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

Ye Zhen stood in front of the operating table, without touching the scalpel.

She bent down, placed the cold tip of the stethoscope back onto the child's left chest wall, listened for two seconds, then moved it to the left edge of the sternum and listened for another two seconds.

Pressing the fingertips of my right hand against the third intercostal space on the left edge of the sternum, a series of fine, irregular vibrations immediately came from my fingertips.

She straightened up, pulled off the stethoscope, and handed it to the scrub nurse next to her.

"The right ventricular outflow tract is almost completely closed."

Her voice was calm and unhurried, just like when she made rounds in the corridor.

"Opening the chest now will only trigger more severe pulmonary vasospasm and accelerate the collapse."

Director Gao of the anesthesiology department stared intently at the monitor, beads of sweat dripping down his temples.

"Dr. Ye, your blood pressure is still dropping, it's down to 68! Should we give you some dopamine to help it up?"

"No."

Ye Zhen answered decisively.

"Now that the medication is being administered, the right ventricle is pumping blood forward with all its might, but the pulmonary artery is completely blocked. This is like making the heart bang against a wall."

Director Gao's hand, which was hovering above the syringe, abruptly stopped.

Ye Zhen glanced at the medicine counter.

"Use Milrinone, micropump, 0.5 micrograms per kilogram per minute."

Switch your gaze back to the monitor.

"Reduce the ventilation rate to twelve breaths per minute, keep the tidal volume unchanged, and adjust the inspiratory-to-expiratory ratio to 1:2.5."

Director Gao hesitated for half a second, then quickly did as instructed. His heart pounded as he adjusted the numbers on the micro-infusion pump, but he gritted his teeth and pressed confirm.

Ye Zhen stood still, her hands hovering above the sterile drape, without touching any instruments.

She is waiting.

"Circulating nurses, from now on, record blood oxygen changes by the second and report the number every five seconds."

"Yes."

Forty-eight.

Five seconds.

Forty-seven.

Everyone in the operating room instinctively held their breath.

Five more seconds.

Forty-seven.

It didn't smash down any further.

Five more seconds.

Forty-eight.

Ye Zhen's fingers, which were suspended above the sterile drape, curled slightly, the movement being extremely small.

"Forty-nine."

"Fifty-one."

"Fifty-three."

Director Gao stared intently at the slowly rising blue curve on the monitor, his surgical gown soaked with cold sweat.

Ye Zhen didn't move or say anything.

She was using minimal medication and precise ventilation adjustments to gradually pry open the child's blocked pulmonary vascular bed. This wasn't a brute-force attack; it was a skillful and efficient solution.

In the observation room, Maheler sat in the first row, leaning forward with his hands tightly clasped on his knees.

He stared at the white figure standing motionless beside the operating table on the screen, then turned to ask Zhou Hai.

"Has she remained this calm throughout?"

Zhou Hai stared intently at the screen: "The calmer she is, the better the child can be saved."

Fifty-eight.

"Sixty-one."

When the circulating nurse reported "sixty-one," her voice trembled slightly; she simply couldn't believe that the number could really be brought back up.

Ye Zhen's right hand had already reached towards the instrument table.

"Number 10 knife."

The way she took the knife was as casual as if she were taking a pen.

The blade pressed firmly against the midline of her sternum, the incision being a full centimeter shorter than the standard line she had drawn in her lecture yesterday.

Gao Haiping frowned in the observation room and exchanged a glance with Liu Jianmin.

"It's too short," Liu Jianmin said in a low voice.

Gao Haiping remained silent, staring at the screen for three seconds: "She's avoiding collateral vessels."

He lowered his voice to a whisper: "This child has abnormal collateral circulation compensation. If the incision is too long, it will definitely rupture the dilated blood vessels, and the bleeding will be uncontrollable!"

The blade sliced ​​through the skin, cutting through the superficial tissue along the midline of the sternum. An electrocautery unit separated the muscle layer, a bone saw sizzled as it split the sternum, and a retractor creaked as it opened up the field of vision inch by inch. Every step was executed with extreme precision.

Suddenly, a jet of dark red blood gushed out of the suction tube!

The blood was extremely volatile, tumbling inside the transparent tube and rushing straight towards the drainage bottle.

The circulating nurse exclaimed, "Major bleeding! A collateral vessel has been hit!"

The scrub nurse's hand trembled, and her action of handing over the gauze slowed down by half a beat.

The air in the entire operating room froze instantly.

Ye Zhen didn't even lift her eyelids: "Little curved pincers."

His voice was so steady it sounded like he was reciting a very ordinary post-operative order: "50-degree suture."

The scrub nurse hurriedly slapped the forceps and sutures at Ye Zhen, and the moment her fingertips touched Ye Zhen's gloves, she was horrified to find that Ye Zhen's hands were as steady as a rock.

Ye Zhen held the forceps in her left hand and bit down hard on the tissue above the bleeding point, while inserting the needle with her right hand and suturing it in place with two stitches!

The first needle penetrates the proximal end of the blood vessel wall, is tied in a knot, and the tail thread is cut.

