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

Ye Zhen didn't go to the cafeteria at noon.

She ate the meal that Gu Zheng brought her in the special consultation room.

On the table, there was a bowl of white rice, a bowl of seaweed and egg drop soup, a plate of braised pork ribs, and a plate of stir-fried vegetables, all neatly arranged.

Gu Zheng sat on the wooden chair opposite the table, one leg crossed over the other, his arm resting on the back of the chair. He frowned as he watched Ye Zhen shovel rice into her mouth.

"Eat slowly, no one's going to take it from you."

Ye Zhen chewed twice and swallowed.

"There are still three hours left in the afternoon, it starts at 1:30."

Gu Zheng used his chopsticks to pick up a piece of pork rib and put it into her bowl.

"When that American stood up to speak this morning, the faces of the people below were all so interesting, they deserved to be shown on a big screen."

Ye Zhen didn't reply and lowered her head to gnaw on the ribs.

Gu Zheng picked up another piece.

"Are you really planning to let him sit in the front row this afternoon?"

Ye Zhen spat the bone into the dish and wiped her mouth with a tissue.

"The fact that he asked those kinds of questions shows that he actually practiced after he went back."

She pushed the bowl away, picked up the enamel mug on the table, and took a sip of warm water.

"After practicing eighteen times, I still dared to stand up and tell my peers around the world that I couldn't do it."

She put down the teacup.

"This kind of person is only worth a chair."

Gu Zheng looked at her for a while.

The corners of her mouth curved slightly.

"Fine, you decide."

He stood up, gathered the bowls and chopsticks into the enamel plate, and casually wiped the table with a tissue.

"After you finish eating, rest for ten minutes, lean back and take a nap. I'll keep watch outside and turn away anyone who comes."

Ye Zhen shook her head.

"No need, I'll go check the drainage volume of bed number three and take a look at the postoperative follow-up images."

Gu Zheng stopped her.

"Comrade Ye Zhen, you stood for three hours this morning and have three more hours this afternoon. Your legs aren't made of iron."

"More iron than yours."

Gu Zheng was momentarily speechless, but then the corners of his mouth curved into a smile.

"Fine, you're made of iron, and I'm made of paper, okay?"

He stepped aside.

Ye Zhen left the special consultation room and walked along the corridor toward the ward.

As she turned the corner, she saw Harrison.

Harrison stood alone by the window in the corridor, holding a printout of the open letter, the paper facing outwards, the creases deeply pressed.

He saw Ye Zhen walking over, took two steps forward, then stopped, hesitated for a second, and walked over.

"Dr. Ye, could I have two minutes of your time?"

Ye Zhen stopped.

Harrison handed him the paper.

"In the last paragraph of my open letter, there is a sentence that suggests your work was influenced by non-academic factors."

His voice was very low, and he spoke even slower than he had in the classroom that morning, each word sounding like it was being squeezed out one by one from between his teeth.

That statement is incorrect.

He paused for a moment.

"I knew it was wrong when I was writing it, but I still wrote it anyway."

He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

There is a shallow indentation on my finger, a mark that people who wear glasses for a long time all have.

"I've been a surgeon for forty years, and I've never said that word to anyone."

He put his glasses back on, and his eyes behind the lenses stared directly at Ye Zhen.

"I'm sorry."

There was no one else in the corridor.

In the distance, the buzzing of voices and the clinking of metal plates could be heard from the direction of the cafeteria.

Ye Zhen looked at him without any extra expression.

She reached out and took the printout, folded it without even looking at it, and stuffed it into the breast pocket of her white coat.

"If you really want to apologize, go back and issue a correction statement yourself."

She pressed the button on the top of her pocket.

"I don't care where it's posted, but it has to be posted."

Harrison nodded.

Ye Zhen turned around and continued walking forward.

After taking two steps, I stopped.

She didn't turn around.

"Starting at 1:30, the third seat from the left in the second row is empty; Professor Wang had to leave due to an urgent matter."

Her voice drifted down the corridor, neither too loud nor too soft, exactly the same tone she used when giving medical orders in the operating room.

"Go sit there."

Footsteps sounded again.

Not too fast, not too slow, the soles of my shoes tapping on the terrazzo floor, one tap at a time.

Harrison stood in the hallway.

Sunlight streamed in at an angle through the window, casting long, dappled patterns on the ground.

His hands were empty.

He glanced down at the canvas stool at his feet.

The iron pipe legs bore the sweaty marks left by two hours of body heat, and the canvas surface had been dented from sitting on it.

He bent down and folded the stool.

The two iron pipe legs came together with a soft sound.

He leaned it against the wall at the corner of the corridor.

Then he straightened his collar and walked towards the classroom.

The fluorescent light at the end of the corridor was on, its white light shining on the clean terrazzo floor.

The canvas stool at the base of the wall stood quietly, a small patch of paint chipped off its iron pipe leg.

Nobody will ride it anymore.

1:30 PM.

Sunlight streamed into the main venue of the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital, making the temperature in the lecture hall a bit higher than in the morning.

Harrison walked to the third seat from the left in the second row.

The desktop is clean and tidy.

He placed his briefcase at his feet, opened his notebook, and took out the gold fountain pen.

Gao Haiping, who was standing next to him, glanced at him, said nothing, and moved aside by half an inch.

Harrison nodded to him and sat down quietly.

No one asked him why he had moved from the corner of the last row to a formal seat in the front row.

Ye Zhen entered the venue as the clock struck 1:30, holding a thin red plastic-covered document in her hand.

Ye Zhen walked to the center of the podium and looked at the audience.

"We discussed how to save the child on the operating table this morning." Ye Zhen placed the documents on the table and reached out to adjust the microphone.

"This afternoon we discussed how to ensure they can live well for the next five years."

The experts who were flipping through their notes stopped in unison.

Ye Zhen picked up half a piece of white chalk.

"For a technique to be considered an industry standard, it cannot rely solely on the intuition of a few surgeons. Such intuition cannot save all the children in the world." She turned around and drew an extremely long horizontal axis on the blackboard, marking six points on it.

"Therefore, a complete postoperative follow-up and evaluation system is necessary."

She wrote seven days on the first mark.

"Seven days post-surgery, we will focus on monitoring the transvalvular pressure gradient of the right ventricular outflow tract and the degree of pulmonary valve regurgitation."

She walked to the second mark and wrote down thirty days.

"On the 30th, monitor the electrocardiogram to see if there is delayed conduction block."

She then wrote down three months and one year.

"At three months and one year, we need to see if the child's heart function can recover to support the normal growth and development curve."

Finally, she stopped the chalk above the three-year and five-year marks.

"Finally, the success of this procedure depends on whether calcification and fibrosis have occurred on the autologous pericardial patch after five years, depending on whether such calcification and fibrosis have occurred."

Ye Zhen turned around to face the group of the world's top cardiac surgeons below the stage.

"All patients who undergo my procedure and suturing method must strictly adhere to these six time points for data collection."

A hushed conversation broke out in the audience.

They originally thought Ye Zhen would only showcase her skills in the morning, disassembling the surgery they considered a miracle and using her technological advantages to prove China's breakthrough in this field.

Only now have they realized that the young Chinese doctor wasn't showing off a successful case at all.

She is developing a completely new set of working rules for cardiac surgeons around the world.