Chapter 8 - Recruitment for Medical Assistants (1/2)

Chapter 8: Recruitment for Medical Assistants

Translator: May Zou

The next morning Jiang Youyou queued to get a ticket only to be told that the tickets were sold out, as if god insisted on her staying in this city.

Jiang Youyou sat on the steps, watching the passers-by coming and going. To her surprise, there would be no one to pick up the fifty-jiao coin lying on the ground. People in various uniforms, Hongkongers wearing check shirt and black-rimmed glasses and indifferent expressions who held wooden handled umbrella in right or left hand, the slouchy poor in clothes as shabby as herself, and peddlers hawking obscene DVDs, fake Rolex and fake LV bags, none of them would turn to her.

Someone distributing leaflets walked towards her and left one at her foot. She could just pick it up and use it as a mat. Jiang Youyou felt very happy as if the distribution were a sign that people thought highly of her.

A second leaflet. This time she could read it carefully. It said on that thin paper:

“Urgent recruitment for 100 medical assistants. Those who have time please contact me quickly. We only recruit students on campus who are in good health and time-guaranteed. Short working period and high pay. If you are interested in the job please contact me as soon as possible. Mr. Bai. Contact Number: 13714561877”

“Short, working, period, and, high, pay…” Jiang Youyou read the sentence word by word.

She made a phone call in the public phone boot beside, and it actually cost her 5 yuan. It seemed that the railway station all over the country did the same thing—they charged one extremely high for everything.

Mr. Bai’s voice was very pleasant on the phone. He told Jiang Youyou with patience about the bus route, the actual location of the hospital, and so on and so forth.

When she got to the fourteenth floor of Xinxing hospital, she saw a lot of people crowded around the door of an office, and a pretty girl in pink nurse uniform who had a stack of forms and a handful of ballpoint pens spoke in harsh voice, “Line up in one row of male and another female. Fill in the form and hand in. Then I’ll call your number for the interview.”

Soon Jiang Youyou was called. A doctor-like young man was sitting opposite her. “Good morning and sit down please. May I ask which college are you in?”