After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

Vice Minister Li was stunned for a moment, then looked down and was overjoyed. Ye Zhen had allocated all the ventilators, monitors, anesthesia machines, and even the two extracorporeal circulation machines!

"Comrade Ye Zhen! Your awareness is truly high! On behalf of..."

"Wait a minute." Ye Zhen interrupted his effusive praise, pointing with her pen to the names she had circled on the document. "Besides these few things."

Vice Minister Li took a closer look and saw a Siemens dual-mode C-arm angiography machine (DSA), a complete set of coronary catheters, guidewires, and balloon consumables.

This is the most crucial and valuable item on the list.

"Comrade Ye Zhen, this..." Vice Minister Li hesitated, "These machines are of paramount importance; several academicians have specifically requested to study them..."

"Giving it to them would just mean a few piles of scrap metal." Ye Zhen closed her pen, her voice cold and devoid of emotion. "Minister Li, this is called interventional equipment. Currently in China, apart from me, no one understands its algorithms, no one knows how to operate the catheter, and no one even knows how to bend the guidewire."

She raised her head and looked directly at Vice Minister Li: "This thing isn't like a stethoscope, which you can just pick up and use. It's a completely new discipline, requiring entirely new anatomical logic and tactile skills. It's like giving the blueprints for an atomic bomb to a workshop that only knows how to make firecrackers; it's useless except for injuring yourself."

This is the technological barrier.

A blatant and irrefutable attack from a lower dimension.

Vice Minister Li opened his mouth, wanting to refute, but found himself at a loss for words. He suddenly realized that Ye Zhen controlled not just a few machines, but a ticket to the future of medicine.

"I'm not refusing to give it to them because I'm stingy," Ye Zhen said, leaning forward slightly, her aura commanding. "It's because I'm going to establish the nation's first 'Cardiovascular Interventional Treatment Center' at the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital. These pieces of equipment I'm leaving behind are the spark."

"I want to set standards, write textbooks, and train doctors here. I want all doctors in China to learn this skill, instead of distributing the machines away to gather dust."

Vice Minister Li was stunned by these words. He had thought she was there to share the cake, but he hadn't expected Ye Zhen to teach everyone how to make cakes, and even to build a cake factory.

The difference in their abilities is immediately apparent.

Grandpa Gu stopped fiddling with the walnuts in his hands. Although his eyes were closed, the slight trembling of his beard revealed his inner turmoil. Gu Zheng, on the other hand, simply put his legs off the coffee table, sat up straight, and looked at Ye Zhen with undisguised pride in his eyes.

Before Vice Minister Li could recover from his shock, Ye Zhen pulled out a German document with a trident emblem from the file bag behind her.

"Also, there's something else I need to report to the ministry," Ye Zhen said, gently placing the document on the table. "It concerns the one hundred million marks donated by Mr. Schroeder."

Upon hearing this number, Vice Minister Li's eyelids twitched violently.

In the early 1980s, how severe was the country's foreign exchange shortage? For just a few million dollars worth of imported equipment, the ministry would hold over a dozen meetings to discuss the matter. One hundred million marks—that was an astronomical figure, enough to renovate half of Beijing's hospitals.

"I don't plan to use this money to build buildings, nor do I plan to use it to pay out bonuses," Ye Zhen said calmly, as if she were talking about what to eat for dinner. "I plan to use this intervention center to launch a project called 'Heart of China'."

"This money will serve as seed funding to provide free surgical treatment for children with congenital heart disease from impoverished families across the country."

boom!

It was as if a thunderclap had exploded in the living room.

Grandpa Gu's hand, which was fiddling with the walnuts, suddenly stopped, and a sharp glint appeared in his eyes.

Vice Minister Li sprang up from the sofa, the movement nearly knocking over the teacup in front of him. His eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at Ye Zhen: "Free? All of it? Comrade Ye Zhen, do you know how much this costs? Do you know what a mess this is?"

"If I don't have enough money, I'll earn more." Ye Zhen said calmly, as if it were no big deal. "As long as the person is still alive and the technology is still there, the money will come eventually. But before that, I don't want to see any child die at the hospital entrance because of a few hundred yuan for surgery."

She remembered her past life.

She remembered the parents kneeling and kowtowing outside the doctor's office, and the backs of those who, because they had no money, could only take their children home to die. That was a thorn in the heart of any doctor with a conscience. Now, having a second chance, with this windfall of money, she was determined to pull that thorn out.

Gu Zheng sat to the side, watching his wife's calm and composed demeanor, and the anger in his heart had long since dissipated.

Instead, there was a sense of pride that almost overflowed from my chest.

This is the woman Gu Zheng truly is.

What do you mean by snatching food from a tiger's mouth? She's standing on a cloud, scattering a handful of rice called "strategic vision" to these ordinary people.

"Excellent! What a heart for China!" Vice Minister Li exclaimed, his face flushed with excitement, and slapped his thigh hard. "Comrade Ye Zhen, I knew I hadn't misjudged you! You have the bearing of a national hero!"

He took a deep breath, as if making a firm decision, and waved his hand: "This matter cannot be shouldered by you alone, nor can it rely solely on foreign money! That would be a slap in the face to our country!"

"The ministry has approved this center! It's a special case! We'll provide the land and the personnel! Anyone who dares to sabotage it behind our backs, I, Old Li, will be the first to object! As for that fund..." Vice Minister Li's eyes reddened slightly, "That's the hope for our country's future. Not a single penny can be misappropriated. Anyone who dares to lay a finger on it, I'll chop off their hand!"

The conversation took an unexpected turn, and both host and guest enjoyed themselves immensely.

The tense atmosphere had instantly transformed into one of exhilaration. Watching this scene, Old Master Gu closed his eyes in satisfaction, a contented smile playing on his lips.

When Vice Minister Li left, this usually stern and unsmiling high-ranking official held Ye Zhen's hand for a long time, reluctant to let go, his eyes filled with affection as if he were looking at his own daughter. Even as the Hongqi car started moving, he rolled down the window and waved to Ye Zhen.

Watching the Hongqi car drive out of the compound, Gu Zheng let out a long sigh of relief, turned to look at Ye Zhen, and a playful smile appeared on his lips.

"Honey, that was a brilliant 'retreat to advance' move. You transferred a few ventilators to a national-level center and even managed to bring the Ministry of Health under your wing as a bodyguard."

Ye Zhen wrapped her coat tighter around herself, braving the winter wind, a slight smile playing on her lips: "There's no other way, Commander Gu. We have a 'villain' in the family who's always biting everyone, offending everyone in the family. I have to be the good guy who gives out the sweetness, right? This is kind of..."

"Husband and wife follow each other's lead." Gu Zheng replied smoothly, putting his arm around her shoulder. "Come on, let's go home. I saw that Grandma had barely touched her braised pork bowl earlier. She was so busy listening to you give your opinions that she's starving now."

Ye Zhen let him put his arm around her and walk back, glancing down at their intertwined shadows on the ground.

The wind picked up.

But this wind is a tailwind.

Meanwhile, a storm brewing in the Ministry of Health building a few kilometers away was brewing over the dramatic changes in China's medical landscape, with the return of that Hongqi car.