Cheng Yang"s punch was indeed vicious, as half of Lu Chenzhou"s face immediately swelled up. Lu Chenzhou frowned and tilted his head to the side, spitting out a gob of blood.The a.s.sistant immediately shouted shrilly, “Director Lu, I"m going to call the cops!”
Lu Chenzhou dismissively waved his hand at him, showing that he didn"t mind. He then calmly got up, poured himself a gla.s.s of water, and rinsed his mouth out. However, his indifferent att.i.tude only made Cheng Yang even more furious. “Lu Chenzhou, you"re too vicious! Meeting you, a crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d, was my sister"s unluckiest moment in her life! She"s capable and intelligent on her own. She doesn"t need you to get rich! If not for my sister, then you"d still be a single virgin that no one else wants!”
The more Cheng Yang shouted, the angrier he became; he had started off more or less calm, but by the end of his tirade, he was stomping his feet and yelling expletives like “Crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” “a.s.shole,” and other curses at the top of his lungs.
Cheng Yang yelled himself hoa.r.s.e, but Lu Chenzhou ignored him until he said, “If my sister doesn"t return, I"ll hound you until the day I die!”
Lu Chenzhou immediately turned around. “Where did she go?”
Cheng Yang was really getting heated up, and he unconsciously replied, “It"s none of your business!”
Lu Chenzhou walked up to him and grabbed his neck. “Where did she go?”
“……”
I don"t want to lose face, but Lu Chenzhou looks too scary, and…… c.r.a.p, I"m running out of air! This b.a.s.t.a.r.d! In the end, Xu Po was the one to remind Lu Chenzhou. “Zhou, you"re about to strangle him to death.”
And only then did Lu Chenzhou retreat, holding his hand behind him as if he were shocked.
Lu Chenzhou was usually very calm, so the shock on his face was even more noticeable than usual. In fact, it was so intense that Xu Po and the others all noticed how abnormal Lu Chenzhou"s expression was. But Cheng Yang didn"t realize anything, because he was shocked by something else. As he coughed, he continued berating Lu Chenzhou. “My G.o.d, I"m going to sue you for attempted murder—”
But before he could finish, Lu Chenzhou suddenly tossed a sharp, s.h.i.+ny fruit knife in front of him. Xu Po and Lu Chenzhou"s a.s.sistant both jumped up in shock and simultaneously yelled, “Director Lu!” and “Zhou!”
Cheng Yang was so scared that he forgot to continue coughing. “You, what are you trying to do?!”
Lu Chenzhou glanced apathetically at him. “Don"t you hate me?” His tone was so calm that it was frightening. “I"m giving you a chance to kill me.” He then turned to Xu Po and his a.s.sistant and ordered, “Let go of him.”
“Director Lu!”
Lu Chenzhou glanced at him coldly.
The a.s.sistant had no choice but to unwillingly let go of Cheng Yang, though he still maintained a defensive posture.
But Cheng Yang continued to look at them superciliously. “You might be crazy, but do you think that everyone else is as crazy as you are? I can hound you without putting my life on the line, can"t I? My life isn"t so worthless that I would waste it on you!”
Lu Chenzhou"s a.s.sistant finally became fed up. He had a pretty good memory, and coldly reminded Cheng Yang, “Mr. Cheng, I recall that you still have a contract with us.”
In other words, Donglai Corporation still owed him a large sum of money for Cheng Yang"s engineering project. Was it really alright for him to act so impudently?
Cheng Yang turned around and shouted back, “Screw the contract! I don"t want it anymore!” And then, with a domineering gaze, he stomped out of the office.
Lu Chenzhou frowned as he watched Cheng Yang leave.
He was still holding onto that paring knife, the sharp steel making the other two jumpy and nervous. However, Lu Chenzhou merely ignored them as he slowly wiped the knife down with his wrist. “Go and investigate where Cheng Xi from Renyi"s psychiatry department is.”
……
Cheng Xi didn"t know about the mess currently taking place at Lu Chenzhou"s office. Currently, she was busy trying to placate her parents. “The hospital"s already dealing with this quite fairly. After all, I was the one who disobeyed the rules first……”
“What do you mean, "disobeyed the rules?" If you can"t have a relations.h.i.+p with any of the hospital"s patients, then if we became ill or were injured and ran over to your hospital, would you not be able to recognize us as your parents?!”
