This surgery was, in a sense, very difficult. The atmosphere in the operating room was tense throughout, and everyone moved with extreme care and caution, bearing a great deal of pressure.
Midway through, a hematologist suddenly rushed in. Seeing the surgery already underway, he felt a wave of dizziness. He opened his mouth to say something, but Xiao Wei, seeing this, quickly pulled him aside.
—As the assistant in the operating room, she didn't have much to do, especially since Sister Hao intentionally left her aside; she was practically the most idle person in the entire operating room.
"What are you doing?" Xiaowei asked, frowning. "The surgery is at a critical moment."
The hematologist, sweating profusely, held a test report in his hand and anxiously whispered to Xiaowei, "We can't do it! This surgery can't be done like this!"
He glanced at Dr. Luo and Sister Hao, who were racing against time to operate on the patient, and said with a grim face, "The patient's blood test results are in. HIV antibody is positive. He's an AIDS patient!"
The hematologists were terrified upon seeing this result, especially thinking about Dr. Luo and his team who were currently performing surgery. They felt their scalps tingle and their blood freeze.
They didn't dare delay and had him rush over with the test report, praying that the surgery hadn't started yet.
However, what they saw completely shattered their illusions—the surgery had not only begun, but it seemed to have reached a point where it couldn't be stopped. What could they do now?
Hearing her hematologist colleague's words, Xiaowei didn't feel afraid, only a sense of relief.
"What Little Turtle said was true…" she thought, a huge wave of relief washing over her.
However, to her hematology colleagues, her reaction was far too calm.
One colleague asked incredulously, "How come you didn't react at all? This patient is HIV-positive! You could all easily get infected! Even if you take post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) afterwards, it's not 100% preventative." The
colleague was both agitated and worried.
Xiaowei snapped out of her daze and quickly said, "It's not that I didn't react, it's just that we already knew the patient was HIV-positive."
The colleague calmed down. "You already knew? Did the patient tell you beforehand?"
Xiaowei shook her head. "No… we just guessed."
"Guessed?"
"Yeah…"
The colleague stared blankly at Xiaowei, completely unable to believe what he had just heard—guessed? Guessed??!
He had considered countless reasons, but he never imagined the final answer would be "guessed." Didn't this sound too frivolous? Was Xiaowei really not just teasing him?
Xiaowei didn't have time to explain Xu Gui's situation at this point, so she could only use those three words to gloss over it. She said, "Actually, Sister Hao specifically asked the family about this before the surgery, but the family denied it..."
Her colleague glanced at Dr. Luo and the others who were in the middle of the surgery and asked in a low voice, "Since you all know about this, why did you still proceed with the surgery?"
Xiaowei looked at him and asked back, "Otherwise what? At this point, are we just going to abandon the patient and ignore them?"
Her colleague calmed down.
Xiaowei said, "If you were standing here on the operating table like us, I think you would have made the same choice as Dr. Luo and the others."
Once you put on a doctor's uniform, you have to be responsible for the white coat you wear. No one can desert their post... Thinking of this, her colleague couldn't help but take a deep breath.
Xiaowei whispered, "You don't need to worry too much about us. We've tried our best to protect ourselves. Everyone will take care of themselves! But you, you should go out now."
Her colleague glanced at her and nodded.
Xiaowei watched the other person leave, took a deep breath, and returned to the operating table. This time, she didn't bother them again. The red light in the operating room remained on for over three hours before suddenly going out.
Only after the surgery was finished did Xiaowei tell Sister Hao about her colleagues from the hematology department's visit.
The blood test results from the hematology department were in, confirming that the patient was HIV-positive.
Hearing this news, everyone in the operating room felt relieved. They were glad they had believed Sister Hao, taken proper precautions, and remained extremely careful throughout the surgery, striving not to contract any infection.
"Sister Hao, who told you the patient had HIV? Now you should tell us!" her colleagues couldn't help but ask. "It's all thanks to her, otherwise we would have been in danger!"
The patient's family had consistently denied having an infectious disease, so when asked how Sister Hao knew, she replied, "...someone secretly told me."
But Sister Hao refused to reveal who that person was.
Of course, Sister Hao wasn't deliberately keeping it a secret; it was just that the situation at the time wasn't a good opportunity to explain. She couldn't very well tell everyone that a fortune teller had told her, could she? She was afraid they'd think she was crazy.
So, that was the only reason she could think of at the time.
But now, there were no more reservations, so she directly told everyone about Xu Gui's situation. And everyone's reaction was pretty much what Sister Hao had imagined—disbelief and suspicion.
