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

London, mid-March.

The continuous rainy weather soaked the entire city in a layer of gray, misty vapor.

The office area of ​​the cardiothoracic surgery department at Royal Brompton Hospital was well-heated, and the windows were covered with a fine layer of condensation.

Sir Williams had been sitting behind his expensive walnut desk, holding a thin journal in both hands, for over forty minutes.

The Earl Grey tea on the table had gone completely cold, and the jasmine tea brewing in the enamel mug he had brought back from Beijing next to it had also lost its heat.

That enamel mug was the only thing he didn't have "stolen" from in Beijing.

Williams' lips twitched at the thought.

The journal's cover features several neatly printed Chinese characters, with a line of small English text below.

Chinese Journal of Surgery.

This was sent to him by Ye Zhen.

In addition to the revision comments for his thesis that he had been waiting for for two whole weeks, the airmail package also contained this thin domestic journal and a handwritten note.

The note contained only one sentence. The handwriting was two sizes larger than Ye Zhen's, and the strokes had a flamboyant style; one glance was enough to tell it wasn't written by Ye Zhen.

Williams spent a long time looking it up in the dictionary before he finally understood what it meant.

A Chinese textbook is included; please bring your own dictionary.

Williams was so angry he almost twisted his nose.

He remembered the Chinese soldier at Beijing airport who had almost crushed his hand and snatched two suitcases of top-of-the-line surgical equipment—Ye Zhen's husband. That man's surname was Gu; he had a handsome smile, but afterwards, your pockets would be empty.

But he still obediently opened the journal.

His Chinese proficiency is limited to the three words he learned in Beijing: 你好 (hello), 谢谢 (thank you), and 手术刀 (scalpel).

He couldn't understand a single Chinese word in the paper.

But he can read the diagrams.

The anatomical diagrams in the paper, with their precise lines and complete data curves, are sufficient for any professionally trained cardiothoracic surgeon to understand the core content.

Moreover, a complete English abstract was attached at the end of the article.

Williams read the summary over and over again.

At first glance, he thought he had misread it.

On the third time, he began to grip the edges of the journal tightly.

After reading it one last time, he closed the journal, took off his reading glasses and threw them on the table, then leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

The walnut chair creaked softly.

The office remained quiet for a long time.

Then he picked up the internal phone on the table and dialed a number.

"Anderson, are you free right now?"

A middle-aged man's lazy voice came from the other end of the phone.

"Old man, I was just getting ready to go for afternoon tea, do you have anything—"

"Cancel the afternoon tea."

Williams sat up straight, his voice unusually deep.

"Call all the people in Corey who can breathe, and call Hawkins at St. Mary's and have him come over too."

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. Anderson had followed Williams for twenty years, and he had only heard this tone in two situations—when a patient was dying, and when an earthquake was about to occur in academia.

"What happened?" Anderson's languidness was gone.

You'll see when you get here.

Williams hung up the phone and dialed a second number.

"Professor Green? This is Williams. I appreciate it if you could come all the way to Brompton; I have something here that I need your review."

"What is it?"

"A research paper. Written by a Chinese person."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"A paper by a Chinese person?" Green's voice was clearly puzzled. "Which journal was it published in? The British Medical Journal? Or your own Thoracic Surgery Yearbook?"

"Neither. It was published in their own Chinese journal."

Two more seconds of silence followed.

"Arthur, are you running a fever?"

Williams put his reading glasses back on, opened the journal to the diagram of the teardrop-shaped patch, and focused his gaze on the pressure differential value marked in the figure caption.

"Green, come here, just take a look."

He paused for a moment.

"If after you finish reading this you think it's not worth canceling afternoon tea, I'll treat you to a week's worth of Earl Grey."

---

Forty minutes later, the small conference room in the cardiac surgery department of Brompton Hospital was packed with people.

The heating was so strong that people were sweating profusely, but no one took off their coats; they all just stood there motionless.

Anderson leaned against the windowsill and flipped through the journal. When he got to the third page, he brought the journal close to the lamp, his eyes less than a fist's width from the paper.

"The way this patch is cut is incorrect."

Anderson frowned.

"It's not that it's wrong." Williams stood in front of the whiteboard, a red marker in his hand, pinning his anatomical drawing to the board. "It's that you haven't seen it before."

"Traditional polyester patches are cut into rectangles and secured with interrupted mattress stitching. Her solution eliminates the need for manual patching."

Williams circled the teardrop-shaped outline on the whiteboard, and the marker nib made a clicking sound on the whiteboard.

"Autologous pericardium. It was removed during the operation, soaked in a 0.6% glutaraldehyde solution for ten minutes, and then cross-linked tanned. The treated pericardium had zero immunogenicity and mechanical strength sufficient to meet the peak tension of the right ventricular outflow tract during systole."