Honestly, it was very difficult to argue against old housewives.
Cheng Xi"s punishment had finally been a.s.signed; after taking her circ.u.mstances into account, the hospital hadn"t suspended her medical license, but because she truly hadn"t handled the situation very well, Cheng Xi would be temporarily transferred to a province in Gansu, where she would provide psychological support to residents that had just suffered through an earthquake.
As for whether or not she would be allowed to return…… it hadn"t been decided yet.
Cheng Xi"s parents had been particularly scared of a vague sentence like this. Actually, even though the hospital wasn"t able to contact Lu Chenzhou, given his grandparents" letter and testimony as well as Cheng Xi"s past hard work and diligence, as long as n.o.body pursued the matter further, she could have survived the incident unpunished.
But just as the investigation bureau was about to submit their final report, an alleged eyewitness had appeared. This eyewitness was someone that n.o.body had ever antic.i.p.ated—it was the patient, Gong Hengjin, who was still staying in Renyi.
It had happened when Gong Hengjin was mostly recovered from her mental breakdown. She was about to be discharged, and on the day right before her scheduled discharge, she had overheard some doctors discussing this matter while walking around, and hence learned about Cheng Xi"s issue.
Gong Hengjin was already aware that Cheng Xi had been suspended; after all, Cheng Xi was an extremely popular figure in the department. She was pretty, gentle, kind, pleasant, and most of the patients in the department considered her a living G.o.ddess. Some patients would even brag about sneakily taking a photo of her, so when Cheng Xi disappeared from work all of a sudden, almost everyone heard of it.
Initially, Gong Hengjin didn"t know the reason for this, and she was simply secretly happy for Cheng Xi"s misfortune. But after she overheard the doctors" conversation and learned that Cheng Xi would be able to return to work right away, she refused to let her get away with it that easily. While Gong Hengjin couldn"t deal with Shen Wei at the moment, she could certainly get back at Cheng Xi. Thus, she had immediately reported herself as an eyewitness and said that she could prove that Cheng Xi was indeed doing all this for money. She had even said that Cheng Xi had discarded her boyfriend of many years, Lin Fan, for Lu Chenzhou, transforming her image into that of a truly heartless woman.
Even worse, Cheng Xi really couldn"t explain herself with regards to Lin Fan, as there had been a period of time where she introduced Lin Fan as her boyfriend. Besides that, most people in the department were somewhat familiar with him because his half-sister was staying in the psychiatry department.
The investigation bureau was thus forced to look deeper into the matter, and they realized that Cheng Xi"s behavior was really quite problematic. In addition, when Lu Chenzhou"s grandparents provided their testimony for Cheng Xi, they exaggerated the circ.u.mstances, saying that Cheng Xi met Lu Chenzhou last year, that the two of them had fallen into love at first sight, and that they had been dating ever since.
⊙o⊙
But the sole silver lining was that Gong Hengjin"s denunciation of Cheng Xi was even more exaggerated than Lu Chenzhou"s grandparents. It was peppered with innumerable half-truths and lies, and she wasn"t an unbiased witness either, as there were records of her quarrels with Cheng Xi. In the end, her report wasn"t deemed as credible—otherwise, Cheng Xi really might have had her license suspended. Just as the department head said in a departmental meeting later, “Regardless of the reason, if a psychiatrist ends up in relations.h.i.+ps with their own patient, it"s medical malpractice and a violation of ethical norms.”
Due to the department head speaking up for her and Cheng Xi voluntarily requesting to be transferred, she had ended up with her current, relatively light sentence.
So Cheng Xi really wasn"t too mad about it. Back in her days as a student, she had frequently accompanied her professors all over the country to do volunteer work. In fact, if not for Cheng Xi"s parents forbidding it, Cheng Xi would have even moved away for a couple of years—after the Sichuan earthquake struck, Cheng Xi had volunteered and worked in the region for almost half a year, and her stay contributed to Cai Yi accepting her as a doctoral student.
Going somewhere else was exactly what Cheng Xi needed, but there were two things that she couldn"t leave behind: Lu Chenzhou and Chen Jiaman. One was the man she loved the most, and the other the patient she was the most concerned about.