If it weren't for the fact that the patient really was an AIDS patient, everyone's first reaction would definitely be that Sister Hao was joking, but now…
they looked at each other in bewilderment.
*
Xu Gui wasn't too aware of the commotion at the hospital; she'd actually been quite busy these past few days.
Since returning to City A, people had been coming to see her every day, and the first person to come to her was someone quite unexpected—Mao Dayong, Mao Taiping's grandson. It was he who had asked Xu Gui to help him calculate where his grandfather had hidden his inheritance.
And it was because of this that the fact that Mao Taiping had donated a large sum of assets to the state was exposed.
Because of this incident, the Mao family didn't like Xu Gui, so Xu Gui never expected that Mao Dayong would come to see her one day.
"I've come to see you because I need your help with something..." Mao Dayong said, his expression somewhat embarrassed—he seemed much more mature than when they first met.
Xu Gui: ?
"What is it?" she asked.
Mao Dayong told her to wait, then went to the trunk of his car, opened it, and bent down to take something out.
From Xu Gui's perspective, she couldn't see what was in the trunk; she could only see Mao Dayong struggling and pulling, so it seemed the item was quite heavy.
Finally, after Mao Dayong had completely removed the item, Xu Gui could clearly see what this so-called "heavy item" in the trunk actually was.
"...Isn't this your family's old tortoise?" She looked at Mao Dayong in surprise. "Why did you move it here?"
Mao Dayong put the tortoise down—this tortoise had lived for several hundred years and was quite heavy; it had tired him up.
Hearing Xu Gui's words, he wiped the sweat from his face, looked up, and said, "This is the favor I want from you. I'll give you this turtle. Can you take care of it?"
Xu Gui: "...Why?"
Mao Dayong pursed his lips and said, "My dad plans to sell it. I'm afraid it won't be well after it's sold. It's so lazy. What if someone doesn't like it and beats or scolds it?"
After saying that, he looked up at Xu Gui and said, "Miss Xu, you're different. You can even communicate with the big turtle. You'll definitely like it and treat it well! So, I want to entrust it to you!"
Xu Gui glanced at the big turtle, which was lying lazily on the ground, too lazy to move, and asked Mao Dayong, "...Don't you hate it?"
Mao Dayong awkwardly said, "I don't particularly hate it. It's, after all, my grandfather's heirloom. It watched me grow up."
As he said this, Mao Dayong couldn't help but feel a strange feeling—being watched by a turtle to grow up didn't sound like a nice thing.
Mao Dayong sighed again. He squatted down, reached out and touched the large tortoise's shell, and said with some disappointment, "My grandfather is gone. I can't just sell his tortoise too, can I?"
Besides, to put it bluntly, this tortoise was his elder.
"I remember when I was little, my grandfather would put me on the tortoise's back and let it carry me..." But the tortoise was really too lazy; it wouldn't move while carrying him, and eventually, his grandfather scolded it, and in anger, it jumped into their family's big pond with him on its back.
Mao Dayong couldn't help but laugh when he thought of his grandfather's expression at that time, but after laughing, he felt a pang of sadness. After all, his grandfather was gone, and now even his beloved tortoise was going to be sold by his father.
"So, I'm planning to give it to you," he said.
Xu Gui: "Oh, then I should thank you for trusting me so much." Entrusting her with her grandfather's belongings.
Hearing this, Mao Dayong, seemingly oblivious to the sarcasm in Xu Gui's tone, replied, "You're welcome. Just treat the big turtle well!"
Xu Gui: "..." You really aren't polite.
She walked over and squatted down beside the big turtle, reaching out to touch its shell, saying, "It's not that I don't want to help, but this guy is so big, and where I live now, there's no pond for it to live in."
"It's alright," Mao Dayong said, "Just because your place isn't big now doesn't mean it won't be big in the future, right? When you have money and buy a big house, you can get the big turtle a bigger place."
Xu Gui looked at him strangely and said, "You seem to have a lot of faith in me."
Mao Dayong said, "I watched your live stream. You make so much money, you'll be able to afford a big house soon... Sigh, I'm different. I've never been good at anything since I was little. My biggest wish is to sponge off my parents. Luckily, my grandfather left me a house, otherwise I'd be even more miserable now."
Thinking back, what was the point of all his hard work searching for his grandfather's inheritance? " Wasn't it all just so I could live off my parents in peace? Too bad, my dream was shattered.
" "Miss Xu, then I'll entrust the giant tortoise to you!" He looked at Xu Gui expectantly.
