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

In the emergency room of the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital, the smell of Lysol in the air was so strong it was pungent, but the domineering smell of the disinfectant couldn't mask another, more stubborn odor. It was the sour smell of sweat accumulated over the years by poor families, mixed with dust and grease, emanating from a shivering man in the corner.

The man's name was Old Li. He had spent half his life collecting scrap in the southern part of the city. His back was hunched like a bow, and his tattered, shiny black cotton-padded jacket was his only shell. At this moment, he had his head bowed low, his two rough hands, like old tree bark, twisted tightly in front of him. He was even breathing carefully, afraid of disturbing the cleanliness of the place.

In his arms, he was holding a little girl who was so thin she was almost unrecognizable.

The child resembled an underdeveloped kitten, with an unusually large head that made his slender neck appear as if it might break at any moment. His face was sallow, but his lips were a horrifying bluish-purple, as if stained with ink, devoid of any vitality.

"Make way! Make way, everyone!"

A hurried voice broke the silence. The bespectacled boy from Tsinghua University, sweating profusely, rushed to the front, using his body to push aside the onlookers, patients, and their families, clearing a path for those behind him.

Ye Zhen strode in, her white coat unbuttoned, stethoscope already dangling from her ear. Her gaze swept over everyone else, fixing directly on the child.

"Put me on the bed." Her voice was as cold as ever, yet it carried an unyielding and reassuring power. "Take off your clothes."

Old Li trembled, as if startled, or as if he had finally been saved. He clumsily tried to undo his daughter's patched little floral jacket, the black dirt under his fingernails smearing onto the clean sheets, and he quickly withdrew his hands in fright.

Ye Zhen didn't care about any of that. She bent down and pressed the cold stethoscope probe against the child's thin chest, where his ribs were protruding.

The moment the probe touched her skin, Ye Zhen's usually calm eyebrows furrowed into a knot.

It was too loud.

The sound wasn't a heartbeat at all; it was like a broken bellows stuffed into the chest cavity, each contraction accompanied by a huge, rumbling noise and a sharp whistling. The heart wasn't pumping blood; it was desperately pounding against the already overburdened chest walls with its last strength!

"A classic case of Tetralogy of Fallot."

Ye Zhen removed her stethoscope, her words rapid and urgent, each syllable like a small hammer striking the quiet floor of the emergency room: "Severe stenosis of the pulmonary valve and infundibulum, a massive ventricular septal defect, and the aorta straddling the ventricular septum. Prolonged severe hypoxia has caused hematocrit to reach a dangerous threshold, a precursor to hypoxic episodes and heart failure. Immediate surgery is necessary!"

For a moment, the emergency room was completely silent.

The student leaders who had followed them all turned deathly pale. The cold English abbreviation "TOF" on the textbook had transformed into a little girl who might stop breathing in front of them at any moment, a shock far more intense than any classroom lesson.

"Hand...surgery?" Old Li seemed to have been struck by lightning, his swaying body barely managing to stay upright by leaning against the wall.

"Doctor... I... I'm just asking... could I take some medicine first?" Old Li's voice trembled uncontrollably, like the last withered leaf in the autumn wind. "My family... my family still has some money, I'll go get it right away..."

He hurriedly reached into his innermost pocket and pulled out a cloth bag that was warm from his body heat. He carefully peeled back the layers, revealing a handful of small bills that were soft and wrinkled from being soaked in sweat.

The largest bills were a few five-yuan "Great Unity" notes, and the rest were mostly small bills and a few coins.

"Doctor, here's thirty... no, forty-two yuan and eighty cents!" Old Li held up the pile of money, still warm from his body and sweat, as if it were a priceless treasure, trembling as he held it up to Ye Zhen. His cloudy eyes were full of pleading and hope. "Is this enough? If not, I'll borrow more! I'll even... even sell my blood!"

Forty-two dollars and eighty cents.

A man who makes a living by collecting scraps, his life savings.

However, in this day and age, the starting price for a radical heart surgery under cardiopulmonary bypass, including consumables, drugs, anesthesia, and all other expenses, is five thousand yuan!

Five thousand yuan! That's a huge sum of money that could easily make someone a "ten-thousand-yuan household"!

This is an insurmountable chasm that stands between life and death.

"Doctor..." Old Li looked at Ye Zhen in silence. The faint, pleading light in his eyes dimmed little by little, until only resigned, despairing ashes remained. "If... if it's too expensive... then... then forget it..."

He turned around, his back hunched, trying to pick up the child on the bed, but his outstretched hand was trembling and he couldn't muster any strength.

"What's there to calculate!"

The Tsinghua University student suddenly roared like an enraged lion cub, his eyes bloodshot and menacing. He abruptly reached into the pocket of his Zhongshan suit, pulled out a wad of cash and meal tickets, and slammed them hard on the nurses' station counter next to him: "I have this! My meal money for this week!"

