By the time they got to the third-tier hospital, the pre-operative preparations involved numerous steps; just getting a doctor available for surgery to come check on the patient was difficult without personal connections, and a delay of about two hours was considered normal. The worst part was that not all patients could afford to wait that long. Just like how her grandfather back then and Mother Dongzi now couldn't afford to waste any time.
Back in those days, there was no emergency green channel; it all depended on whether the patient had connections inside the hospital and entirely on the attitude and willingness of the emergency room doctors. Like today's Doctor Ye, she specializes in internal medicine and was too busy to take on a colleague's patient. To put it plainly, her expertise in internal medicine wasn't what the patient needed right now; what they urgently required was a surgeon.