ATPnovel Chapter 24 Mother's Kindness and Daughter's Filial Piety
Chapter 24 Mother's Kindness and Daughter's Filial Piety
at the same time.
Milburn, New Jersey.
Like any megacity, New York City is not a friendly place to live for the vast majority of people.
Therefore, as the city continues to expand, a series of satellite towns have emerged in the surrounding area, resulting from compromises in factors such as housing prices, commuting needs, and living environment.
Milburn was one of them.
Thanks to New Jersey’s relatively relaxed tax and legal environment, this small town, separated from Manhattan by a river, has become a favorite among many high-end middle-class people who cannot afford large apartments in Manhattan, or wealthy people who dislike the noisy environment of New York, and has gradually become one of the most well-known mid-to-high-end residential areas in the United States.
Short Mountain.
Helena Murphy lives here.
A townhouse located slightly off the edge.
Eating lobster rolls was just an excuse to get Chen Yisen to go out alone. How could a health-conscious middle-class woman like something so greasy?
Since the latter did not agree, she naturally went straight home.
Parking, opening the door, kicking off the white loafers I'd worn all day, and casually tossing my coat onto the front bar...
Like any young person returning home, Helena couldn't help but hum a tune as she recalled the day's work and her new acquaintance, Dr. Chen.
But after taking only one step forward, she saw the figure of a beautiful woman sitting on the living room sofa.
His expression froze instantly.
"Mom..." Helena subtly took a half step back, used her foot to gather the two shoes together, and carefully hung the clothes up again. "You're back so early today..."
"A scheduled surgery has been canceled." Dalia Murphy noticed her daughter's subtle movement, but didn't point it out. Instead, she took a sip of her tea and started talking about Helena's work. "I heard from Dr. Pierre that the group you were interning with was sent out for community outreach today?"
Dr. Pierre is the director of the training program at Bellevue Hospital.
This position is theoretically mainly responsible for resident physicians rather than medical students. Chen Yisen was still able to obtain his professional license despite his tough stance against his supervising physician, which is largely due to his smooth and tactful approach.
He refused to dismiss the resident physician for any reason other than hard violations and medical malpractice, because that would affect NYU's training pass rate metric.
However, they agreed not to give Chen Yisen any recommendations or subspecialty training opportunities, making it impossible for him to establish himself in Bellevue or any major hospital, and forcing him to find work in community clinics.
To avoid offending either side to the death.
Given her personality, coupled with Dalia's position as the associate director of neurosurgery at Langone Medical Center, it would be no problem for her to take care of a student undergoing clinical rotations.
However, for Helena, this kind of character who might tattle at any time is naturally very annoying.
Therefore, upon hearing her mother's question, she pouted somewhat unhappily.
But she still sat down properly on the side sofa, adopting a ladylike demeanor: "Yes."
"You went to the community clinic?"
Lonnie Collegiate Medical Center is a top-tier private hospital affiliated with NYU, and it has virtually no medical student rotations or residency training programs, so Dalia was not very familiar with these details.
Seeing that her mother didn't seem to know all the details, Helena's mood improved considerably: "No, I applied to go to a shelter on Franklin Street."
"The Bronx?" Dalia frowned upon hearing that her daughter had gone to the shelter, and had even applied for it herself.
Helena seemed to have been waiting for this expression on her mother's face, and immediately explained, "This way, I can make up for 10 hours of social work credits, and I'll be eligible to apply for an honors graduate next semester."
Sure enough, Dalia's expression softened slightly, but the veins in her neck bulged out abruptly for a moment.
"There was no occupational exposure, right? Did you encounter any homeless people causing trouble? Who was the person in charge of the team?" The three questions were asked in quick succession.
Helena shook her head: "No, the event was organized by the Homeless Services Bureau, and NYPD personnel were deployed to the site."
Actually, besides Amber Jeong, who was insane, there were several drug addicts who caused a scene during the day in order to get painkillers, but she didn't want to talk about that topic.
"That's alright..." Dalia reached out, seemingly wanting to check her daughter for any wounds or stains, but stopped halfway and ended up just shifting her body slightly to the right.
Helena, oblivious to her mother's actions, continued, "Dr. Natalia Lynch is in charge of my group, and Dr. Ethan Chen is our contact person with the local community."
Those involved in this kind of work are usually not big shots. Dalia just asked instinctively and didn't really expect to hear someone she knew.
But one of the names does sound quite familiar.
"You seem to have mentioned this Ethan Chen before?"
Helena was slightly taken aback, seemingly not expecting her mother to remember such a detail.
“Yes, Mother.” She nodded. “There was a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June written by Dr. Chen. It was about a new treatment for relapsing polychondritis based on a dual cytokine blocking mechanism, which avoided the side effects of high-dose prednisone… I’ve talked to you about this article. It saved the career of a musical actor.”
When Chen Yisen was mentioned, Helena's answer became noticeably longer, and the intonation of the last syllable of each sentence rose slightly.
After this reminder, Dalia recalled, "I remember that the institution where that paper was published was Bellevue Hospital?"
"Dr. Chen was a resident physician at the time." If it weren't for her mother's interrogation-like questions, Helena wouldn't have even realized how well she knew him.
