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

Ye Zhen turned around to face the audience.

"William Osler, the father of modern clinical medicine."

Her voice amplified through the microphone and reached the ears of the students standing against the wall in the last row of the second-floor stands.

"He once said something that I think should be etched into the bones of every medical student from the very first day of school."

She paused for a moment, lowering her voice by half an octave.

"The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business; a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head."

When the English flowed from her mouth, her pronunciation was crisp and clear, with a relaxed and rhythmic quality.

Several students in the front row with good English skills were already translating at lightning speed, their pen tips poking the paper and the ink spreading into small blobs.

Ye Zhen did not wait for them.

She repeated it in Chinese, saying it word by word.

"Medical practice is an art, not a transaction."

"It's a mission, not an industry."

"In this mission, your heart is just as important as your mind."

After the last half-sentence was uttered, all the murmurs in the auditorium ceased.

Only the scratching sound of the pen tip gliding across the paper remained, converging from all directions, as dense as silkworms gnawing on mulberry leaves.

Ye Zhen did not stop.

"Osler had a habit of requiring his students to spend at least fifteen minutes sitting by a patient's bedside every day."

She raised her head, her gaze slowly sweeping from the front row to the back.

"It's not a physical examination, not a consultation, and not a prescription."

"It's just sitting, listening to the patients talk, and chatting with them."

Ye Zhen took a step forward, getting closer to the edge of the podium.

"Doctors from a hundred years ago already knew this principle."

She slowed down her speech and enunciated each word clearly.

"A patient is not just a machine that needs fixing."

"He is a person."

"A person who is afraid, in pain, and needs to be seen."

In the front corner, a girl with a ponytail lowered her head.

She recalled her internship at the gynecology clinic last week, where a pregnant woman from the countryside was sweating profusely from the pain, repeatedly calling out "Doctor, save me!" But everyone in the corridor was busy, and no one stopped to hold her hand.

Ye Zhen gave the audience a few seconds of silence.

Then she turned around, picked up the chalk, and wrote a second name on the blackboard.

Albert Schweitzer.

The chalk writing was large, the strokes were steady, and every stroke conveyed strength.

Albert Schweitzer.

Ye Zhen put down the chalk and patted the white dust off her hands.

Does anyone know him?

A few hands were raised sparsely in the audience.

Ye Zhen pointed to the boy with glasses who was closest to her.

"Tell me about it."

The boy stood up and nervously pushed up his glasses twice.

"A Nobel Peace Prize laureate practices medicine in Africa."

"Anything else?"

The boy thought for a moment and then shook his head.

"Sit down."

Ye Zhen turned to face everyone.

"Schweitzer was a theologian, a musician, and an authority on Bach's organ playing. He had a respectable teaching position, academic prestige, and a comfortable life in Europe."

She drew a horizontal line between the two names to separate them.

"At the age of thirty, he made a decision: to go to Africa."

"They went to the jungles of Gabon and built a hospital."

"I stayed there for fifty years."

Someone in the auditorium gasped.

Ye Zhen pointed to the first name on the blackboard with her finger.

"Osler taught us how to be doctors."

Move your finger to the second name.

"Schweitzer taught us something else."

She lowered her hand.

Why become a doctor?

A tall boy standing in the back row craned his neck as if afraid of missing a single word.

Ye Zhen's voice deepened, carrying an undeniable weight.

"Schweitzer proposed a concept called reverence for life."

He said that good is to preserve life, promote life, and enable life with potential to realize its highest value. Evil is to destroy life, harm life, and suppress the development of life.

She glanced at the audience.

"This is not just empty talk from philosophy textbooks."

"This is a conclusion reached by a doctor who deals with death every day, a conclusion he has reached after half a lifetime of hard work."

As soon as the words were spoken, the silence in the auditorium changed its nature.

It was no longer the quiet of curiosity, but the kind of quiet that comes after something has struck your chest.

The girl in the front row with a ponytail had reddened eyes. She turned her face away and quickly wiped her eyes with her sleeve.

She recalled the first time she faced a cadaver in anatomy class, when the professor made them all stand up and bow to the cadaver.

That night, she huddled in her blankets and cried for a long time. When her roommate asked her why, she couldn't answer.

She wasn't afraid.

She felt that life was too heavy, so heavy that she didn't know if she was qualified to support it.

Ye Zhen paused for a few seconds, letting the aftershocks of her words resonate in everyone's chests.

Then she put down the chalk, walked out from behind the podium, and stood at the front edge of the podium.

He was only two steps away from the students in the first row below the stage.

"I'm not here to give you a lesson today."

Her gaze was level with the lines ahead, not looking down from above, but observing with equal and earnest attention.

"I am not qualified to teach you how to be doctors. What kind of doctor you become is up to you."

Someone tried to clap, but someone next to them held their arm down.

Ye Zhen continued.

"But I can tell you one thing I've learned from standing on the operating table all these years."

Her speech slowed down again.

"Think what the patient thinks, and be anxious about what the patient is anxious about."

Eight characters.

It only takes two seconds to say it.

"These eight words are easy to say."

Ye Zhen's voice was flat and even a little cold, but it was this restraint that made every word carry weight.

"It would take a lifetime to do this."

The entire auditorium, with over three thousand people, was filled with quiet, even their breathing became soft.

Ye Zhen turned around and went back to the blackboard, picking up the chalk.

She wrote the first line: Humanity.

Then comes the second line: comprehension.

Third line: Rationality.

Fourth line: Spirituality.

Humanity, insight, rationality, and spirituality.

She put down the chalk and tapped her finger lightly on the edge of the blackboard.

"It requires you to be humane and to feel the patient's pain, rather than just writing a line of chief complaint on the medical record."

A pen in the front row stopped on the paper.

"You need to be perceptive and able to spot problems from the slightest clues. A seemingly insignificant symptom or a minor physical sign could be the turning point in a life."

A graduate student on the second-floor stands nodded vigorously. Just last month, under the guidance of his supervising professor, he had identified an early-stage appendiceal abscess from a common case of abdominal pain.

"You need to be rational and able to make the right judgments without being swayed by emotions. The family is crying, the nurses are urging you on, the monitors are beeping, and everyone is watching you. At that moment, your hands can't shake, and your mind must be clear."

The rustling sound of writing notes stopped for the most part.

Everyone is listening.

"You need to be spiritual."

Ye Zhen turned around and scanned the entire room with her gaze.

"When you've had enough time in the clinic, you'll encounter that situation. You've gone through all the textbooks, completed all the tests, and held all the consultations, but you still can't find the answer."

"At that time, you need to step outside of all existing knowledge."

"When you've reached a dead end, find that crack."

She slapped her palm heavily next to the four words on the blackboard, and chalk dust fell down.

"These are the four things I believe a good doctor must possess."

Someone in the front row had already raised their hand, their palms almost touching, but the person next to them grabbed their wrist and pressed it back down.

"Wait, she hasn't finished speaking yet."

Ye Zhen picked up the chalk and drew a large bracket next to the four characters.

Two words were written outside the parentheses.

clinical.

"All human nature, understanding, rationality, and spirituality ultimately come down to these two words."

She put the chalk back in the chalk tray, clapped her hands, and the white ash scattered in the sunlight.

"Next, I'll talk about two cases. Both of them were handled by me personally."