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

"Pause for eleven minutes. Prepare for rewarming and re-jumping."

Ye Zhen's voice came from behind her mask, neither too loud nor too soft, like she was reading a surgical record, without any extra fluctuations.

The perfusionist, Lao Zhao, took a deep breath and slowly pushed the knob with his right hand. The pump head of the extracorporeal circulation machine adjusted its speed slightly, and the tubing carrying oxygenated blood began to warm up.

All eyes were fixed on that still heart.

The pink myocardium gleamed faintly under the operating lights, motionless. Like a frozen living thing, or a sculpture whose time had been paused.

The temperature is rising.

32 degrees.

33 degrees.

34 degrees.

"Twelve minutes." The nurse, Xiao Chen, stared at the stopwatch, her voice steady, but her fingertips, which were gripping the watch, turned white.

The heart didn't move.

The air in the operating room felt like it had been sucked out. The hissing of the ventilator, the low hum of the extracorporeal circulation pump, and the faint electrical hum of the overhead operating light ballast—these background noises that were usually imperceptible were all amplified tenfold at this moment.

"12 minutes and 30 seconds."

Didn't move.

Gao Haiping stood in the position of the first assistant, his hands behind his back. He thought he was hiding it well, but his knuckles were clenched so tightly they were cracking, and a layer of sticky cold sweat seeped from between his bones.

He had seen far too many cases of hearts stopping on the operating table and never beating again. Twelve minutes is already the limit of myocardial ischemia tolerance at room temperature. Every extra second reduces the probability of the heart restarting.

"Thirteen minutes."

Behind the glass window of the observation room, Williams' ballpoint pen fell to the ground with a "thud" and rolled under the chair.

He didn't bend down to pick it up.

He was as if nailed to his seat, his hands gripping the armrests, his ten fingers digging deeply into the leather. He had practiced medicine for forty years and performed thousands of open-chest surgeries. He knew what thirteen minutes meant.

Anderson sat beside him, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles cracked. He moved his lips as if to say something, but then swallowed his words.

Professor Green remained silent. A large, dark water stain had seeped into the back of his shirt, running from his shoulder blades down to his waist.

At that moment, only one thought remained in his mind—jump. Please jump.

"Thirteen minutes and thirty seconds."

Xiao Chen's voice began to tremble. His throat felt like it was being choked, and the last syllable of his voice floated upwards.

The operating room was so quiet that you could hear the dull thud of a bead of sweat sliding down the back of the head of the infusion specialist, Lao Zhao, and hitting his collar.

The scrub nurse's hand hovered above the sterile table, her fingertips trembling slightly. She glanced at Ye Zhen subconsciously, then quickly looked away—she dared not look, yet couldn't help but look away.

"Fourteen minutes."

Gao Haiping suddenly raised his head.

He couldn't see Ye Zhen's expression. The surgical cap was pressed down to her brow bone, and the mask covered her entire face below the bridge of her nose.

He could only see her hands.

The hands hovered three centimeters above the heart, fingers slightly spread, firmly fixed there.

Not moving at all.

There was no trembling, no hesitation, not a single superfluous movement. It was as if these hands were an extension of the air, frozen in time, just like the lifeless heart beneath them.

Gao Haiping has been practicing medicine for thirty years and has seen countless pairs of surgeons' hands. Some are as steady as a rock, some as skillful as a thread. But he has never seen a pair of hands that can maintain this almost inhuman calm when the heart has stopped beating for more than fourteen minutes.

Ye Zhen spoke up.

"Lidocaine, 1 ml, for myocardial injection. To prevent recurrent ventricular fibrillation."

Gao Haiping was startled.

His brain reacted a fraction of a second faster than his mouth—if the heart muscle didn't start beating at this temperature after prolonged ischemia, the myocardial fibers would be in a critical state of extreme sensitivity to "electrical storm." Once the heart muscle resumed beating, the most likely outcome would not be a normal rhythm, but rather fatal ventricular fibrillation.

When ventricular fibrillation occurs, the heart becomes a frantically writhing mass of rotten flesh, unable to pump out a single drop of blood.

Ye Zhen's move was to extinguish the bomb's fuse before the heart could even open its eyes.

The anesthesiologist froze for a fraction of a second, then hurriedly rummaged through the medicine cart, pulled out an ampoule, broke it open, drew out the medication, and handed it over. His hand trembled as he handed over the syringe, the needle tip leaving a blurry outline.

Ye Zhen took the syringe.