Dalia, who had never been in a relationship herself, didn't notice the subtle changes in her daughter's speech. She simply asked with a puzzled look, "Someone who can write this kind of article... seems unlikely to be working at a community clinic?"
"Why not?" Helena's voice rose slightly, but quickly returned to normal. "He told me today that community work requires more humanity than medical skills... I think he went there voluntarily."
In all honesty, neither the Chen Yisen of the past nor the Chen Yisen of the present has ever been this noble.
As for the sentence above, it was just something I came up with on the spot to show off.
Helena only mentioned that she had given up neurosurgery, without mentioning anything about her family situation.
Chen Yisen could only guess that her mother was also a medical professional, so she understood just how valuable neurosurgery really was.
Otherwise, even if I was exhausted, I would definitely have gone to eat the lobster roll.
Dalia had only mentioned it casually and didn't intend to dwell on the matter, quickly shifting the conversation to Helena's studies.
"So, how's it like doing community work?"
"It was chaotic, and the conditions were very limited," Helena's answer became brief again, "but I also learned a lot."
"For example?"
"At noon, I encountered a relatively rare case of suprametrial artery syndrome. We didn't have large equipment, and the signs were quite misleading, but in the end, the cause was determined through just one palpation and a few questions... Oh, it was Dr. Chen who did it."
Upon hearing this, Dalia's eyes revealed pure approval.
"That's definitely something..."
"Right?"
"..."
After Helena finished speaking, the large living room fell silent.
Dalia opened her mouth several times, but was unable to make a sound.
As a single mother, she really wanted to mend her relationship with her daughter.
But I have absolutely no idea what to do.
So much so that every conversation, no matter what topic it started with, would end up like an interrogation, a question-and-answer session.
Helena has two Instagram accounts. Dalia follows one of them, which has no content, and secretly checks the other one.
Under a photo, the former complained that the atmosphere at home was like a group meeting.
Dalia really wanted to reply below, saying that her group meeting wasn't actually that tense.
Fortunately, I managed to hold back in the end.
But today she has made up her mind that she must have a conversation that is closer to a mother-daughter relationship than a teacher-student relationship.
After a silence of about a minute, Dalia unleashed her ultimate move:
"Helena, I understand your reluctance to go into neurosurgery... but primary care medicine is such a waste of your talent."
Sure enough, Helena's eyes lit up.
In fact, she was not "unwilling" to enter neurosurgery, and giving up neurosurgery had nothing to do with Dalia.
At least initially there was no connection.
It was simply because I discovered I was afraid of blood during my third-year clinical rotations.
It's not to the point where I would lose consciousness upon seeing blood; I just experience some double vision and difficulty breathing.
However, it is absolutely impossible to have surgery.
Initially, she was just worried that this defect would make Dalia the center of attention in the circle, so she explained her unusual behavior during the surgery observation as her "dislike of scalpels" and casually mentioned that she would not become a neurosurgery resident.
But after disobeying her mother's demands for the first time in her life, Helena felt a hidden, abnormal, despicable, and immense pleasure.
This is actually a need for self-control, a desire to "finally have the opportunity to break free from the protection of one's mother and prove oneself," rather than simply a manifestation of adolescent rebellion.
So for her, the source of pleasure was not making Dalia angry, but simply leaving the neurosurgery department.
If my mother can understand this matter, that would be the best outcome.
"Giving up neurosurgery... might not be a bad choice," Dalia continued, then pulled an exquisite folding photo frame from under the coffee table.
Upon opening it, the left side shows her official photo taken nineteen years ago when she graduated with her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The right side, however, is empty.
"I became the deputy director of neurosurgery at Tish Hospital when I was thirty-seven... If you could get your attending physician qualification when you're thirty, then maybe we could open a joint clinic..." Dalia stroked the photo of her youthful and beautiful self, and for a moment it felt like she had returned to the past.
Thanks to good living conditions and careful maintenance, she looks like she's only in her early thirties.
But only the person themselves knows how old they get; no amount of technology or money can completely counteract the erosion of time.
Helena actually didn't dislike her mother; in fact, she was quite interested in the idea.
She approached Dalia, rested her chin on Dalia's shoulder, and suggested, "Perhaps we could call her Mrs. & Miss Murphy."
Dalia had almost forgotten when the last time her daughter spoke to her so affectionately.
Therefore, although she thought the name was awful, like a tailor shop from 1900, and Murphy was not her husband's surname so it shouldn't be prefixed with Mrs, she surprisingly didn't reject it outright.
"You're right, or... how about Dr. Murphy & Murphy?"
For a moment, the atmosphere in the living room was warm and touching, with a scene of motherly love and filial piety on the sofa.
until……
"Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to get a neurology inpatient placement in time." Helena tightened her arms around her mother, just like when she was a child. "I can only work with you in general internal medicine..."
"It's alright." Dalia put down the photo frame and hugged Helena back. "I just had lunch with your Aunt Fuss, and she's already written you a letter of recommendation."
?
At that moment, Helena's movements and expression remained unchanged.
But Dalia just inexplicably felt it.
The warm atmosphere from just now has vanished.