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

Zhou Hai didn't answer, because he wasn't sure if what he saw was real.

If you bombard it with the current from a defibrillator, the power is too great and it will burn up this cluster of fragile conduction cells, making it impossible for the heart to regain its own rhythm.

What Ye Zhen wants to do is replace electric shocks with physical stimulation.

Her fingers fell.

My fingertips tapped on that unseen spot.

First time.

The force was neither too strong nor too weak, and the speed was neither too fast nor too slow.

The heart is not responding.

The second time.

It's still the same position, and the same intensity.

The straight line on the monitor remained unchanged.

Everyone in the observation room had their hearts in their throats.

Andrei's ten fingers were clenched together, and the blood squeezed out between his knuckles had all faded.

On the stage, Ye Zhen raised her finger for the third time.

Her wrist adjusted its angle by less than a millimeter in mid-air.

Fall.

The third time.

A voice came from the loudspeaker in the observation room.

beep.

A sound.

crisp.

Short and brief.

It echoed alone in the absolute silence.

Everyone's eyes simultaneously turned to the monitor screen.

A small peak appeared on that straight line that had been dead for nearly six minutes.

Then came the second one.

The third.

the fourth.

The waveforms have uniform spacing, stable amplitude, and gradually increasing frequency.

Standard sinus rhythm.

The Soviet transport medic's knee slammed into the back of the seat in front of him, causing him to slump down, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking violently—it was hard to tell whether he was laughing or crying.

Ivan turned his head away and raised his arm to frantically wipe the stuff off his face with his sleeve.

Andrei sat in the first row of chairs, leaning forward with his hands on his knees, his silver hair trembling slightly under the light.

He watched the green waveform on the projection screen begin to beat again, and a feeling he hadn't experienced in many years surged in his chest.

Shock and admiration are not accurate enough.

All that remains is piety.

He spent forty years reaching the pinnacle of cardiac surgery in the Soviet Union, believing he had seen all the diseases that could and could not be treated with surgery.

Today, in the dimly lit operating room of the Beicheng Military Region Hospital, he saw someone use two fingers to awaken a heart that the whole world believed to be dead.

The automatic doors in the operating room opened.

Ye Zhen came out, her mask pulled down to her chin, revealing a fine layer of sweat on her forehead.

Gu Zheng leaned against the wall across the corridor, holding a military green insulated lunchbox in his hand.

He straightened up when he saw her come out.

"How is it?"

Ye Zhen pulled off her surgical cap and ruffled her messy hair.

He's alive.

He didn't say a single extra word.

Gu Zheng handed over the lunchbox.

"Brown sugar and egg noodles, just brought over, still hot."

Ye Zhen took it, unscrewed the lid, and a blast of steam hit her face, the sweetness of brown sugar and the aroma of scallions mingling together.

She leaned against the white tiled wall in the corridor and took a bite.

The moment the noodles slid down my throat, my stomach, which had been working non-stop for over six hours, finally remembered that it was still alive.

Gu Zheng reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, then pressed her temples twice with his fingertips.

The pressure was just right, neither too light nor too heavy, pressing precisely on the acupoint.

Ye Zhen didn't dodge or look up, but her movement of picking up the noodles was a beat slower.

A series of hurried footsteps came from the end of the corridor.

Andrei walked out of the observation room.

He strode up to Ye Zhen and stopped.

He watched Ye Zhen eat noodles from her lunchbox.

He opened his mouth.

Close up.

It opened again.

Close it again.

The young translator appeared out of nowhere, panting as he followed behind, almost bumping into Andrei's back.

Andrei took a deep breath and reached into the inside pocket of his coat.

He took out the Gold Star Medal.

The metal surface reflected a dim light under the corridor lights. There was a very fine scratch on the edge of the medal, a mark left by countless times of wearing, taking off, and wearing it again over the past forty years.

He held the medal in both hands and stretched it out towards Ye Zhen.

The arm is very steady.

But my fingertips are trembling.

"Dr. Ye."

Andrei spoke Russian slowly, emphasizing each syllable, as if he were reading a formal award decree.

The translator's voice trembled.

"The academician said... today, he wants to present this medal to you."

Ye Zhen, with noodles in her mouth, looked up at Andrei.

I chewed it twice.

I swallowed it.

"Academician Andrei".

She lowered her head and picked up another mouthful of noodles, her tone similar to how she greeted people in the cafeteria.

"Keep your medals for yourself. They were earned for you by the people you saved over the past forty years; they shouldn't be given to anyone else."

The translation is a faithful retelling.

Andrei's hand froze in mid-air, the medal still resting in his palm.

The old man's Adam's apple bobbed.

"But you saved that child's life."

Ye Zhen rolled the last bite of noodles into her mouth, screwed the lid of the lunchbox on, and casually stuffed it into Gu Zheng's hand.

She raised her head and looked directly into Andrei's eyes.

"You sent me the actual follow-up data for those twenty-three cases."

"This is worth more than any medal."

Andrei was stunned.

Ye Zhen spoke at a steady pace, each word coming out one by one.

"After you return to Moscow, use my autologous pericardial conduit method to recalculate how many of those twenty-three children can still undergo a second surgery to save them. Send me the list."

She paused for a moment.

"We'll save as many as we can."

Andrei's fingers slowly closed.

The medal was returned to his palm.

The edge of the metal pressed against his skin, warm from his body.

He lowered his head.

"it is good."

One word.

The sound was very soft.

But everyone in the corridor could hear it clearly.

Ye Zhen turned and walked towards the ICU, the hem of her white coat swaying slightly at her legs as she walked at a leisurely pace.

Gu Zheng followed, carrying the lunchbox, and glanced back after taking a couple of steps.

Andrei remained standing in the same spot.

The silver-haired old man lowered his head, his shoulders slumped down half an inch, and he clutched the medal in his hand, rubbing the metal surface with his thumb.

It's like caressing a piece of old time.

Gu Zheng withdrew his gaze and strode to catch up with the person in front of him.

"young married woman."

"Um."

"I answered that call for you just now. Director Fang said that the Americans in Geneva are pushing to withdraw your nomination."

Ye Zhen's steps didn't stop, and her rhythm didn't change either.

"understood."

"Aren't you in a hurry?"

Ye Zhen pushed open the ICU door.

Inside the incubator, the eleven-day-old baby's chest rose and fell slowly. A steady green waveform danced on the monitor screen, each peak clean and crisp.

She stood beside the container and looked down at it for a while.

The light shone on her face, her expression was indifferent, but there was a tiny, fleeting softness deep in her eyes.

"Have Vice Minister Li translate today's surgical record into English."

She opened the post-operative medical instructions sheet hanging on the side of the box and picked up a pen.

"Along with the transfer records of the Soviet Air Force special plane, all the pre- and post-operative data were packaged and sent to Geneva."

The pen tip landed on the paper, the characters were thin and firm, the force penetrating the paper.

"Add one more sentence."

Gu Zheng waited on the side.

After writing the last line of medical instructions, Ye Zhen paused for a moment at the period before looking up.

Tell them that Chinese doctors don't engage in verbal battles.

She put the pen back in her breast pocket, her gaze falling on the tiny face in the incubator.

"We'll let the operating table do the talking."