The second needle pierced the distal end, tightened cleanly, and stopped the bleeding instantly!

From spurting blood to being stitched up, it took a total of twelve seconds.

The dark red blood in the suction tube abruptly stopped flowing; less than thirty milliliters of blood had leaked into the drainage bottle. Before the observation screen could even switch to a close-up, the surgical field of vision was completely clear.

Harrison stared intently at the screen, half of his body leaning out of the chair.

"She didn't even look for the veins..." he muttered to himself, as if he had seen a ghost. "She knew where the veins were even with her eyes closed."

Andrei didn't even turn his head, his gaze fixed on the screen: "This is why we came all this way and are sitting here."

The moment Ye Zhen cut open the pericardium, there was a noticeable moment of silence in the operating room.

The anatomical structures exposed inside the pericardial cavity are completely different from what is written on the referral form.

The main pulmonary artery was more than half again as thin as expected; the extent of its underdevelopment was so severe that it was chilling to behold. The entrance to the left pulmonary artery was even narrower, barely the size of a pinhead, leaving pitifully little space for blood to flow.

In the observation room, Gao Haiping was so surprised that he almost stood up from his chair.

His gaze lingered on the screen for a full three seconds before he slumped down in dejection.

"We can't do a standard farotectomy anymore." His voice was strained. "The blood flow to the left and right lungs has to be redistributed, which is several orders of magnitude more difficult than the theoretical model in yesterday's lecture."

Liu Jianmin's pen, which was suspended in mid-air and ready to take notes, froze completely, and his face turned ashen.

On the screen, Ye Zhen lowered her hands from above her field of vision.

She stared for a full five seconds without moving the knife. Then she spoke.

"Revise the plan."

The scrub nurse and the anesthesiologist both turned to look at her.

"Abandon complete radical treatment." Ye Zhen's cold voice echoed in the operating room. "Perform right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction and add a flow-limiting patch. Perform palliative care first, save the patient's life, and stabilize the critical condition."

She paused for half a second: "During the surgery, we'll leave an incision for the second-stage radical treatment. Once the child grows to over 15 kilograms, we'll perform a complete radical treatment."

In the back row of the observation room, a young French doctor in his early thirties whispered to his colleague, "Why not just go all the way? With such good medical equipment and such a skilled surgeon, going for palliative care would be too conservative."

The sound wasn't loud, but those in the front row could hear it clearly.

Harrison didn't even turn his head, staring at the screen as he coldly uttered, "Because that child is a life, not an experimental subject for publishing top-tier academic papers."

His tone was as calm as stating a truth: "Keeping him alive is far more important than you showing off a beautiful, dazzling spell on stage."

The young doctor fell silent instantly, his face turning bright red.

Ye Zhen lowered her head and began to cut the pericardium.

She laid a fresh piece of her own pericardium flat on sterile gauze, and with surgical scissors following the marked lines, cut out an exquisite arc-shaped patch.

As she made the last cut, her wrist paused.

"Reduce the width of the patch by two millimeters."

The scrub nurse, holding a sterile steel ruler, glanced at her subconsciously.

Ye Zhen, too lazy to waste words, said, "Retract by two millimeters."

In the observation room, Yamada suddenly looked up from his notebook, pulled out a portable calculator, and started frantically pressing numbers.

He was calculating the blood flow.

His fingers tapped away for more than twenty seconds, and when the final value popped up on the screen, his hand, which was suspended in mid-air, suddenly trembled.

"It's this width..." His voice was barely audible, as if he'd seen a ghost, "Shrink it by two millimeters, and the blood flow to the child's left lung after surgery will be just below the physiological limit!"

He abruptly looked up, staring intently at the screen, and pushed up his glasses that were slipping down: "She even calculated the hemodynamic risks three days after surgery with just a casual snip of the scissors!"

Andrei's pen slashed across the notebook, leaving a deep mark, the hook of the nib almost piercing through the back of the paper.

The patch was sewn with the last three stitches. The specially made sliding thread of "parachute continuous stitching" moved evenly and steadily under Ye Zhen's fingertips.

Eleventh stitch, through.

Twelfth stitch, tighten.

Ye Zhen lifted the end of the line with her right hand, preparing to tighten the last line of defense.

At this critical moment, the blood pressure curve on the monitor plummeted like an avalanche without warning!

From 68 to 55! All in less than two seconds!

A piercing alarm suddenly blared! A series of deadly "beep beep beep" sounds overlapped, making the entire machine seem to be screaming in agony.

Director Gao's face turned deathly pale, and he lunged at the injection of the cardiac stimulant: "Dr. Ye, my blood pressure has spiked!"

Ye Zhen's hand was suspended tightly above her field of vision, the end of the thread stuck in the needle holder, and the last stitch was left unfinished.

She quickly glanced at the color changes on the surface of the heart, then her eyes sharpened as she stared at the pulmonary artery pressure value on the monitor.

The gaze instantly shifted back to the anesthesiologist, whose voice was as cold as ice.

"The problem isn't in the heart."

Her speaking speed remained as steady as a mountain.

"The pulmonary vessels are blocked again!"