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

In February, the wind on the Qingyun River beach was as hard as a bone scraper in the early morning.

Several strong laborers from Dahe Village, wearing patched old cotton-padded jackets, were pulling long measuring tapes under the direction of village chief Zhao Dahai. They were working with great enthusiasm, sweat beading on their foreheads. Meanwhile, Wang Laocai, the village chief of Heishan Village, and Ye Cheng, the quarry foreman, also wore military overcoats and stood watch intently at the edge of the mudflat.

Ma Zhigang, an engineer from the provincial capital's design institute, had his trousers rolled up high, revealing black rubber shoes covered in yellow mud. He carried an old brass surveying instrument in his hand, using only one eye to measure the distance between the two banks of the river. Every now and then, he would quickly jot down a few hydrological figures in the notebook hanging around his neck with his frozen red fingers.

Gu Zheng leaned against the hood of a jeep with military license plates, his crisp military overcoat open. His long fingers held a Daqianmen cigarette, and the grayish-blue smoke he exhaled was torn to shreds by the cold wind on the riverbank.

"The hydrological data is fine!" Ma Zhigang shouted at the other side of the river, put away the surveying instrument, and waded back across the muddy beach.

He walked to the jeep, carefully placed the heavy instruments into the back seat, and then bent down to brush the dry mud off his trousers.

"I've figured out the stress points of the bridge piers now. The foundation in Heishan Village is rock, so it's very stable. The sand layer in Dahe Village is a bit thicker, so we just need to drive in two more meters of piles." Ma Zhigang opened the passenger door and got in, rubbing his hands together and exhaling a puff of white breath. "Old Gu, only you could have brought this up. If it were anyone else, dragging me from my warm bed in the provincial capital in this freezing weather to do this kind of hard labor, I would have cursed them out long ago."

Gu Zheng threw his cigarette butt on the ground, stomped it out, turned to the group on the mudflat, and loudly instructed, "Big Brother, Uncle Wang, Uncle Zhao, you're in charge of leveling this muddy mess in the eye of the storm. Ma, get all the data here, I'll go over and get the blueprints done. Once the blueprints arrive, we'll break ground immediately!"

"Don't worry, Chief Gu! Even if we have to dig it out with our bare hands, we'll dig out the foundation!" Old Wang patted his chest confidently, and Ye Cheng nodded heavily to Gu Zheng as well.

After giving his instructions, Gu Zheng nimbly walked back to the driver's seat and opened the car door: "Enough talk, when are the blueprints ready?"

"It will take at least two days." Ma Zhigang flipped through his notebook. "This is a stone arch bridge that can carry ten heavy trucks, not a log bridge for oxcarts in the village. The load-bearing structure must be calculated perfectly. I'll go back to your big courtyard in Beicheng to draw it; it'll be quiet there."

The jeep started, spewing out a puff of white smoke from its exhaust pipe. Its rough tires rolled over the gravel on the dirt road, and the vehicle swayed as it drove towards Qingyun County.

There was no heater in the car. Ma Zhigang, with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his padded jacket, turned to look at Gu Zheng, who was focused on driving, and suddenly raised an eyebrow: "Old Gu, we're taking the wrong route. We should be taking the provincial highway back to Beicheng. Why is your jeep heading into the county town?"

Gu Zheng looked ahead and tapped his long fingers on the steering wheel twice unhurriedly: "It's on the way, let's go to the county hospital."

Ma Zhigang paused for a moment, then grinned and pointed at Gu Zheng, laughing, "So, you're in such a hurry this morning, huh? You've been missing me since we last saw each other? Back in the southwestern border, in those cramped foxholes where you could barely turn over, you'd squat there for half a month at a time, and you didn't even take out a single woman's picture to look at. The guys in our engineering company all bet that you, Gu Zheng, would probably spend the rest of your life with rifles."

Ma Zhigang pulled his hand out of his sleeve, gestured, and asked with a face full of curiosity, "Just what kind of person is your sister-in-law? How could she warm up such a cold stone like you?"

Gu Zheng lowered the car window slightly, letting in some of the cold air. He looked at the gradually clearing outline of the county town ahead, a smug, undisguised pride and smugness playing on his lips.

"Your sister-in-law?" Gu Zheng scoffed, his brows furrowed with the arrogant air of a soldier. "I'm afraid I'll scare you if I tell you. Ever heard of the North China Field Hospital? During the recent exercise, there was a seriously wounded soldier whose leg was crushed. The old medic was even ready to amputate with a saw, but your sister-in-law single-handedly reconnected the shattered blood vessels and nerves, one by one. Even Commander Wang of the major military region has to give her a proper military salute when he sees her!"

Ma Zhigang gasped, his eyes widening like saucers: "Really? Is this still a doctor? This is a living saint descended to earth!"

"When you see her later, you better watch your eyes when you're looking at blueprints." Gu Zheng stepped on the gas, his tone full of smugness. "She's aloof and has a head full of real stuff. She doesn't like listening to those empty pleasantries."

The rusty iron gate of Qingyun County Hospital was wide open. The jeep drove straight in and came to a smooth stop in the open space behind the outpatient building.

Gu Zheng led Ma Zhigang through several narrow paths and straight to the door of the archives room. Pushing open the mottled wooden door, the room was unusually quiet, with only the scratching sound of pen nibs scratching on paper.