With a flick of the wrist, the needle tip was aimed at the free wall of the right ventricle. There was no trial and error regarding the angle, depth, or insertion point.

Insert the needle.

Push the medicine.

Remove the needle.

The three movements were completed in one smooth motion. Three seconds.

A bead of blood the size of a mung bean seeped from the puncture site and was gently wiped away with gauze.

"14 minutes and 20 seconds."

Everyone—on the operating table, in the observation room—had their eyes glued to the monitoring screen.

That straight green line silently traversed the entire screen, like a dead end with no end in sight.

I jumped.

The waveform is very small, so small that it can be almost ignored.

But no one present could ignore it.

It jumped again.

This one is a little higher than the last one, and the waveform is clearer.

"Beep".

The monitor emitted its first beep.

"Beep...beep..."

The intervals are getting shorter.

"Beep beep...beep beep...beep beep beep beep—"

Sinus rhythm.

A regular, clean, textbook-standard sinus rhythm.

No ventricular fibrillation. No atrioventricular block. Not a single extra ectopic beat. The first waveform of the resumed beat is a perfect sine curve.

The heart, which had been silent for more than fourteen minutes, began to beat again under Ye Zhen's touch.

Xiao Chen clutched the stopwatch to his chest, tilted his head back, and tears silently streamed down his face.

In the observation room, Anderson covered his face with his hands.

Williams slowly leaned back in his chair, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. His chest heaved violently, as if he had just finished a marathon. His lips moved silently a few times, and Anderson later recalled that he thought he seemed to be saying "my God." But he might not have said anything at all.

Professor Green lowered his head.

He bent down to pick up the pen that had fallen to the ground and opened his notebook. His hand was still trembling, and the pen nib made a soft scratching sound as it scratched across the paper. But he began to write. Starting from the first line, he meticulously recorded every operation, every parameter, and every time point he had just witnessed, word by word.

Finally, he wrote a line of English in the blank space.

I was wrong. She is not a genius. She is the standard.

When the operating room door was pushed open from the inside, the fluorescent lights in the corridor were hissing, casting a pale white light on the terrazzo floor.

Xiao Jun's mother huddled against the wall.

She had been kneeling here for three hours. Her knees were pressed against the cold terrazzo floor, and her legs had long since gone numb. The nurse next to her had urged her four times to get up and sit in a chair to wait, but she shook her head and refused to move.

The hem of his clothes dragged on the ground, covered in a layer of dust. His ten fingers were clenched together until the knuckles turned white, and his lips were bitten so hard that two deep bloody marks appeared, the dried scabs cracking open and bleeding again.

The moment the door opened, she jolted awake, as if she'd been electrocuted.

Ye Zhen stood at the door.

The mask was pulled down to below his chin, leaving a red mark on his forehead from the hat. His face was pale, and the skin on his cheekbones was taut.

But the eyes are bright.

"The surgery was a success."

The corridor was initially deathly silent.

Then the woman's body seemed to have all its bones removed; she lunged forward, her forehead slamming heavily onto the terrazzo floor. The loud thud made everyone's hearts skip a beat.

Ye Zhen bent down, grabbed her arm, and forcefully pulled her up from the ground.

"Don't bump your head, the ground is cold." Her voice was hoarse, with the roughness of someone who had been working non-stop for hours. "The child will look for you when he wakes up. Go wash your face, dry it off before going in. Don't let him see you crying."

The woman nodded frantically, her legs too weak to stand, and was supported by Li Hong and Lin Yi on either side as they walked towards the washroom. After taking seven or eight steps, she suddenly turned around, opened her mouth as if to say something, but only a series of broken breaths came out of her throat.

Ye Zhen had already turned away.

She leaned against the operating room door frame and closed her eyes briefly.

three seconds.

I opened my eyes, lifted my foot, and walked towards the office. A dry, cold breeze swept up from the hem of my white coat.

At 10 p.m. that night, inside the tent.

Gao Haiping gulped down the last mouthful of the now-cold tea, pulled out a draft of his thesis from his briefcase, and flipped to the "Extreme Cases" section.

In the blank space, he picked up his pen and wrote: No. 042, intraoperative block 14 minutes and 20 seconds, intracardiac operation completed, heartbeat resumed, sinus rhythm.

The pen tip paused on the paper for a moment.

He looked up at Liu Jianmin, who was checking data across from him.

"Old Liu."

"Um?"

"This paper...is much more important than we expected."

Liu Jianmin didn't reply. He turned the data sheet in his hand over and drew a heavy line in red pen between rows 042.