalpel in a month."

"I'm grateful, Deputy Director. I'll stay where I am."

"Think about it. The offer doesn't expire." Lu tapped the lift button for him. "Gallery seat three is the good one. It faces the field."

The gallery sat above the main theatre behind a pane of glass, with six rows of tip-up seats and a speaker for the surgeon's voice.

Tong Yu took seat three in the front row.

He had sat in it on his student placements, and it was the best view in the building.

Below him the patient was draped and the lights were on, and Han Zhiyuan stood at the table with his hands raised and waiting.

Gao scrubbed at the instrument table herself, and she placed the scalpel in his right palm before he asked for it.

Tong Yu took out his wallet and, as he always did before a case, unfolded the paper inside it and read it once.

It was a hospital consent form, creased soft, and on the back someone had written in blue ink.

The writing sloped downhill and wobbled, because the man who wrote it had been awake for twenty hours.

Tong Yu had carried it for eight years.

He folded it away and watched the field.

Han worked without a wasted motion, and every cut was exactly where it should be.

It took hours, and the gallery speaker carried his dry voice and the quiet answers of the team.

At a quarter past one, Deputy Director Lu came in from the side and took the closing sutures.

He had done the same on every long case Tong Yu had ever watched.

Han stepped back from the table at 1:20, stripped his gloves, and walked out of the theatre at 1:28.

He did not look up at the gallery.

Tong Yu wrote the time in a small black notebook, as he had written it in a hundred others.

Then he sat for a moment and looked at the line.

Nothing the chief ever did ran past half past one.

Three years of lists, and Tong Yu had never once asked himself why.

He closed the notebook and stood, and found Lu waiting at the gallery door with his hands in his pockets.

"Walk with me," said Lu pleasantly.

They went down in the staff lift together, just the two of them.

"You noticed the time," said Lu. "I saw you write it."

"I write everything down, Deputy Director. It's a habit."

"A good one." Lu watched the floor numbers fall.

"Whoever taught you to watch him did you no favours," he said. "I've been trying for years to find out what he doesn't want seen."

Tong Yu said nothing at all.

"Write down what you notice," Lu said gently, as the doors opened. "Bring it to me, and I'll make you a surgeon."

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