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

Ye Zhen flipped open the child's thin fingers: "See? The fingertips are deformed, the lips are purple, and you have to squat down after taking just a few steps. That's an illness, not laziness!"

When Xiaoman heard that her father had stopped scolding her, her eyes immediately reddened, and her breathing became even more erratic due to her excitement.

Xiaoman's mother was terrified and immediately knelt on the ground, crying out, "My child, what's wrong with you?!"

"Don't hug him!" Ye Zhen reacted quickly, grabbing Xiaoman's shoulders and back. "Keep him squatting, knees close to his chest, don't move."

Liu Xiaolan understood immediately and quickly opened her notebook: "Dr. Ye, time!"

Ye Zhen glanced at her watch and spoke rapidly: "9:42 AM, the cyanosis worsened after activity, and breathing became rapid; squatting relieved the symptoms. Write that down!"

Gao Haiping also squatted down on the other side, his stethoscope firmly pressed against the child's chest: "The heart rate is fast, the murmur is still there, and there are no wet sounds in the lungs."

Ignoring the adults' panic, Ye Zhen kept her eyes fixed on Xiaoman: "Listen to me, inhale with me. Yes, slowly, then exhale."

"Doctor, will he die?" Xiaoman's mother cried uncontrollably.

"It won't happen now that it's recovered," Ye Zhen reassured the child while trying to calm him down. "But you'll have to go to the county for a follow-up examination and arrange a referral as soon as possible."

Xiaoman's father stood to the side, his arrogance completely gone, replaced by utter astonishment: "He...he's really sick?"

Ye Zhen looked up at him, her gaze sharp as a knife: "It's an illness, and a fatal one that can't be delayed!"

Xiao Man took a few minutes to recover before the dark purple color on her lips slightly returned to normal. By then, a dozen or so villagers had already gathered outside the courtyard gate.

A woman holding a baby was anxiously pushing her way in: "Doctor, please listen to my baby's ears too! He keeps choking while nursing!"

Another old man pushed his grandson forward, saying, "My grandson gets sweaty after just a few steps. Could he have this disease too?"

Zheng Mei quickly stood at the entrance of the courtyard to block the way: "Everyone, one by one! Don't push, let the doctor finish registering Xiaoman's condition first."

Xiaoman's mother collapsed to the ground, clutching her child tightly and crying, "He's not lazy, he really can't breathe... I thought this child was just being lazy!"

The man squatted down, his rough hands stroking his son's head, his voice hoarse: "Xiaoman, Dad... I misjudged you before."

Ye Zhen wrote Xiaoman's name at the top of the notebook, then turned to Liu Xiaolan and instructed, "Mark the name in red! Suspected serious illness, we must arrange to send her out of the mountains as soon as possible."

No sooner had he finished speaking than a series of chaotic footsteps echoed from outside the courtyard.

A man in a gray Zhongshan suit, accompanied by two medical workers wearing armbands, rudely pushed aside the villagers, displaying an air of official authority: "Who gave you the audacity to provide unauthorized medical services in Shiao Village?"

Li Hong leaned closer to Ye Zhen and lowered her voice: "Teacher Ye, he is Cao Qing, the vice president of Baishi Town Health Center."

Cao Qing's eyes immediately fell on the notebook in Liu Xiaolan's hand. He pointed at it and said, "Hand over the notebook! You haven't registered with the town health center; this is seriously disrupting the screening work at the grassroots level!"

Liu Xiaolan was startled, but clutched the notebook tightly: "This is our medical record, why should we give it to you?"

"Someone from out of town, daring to make diagnoses with just a broken stethoscope?" Cao Qing scoffed. "If someone dies, who will take responsibility!"

Ye Zhen slowly removed her stethoscope and looked at him coldly: "You think I'm being reckless? Can you take responsibility for Xiaoman's situation?"

Cao Qing was speechless for a moment, but stubbornly retorted, "The town has its own unified arrangements for screening children in the village!"

"Okay." Ye Zhen straightened up. "He's eight years old, with obvious cyanosis, squats after activity, and there's a systolic murmur along the left sternal border. Have you noted down children like this in your records?"

Cao Qing's forehead began to sweat, and he quickly looked at the medic beside him: "Whose family does this Xiaoman belong to?"

The medic stammered, "Well... we might not have had time to put it back on yet."

The villagers on the outskirts protested loudly, shouting, "You just said yesterday that everyone had undergone medical examinations, and now you haven't had time?"

Cao Qing completely lost his temper and turned around, yelling, "Who's talking nonsense!"

Ye Zhen didn't even raise her voice before throwing out the three probing questions: "Vice Dean Cao, I have three questions for you."

Cao Qing frowned, his face full of resentment: "Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to test me?"

"Just answer whatever she asks you honestly!" Gao Haiping put his hands behind his back and strode out from the back of the crowd.

Cao Qing looked the old man up and down: "And where did you come from?"

