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

In the operating room, the sound of the extracorporeal circulation machine's rollers gradually weakened until it stopped completely.

After the buzzing sound that had occupied our hearing for hours disappeared, the room didn't become quiet. Instead, it was filled with something heavier. It was the heavy, suffocating feeling in everyone's chest, making their scalps tingle.

This is the final hurdle, and also the most dangerous one.

The heart is like a precision instrument that has been disassembled and reassembled. Now that blood supply has been restored, whether it can start beating again, and whether the heart muscle will have the strength after it restarts, depends entirely on fate.

Or, to put it another way, it depends on the skill of the surgeon.

Dark red blood flowed back into the body through the tubes, and the once shriveled and pale heart, like an inflated balloon, gradually filled up, its color slowly changing from a deathly grayish-white to a fleshy pink.

The temperature is rising.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on that fist-sized muscle.

a bit.

The lump of flesh trembled slightly.

It wasn't a powerful contraction, but rather a series of fine, chaotic tremors, like the surface of water ruffled by the wind. The once smooth surface of the myocardium now felt as if countless tiny worms were wriggling beneath it.

"Ventricular fibrillation!" The anesthesiologist's voice was as tight as a snapping string, his eyes filled with terror as he stared at the jumbled, wavy lines on the monitor. "Unstable voltage, myocardial tension is too high!"

Behind the glass window of the observation room, Zhao Degong gripped the railing tightly, his knuckles turning white. He knew all too well what this meant. Prolonged cardiac arrest coupled with such complex major vascular reconstruction inevitably led to myocardial edema. Ventricular fibrillation at this point often meant the heart was at its last gasp, potentially resulting in refractory ventricular fibrillation, beyond saving.

"It's over..." Zhao Degong's lips moved, but before he could finish the thought, he saw the thin figure below move.

Ye Zhen didn't even lift her eyelids.

She stood in the stark white light of the operating lamp, her hands frighteningly steady. There were no panicked shouts, no unnecessary commands; she simply and calmly reached out and took two internal defibrillation electrode pads, shaped like small soup spoons, from the scrub nurse.

"Twenty joules of charge." The voice came through the mask. "Ready."

Two metal electrode plates were attached to both sides of the heart.

"Bang!"

A muffled thud. Zhao Lanlan's body bounced on the operating table, and her still-beating heart stopped moving instantly.

One second, two seconds. The heart remained frozen in place. The lines on the monitor straightened, emitting a long beep.

Sir Williams stood in the first position, his deep blue eyes filled with despair despite the mask and hat he wore. He had seen too many scenes like this; they were the footprints left by death as it passed by.

Just when everyone's hearts were about to turn cold.

My heart skipped a beat without warning.

The amplitude was large and powerful, like a sleeping beast stretching.

Then, "thump," "thump," "thump."

The sound was steady and powerful, pumping out fresh blood with each stroke.

The pink muscles began to contract and relax rhythmically. The straight line on the monitor disappeared, replaced by steep, beautiful mountain peaks. The waveform was perfect, and the rhythm was regular.

Came alive.

"Sinus rhythm, blood pressure 90/60, oxygen saturation 98!" The anesthesiologist's voice trembled. "He's back! He's saved!"

The observation room was deathly silent.

No one spoke, and no one applauded. Everyone was stunned by the overwhelming impact.

Zhao Degong felt his knees go weak, his body swayed, and he fell hard onto the chair behind him.

The chair leg scraped across the terrazzo floor with a jarring "screech," but no one cared about his lapse in composure. Zhao Degong gasped for breath, his shirt soaked with cold sweat. He looked down at the young man's back as he examined the fit of the metal plate, and the last vestige of defiance in his eyes shattered completely.

This is talent.

This is what it means to be blessed by God.

He'd been in this business for decades, considering himself well-informed, but today he realized that the difference between some people is greater than the difference between a person and a dog. In that situation, if it were him, he'd probably be frantically yelling, unlike her, who just promptly shocked him without a second's hesitation.

On the operating table, Ye Zhen did not savor the joy of victory.

Her gaze swept over the delicate sutures of the blood vessels, like a meticulous craftsman inspecting his work.

"There was no bleeding at the anastomosis site."

"Hemodynamically stable."

"Close your chest."

She tossed the tweezers back into the dish with a crisp sound. The noise startled Sir Williams, who was still standing there in a daze.

It wasn't until Ye Zhen started counting the gauze that he blinked violently, like someone who had just woken up. Under his mask, his lips trembled, and it took him a long time to squeeze out a sentence.

"Dr. Ye..."

Williams' voice was choked with emotion, thick with a nasal tone. He looked at Ye Zhen with an expression that didn't seem like he was looking at a doctor, but rather like he was looking at Van Gogh or Beethoven.

"This is a miracle... God, this is the most perfect work of art I have ever seen in my life."

The old man was so excited he was incoherent, throwing even his ingrained British reserve to the winds: "You not only saved her life, you practically recreated her! That 'skirt'... oh, that damn, brilliant 'skirt' design! The expansion of that artificial sinus as the blood flowed was simply beautiful, like poetry!"

"Sir, you flatter me."

Ye Zhen's voice was indifferent, carrying a businesslike detachment, "It's just surgery, nothing that mysterious."

This reaction left Williams speechless.

He had already prepared a torrent of praise, and even planned how to write an article in The Lancet to eulogize this Eastern goddess after returning home. In his view, the two, who had just accomplished a monumental feat in the history of human medicine, should now reach a certain level of spiritual resonance.

However, Ye Zhen's gaze passed over him and landed on the equipment tray next to her, and her expression changed.

Williams looked over and saw several unopened packs of sutures and two pairs of vascular forceps on the tray. These were his personal stash from England—experimental products from Johnson & Johnson that hadn't yet hit the market, and they were very expensive.

"Um..." Ye Zhen suddenly smiled. Her previous aloofness was gone, and she became unusually friendly, which sent chills down Williams' spine.

She gestured with her chin towards the pile of things. "Sir, we had an agreement beforehand."

Williams was taken aback: "Wh...what?"

"You said you brought your own instruments to help." Ye Zhen walked to the instrument table, her hand running over several packs of sutures. "Now that the surgery is finished, here are the remaining sutures, and these two forceps..."

She looked up, her eyes gleaming with shrewdness: "Since you brought it, there's no need to take it back, right? This is considered medical waste disposal, isn't it? Taking it on the plane involves going through security, which is quite troublesome."

Williams stared, his mouth agape, speechless for a long time. He looked at Ye Zhen, then at the several packs of brand-new sutures. Medical waste? Those were top-of-the-line supplies, each costing tens of pounds.

"But... Dr. Ye, these packages are unopened..." Williams tried to argue, "These are original samples that I had a lot of trouble getting my hands on..."

"We're really short of these things here," Ye Zhen sighed, her face filled with concern. "As you can see, we're poorly equipped. That surgery just now was so successful thanks to your sutures; the stitches were so neat. For the advancement of medicine, for more children like Lanlan..."

She paused for a moment, then quickly grabbed a few bundles of thread and placed them, along with two pairs of tweezers, into a dish.

"Such a great medical scientist as you wouldn't care about such material possessions, would you?"

Williams: "..."

Williams looked at Ye Zhen, and all the lofty emotion he had just felt was choked back.