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

Mid-February, Beijing Railway Station.

The cold wind howled like knives, and the crowded platform teemed with people. The whistle of the green train pierced the morning chill with a loud "whoosh." As soon as the doors opened, a mixture of sweat, cheap tobacco, and the sour smell of a long journey rushed out without restraint.

"Make way! Everyone, make way! Harbin Medical University students, keep up, don't fall behind!"

A burly young man, wearing a thick, even somewhat stiff, cotton-padded coat and a dog-skin hat, struggled to squeeze out of the carriage. He held aloft a sign with the four large characters "Heart of China" written on a piece of cardboard; the handwriting was neat, but the edges of the cardboard were worn.

Behind him followed dozens of students, all equally travel-worn, their faces as red as Fuji apples from the cold, some even with frostbite on their hands, but their eyes were frighteningly bright.

"This is Beijing... It's so big," someone exclaimed softly, their breath instantly fogging their eyelashes.

On the other platform, a group of students speaking with a Sichuan accent got off the train, carrying bedding rolls taller than themselves. That was the team representing West China Medical University.

Several groups of people met at the station exit. They looked at each other's rather shabby welcome signs, then at each other's cloth shoes with thick soles, and smiled at each other, which had a bit of a "meeting of heroes and heroines".

"Comrades!" Zhao Dayong, the team leader from Harbin Medical University, cleared his throat. This loud-voiced man from Northeast China asked, "How do we get to the General Hospital of the Military Region? Do we need to take a bus?"

Before the words were finished, a muffled engine roar made my feet go numb.

Three Liberation brand military trucks covered with grass-green tarpaulins, like three steel behemoths that had just come down from the mountain, stood domineeringly on the curb at the exit of the station.

The driver's side door opened, and Gu Zheng, dressed in a crisp winter uniform, jumped out. His black leather boots crunched on the remaining snow, sending a chill down everyone's spine. His hat was pulled low, and the menacing aura he exuded from the battlefield momentarily silenced the noisy crowd around him.

He glanced at the group of students who were terrified and speechless, raised an eyebrow, and said in an unyielding tone, "What are you standing there for? Get in the car."

"Is this... here to arrest vagrants?" A little girl with braided pigtails in Huaxi was so frightened that she trembled and shrank behind the leader.

Xiao Wang, the bodyguard behind Gu Zheng, poked his head out, grinned, and revealed a set of bright white teeth: "What nonsense are you talking about! Commander Gu was worried you'd break your bones on the crowded bus, so he specially approved military vehicles for your transportation! Our Dr. Ye is waiting in the canteen; there's plenty of big slices of fatty meat!"

Upon hearing the words "Dr. Ye," the students, who had been intimidated by the military might, instantly erupted in chaos.

"It's Teacher Ye!"

"Hurry up, don't keep Teacher Ye waiting!"

The children used both their hands and feet to climb up the tall truck bed, their movements so nimble, as if they were going on a pilgrimage rather than to a hospital.

……

The main canteen of the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital.

Several large iron pots were lined up in a row, and the aroma of steaming cabbage, pork, and vermicelli stew wafted into the nostrils. The white steamed buns were piled up like small mountains, which looked very comforting.

Gu Zheng leaned against the doorway, smoking, but his eyes, like radar, remained fixed on the slender figure in the center of the crowd, as if afraid someone might bump into her.

Ye Zhen was wearing a white lab coat today, unbuttoned, over which she wore a black turtleneck sweater, which made her face appear even whiter and more aloof. She was holding a stack of red, yellow, and blue cards and explaining them to Zhao Dayong.

"The core of screening is one word: speed." Ye Zhen's voice wasn't loud, but it was extremely penetrating in the noisy cafeteria. "Use a stethoscope to filter out background noise, check if the lips are purple, check if there's clubbing of the nails. Once you find any signs, issue a ticket immediately, understand?"

Zhao Dayong clutched the thin card in his hand as if it were a family heirloom. Looking at the busy Peking University medical students around him, and at the national map covered in black dots on the wall, he suddenly slapped his thigh, his face flushed with excitement:

"Professor Ye! Harbin Medical University will take this job! I'll go back and build a team at the university to establish a branch in Heilongjiang! Even if it means wading through knee-deep snowdrifts into the mountains, I'll screen out those sick children hiding in the forest for you!"

"We'll take them too!" the Huaxi team leader retorted. "The Sichuan Basin has many mountains and difficult roads, but our Huaxi people's legs aren't made of mud!"

The crowd was excited and their blood was boiling.

Ye Zhen looked at the group of young faces, a slight smile playing on her lips. This was the 1980s, a pure idealism that brought tears to one's eyes, a backbone that money couldn't buy.

"Okay." Ye Zhen nodded decisively. "The manual and cards will be picked up from the warehouse after lunch. I'm warning you, there's no pay, no subsidies, and you'll even have to pay for your own travel expenses. If anyone wants to quit, there's no shame in doing so now."

"We're not short of money for that meal!" Zhao Dayong said with a hearty laugh, taking a big bite of his steamed bun. "I just want all the children in China to be healthy and energetic!"

However, as the initial excitement faded, a very real and cruel problem, like a bucket of ice water, extinguished the warmth in the cafeteria.

Zhao Dayong swallowed the steamed bun in his mouth, hesitated for a long time, rubbed his hands on his cotton-padded coat, and finally stood up: "Teacher Ye, there's something... I have to tell you the truth."

The entire room fell silent instantly, with only the sound of chewing remaining.

