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

three days later.

The three burlap sacks in the switchboard room were finally emptied, and replaced by a neatly stacked red, yellow, and blue folder in the corner.

Zhou Ming gripped his pencil and drew a heavy period on the last register. He took off his black-rimmed glasses and rubbed his sore nose; fingerprints were stained the lenses.

Lin Yi carefully clipped the summary of the last letter to his pocket, tucked it into his blue wallet, and let out a long sigh.

"All cleared."

Li Hongzai carefully checked the total number of letters, picked up the chalk, and wrote the final number on the small blackboard on the wall: one thousand two hundred and sixty-seven letters.

Gu Yue stared at the string of numbers on the blackboard, not even bothering to drink the tea in her enamel mug, which had gone completely cold.

"One thousand two hundred and sixty-seven families..."

Zhao Lanlan closed the last red leather folder, her fingers lingering on the cover for a long while.

"How many of them are in critical condition (red zone)?"

"Thirty-eight." Li Hong's voice was soft, yet it weighed heavily on one's heart. "The youngest is only four months old, and the oldest is twelve."

The room fell into a deathly silence.

Suddenly, a noisy commotion came from outside the window. At first, there was a buzzing of voices, like dozens of people chattering together, followed by a muffled "bang" as the large iron gate outside was pushed open.

The soldiers at the guard post at the main hospital entrance shouted, "Halt! This is a military restricted area; you can't just wander in!"

Then came intermittent crying, interspersed with shouts in an incomprehensible dialect.

Lin Yi was the first to react. He rushed to the window and peered out, his face instantly turning pale: "Something's happened! There's a huge crowd gathered at the door!"

Upon hearing this, several interns dropped their pens and ran outside.

Li Hong grabbed the white coat hanging behind the door and started buttoning it as she rushed out.

When they ran all the way to the main gate of the hospital, they were stunned by the sight before them—a dense crowd of thirty or forty people.

They were all dressed like ordinary people, toiling in the fields from dawn till dusk. Some carried tattered bedding rolls, others wore patched cloth bundles, and still others clutched their children tightly in their arms. Their faces were covered in dust and weary, and many still smelled of coal dust from the old green trains.

A middle-aged woman in an old cotton-padded coat was holding a child wrapped in a blanket tightly in her arms, squatting on the ground and wailing. The man next to her, with rough hands and feet, was so anxious that he gestured helplessly, speaking in a dialect that the soldier on duty could not understand.

In the crowd behind, several elderly men leaned on wooden canes, craning their necks to peer inside.

"Is Dr. Ye here? We found him through the newspaper!"

"Comrade, PLA comrade! My child has congenital heart disease, and we traveled all the way from Shandong by train for a day and a night!"

The crowd stared at a young female doctor in a white coat running over, momentarily stunned, then surged forward as if a pot had been boiled over.

"Doctor! Doctor, are you Dr. Ye Zhen?"

"We're from Hebei; the brigade issued us letters of introduction!"

"Please, please look at my child! His lips are all purple, and he doesn't even have the strength to eat a bite of porridge!"

Li Hong was instantly surrounded, with hands reaching out from all directions, tightly gripping her sleeves and the hem of her clothes.

She didn't take a single step back; she simply raised her hand and pressed it into the air.

The movement was small, but it exuded an inexplicable steadiness. The surrounding noise miraculously subsided within seconds.

"I am Dr. Ye's student. Everyone, please be patient and take turns."

"Those with children, please line up on the left first; those without children, please register on the right. Don't worry if you don't understand Mandarin; someone will help you take your names shortly."

As soon as these words were spoken, the chaotic crowd seemed to be reassured and began to slowly move and disperse.

Lin Yi and his three interns worked quickly and efficiently, moving tables and chairs to the door and hanging up cardboard signs with the three-color grading instructions for "red, yellow, and blue".

Zhou Ming sat upright behind the registration desk, took out his pen, and waved to a dark-faced man at the front of the line.

