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

In the Gu family's courtyard, the early morning air was filled with a biting chill, but this was somewhat masked by the aroma of millet porridge.

Gu Zheng was peeling a tea egg with such meticulous movements that it looked like he was defusing a bomb.

After peeling, the egg white was crystal clear, without a single scratch. He casually put it into Ye Zhen's bowl, and the way he served her would make those bastards from Unit 761 drop their jaws if they saw it.

"Eat more." Gu Zheng pushed the dish of pickled vegetables towards her. "I was drawing until midnight last night, it was mentally taxing."

Ye Zhen had just picked up her chopsticks and hadn't even had a chance to put the egg in her mouth yet.

"Squeak—creak!"

A screeching sound of brakes rang out at the gate of the courtyard.

Then came a rapid knocking on the door, without the slightest hint of politeness, in a very urgent manner.

Gu Zheng frowned, the tenderness in his eyes instantly turning to ice. Just as he was about to get up, the door was pushed open.

Dean Zhang entered.

This top official of the Beijing Military Region General Hospital, who is usually a man who remains calm even in the face of a collapsing mountain, was now wearing a crooked hat, had a button on his military overcoat that was wrong, and was covered in sweat.

"Xiao Gu, don't glare at me." Dean Zhang was panting heavily, but his eyes were fixed on Ye Zhen as if she were his last straw. "Dr. Ye, Nannan... is dying."

Ye Zhen paused, then put down her chopsticks.

"The situation." She spoke succinctly, the languid look on her face instantly vanishing, replaced by a chilling calmness.

"Last night, after being admitted to the hospital, he suddenly suffered from hypoxia, and his heart rate dropped to 40." Dean Zhang wiped the sweat from his forehead. "The old guys in the cardiac surgery department consulted all night, and their conclusion was... without surgery, he would die; with surgery... it was nine out of ten chance of survival."

He choked up as he spoke, looking at Ye Zhen: "The family signed the critical condition notice, and the father... kowtowed until his head bled. Dr. Ye, I know this isn't in accordance with the rules, and your personnel file is still in Beicheng, but... I'm begging you, please go and see him."

Gu Zheng stood up, picked up the coat hanging on the back of the chair, and draped it over Ye Zhen's shoulders.

"Walk."

No nonsense.

The jeep, like a mad beast, rampaged through the streets of Beijing, its siren blaring as it crashed into the main hospital gate.

……

The cardiothoracic surgery building, third-floor conference room.

As soon as the door was pushed open, a strong smell of smoke hit us.

Seven or eight old men in white coats sat around a long conference table, each with a worried expression, and the ashtrays in front of them were stuffed with cigarette butts.

The air felt oppressive, as if it were filled with lead.

Outside the window, the faint sound of a man's heart-wrenching cries could be heard coming from the end of the corridor; it was Nannan's father. Every cry was like a whip lashing at the hearts of the experts inside.

"Dean Zhang, it's not that we don't want to save them."

The speaker was an elderly man sitting at the head of the table. He had gray hair, wore black-rimmed glasses, and had sharp eyes that were now filled with weariness.

He is Professor Wang, the head of cardiac surgery, a leading figure in cardiac surgery in China.

Professor Wang took off his glasses, rubbed his temples, and pointed to the chart on the wall: "The child is five years old, weighs less than 15 kilograms, and is severely malnourished. He has Tetralogy of Fallot, a large ventricular septal defect, and extreme pulmonary artery stenosis. Under these conditions, if cardiopulmonary bypass is performed and the heart stops beating, the probability of restarting is... less than 30%."

"That's still an optimistic estimate," a deputy director added, his tone somber. "If there's massive bleeding during the surgery, or low cardiac output afterward, the child simply won't make it off the operating table."

The conference room was deathly silent.

This was the state of healthcare in the 1980s.

There was no extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), no advanced monitoring equipment, and even decent imported sutures were extremely expensive.