"Gao Haiping. Vice President of Fuwai Hospital."

A few simple words, and it's a direct and devastating blow.

Cao Qing's arrogant demeanor vanished with a "hiss," and his calves visibly trembled.

Ye Zhen stared at him, her pace quickening: "In the initial screening for congenital heart disease, which auscultation points on the chest are essential to listen to?"

Cao Qing's lips trembled slightly: "Well... at the grassroots level, we mainly check if the child is feeling unwell..."

"How many different situations should cyanosis be recorded? Should it be recorded separately for resting and active periods?"

Cao Qing's back was now soaked with sweat, and he stammered, trying to shift the blame: "Conditions in the mountainous area are poor, we don't have time to do such detailed things..."

Ye Zhen turned to a blank page: "Okay, the third question. How do I ask about activity tolerance? How do I ask about feeding difficulties? How do I record squatting attacks?"

The room fell silent. Cao Qing was so overwhelmed by the three tough questions that he saw stars and couldn't utter a single word. The entire background of this makeshift troupe had been laid bare.

Gao Haiping snorted coldly and looked at the villagers watching: "You can't even explain the most basic screening standards, but you're pretty quick at copying down the records!"

Cao Qing, his face flushed and neck red with anxiety, said, "Dean Gao, you're a top expert from the big city, of course you can talk big without understanding the situation! We in the mountainous area have no equipment, no money, not even a cardiac ultrasound machine! Even if we could find the problem, what then? The county can't treat it!"

"Without machines, we'll use the hard way to fight for our lives!"

Ye Zhen was too lazy to waste words with him. She simply took out a red and blue pencil and wrote four lines of large characters on the back of her notebook: "Even without Xin Chao, I can still find the child who is on the verge of death!"

Zheng Mei curiously leaned closer to look: "Dr. Ye, what does this say?"

As Ye Zhen wrote, she read aloud, her voice carrying throughout the courtyard: "First, look at the lips and fingertips! Those that are purple or have swollen fingertips must be noted!"

"Secondly, ask the parents how they breastfeed, ask about the child's running and jumping habits, and ask if the child squats down after walking a few steps!"

"Third, listen for any rough, noisy sounds along the left edge of the sternum! Don't worry if you don't understand, just write it down and go to the health center for a checkup!"

Gao Haiping seamlessly continued, "Fourth, record the number of seizures! Which day it occurred, how long it lasted, and how it subsided!"

Ye Zhen ripped the page off with a tearing sound and slapped it into Zheng Mei's hand: "Post this at the entrance of the primary school! All the children in Shi'ao Village should go through the process again according to this old standard!"

Cao Qing tried to stop him, saying, "No! This doesn't follow the proper procedures from higher authorities!"

As soon as he finished speaking, more than a dozen villagers swarmed around him, blocking his way.

Xiaoman's father stood at the front like an iron tower, his eyes red-rimmed: "Dean Cao, don't go anywhere, just listen here! Why didn't you tell me before that my child had this disease?!"

Zheng Mei didn't back down at all: "Since the county sent you here for screening, then you should stay and learn how real doctors do it!"

Cao Qing was caught in a dilemma, completely pinned down in the courtyard.

Inside the earthen house of Shiao Village Primary School.

Gao Haiping simply pasted an old newspaper on the blackboard and casually drew a cross-section of a heart. The room was crowded with barefoot doctors, midwives, village officials, and parents holding their babies.

Gao Haiping slammed chalk on the blueprints: "Remember these four words: turning purple, squatting, poor feeding, repeated fainting! Got it?"

Barefoot doctor Old Chen nodded vigorously, "I've got it! I've got it! Before, the town only told us to fill in 'tested' or 'not tested,' they never taught us to be this detailed!"

Cao Qing, standing by the door, felt like he was sitting on pins and needles.

Just then, a white-haired midwife tremblingly raised her hand: "Doctor... I have an old debt here, I wonder if it can help?"

Ye Zhen immediately turned her head: "Let me see it."

Grandma Wang carefully pulled out a small booklet wrapped in oilcloth from her bosom: "I've been delivering babies in these mountains for decades. Those babies who were born with purple lips, cried silently, and seemed unlikely to survive, I was afraid people would gossip about them later, so I secretly wrote down a few words."

Ye Zhen took the tattered ledger with both hands, but after turning only two pages, her gaze froze, and her finger stopped firmly on three names.

She turned to Gao Haiping: "In Shiao Village, there are at least three children suspected of having missed screening."

Liu Xiaolan's pen flew across the notebook: "Xiaoman, eight years old. Huaihua, five years old. Chungen, three years old."

Cao Qing couldn't stay any longer. He pushed aside the person blocking his way and turned to run away.

Zheng Mei shouted loudly from behind, "Dean Cao, are these three children who were missed included in the supplementary records you made?!"

Without uttering a sound, Cao Qing emerged from the crowd, covered in dust, and headed straight for the village entrance.