【Earth’s Lament】
My name is Zhang Xiaoxia. I was once the youngest female deputy director in the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at the Provincial Central Hospital—and the fastest, most steady surgeon in our division. I drove a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, lived in a spacious riverside apartment, married a regional manager at a pharmaceutical company, and enrolled my son in the city’s top international school. My annual commissions from cardiac stent procedures alone exceeded 600,000 yuan. Combined with my base salary and year-end bonus, my income easily surpassed 1-2 million yuan. To outsiders, I had become the epitome of a successful woman. Yet every night, I was consumed by sleepless agony!
The turning point came from a surgery that should never have been performed. That day, I performed five consecutive stent procedures. While washing my hands afterward, a chill ran down my spine—at least three of those patients never needed surgery. Among them was a 45-year-old female taxi driver. She only experienced occasional chest tightness, and her coronary angiogram showed less than 40% narrowing. Medication alone could have fully managed her condition. But the chief physician slammed his fist on the table, insisting I implant three imported stents in her as “preventive treatment.”
I knew the scheme: those imported stents cost only 8,000 yuan to produce, yet they were sold to patients for 68,000 yuan. Three stents totaled 204,400 yuan! Ironically, our department had a private agreement with five imported medical device suppliers. For each stent implanted, I, as the lead surgeon, could receive a commission of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan; the director could get 8,000 to 12,000 yuan.
Three days after her surgery, the female driver found me and clasped my hands tightly, her eyes brimming with gratitude. She said she mortgaged her house to scrape together the money, believing it was worth it just to survive. Her words pierced my heart like an ice pick. Looking into her bloodshot eyes, I thought of the house she mortgaged, of the mortgage she might carry for the next decade or more. My throat tightened, and I couldn’t utter a word.
Over eight months, I combed through over 1,200 medical records from our department spanning the past three years. Comparing them to the International Society of Cardiovascular and Cerebrovascular Diseases’ treatment guidelines, I broke out in a cold sweat—a full 850 patients never needed surgery at all! Holding this evidence, I confronted the director, my voice trembling as I declared, “We must standardize our surgeries! We can’t keep harming people like this!”
The director flung the medical records at me, glaring and snarling, “Zhang Xiaoxia, what do you think you’re doing? Have you forgotten how much your son’s tuition costs? Forgotten your mortgage and car loan payments? What’s this sudden pang of conscience? Do you want to starve the entire department?”
Refusing to give up, I approached the vice president in charge, only to be told, “Mind your own business.” When I finally reached the president, he sighed and said, “This is a nationwide issue. A mere junior doctor like you can’t change anything!”
What truly shattered me was seeing a rural woman kneeling on the floor, clutching a nurse’s pant leg and sobbing, “We only have one cow left. We sold it for eight thousand yuan, but it’s nowhere near enough for this eighty thousand yuan surgery!” My heart sank. I immediately pulled up her husband’s scans—showing only 35% coronary artery stenosis. He didn’t need surgery at all!
Frantic, I stomped over to the junior doctor on duty and demanded, “This patient doesn’t need surgery! Just send him home on medication!” But he looked troubled and replied, “Senior, I get a 20,000 yuan commission on this surgery. You want me to turn it down?”
Fuming, I accused him of endangering lives, but he just smirked dismissively, “That’s just your opinion!” I stormed into the director’s office, pounding the desk and shouting, “This patient cannot undergo surgery!” The director leapt up, pointed his finger at me, and yelled, “Zhang Xiaoxia, have you lost your mind? Are you rebelling against me?”
That night, I waited outside the operating room until three in the morning. Suddenly, a shrill alarm from the monitor pierced the silence, followed by the sound of frantic footsteps. The farmer’s husband had suffered cardiac arrest on the operating table. Despite forty minutes of resuscitation efforts, he couldn’t be saved. The autopsy report revealed that the degree of coronary artery stenosis was nowhere near the threshold for surgery. The cause of death was myocardial infarction triggered by an anesthetic accident. But the hospital suppressed this report, officially stating he died of sudden heart failure despite treatment. Watching that rural woman clutching her husband’s body, wailing with heart-wrenching grief, pulling a crumpled stack of eight thousand yuan—money from selling their cow—from her pocket… my defenses crumbled!
Over four months, I compiled all the data and evidence, writing a nearly 20,000-word paper submitted to the Chinese Journal of Cardiovascular Diseases. It exposed that over 1,200 cases in three years at a certain top-tier hospital’s cardiothoracic surgery department involved at least 70% of stent procedures with insufficient indications or overtreatment. I recommended the National Health Commission intervene for investigation.
On the day the article was published, I believed it might awaken some conscience. But the very next day, I was suspended for violating patient privacy and breaching medical ethics. By the third day, the Provincial Health Commission and Health Supervision Commission revoked my medical license. On the fifth day, prosecutors arrived, accusing me of accepting kickbacks and commercial bribery based on a tip-off!
On the seventh day, my husband demanded a divorce. His eyes red, he demanded, “Zhang Xiaoxia, have you truly lost your mind? Do you realize you’ve destroyed this family?” Staring at him, I answered each word deliberately before signing the divorce agreement. The next day, he took our son and moved out.
Later I learned that because of my case, he was transferred by his company to a remote area in Northwest China. My son was sent to live with his grandparents in the countryside and never called me “Mom” again. And just like that, I became blacklisted in the medical system!
I sent out dozens of resumes, but not a single hospital dared to hire me! A headhunter approached me, saying a private hospital was willing to pay top dollar to hire me—on the condition that I write a self-criticism admitting my thesis contained false information. Without a second thought, I refused!
Tell me, was I wrong? Don’t those doctors who betray their conscience feel any pain at all?