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

Gu Zheng took a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his military overcoat, unfolded it, and placed it on the stone table.

The paper was yellowed, the handwriting was crooked, and there was a blurry muddy handprint in the lower right corner.

It was sent from Guizhou.

"When you were conducting screenings in Beijing, you went door-to-door with red, yellow, and blue medical cards. Every black dot on the map was marked out by your own efforts."

Gu Zheng spoke casually, as if he were chatting about everyday things.

"But what about other places? People in Guizhou, Gansu, Heilongjiang, and other places read the newspapers but don't have the means to come to Beijing. Their only hope is to write a letter."

He paused.

Do you know where all these letters are?

The crowd shook their heads.

"Gu Yue and Lan Lan are in the triage office of Huaxia Heart."

"Two girls, three sacks of letters."

"Each letter could potentially hold a life. The dialects and local expressions from all over the country are so varied that some characters are impossible to recognize even by guessing."

He pushed the letter from Guizhou in front of Li Hong.

"Take a look at this."

Li Hong took it and glanced at it, her brows immediately furrowing.

"Severe cyanosis, squatting position, the symptoms described in the letter are highly suggestive of Tetralogy of Fallot, and hypoxia has already occurred."

She turned over and her voice lowered.

The letter was dated twelve days ago.

No one in the courtyard made a sound.

The aroma of steamed buns and chicken mingled in the cool early spring breeze, but no one had the heart to look at the two roast chickens anymore.

Lin Yi stood up.

"Commander Gu, are you short-staffed in the rear?"

Gu Zheng didn't respond directly.

"I never said I wanted you to go. Your teacher Ye's residency rotation schedule is very tight. If I were to transfer people without permission, she would punish me and you all."

Li Hong and Lin Yi exchanged a glance.

Zhou Ming pushed up his glasses.

"What if we apply voluntarily?"

Gu Zheng raised an eyebrow.

"voluntary?"

"right."

Zhou Ming took a step forward.

"Although the descriptions of medical history in the letters are not standardized, they are, for us, equivalent to first-hand information on real cases from all over the country."

He paused for a moment, and his voice became more serious.

"Learning to quickly differentiate the severity and urgency of symptoms from these letters is a crucial skill for future clinical triage. Moreover—"

He glanced at the muddy handprint on the letter from Guizhou.

"This was originally our responsibility. When we were conducting street screenings in Beijing, we said we wouldn't desert our posts."

Gu Zheng's gaze lingered on Zhou Ming's face for two seconds.

This kid is very shrewd. He managed to package helping out as self-improvement, and then elevated the whole thing to a higher level.

It's a good piece of material.

"OK."

Gu Zheng got up, patted the oil stains off his hands, and casually grabbed a rag and rubbed them a couple of times.

"But let me make this clear—not just anyone can go."

He glanced at the seventy-odd people squatting on the ground, his eyes sharpening.

"These letters came from all over the country, with all sorts of dialects. The Guizhou people said '背时' (bèishí), the Sichuan people wrote '心口窝子' (xīnkǒuwōzi), the Northeast people wrote '嘎嘎' (gāgā) all over the place, and the Gansu people were even more bizarre, not a single word was recognizable. Relying on guessing? If you guess the wrong description of a symptom, that's playing with people's lives."

He held up one finger.

"So, it's divided according to hometown. Letters from which province are read by the people of that province. If you can't understand your own province's dialect, you'd better shut up and not cause any trouble."

The courtyard was quiet for a moment, then suddenly erupted into a commotion.

Zhao Dayong was the first to jump up, patting his chest with his thick Northeastern accent: "The letters from Heilongjiang are mine! I can read aloud anything those fellow villagers from the forest farms and mining areas write, even with my eyes half-closed!"

A tall, thin boy quickly raised his hand, his voice carrying a strong Sichuan accent: "I'll take you in, Sichuanese people. We old folks from my hometown all know what 'heart and soul' and 'foreign-style' mean."

"What about Shanxi?"

"Me! I'm from Datong!"

Are there any people in Gansu?

"Yes! I'm from Lanzhou—"

Gu Zheng leaned against the stone table, his long legs crossed, watching the group of people automatically announce their provinces and automatically pair up, unable to suppress the corners of his mouth.

He knew, of course, that these interns came from more than a dozen provinces across the country.

This roast chicken wasn't bought for nothing.

"Those who are willing to go, come with me after lunch. Each province will send one or two people, taking turns each day, so it won't interfere with the regular classes arranged by your teacher, Ms. Ye."

Gu Zheng straightened up, his tone becoming serious.

"Anyone who dares to use this as an excuse to skip her exam, don't blame me for covering for them."

He pushed the remaining roast chicken in front of Li Hong.

"Let's break up, don't waste the stuff."

As he was leaving, Gu Zheng glanced back at the interns who were excitedly dividing up chicken, and a slight smirk appeared on his lips.