"Screening? We can handle that. Finding suspected cases with a stethoscope and touch isn't difficult," Zhao Dayong said, a hint of embarrassment on his face—the helplessness of someone struggling to make ends meet. "But what if it's confirmed?"

He pointed to the sky outside: "Beijing has you, with all that expensive foreign equipment. But back here... the county hospital doesn't even have an X-ray machine, it's an old relic from the Soviet Union in the 1950s, it breaks down all the time. The best one we have is an M-mode ultrasound, which just produces a wavy line, not even a proper image."

The team leader from West China Hospital sighed and put down his chopsticks: "Yes, Professor Ye. Congenital heart disease is very complex. Some deformities can't be diagnosed just by listening. Without ultrasound, even if we screen out a child, we'll be completely clueless when we send them to the local hospital. We can't possibly transport all the children in China to Beijing, can we?"

The cafeteria was deathly silent.

Ye Zhen fell silent.

This is the inherent weakness of this era. This is also why Westerners look down on Chinese healthcare—the infrastructure is more than twenty years behind.

At that time, apart from a few top hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai, most areas in China were still in the primitive stage of "stethoscope + touch".

M-mode ultrasound was the mainstream at the time, only showing a one-dimensional curve of the heart's structure. For doctors, looking at that was like the blind men and the elephant—they touched a pillar, but had to guess whether it was an elephant's leg or a slug's tail. More complex conditions like Tetralogy of Fallot and transposition of the great arteries appeared as a jumbled mess on that waveform.

"If we can't see clearly, we can't make a diagnosis." Zhao Dayong's voice lowered, like a wilted eggplant.

At the doorway, Gu Zheng stubbed out his cigarette, his brows furrowed deeply. This wasn't just a medical issue; it was a matter of national strength. Some gaps couldn't be bridged by mere enthusiasm.

All eyes were on Ye Zhen. Everyone hoped this "Oriental Witch," who had created countless miracles, could perform another magic trick, but reason told them it was impossible. Ye Zhen was a doctor, not a deity; she couldn't conjure hundreds or thousands of priceless imported machines.

"Teacher Ye..." Zhao Dayong wanted to say something to ease the awkwardness.

"M-mode echocardiography really won't work," Ye Zhen suddenly said, her tone as calm as if she were discussing how old the cabbage was today. "That's for looking at waves; we need to look at the images. At least a two-dimensional echocardiogram, or B-mode ultrasound, is needed."

A student below gave a wry smile and muttered, "Professor Ye, that thing is very expensive. It must cost tens of thousands of US dollars per unit, right? There are only a few in all of China."

"Then let's change them." Ye Zhen put down her chopsticks, her voice clear and bright. "Since the old rifles aren't working well, let's replace them with new submachine guns for the soldiers."

"Change...change?" Zhao Dayong was dumbfounded, his eyes wide open. "Where are we going to get the money?"

Ye Zhen stood up, straightened her collar, and did not answer directly.

Just then, the old man at the canteen gate rushed in, holding a black receiver, his face flushed and panting: "Dr. Ye! The phone! It's that German guy again! We don't know what he's yelling about, we can't understand his English, but he's practically blown the receiver off!"

Gu Zheng raised an eyebrow, a playful smile playing on his lips, and walked over, saying, "Looks like our God of Wealth is getting anxious."

Ye Zhen calmly walked to the door and took the phone.

Hans's almost hysterical roar immediately came through the receiver, so loud that even Zhao Dayong, who was standing next to him, could hear it:

"Ye! You're a monster! President Thomas has gone mad! He canceled his lunch with the German Chancellor and has already taken off in a Boeing 747! He wants to see you in Beijing! Immediately! Right now! He said if he doesn't see the complete formula for that nickel-titanium alloy, he'll throw me into Siberia to grow potatoes!"

The students in the cafeteria looked at each other, completely baffled as to what the German was yelling about.

After the other side finished yelling, Ye Zhen slowly replied in German:

"Tell Thomas that Beijing is very windy and dusty, and tell him to prepare a good gift for our first meeting. Empty promises won't get you anything good here."

After saying that, she hung up the phone with a "snap" and it was a clean and decisive end.

He turned around and faced a room full of students with blank expressions.

"Teacher Ye, this is..." Zhao Dayong asked cautiously, afraid of asking the wrong question.

Ye Zhen scanned the entire room, her gaze finally settling on Zhao Dayong's face, which was filled with worry. She had one hand in the pocket of her white coat, her chin slightly raised, exuding the absolute confidence of a strong person.

"Weren't you worried about not having the equipment?"

Her tone was as relaxed as if she were talking about a neighbor coming over to drop by and bringing some dumplings:

"Don't worry, our delivery guy is flying in the sky right now. He'll not only bring us the machine we desperately need, he'll also beg us to accept it."

"Remember, when you hold the technology that can strangle them, capitalists are the best logistics ministers."

Zhao Dayong's mouth dropped open, and the steamed bun in his hand fell to the ground with a "thud," breaking in two.

Is he delivering a package?

Begging to accept it?

Is this Teacher Ye... a miracle doctor or a deity?

Gu Zheng walked over, bent down to pick up the steamed bun from the ground, dusted it off, and put it back into Zhao Dayong's stiff hand, while giving the silly boy a heavy pat on the shoulder.

"Eat up, you'll have the strength to move the machines."

Gu Zheng smiled like an old wolf that had just caught its prey, his eyes gleaming.