Under such hardware conditions, attempting to treat this level of congenital heart disease is tantamount to suicide.

"so what?"

A clear, cold female voice suddenly broke the deathly silence.

All eyes turned to the doorway.

Ye Zhen, wearing an ill-fitting white lab coat (provided by Dean Zhang at the last minute), with her hands in her pockets, slowly walked to the conference table.

She is too young.

His youth seemed absurd to the gray-haired experts present.

"Who are you?" Professor Wang's brows furrowed deeply. "This is an expert consultation. Unauthorized personnel, get out!"

Just as Dean Zhang was about to begin his introduction, Ye Zhen skipped the pleasantries.

She picked up the chest X-ray from the table, glanced at it under the light, and then casually tossed it back onto the table.

"Open the chest in the center, saw through the sternum, and establish extracorporeal circulation." Ye Zhen spoke very quickly. "Given this child's physical condition, if the sternum is sawed open, the amount of bleeding could very well be fatal. Add to that the four-hour open-chest surgery. Professor Wang is right, following the conventional approach, she might not survive the operation, resulting in both financial and personal loss."

Professor Wang's face instantly darkened: "You little brat, we've treated heart disease our whole lives, are you really less accurate than us?"

Gu Zheng leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, coldly surveying the room. He didn't speak, but his menacing aura made several doctors who wanted to curse swallow their words.

Ignoring the crowd's anger, Ye Zhen walked to the anatomical model in the corner and picked up a red marker.

"Since the mortality rate is high with a center incision, let's try another approach."

She drew a short line about five or six centimeters long under the right armpit of the model.

"A straight incision under the right armpit."

Ye Zhen's voice wasn't loud, but in the quiet conference room, it was like a thunderclap.

"Enter the chest through the third or fourth intercostal space, without sawing the sternum, only cutting a small amount of intercostal muscle. From the right side, directly expose the right atrium and interatrial groove. Here..." She pointed on the heart model, "Open the right atrium, repair the ventricular septal defect through the tricuspid valve, and open the right ventricular outflow tract."

As she described it, Professor Wang's eyes widened and his mouth opened slightly, as if he had seen a ghost.

"Nonsense! Absolutely nonsense!"

Professor Wang suddenly stood up, the chair scraping against the floor with a piercing noise.

He pointed at Ye Zhen, his fingers trembling: "Performing heart surgery through the armpit? Unheard of! The surgical field is so small, how can you operate? How do you stop the bleeding if there's massive hemorrhage? You're playing with people's lives! This is a heretical and evil practice!"

Other experts echoed this sentiment, which completely overturned their understanding.

In this day and age, heart surgery involves a massive, open-heart operation; they practically have to open the entire chest cavity to feel safe. The armpit? That's where lung surgery or minor thoracic surgeries are done!

Ye Zhen turned around, facing the room full of doubts and accusations.

There was not a trace of panic on her face.

"Small field of vision? For top surgeons, even a tiny ray of light is enough to illuminate a lifeline."

"The axillary incision avoids bone damage, and the bleeding is less than one-third of that of a midline incision. No wires are needed to fix the sternum, so breathing is almost unaffected. For this severely malnourished child with extremely poor cardiopulmonary function, this is her only chance to survive."

"This is impossible!" Professor Wang roared. "This technique has never been found in textbooks!"

"Textbooks are written by people, and they are also revised by people."

Ye Zhen straightened up, her voice firm and resolute: "If we just watch patients die because it's not in the textbooks, then what's the difference between the knife in our hands and a butcher's knife?"

"That's sophistry! You're insane!" Professor Wang exclaimed, his face flushed with anger. "I'm the head of the department, and I absolutely refuse to allow such a crazy experiment to be conducted in my own office!"

The atmosphere froze completely.

On one side are authority, seniority, and traditional experience.

On one side is young, arrogant, and unknown technology.

