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

The top-floor conference room at Charité Hospital was blindingly white. The air was thick with the same cold, sterile smell of disinfectant that's common in hospitals worldwide.

But at this moment, the cold air couldn't suppress the smell of gunpowder in the room.

"Absurd! This is utterly ridiculous!"

The speaker was Williams. This top cardiac surgeon from the Royal London Hospital was slamming a medical record onto the table with such force that even the coffee cup jumped. His meticulously groomed mustache trembled violently with anger, like a comical metronome.

"Pulmonary vascular resistance 14 Wood units! This kind of data for Fontan surgery?" Williams pointed at the data on the projector, spitting everywhere, almost hitting Schröder's aged face. "Mr. Schröder, what kind of bewitching potion have these Easterners given you? This isn't surgery, it's a funeral!"

On either side of the long table in the conference room sat a dozen or so leading figures in European cardiothoracic surgery. At this moment, some shook their heads and sighed, while others wore mocking expressions, looking at Ye Zhen as if she were a charlatan who didn't know his own limitations.

Schroeder sat beside his wheelchair, holding his granddaughter's cold little hand, his face ashen.

He doesn't understand medical data, but he understands human nature. These experts before him are all titans of their fields; if only one opposes them, it's prejudice; if everyone opposes them, it's a dead end.

"Ms. Ye..." Schroeder's voice was hoarse, as if he had aged ten years overnight. "Professor Muller said that Alice's lung pressure is too high, and blood can't flow through... she will suffocate."

Ye Zhen leaned back in her chair, twirling a piece of chalk in her hand.

Despite the room full of doubts and ridicule, she didn't even flinch. Her black suit made her skin appear pale and cold, and she looked like a scalpel yet to be drawn, its cold light concealed.

"Are you done talking?"

Ye Zhen suddenly spoke. Her voice wasn't loud, but her German pronunciation was as standard as a news anchor's, carrying a penetrating quality.

She stood up, ignored Williams, and walked straight to the blackboard.

"Before we go on, let me correct a common-sense mistake made by Dr. Williams." Ye Zhen picked up the eraser and unceremoniously wiped away half of the anatomical diagram that Muller had just drawn. "The core of the Fontan procedure is not whether it can be done, but how to do it."

The chalk made a harsh scratching sound on the blackboard.

With just a few strokes, a diagram of a deformed heart structure leaps onto the board.

"High pulmonary resistance and obstructed venous blood return are facts," Ye Zhen said while drawing, speaking very quickly. "Traditional surgery directly connects the inferior vena cava and the pulmonary artery, which is like forcing water into a blocked pipe. The result is inevitably a surge in venous pressure, leading to ascites, liver failure, and the patient dying from low cardiac output syndrome."

Williams sneered, "Since you knew, why did you do it?"

"Because I want to give it—" Ye Zhen's wrist suddenly stopped, and the chalk drew a heavy circle between the atrial wall of her heart and the artificial tube.

"Open a window."

The entire room fell silent.

After a full three seconds, an even more violent uproar erupted.

"What?!" Professor Mueller jumped to his feet, his glasses askew. "Drill holes in the Fontan tube? Let venous blood flow directly back to the heart? That's insane!"

Williams, as if he'd heard the biggest joke in the world, exaggeratedly spread his hands: "My God, did I hear that right? The purpose of the Fontan procedure is to separate arterial and venous blood to solve the oxygen deficiency problem! You're deliberately leaving a hole to let blue blood mix with red blood? You're turning back the clock! This isn't just ignorance, it's downright inhumane!"

Laughter surged forth like a tidal wave.

In the 1980s, repairing a heart meant "a perfect fit," so why deliberately leave a hole? What's the difference between that and deliberately drilling a hole in a ship?

"You are the ones who are ignorant."

Ye Zhen turned around and precisely tossed the chalk into the chalk tray with a crisp "thud," silencing the noisy conference room once again.

She placed her hands on the podium, her gaze sharp as she swept across the entire room, exuding an aura of authority.

"This is a 'safety valve'."

Ye Zhen's voice was cold and carried an unquestionable authority: "In the early postoperative period, the pulmonary blood vessels will experience reactive spasms with extremely high resistance. At this time, this window is a life-saving passage. When the pressure in the right heart system is too high, some blood can 'short-circuit' back to the left heart through this window."

She held up one finger: "Although it will slightly lower arterial blood oxygen saturation, maintaining it at around 85%, and the child will have mild cyanosis. But—"

Ye Zhen's gaze suddenly sharpened, piercing Williams: "This can preserve cardiac output! It can prevent organ failure caused by excessively high venous pressure! You have to live first before you can talk about a cure. This is the price, and this is the gamble."

This "retreating to advance" hemodynamic theory was beyond the comprehension of everyone present.

Williams opened his mouth, but the torrent of curses he had prepared suddenly got stuck in his throat. Theoretically speaking... this actually made sense.