"Hello, fellow villager. I'm an intern at the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital. My surname is Zhou." His voice was gentle, and he deliberately spoke slowly. "What's your child's name? How old are they? Where are they from?"

The dark-faced man rubbed his calloused hands nervously, speaking in a thick Henan accent: "My surname is Wang, my child's name is Wang Daniu, he's six years old, and we're from Zhumadian."

Zhou Ming paused for a moment while holding the pen.

He looked up, scrutinized the farmer for two seconds, then looked down and opened the black leather notebook he always carried with him. It was a categorized index he had created himself, organized by province and number, after several sleepless nights in the switchboard room.

His finger stopped on a line of text.

"Wang Daniu from Zhumadian is six years old."

Zhou Ming's voice changed. He suddenly stood up, walked around the wooden table, and stood in front of the dark-faced man.

"Didn't you send a letter a while ago? In it, you said the child's lips were turning purple and his hands were shaking uncontrollably when he held a spoon to eat?"

Wang Daniu's eyes widened instantly: "You...how did you know?!"

Zhou Ming turned the notebook over and pointed it out to him. It was a summary of letters that he had personally dug out of the sack three days ago, with two key symptoms heavily circled in red pen.

"I read your letter four times and immediately labeled the child as an 'emergency case with yellowish-red discoloration'." Zhou Ming squatted down, reached out to uncover the child's tattered quilt, and stared at the purplish lips and fingernails. "Come on, let me listen to the heartbeat first."

His hand was as steady as a rock when he placed the stethoscope against the child's chest.

Wang Daniu stood frozen in place, his lips trembling. The eyes of this burly farmer instantly turned red.

He turned around abruptly and shouted at the villagers queuing behind him, his voice trembling with tears:

"Everyone! They really read the letter we wrote! They even remember my kid's name perfectly!"

The moment that voice came out, the crowd erupted in cheers.

"Really? Is it true?"

"What about the one I sent? Our brigade secretary also helped write a letter!"

On the other side, Lin Yi was registering a woman holding a child when he heard Wang Daniu's shout and looked up as well.

The baby in the woman's arms looked to be only three or four years old, with a dangerously pale complexion and bulging fingertips like those of a small drum.

Lin Yi glanced at her twice: "Big sister, where are you from?"

"We've also sent letters from people from Gansu!"

Lin Yi's heart skipped a beat, and he blurted out, "Does your child always like to squat and refuse to get up, and get out of breath after running only a few steps?"

The woman's pupils dilated sharply: "You...how did you know?!"

Lin Yi deftly pulled out his notebook and turned to the page with the red cardboard label. He had read that SOS letter from Gansu more than three times.

"Big sister, your letter arrived. We've read it word for word." Lin Yi squatted down, took a yellow triage card from his white coat pocket, and handed it to her. "Now go sit on that bench over there and rest for a while. Don't let the child catch a cold. Teacher Ye will personally examine the child later!"

When the woman received the card, her hands trembled like leaves, and large tears streamed down her face.

The news spread like wildfire through the queue.

"These child doctors really took our letter to heart! They matched all the names perfectly!"

"He knows all our child's ailments by heart, even better than the barefoot doctor in our village!"

An old man leaning on a cane gripped his wife's arm tightly, his throat feeling like it was stuffed with cotton. After a long pause, he managed to choke out a sentence:

"Old woman... this trip wasn't in vain."

The order in the square became smoother and smoother, and two neat lines formed in front of the registration table.

The interns weaved through the crowd, some helping illiterate villagers fill out forms, others performing initial auscultation on seriously ill children.

Gu Yue also appeared out of nowhere, carrying a large aluminum thermos with the Double Happiness logo, and poured hot water for each of the frozen villagers; Zhao Lanlan followed behind her, handing out number tags in an orderly manner.

Gu Zheng stood on the steps with his arms crossed, looking very imposing. Looking at the group of young people below, busy yet orderly, a slight smile crept onto his usually cold and hard lips.

He turned his head and saw Ye Zhen, wearing a white coat, walking briskly out of the outpatient building.