This is not just a debate about a surgical procedure; it's a clash between two eras.

Ye Zhen fell silent.

She knew how difficult it was to break with convention in this era. She possessed extraordinary medical skills, yet she was firmly blocked by the wall called "conservatism."

Gu Zheng's face darkened. He lowered his arms and was about to take a step forward.

"I agree."

A deep, authoritative voice suddenly rang out.

Dean Zhang, who had been silent all along, slowly stood up.

He stubbed out his cigarette and pressed it hard into the ashtray until the embers were completely extinguished.

"Dean Zhang!" Professor Wang looked at him in disbelief. "Are you going to go crazy with this girl too? Who's going to take responsibility if something happens? This is a matter of life and death!"

"It's because human lives are at stake!"

Dean Zhang slammed his hand on the table with a loud bang, making the teacups on the table jump around.

His eyes were bloodshot as he pointed out the window: "Listen! Listen to the crying outside! We are military medics! On the battlefield, as long as there is a glimmer of hope, we will fight to the death! Now we have a plan here, theoretically feasible, logically sound, but just because we 'have never seen it before' or 'dare not do it,' we are going to give up?"

Dean Zhang took a deep breath and turned his gaze to Ye Zhen.

In those eyes, there was the madness of a gambler and the resolve of a healer.

"Comrade Ye Zhen."

"exist."

How confident are you in the success of your plan?

Ye Zhen met his gaze and held up three fingers: "Seventy percent. If we cooperate well, eighty percent."

Compared to the previous figure of "less than 30%", this is a completely different number.

Dean Zhang nodded, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

He looked at Professor Wang, his tone leaving no room for argument: "Old Wang, you're the department head, you have your concerns, and I don't blame you. This surgery doesn't require your signature."

As he spoke, Dean Zhang took out a pen from his pocket and signed his name in a flamboyant manner on the title page of the medical record.

"I am the lead surgeon for this operation."

The entire audience erupted in uproar.

The hospital director himself is performing the surgery? What if it fails? That would be a serious medical accident, and could even ruin his political career!

After signing his name, Dean Zhang capped his pen and turned to face Ye Zhen.

"Xiao Ye, although I am nominally the chief surgeon."

"But on the operating table, you are the brain."

Dean Zhang's voice trembled slightly, yet remained resolute: "How this knife is cut, which path this is taken, is up to you... to decide."

The meeting room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Professor Wang's mouth was agape, and he couldn't close it for a long time.

Why would a senior expert with the rank of Major General and the head of the main hospital be an assistant to a young girl, and in such a questioning tone?

Has the world gone mad?

Looking at the elderly man with graying temples before her, Ye Zhen felt a corner of the suppressed coldness in her heart quietly melt away.

She neither declined nor acted modestly.

Because this is a battlefield, where there is no need for formalities, only the strongest warriors.

Ye Zhen nodded, her expression solemn, a gesture of the highest respect for the surgical master.

"it is good."

"Prepare for surgery."

She turned around, the hem of her white coat drawing a sharp arc in the air.

"Gu Zheng".

The man who had been guarding the door immediately stood up straight, a signature roguish smile curling at the corner of his mouth, his eyes filled with pride.

"arrive."

"If the surgery fails, I may never be able to hold my head up high again for the rest of my life." Ye Zhen's voice came through the mask, muffled.

Gu Zheng patted her shoulder.

"As long as we have a clear conscience, that's enough. Honey, do your best, and I'll always support you."

Ye Zhen looked into his eyes, nodded, and strode towards the locker room without looking back.

In the corridor, the father, who had collapsed to the ground crying, looked up and, through his blurry, tear-filled eyes, saw the young female doctor, like a ray of light, cleaving through the despair that filled the corridor.

The red light in the operating room came on.

On this cold morning, a surgery destined to be recorded in the history of the General Hospital of the Military Region and even rewrite the course of cardiac surgery in China began.