Chapter 3 The most taboo thing in this line of work
"Doctor Jiang, I really enjoy helping you. Look at how clean you are. I don't even need to do any more work for you."
In the afternoon, Jiang Ranxu disinfected the entire clinic once more. Nurse Ni, however, became an idler, leaning against the door as she watched him busy himself.
Jiang Ranxu left his previous unit to be with his doctoral advisor, while Sister Ni left to avoid her ex-husband, the vice president. Her ex-husband's marriages adhered to traditional medical ethics: his first marriage was with a college classmate, his second with a nurse, and his third with a pharmaceutical representative. Unfortunately, Sister Ni was the one who ended up marrying him for the second time.
Sister Ni spent so much energy on her divorce a few years ago, but this year she finally came to terms with it and started postgraduate medical studies. It's the end of the year now, and whenever she has free time on the way to work, she's been studying for final exams.
Jiang Ranxu also understood what she meant, so he deliberately let her go:
"They are still needed. This afternoon, please help me send these instruments to the sterilization center. Remember to put the probes and other things through the vibrator several times. Other than that, there are no other arrangements. Other assistants will be in charge of the activities. You can go back early to review."
"Don't worry. Don't I know you? You care most about a sterile environment. I will definitely wash the instruments thoroughly before leaving."
Sister Ni agreed with a smile, and watched him wipe the table for a while. "But there were no patients this morning. Do you really have to spray disinfectant so many times? I think your clinic is already very clean. If it were in the whole hospital, it would be awarded the Civilized Hygiene Award."
Jiang Ranxu had just finished wiping half of the table when he paused abruptly and threw the wet wipe in his hand into the medical waste bin.
He realized he was getting sick again, so he couldn't continue wiping, nor could he focus on the dry half of the table without any traces of disinfectant, otherwise his mind would be filled with all kinds of obsessive thoughts about germs.
Fortunately, the front desk clerk called Sister Ni away. When she returned, a hint of inquiry crossed her face. "Hey, your old client, in his twenties, is here to see you. Why is he here again? Didn't he just have his wisdom teeth removed yesterday?"
"Meng Weishen?"
"Who else could it be besides him? The average age of your customer base is less than ten years old, and he seriously raises the average."
"He wants to get invisible braces, so he'll probably talk to me about orthodontic options. But don't let him do it, there's no need for that."
"What is it to not make money when you have it?"
Jiang Ranxu got a little irritated at the mention of this. He forced himself to maintain a calm expression. "I don't understand. What went wrong? Now he thinks I'm trying to sell him an expensive project. I'm not a salesperson."
Sister Ni spoke with the tone of someone who had experienced it: "The problem is, in our line of work, the biggest taboo is falling in love with a customer."
Jiang Ranxu sneered, "It's no longer taboo to fall in love with the dean."
Sister Ni immediately emphasized: "That is the most taboo of all."
"Sister Ni, what opportunity? Did you find a new job opportunity?"
Meng Weishen had just walked in from the front desk. Sister Ni quickly said that she had found an opportunity to be a disinfectant for cattle and horses, and ran away.
The temperature was rising in the afternoon, and the heated room was even hotter. Meng Weishen slung his coat and shoulder bag over his arm, leaving only a short-sleeved T-shirt on. The fabric was thin, almost perfectly fitting the lines of his chest and abdomen, suggesting he'd been training well. His hair must have been freshly washed; there were a few fine, fluffy strands floating about, making it particularly distinct in the sunlight.
It looked and smelled clean. Jiang Ranxu felt comfortable, moving away from the half-wiped table and closer to Meng Weishen, who had cleaned it.
Meng Weishen glanced at the time on his phone and explained his purpose to him directly: "Doctor Jiang, have you had lunch? I'll treat you."
——
Meng Weishen has been working in Zhongguancun for a full decade, accumulating seven years of undergraduate and graduate experience at THU, a year of internship overlapping his third year of graduate school, and three years of full-time work experience. For Meng Weishen, the capital is synonymous with Zhongguancun.
As a native of the imperial capital, Jiang Ranxu had rarely set foot in Zhongguancun before his job change, and was less familiar with the terrain than Meng Wei. He only knew that the place was once a gathering place for old eunuchs, and now it was not much better, filled with new-age slaves with strong sexual atrophy.
As expected, Meng Weishen easily took him into the Lenovo campus, and even borrowed an internal employee ID from somewhere, allowing him to enjoy a 20% discount at the BLT restaurant.
"Move the junk food away." Meng Weishen pushed aside the plate of Land, Sea, and Air Burgers and pointed his phone's camera at the cherry tomatoes in the salad buffet. "I'm going to send a picture of our lunch to my trainer. Let me take another picture when your steak is served."
It was peak mealtime, and the bustling crowd was exchanging bacteria, viruses, and dander. Jiang Ranxu was trying to suppress a morbid thought, like spraying the chairs and tabletops with disinfectant again, when a sour feeling slowly took over. "Did you just go to the gym to see your personal trainer?"
Meng Weishen didn't smell any danger at all and nodded honestly to him: "Go find my private tutor to continue the lesson. Do you want it? I can give it to you."
"No, I don't want to be sexually harassed by a private instructor."
"You can hire my current female personal trainer. She's a serious person and never posts messy pictures."
Jiang Ranxu was quite satisfied with Meng Weishen's answer and decided not to pursue the hot photos in his phone. Instead, he said:
"Did you just poop? You smell nice though. Actually, you always smell nice. I can't tell what kind of perfume it is."
"No perfume, probably because I like to take a bath."
"When I passed by the computer school classrooms before, I always thought they were stinking. People like you are rare. Maybe a lot of girls will like you."