The meeting room fell silent.

Several young resident doctors tilted their heads and exchanged glances, not daring to utter a sound.

Professor Green came all the way from University College London, and without even taking off his coat, he took the journal right at the door.

He flipped to the data page and looked at it for less than half a minute.

The "I'm already here, might as well take a look" expression on his face gradually disappeared.

Are you sure this pressure difference value is accurate?

Green flipped the journal over to look at the publication information on the back cover, then flipped it back to stare at the string of numbers.

"Fifteen millimeters of mercury. If this figure holds true, the hemodynamic patency distal to the patch will be better than the Gore-Tex patch we are currently using."

"That's impossible." Anderson snatched the journal from Green's hands.

"Gore-Tex is currently the best performing expanded polytetrafluoroethylene material. The cost of just one patch is enough to buy a used Jaguar."

Anderson's finger poked at the illustration in the journal.

"You're telling me that soaking a piece of pericardium taken from a patient's own chest cavity in a solution for ten minutes will hemodynamically kick it out of the operating room?"

He slammed the magazine on the table and turned to look at Williams.

"Arthur, how many days did you stay in China? What kind of spell did you get cast on?"

A low, dry laugh escaped someone in the conference room.

Williams didn't laugh.

He took off his reading glasses and slowly wiped the fingerprints off the lenses with a cloth.

"magic potion?"

He put his glasses back on his nose and looked over the top of the frame at Anderson.

"Anderson, I wasn't drugged."

His voice was neither loud nor soft, as if he were recalling a nightmare.

"I paid a heavy price."

Anderson was taken aback. "What price?"

Williams was silent for two seconds.

Then he stretched out his hand and started counting on his fingers.

"Two brand-new artificial blood vessels."

One finger is held upright.

"A whole box of newly released Proline 7-0 sutures."

Two.

"A complete set of Codman microsurgical instruments."

Three.

"I've been using a Montblanc gold pen for twenty years."

Four.

His voice paused for a moment, and a very complex expression appeared on his face—between heartbreak and resignation.

"And there's the calfskin suitcase I had custom-made in London."

All five fingers are standing upright.

There was a brief, deathly silence in the conference room, then several young resident doctors couldn't help but chuckle softly.

Anderson opened his mouth, momentarily at a loss for words.

Professor Green leaned against the door frame, his eyes wide open behind his glasses.

Williams pulled his five fingers back, clenched them into a fist, and placed it on the table with a sorrowful expression.

"Her husband is a commander in the Chinese military. When he picked me up at the airport, he almost crushed my bones by shaking my hand. He was smiling like a brother, and then before I could react, he ordered two soldiers to take all my suitcases away."

He took a deep breath.

"Finally, he treated me to Peking duck."

It paused for another beat.

"A duck, all that's left is its skeleton."

"They insisted on packing it up and bringing it back for me."

Even Green couldn't hold back this time, his shoulders twitched a couple of times.

Anderson's skepticism was largely dispelled by this "accusation." Looking at Williams's aggrieved "I'm the victim" expression, the corners of his mouth involuntarily turned upwards.

"So you mean...?"

"What I mean is—"

Williams stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and held the Chinese journal high in the air.

Everyone in the room stared at that thin magazine.

"I'm not some fool who's been bewitched. I gave up two boxes of equipment, a gold pen, and a suitcase to get the chance to stand by her operating table for a few hours."

He flipped the journal to the diagram of the teardrop-shaped patch and slapped it onto the whiteboard.

"Is this price worth it?"

Williams tapped his finger on the differential pressure data on the graph, his fingernail making a thumping sound on the whiteboard.

"Gentlemen, look at this number, and then tell me, is it worth it?"

No one laughed in the meeting room.

Green walked up to the whiteboard and looked closely at the picture.

Anderson also stood up.

The gurgling sound of hot water flowing through the heating pipes became the only noise in the room.

"...When will the English version of her thesis be published?" Anderson's voice lowered.

"She's not in a hurry." Williams put his hands behind his back and looked into Anderson's eyes.

"A Chinese female doctor in her early twenties has surgical techniques that are enough to redefine the standards of materials science in congenital heart disease surgery. She is not in a hurry to be recognized in Europe."

Williams pushed his reading glasses up his nose.

"On the contrary, we can't even understand the Chinese text of her paper."

He glanced back at the note on the table.

A Chinese textbook is included; please bring your own dictionary.

"So," Williams drew a heavy circle on the whiteboard, placing the pressure difference value right in the center.

"Can anyone help me find a Chinese translator?"