But he quickly seized on the loophole, sneering, "Nonsense! Even if they survived the initial stages, what about later? Will that hole remain forever? Will the child have to endure the risks of oxygen deprivation and blood clots for the rest of their life? What kind of cure is that? It's a defective product!"

"Who said that hole has to stay there forever?"

Ye Zhen's lips curled into a mocking smile, as if she were looking at a group of uncivilized primitives.

"Once the child has passed the critical period and adapted to the new blood flow, I will use a catheter to insert a specially made occluder, like closing a window, to seal the hole."

"No need for open-chest surgery, no need for general anesthesia, 20 minutes, complete cure."

Ye Zhen crossed her arms, raised her chin slightly, and looked down at the group of dumbfounded foreign experts: "This is called—a staged treatment strategy. Do you understand, esteemed experts?"

Even Professor Muller slumped into his chair.

Surgical intervention to open a window to save a life, internal medicine intervention to close the closure.

This combination of treatments, which would become the gold standard for treating complex congenital heart disease decades later, is now nothing short of science fiction coming to life.

This is a dimensional reduction attack. It's a blatant intellectual crushing.

The meeting room was so quiet you could hear someone breathing.

Schroeder's hands trembled. He looked at Ye Zhen as if she were his last straw, or as if he were looking at a crazed gambler. He dared not gamble; she was his only granddaughter.

"This...this is too radical." Schroeder's lips trembled as he looked at the silent experts. "Dr. Williams, Professor Mueller, what do you think..."

Williams took a deep breath, his face ashen. "Mr. Schroeder, theory is theory, and reality is reality. No one has ever performed this kind of surgery before! If anything goes wrong, the patient will be a corpse! I still recommend conservative treatment; at least... they can live a few more months."

"Conservative treatment?"

Gu Zheng, who had been leaning against the door without saying a word, suddenly moved.

The military boots made a dull sound as they stepped on the solid wood floor, each step feeling like a blow to the heart.

He walked up to Ye Zhen, his tall figure like a black iron tower, blocking all the malicious gazes directed at her. He didn't understand the complicated medical terms, but he understood that the bearded man named Williams was talking nonsense.

"Old sir."

Gu Zheng looked at Schroeder, his hawk-like eyes showing no emotion, only a chilling determination. "I served in the army for ten years, and crawled out of piles of corpses seven times. I know what it means to wait for death and what it means to fight for survival."

He reached out and placed a hand on Ye Zhen's slender shoulder, the warmth of his palm passing through his suit jacket and into her body.

"My wife was snatched from the jaws of death." Gu Zheng's voice was deep, carrying the arrogance unique to a soldier, yet it was also incredibly convincing. "If she says she can save her, even God would have to make way."

"If you believe these bookish old pedants, then take your child and go home to die. If you want to fight for your life—"

Gu Zheng grinned, revealing a set of white teeth, his eyes fierce: "Just trust my wife."

Schroeder was stunned.

He looked into Gu Zheng's murderous eyes, then at Ye Zhen's calm and composed face.

In that instant, he felt as if he had returned to forty years ago, to that night when he started from scratch in the port of Hamburg, risking his entire fortune and life in the face of raging storms.

"grandfather……"

In the wheelchair, the little girl, who had been in a daze, suddenly tugged gently at Schroeder's sleeve. A faint smile appeared on her small face, which was purple from lack of oxygen: "That older sister... I believe her."

Schroeder was startled.

Tears welled up in the old man's eyes instantly. He abruptly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the hesitation in them had vanished, replaced by the decisiveness of a shipping magnate.

Schroeder walked shakily to Ye Zhen, and instead of shaking hands, bowed deeply.

"Dr. Ye," the old man's voice was hoarse and solemn, "Alice's life is in your hands. If the surgery is successful, from today onwards, the Schroeder family's fleet will be your private fleet."

William was furious, his face turning green: "Schrod! You'll regret this! This is murder! I'm going to file a complaint with the Medical Association! I'm going to expose this farce to the media!"

"Whatever you want."

Ye Zhen didn't even glance at him, turned around and strode towards the door.

As she passed Gu Zheng, she paused slightly, a fleeting smile playing on her lips, and whispered, "Thanks, Commander Gu."

Gu Zheng took the opportunity to squeeze her hand and lowered his voice, "Take it easy, don't overwork yourself. After we finish this, I'll cook you noodles when we get back."

Ye Zhen pushed open the conference room door, and the cold wind outside rushed in, blowing the hem of her clothes.

With her back to the group of jumping-up experts behind her, her voice was cold and clear, like a royal decree:

"Prepare for surgery. All bystanders, shut up."

……

Half an hour later, the red light in the operating room came on.

In a phone booth at the end of the corridor, Williams was roaring into the receiver, his face contorted with rage: "Yes! It's that Chinese woman! She's using Europe's richest man's granddaughter for live experiments! Send reporters over immediately! If that child dies on the operating table—I'll make this the biggest medical scandal in all of Europe!"

He hung up the phone and looked at the bright red "Operation in Progress" sign above the operating room.

Fontan, add a window?

Go to hell.