"I have one too!"

"And mine too!"

Count me in!

One sentence ignited the entire emergency room. Those usually proud and reserved high-achieving students were now red-eyed and frantically rummaging through their pockets.

One yuan, two yuan, fifty cents...

Coins, small bills, brand-new "Great Unity" notes, and precious meal tickets and food coupons...

A pile of colorful bills and change fell like snowflakes onto the pristine white emergency room bed, covering the sour smell and the despair of a family.

Old Li was completely stunned. He stared blankly at the pile of money, his lips trembling, wanting to say something but unable to utter a word. Two streams of hot tears washed away the grime on his face, drawing two clear lines. His legs went weak, and he was about to kneel down with a "thud," but the Tsinghua University student grabbed him tightly.

"Uncle! Don't kneel! We can save him!" the boy shouted at him, his voice trembling with tears.

At the entrance, Dean Zhang Guohua was summoned by the head nurse. As soon as he entered, he witnessed this chaotic yet tragic scene. He paused, took off his glasses, wiped the fog off the lenses with the corner of his shirt, and let out a long sigh.

"Ye Zhen..." Zhang Guohua walked to her side, lowering his voice, his tone full of helplessness and exhaustion, "I know you're kind-hearted. But this surgery... it's not just a matter of a few hundred dollars. It's five thousand dollars! And that's just the cost of supplies converted to US dollars!"

"The official document for 'Heart of China' is still going through the departmental process. Without formal approval, the finance department can't approve a single penny. If we open this door today, the hospital's doors will be bursting at the seams... The main hospital isn't printing money, you know."

Zhang Guohua was right; as the hospital director, he was responsible for the basic needs of thousands of people in the hospital. Reality, sometimes, is colder and more ruthless than a scalpel.

The students slowed down.

They stared at the pile of loose change, silently calculating that it probably didn't even amount to five hundred yuan. Faced with a sum of five thousand yuan, their fervent enthusiasm seemed so pale and powerless.

The Tsinghua student clenched his fists, his nails digging deep into his palms. Only at this moment did he truly understand what Professor Ye had said in the auditorium—"This battle will not be easy."

It turns out that the hardest thing wasn't technology, but poverty.

"Have you emptied everything out?"

Ye Zhen, who had been silent all along, finally spoke.

She stepped forward, extended the hand that held the scalpel with unwavering steadiness, and gently, yet with an undeniable air, pushed the pile of money on the table toward the students.

"Take all the money back." Her voice wasn't loud, but it resonated clearly in the noisy emergency room.

"Teacher Ye!" the students cried out anxiously.

"Take it back!" Ye Zhen's eyes flashed with a sharp edge, the murderous aura she carried from the operating table instantly exploding. "You're still students, every penny you spend is your parents' hard-earned money. You won't even have enough to eat tomorrow, how will you have the energy to conduct contact tracing? How will you have the energy to hold a stethoscope?"

She turned around and her gaze fell on Zhang Guohua, whose face was full of embarrassment.

Uncle Zhang.

Ye Zhen took a pen out of her white coat pocket, uncapped it, and quickly signed her name on a blank prescription sheet. Then, she slapped the thin sheet of paper into Zhang Guohua's hand.

"I don't care about the procedures; until the official document is issued, I am the document itself."

She pointed to the dying child on the bed, her tone as indifferent as if discussing the weather: "Put this surgery on my tab. I'll pay for it."

"Dr. Ye... Dr. Ye..." Old Li knelt down on the ground with a "thud," his knees hitting the hard terrazzo floor with a dull thud.

"Stand up!"

Ye Zhen grabbed Old Li's greasy arm, instantly staining his expensive white coat with a glaring black mark, but she didn't even flinch.

"You're the child's father, the pillar of this family, why are you kneeling?"

Ye Zhen stared into Old Li's evasive eyes, speaking slowly and deliberately, each word carrying immense weight: "Here, no one dies because they have no money. Understand?"

Having said that, she gave no one time to react, turned to the head nurse beside her, and spoke at a sudden rapid pace, as if issuing a military order:

"Notify the operating room to prepare a surgical table immediately! Activate the emergency response channel! Prepare blood from the level-one blood bank! I need to see the patient on the operating table in half an hour!"

"Yes!" The head nurse shouted until her voice cracked, then pushed the stretcher next to the bed and rushed out.

Ye Zhen strode after her. As she passed the group of students who were still in a daze, she paused slightly, a faint smile curving her lips, and pointed to the pile of loose change on the table.

"Keep the money safe and go buy some steamed buns. You'll have the strength to watch how I save people when you're full."

The emergency room door slammed shut behind me.

All that remained were students with tears streaming down their faces, and a prescription slip that felt both light and heavy in their hands.

Zhang Guohua looked down at the flamboyant and sharp signature on the paper, shook his head with a wry smile, but a strange light gleamed in his eyes.

"This girl... she's a real ancestor."