Xu Gui saw his serious expression, "...Alright, for the sake of the giant tortoise." — We're all tortoises, so let's look after each other, even though our Xuan Turtle clan is actually a different kind of creature from ordinary tortoises.
"But if you give me this tortoise, won't your father be angry and come looking for trouble?" she asked Mao Dayong.
Mao Dayong said, "So, I prepared this..."
He ran to the passenger seat and took out a...contract? from his bag.
Xu Gui looked at him suspiciously.
Mao Dayong said seriously, "I've decided to sell the giant tortoise to you for ten yuan. We'll both sign it, that way, even if my father comes looking for trouble, you won't have to be afraid!"
Xu Gui's gaze changed slightly as she looked at him, and she sighed, "You really are thoughtful."
But from this, it was clear he was genuinely concerned about the giant tortoise.
Xu Gui said, "I can sign the contract, and you can keep the turtle with me. But I hope you can handle things properly with your father… After all, if your father really comes looking for trouble, I absolutely won't get involved with him. I'll just return the turtle to him."
Hearing this, Mao Dayong became anxious, but before he could speak, Xu Gui said, "In the end, this has nothing to do with me, right?"
Mao Dayong opened his mouth, but in the end, he lowered his head, looking dejected.
"You're right, this has nothing to do with you…" he murmured.
Xu Gui signed the contract with him, paid him ten yuan, and Mao Dayong left. Before leaving, he touched the turtle's shell and mumbled something to it.
After he left, Xu Gui looked down and saw the turtle, whose head had somehow emerged from its shell and whose eyes were fixed on the direction Mao Dayong had left, bent down and picked it up.
"Okay, from now on that's my turtle. I have another turtle at home, but it's not as big as yours…" She carried the large turtle towards her room at the orphanage, muttering to herself, "Should I give you both names? How about you call it Big Turtle and it Little Turtle?"
…
In the afternoon, the children at the orphanage heard from somewhere that Xu Gui had brought back a large turtle, and they all gathered around to see it.
Because of limited space, Xu Gui found a large basin to keep the turtle in, placing it in the bathroom. The big guy was lazily lying in it, letting the children poke its shell, looking quite content with its lot.
The director asked Xu Gui, "What's this turtle?"
Xu Gui then told her about Mao Dayong entrusting the large turtle to her, and finally scratched her head, saying, "Right now, conditions are limited, so I can only make do with it like this. When I have money later, I'll build it a big pond to live in!"
The director looked at her, hesitant to speak, but in the end, she said nothing.
Two days later, a pond was dug in the orphanage's backyard, next to a large tree. The bottom was hollowed out to allow water to flow in, and large stones were used to block the water from splashing out.
Considering the children in the orphanage, the pond wasn't very deep, just right for Xu Gui to put the large turtle in.
"With this pond, you don't have to keep the turtle in your room anymore, making the whole place flooded," the director said.
Xu Gui looked at her, touched. "...Director."
The director said, "I didn't do this, your Uncle Liu did it. You know, your Uncle Liu is very skillful; digging a small pond is a piece of cake for him."
Xu Gui hugged her, rubbing her cheek against her shoulder, and said sweetly, "Director, thank you and Uncle Liu for digging this pond for me... The big turtle will be very happy to see it."
The director patted her on the back and sighed, "If anyone should be saying thank you, it's us, Xiao Gui. The money you donated to the orphanage has been a huge help."
The director had first used the money Xu Gui donated to improve the children's meals, and in just over a month, the children's complexions had improved significantly, making everyone at the orphanage very happy.
All of this was thanks to Xu Gui.
Xu Gui herself didn't seem to care much about it, saying, "Don't worry, Director, I'll earn lots of money in the future so everyone can live a good life."
Hearing her words, the director's vague idea grew stronger. She reached out and patted Xu Gui's arm again, a thoughtful look flashing in her eyes.
...
After the orphanage got a pond, Xu Gui put the large turtle in it, and at the same time, she also put the small turtle from the fish tank in—she had asked the small turtle what it wanted, and it also wanted to live in the pond, so she put it in too. From
then on, they would come to the pond to feed it.
A month had passed when Kuang Ming suddenly brought someone to see Xu Gui. According to Kuang Ming, this person was named Qin Zhongyi. The name sounded like a tall, burly man, but in reality, he was a thin, pale-faced man with a somewhat gloomy demeanor.
Qin Zhongyi worked in asset management, specifically as a financial advisor, managing the assets of wealthy individuals. He was a very famous financial advisor, having previously worked with clients whose net worth was at least hundreds of millions, earning him a monthly salary of over a million.