"Pretty much. The gender ratio in our undergraduate class was seriously unbalanced. In the winter, if the windows weren't open, you'd be suffocated by the human odor. There was even a required small class where there was only one girl, and she said she had to sit next to me because I was the only one who didn't smell. But it's hard to stay clean, so to make her feel more comfortable during class, I showered twice a day in the summer and once a day in the winter. It's a habit I've kept to this day."
Jiang Ranxu sensed something was amiss and asked casually, "Do you like her? Or does she like you? Did you two end up in love?"
Meng Weishen was obviously stunned. "No, she never said she liked me. How could we be in love?"
So you liked her.
Jiang Ranxu had just made a serious mental note when he heard Meng Weishen confess, "I've actually never been in a relationship. From adulthood until now, there have been very few women my age around me, and I haven't met anyone I particularly like."
I scared myself. Jiang Ranxu finally calmed down, "It's normal. You're not too old now. There will be opportunities in the future..."
"But recently my mother has been urging me to go on blind dates." Meng Weishen continued the previous sentence.
Eating lunch was like riding a roller coaster. It wasn't meant to be this way. Jiang Ranxu felt his stomach lurch, his appetite gone. He then pinned the diced beef to the plate. "So, what's your attitude towards this?"
"It's annoying. But I can't keep rejecting her. The more I reject her, the more she'll cling to me."
"All parents are like this. You must not give in. Once you do, there's no turning back."
Meng Weishen looked thoughtful and asked him, "Doctor Jiang, are you married?"
"Of course not, I'm single."
Meng Weishen obviously didn't understand his good intentions. Instead, he sighed several times: "Forget it. I originally wanted to talk to married people and see if I could get some advice on marriage, so I asked you out for dinner."
Being mistaken for a married man, Jiang Ranxu was deeply distressed, feeling a sense of defeat, as if all his previous efforts had been wasted. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that what he thought was his previous achievements were, in the eyes of the other party, the equivalent of not even getting started.
Meng Weishen insisted on asking him, "Then why haven't you gotten married yet? The leaders around me who are the same age as you have already had a second child."
"Just like you, I've never met anyone I particularly like. ...But what do you mean by the same age as me?"
"That's the age to get a management position. Those who haven't reached a management position should generally be fired at the age of 35." Meng Weishen began to worry about him again. "By the way, Doctor Jiang, have you become a leader?"
Married, about to be laid off, and over the age limit—Jiang Ranxu silently accepted these three negative labels, barely managing to contain his expression. He had originally thought his career was just getting on track, but he still had a long way to go in terms of further training. After all, being a doctor is a profession that relies heavily on experience. Even if a ninety-year-old miraculous doctor couldn't perform surgery, he could still attend lectures and provide guidance and consultations.
"No. I will try to be promoted to associate professor before I turn 40." Jiang Ranxu tried his best to choose a decent answer.
Meng Weishen didn't know where his trust in him came from, and he kept agreeing: "You can definitely do it."
Jiang Ranxu nodded slightly, controlling the arc very well, maintaining the reserved and rigorous demeanor of a miracle doctor.
He forked up a small tomato, and the tip of his tongue keenly tasted the alkaline taste of tap water. He wanted to spit it out, but that was too much of a fuss. This reminded him of an important question that he had to explore first:
"Two years ago, the pilot program for same-sex marriage started, and a friend of mine is working on a same-sex dating app. They often organize offline events. If you're not averse to it, I can recommend it to you."
Meng Weishen had just taken a bite of cheese-covered beef when he paused chewing. His furrowed brows seemed to indicate he was thinking, but someone had clearly misinterpreted his intentions: "Doctor Jiang, why are you as anxious as my mom? I haven't made up my mind to go on a blind date yet, have I?"
“You can get information ahead of time.”
"Let's talk about it after the New Year. I definitely won't be able to spare any free time before the New Year. There's just too much work in the group, and I still have to prepare the year-end performance report." Meng Weishen picked up his phone, and the unread message prompt on the screen flashed before his eyes. "Look, the product manager is urging me to have an emergency meeting again, asking me to align the early requirements. I suspect the product requirements are going to change again. How could they do such a stupid thing?"
Jiang Ranxu had no choice but to give up. He said with a sense of the overall situation: "It's okay, you can go back early. I can find the way myself."
"Then I'll go back to the company first. I've already paid the bill, you don't have to worry about it."
Meng Weishen stuffed the remaining half of the hamburger into his mouth. Without having time to swallow it, he left the seat with his shoulder bag hanging.
Jiang Ranxu seemed to have a tracker on Meng Weishen, his gaze following him as he passed through a row of warm yellow wooden tables and chairs. The moment he pushed open the shop door, a chill wind blew Meng Weishen's hair and backpack upright. His pace slowed as he walked past the glass wall, gradually blending into the gray city of dead trees and steel buildings.
After waiting for Meng Weishen to disappear behind the rightmost glass wall, Jiang Ranxu sent the text message he had edited:
Are you free after the New Year? Then please come to the hospital and see me, and we can start working on an orthodontic plan.
Jiang Ranxu thought for a moment and added in the chat box:
I need to take a look at your situation first. The cost is not yet determined, so you don't need to rush to pay.
Meng Weishen quickly responded with a cartoon puppy with tears in its eyes.
If Jiang Ranxu had strictly followed the outpatient management regulations and established a detailed return visit record for each client, Meng Weishen's comment would definitely be "high pay, low work, communication is a bit difficult, but easy to deceive." With just a few indirect hints, Meng Weishen would have voluntarily purchased the Invisalign orthodontic gift package.
But his goal was not to sell Invisalign, but to sell himself, and things became tricky.
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