Ye Zhen sat at the wooden table with its paint chipped off, her head bowed. A thick, hardcover notebook lay open in front of her, with several sketches scattered around it. The red plum blossoms in the glass jar on the corner of the table were in full bloom, their delicate fragrance wafting through the small space.

Hearing the door open, Ye Zhen looked up.

"Honey, this is Ma Zhigang, the engineer I told you about. He's a bridge engineer at the provincial design institute. He's in charge of the blueprints for the bridge." Gu Zheng strode forward and casually draped Ye Zhen's coat, which she had been wearing on the back of the chair, over her slender shoulders.

Ma Zhigang stood by the door, secretly observing the woman before him. Slender and beautiful, with slightly pale skin, yet her eyes shone like cold stars. She possessed none of the coquettishness of a typical woman; instead, she exuded an absolute rationality and composure typically found only in a chief surgeon. Based on this aura alone, Ma Zhigang believed Gu Zheng's earlier boast.

"Hello, Mr. Ma." Ye Zhen stood up, her gaze sweeping over Ma Zhigang's hands, calloused from years of holding pens and working on construction projects. "Gu Zheng said you're an expert, so I happen to have a professional question I'd like to ask you."

Ma Zhigang was taken aback by this direct approach and subconsciously straightened his back: "Sister-in-law, you're too kind. Just say whatever you want. As long as it's about the building structure, I, Old Ma, will never be ambiguous."

Ye Zhen didn't waste any pleasantries. She simply turned the notebook on the table around and pushed it in front of Ma Zhigang: "Come and take a look at this ventilation system."

Ma Zhigang stepped forward. He was initially being somewhat polite, but in his mind he was thinking: what complicated drawings could a doctor possibly produce? At most, he could only modify the ventilation duct in the bathroom or repair the window in the ward.

But the moment his gaze fell on those few pages, Ma Zhigang's expression changed completely.

On the notebook, a cross-sectional diagram of a vast three-dimensional space was sketched with extremely fine pen lines. The layout of each area—load-bearing walls, sterile corridors, operating areas, and observation areas—was clear, precise, and easy to understand at a glance.

What terrified him most was the design of the exhaust duct system that was mounted on the ceiling—every bend and every reserved position for the fan was marked with densely packed air exchange rates in neat and powerful handwriting.

"What...what kind of room design is this?" Ma Zhigang's voice cracked as he pointed to a square area heavily circled in red. "My goodness, this area is designed to withstand two tons of weight per square meter! What kind of medical equipment weighs that much? And this ventilation system, the heat it dissipates is comparable to the steel furnaces at Shougang Group!"

Ye Zhen picked up a pencil from the table and lightly tapped on the drawing: "This is the cardiovascular interventional center that the main hospital will build in the future. This load-bearing area will house a large Siemens angiography machine imported from Germany. The equipment generates a lot of heat when it is running. If the temperature in the catheterization lab is not lowered by powerful ventilation, not only will the machine malfunction and crash, but the doctors performing surgery under the operating lights wearing lead aprons will also suffer from severe dehydration."

Ye Zhen pointed to a pipe, then looked up at Ma Zhigang with an extremely professional expression: "My current difficulty is that the existing floor structures in domestic hospitals have very thick load-bearing walls. If we forcibly drill through the walls with this size pipe, won't it damage the structural integrity of the entire building?"

Ma Zhigang was completely absorbed in the blueprints at this moment. He casually dragged over a chair and sat down, took out a red and blue pencil from his breast pocket, and drew a few auxiliary lines next to Ye Zhen's blueprints without blinking.

"The drilling location you chose is absolutely unacceptable." When faced with a technical issue, Ma Zhigang's engineerly stubbornness kicked in. "This joint is right at the intersection of the beam and the load-bearing wall, where the shear force is greatest. If you pull the pipe out from here, even the slightest vibration will cause this wall to crack immediately!"

He took a red and blue pencil, moved the drawing five centimeters to the right, and drew an X: "It has to go this way! Avoid the main steel reinforcement; this is the infill brick layer. However, this means the exhaust pipe will need a 45-degree bend, which will increase air resistance. We'll have to install a booster fan in the middle of the pipe."

"The booster fan will generate vibration and noise." Ye Zhen immediately hit the nail on the head, pointing out incisively, "When performing minimally invasive cardiac catheterization surgery, doctors need an absolutely quiet environment."

"Then let's use a suspended vibration damping bracket!" Ma Zhigang's mind raced. He slapped his thigh. "Wrap the pipes with a thick layer of damping material, and suspend the fan directly from the ceiling. There will be absolutely no rigid contact with the load-bearing wall. The noise will be reduced to a minimum!"

The two men talked back and forth, their pens and red and blue pencils constantly clashing and revising on the blueprints. A complex medical building blueprint that originally only existed in the future was transformed into a feasible and complete system at an astonishing speed in this dilapidated archive room in the early 1980s.

Gu Zheng pulled up a long bench and sat down imposingly against the wall. He casually picked up a rare Fuji apple that he had specially asked someone to bring from Beijing and slowly peeled it with a military knife.

He couldn't utter a single word of those highly technical terms, but his gaze as he looked at Ye Zhen's focused profile was fiery and proud.

Gu Zheng's wife wasn't thinking about petty gains of a few dozen yuan. Her vision and planning were far grander than anyone in this era could imagine!