In comparison, Xu Gui, whose current assets were only around 800,000, seemed quite poor. However, he and Kuang Ming were friends, which was why he had accepted Xu Gui's job.
"If you're willing, Qin Zhongyi can manage your money for you from now on..." Kuang Ming said, glancing at the orphanage. "Even if you want to use this money to build your orphanage, you can entrust that to him. He'll provide a reasonable financial plan and can also help you contact a renovation team."
Xu Gui, curious, turned to look at him: "Is he that capable?"
Kuang Ming chuckled and said, "Don't underestimate our Zhongyi just because he's young. He's a very famous financial advisor. You know the movie star Meng Die, right? She entrusted her assets to our Zhongyi for management!"
He glanced at Xu Gui and said irritably, "Compared to your behavior of not having any financial planning and transferring all your earnings to the orphanage, I think you should entrust your assets to my professionals for management."
Speaking of this, one has to mention Kuang Ming's reaction when he learned that Xu Gui had earned so much money but only kept a few tens of thousands for himself.
He really didn't expect Xu Gui to be so... so willing, so generous.
When Xu Gui said in her live stream that she wanted to earn money for the orphanage, he thought she was just putting on a show to gain favor. He never expected her to be a woman of her word; she really did what she said.
Kuang Ming thought, "...After meeting her, I should have known she was exactly like that—completely consistent inside and out."
In short, he couldn't stand Xu Gui's reckless spending, so he simply found a familiar financial advisor to introduce her to someone. That way, even if she wanted to use the money for the orphanage, the financial advisor could clearly explain every expense and plan it meticulously, preventing her from being confused about where the money went.
Xu Gui took the business card Qin Zhongyi handed her and asked curiously, "If I want to make our orphanage the number one in the world, can you help me with a reasonable plan?"
Qin Zhongyi was taken aback, somewhat surprised. He hadn't expected that the employer Kuang Ming had introduced him to had such... such ambition.
Qin Zhongyi didn't know how to describe it.
If you said she wasn't ambitious, she wanted to turn an orphanage into the world's number one; but if you said she was ambitious, the thing she wanted to make the world's number one—an orphanage?
"...Miss Xu, what are you planning to do by building the world's number one orphanage?" Qin Zhongyi couldn't help but ask.
Xu Gui said, "I didn't say anything specific, but the children in orphanages are usually orphans, abandoned children without parents or relatives. As they grow up, they often face strange looks or ridicule for not having parents and being orphans."
"So, I want to change this situation..."
"I want to make our orphanage the number one in the world! It will have a first-class amusement park, a first-class restaurant, and all facilities will be the best in the world! I want children all over the world to envy them for living in an orphanage." "
That way, if they are ridiculed again, they can hold their heads high and proudly tell those people that they live in the world's number one orphanage!"
Xu Gui looked at Kuang Ming and Kuang Ming with bright eyes and asked, "What do you think? Isn't my idea amazing?"
Kuang Ming looked at her with some surprise, his eyes seeming to be seeing Xu Gui for the first time.
"I didn't expect you to think this way..." he said, "But if you can really do this, then the children in your orphanage will definitely be the happiest children in the world."
Hearing this, Xu Gui said smugly, "Right? That's what I was thinking too!"
Qin Zhongyi pondered, "...In that case, Miss Xu, are you planning to turn your orphanage into a huge theme park?"
Xu Gui was puzzled, "...Huh?" Isn't it an orphanage? How did it become a theme park?
"Isn't it?" Qin Zhongyi countered, "You know, the place that children in this world yearn for most right now is Disneyland... Miss Xu, if you want children all over the world to envy the children in your orphanage, then your orphanage naturally needs to have a place that other children can envy."
"An amusement park, that's the place children yearn for most..."
And the world's number one amusement park, just hearing that makes children's hearts flutter.
After listening, Xu Gui thought: Wow, this Mr. Qin Zhongyi really knows how to do things!
"Then, I want to build a world's number one amusement park that children all over the world flock to..." Xu Gui's vague idea gradually became clear under Qin Zhongyi's description.
Imagine, a place every child in the world longs for, if they knew their orphanage's children lived there… they would be incredibly envious of their orphanage's children!
That's exactly it!
Thinking this, Xu Gui suddenly grabbed Qin Zhongyi's hand, her voice earnest and excited, "Mr. Qin, please help me! I've decided, I don't want to build the world's number one orphanage anymore, I want to build the world's number one amusement park!"
Qin Zhongyi: "…"