Gu Yue followed behind, carrying an apple, and jogged up to his ear, her voice barely audible.

"Brother, what if my sister-in-law asks?"

Gu Zheng strode towards the jeep without turning his head.

"Should I ask?"

He opened the car door and stepped inside with one leg.

"If asked, just say it was your idea."

Gu Yue's face fell instantly.

---

The door to Huaxia Zhixin's office was already small, and when a dozen or so people rushed in, the room immediately became so crowded that there was hardly any room to turn around.

Gu Yue stood in the corner, watching the group of interns surround the three burlap sacks, and almost shouted out in excitement.

He swallowed the words that were on the tip of his tongue, then turned and winked at Zhao Lanlan.

Zhao Lanlan understood, stood up and cleared her throat.

Let me explain the rules to you first.

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to look at them.

Zhao Lanlan picked up a well-worn copy of "Work Rules" from the table and turned to the page with the folded corner.

"After opening each letter, register its number and conduct an initial screening based on the symptom description. Blue clips are for mild cases, yellow clips are for sub-emergency cases, and red clips are for critical cases."

She pointed to the three color swatches pasted on the wall.

"If you can't tell the difference, put them in a separate pile and wait for your sister-in-law to decide."

"Also—" Zhao Lanlan waved a stack of kraft paper envelopes labeled by province in her hand, "The letters are sorted by the province of origin. Letters from each province should be given to students from that province to open first. If you can't understand the dialect, you can ask your classmates from the same province for help, but you are not allowed to guess or assume anything. Any letters you are unsure about should be put in the 'pending' pile."

Lin Yi rubbed his hands together.

The openings of the three burlap sacks came loose, and the letters spilled all over the table.

Zhao Dayong was the first to act, grabbing the top few envelopes, flipping through the postmarks, and muttering, "Mudanjiang, Jiamusi, Hegang—all done, these are mine."

He opened the first envelope, scanned two lines, and his expression relaxed.

"Okay, I recognize this one. 'The little brat's face turns ashen, and when he has an attack, his legs tremble, and he can't get up from his squatting position for a long time'—cyanosis, squatting posture, typical symptoms of congenital heart disease."

He looked up at Zhao Lanlan.

"Yellow, with a reddish tint."

Zhao Lanlan nodded and wrote the number into the register.

The tall, thin guy from Sichuan next to me had already opened two envelopes. One was from Meishan, and the other from Guangyuan. He read the whole envelope in the local Sichuan dialect fluently.

"A feeling of tightness in the chest, which flares up when exposed to wind"—discomfort in the retrosternal region, which is triggered by cold or fatigue.

He quickly wrote down the key information in the summary column, then flipped to the next letter, from Qionglai. It had no punctuation marks at all, but he read it through in one go without a single stumble.

Lin Yi stared at him for a few seconds, his face full of admiration.

"You're much faster than flipping through a dictionary."

"Nonsense." The tall, thin man didn't even look up. "My mom writes like this all the time, not even as neatly as this fellow villager's."

Meanwhile, the boy from Datong had already taken over the letter from Shanxi—the one that Gu Yue and Zhao Lanlan had opened before. It was full of typos, and there was a small dried water stain in the lower right corner of the letter.

He picked it up and read it silently.

"Male, seven years old, recurrent cyanosis, squatting posture, extremely poor appetite, and weight below the standard for his age."

He placed the letter neatly on the table, picked up his pen, and wrote down the number and summary in the register with steady, deliberate strokes, as if he were rushing to finish.

"Initial screening rating - yellowish-red".

It was exactly the same as the previous verdict against Li Hong.

However, he added a note at the end: "The phrase 'fell into the throes of convulsions' in the letter is a dialect from northern Shanxi, referring to a seizure or spasm, suspected to be combined with hypoxic syncope, and I suggest prioritizing a review."

Li Hong peeked at the note from the side and her eyes lit up.

"You added a great dialect annotation. When your sister-in-law sees it, she'll be able to tell the difference at a glance, saving her so much trouble."

The boy from Datong scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

"That's how my grandma always talks. In our local dialect, 'yangjiaofeng' means convulsions, which outsiders might not understand."

A dozen or so people each guarded the letters from their respective provinces, some opening them, some reading them aloud, and some memorizing them.

The buzzing in the room was no longer a chaotic discussion, but rather like the threshing machines operating in unison on a threshing floor, each strike hitting the mark perfectly.

Gu Yue stood to the side watching, her mouth opening and closing repeatedly.

This group of people worked at a speed more than three times faster than she and Zhao Lanlan combined.

The key is accuracy. Dialects don't stop them, typos don't stop them, and even vague descriptions of symptoms can be translated into standardized medical terminology in just a few sentences by students from this province.

Feeling quite pleased with herself, she picked up the enamel mug, blew away the tea leaves floating on the surface, and took a sip.