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

The air in the old conference room fell completely silent as Ye Zhen put down the half-smoked chalk. The large clock on the wall pointed to exactly nine o'clock in the evening. Ye Zhen didn't linger for a minute longer; she dusted the white dust off her fingers, pushed open the wooden door, and stepped into the night outside.

Vice Dean Gao Haiping of Fuwai Hospital remained seated in the first row until Ye Zhen's footsteps completely disappeared down the corridor before closing the black hardcover notebook in his hand. The first five pages were densely filled with writing, even the margins were marked with mechanical formulas and chemical reaction ratios. He reached for his walking stick, which lay to the side, and only when his fingers touched the wooden handle did he realize that his palms were covered in sticky, cold sweat.

"Old Gao, let's go." Director Ma walked over and handed him the military overcoat. He had worn the overcoat when he came in the afternoon, and now it was covered in some wall dust.

Gao Haiping silently put on his overcoat, leaned on his walking stick, and stood up. The two followed a large group of experts in white coats along the bumpy dirt road leading from the main hospital compound to the dilapidated dormitory in the back. In early spring in the northern city, the northwest wind at night carried sand and dust, stinging like knives against one's face. Gao Haiping turned up his overcoat collar to shield his frozen chin.

Pushing open the rickety wooden door, a wave of cold, damp air rushed out. A few dusty 15-watt incandescent bulbs on the ceiling cast a dim, yellowish light, illuminating the dilapidated passageway where even the windows were covered with old newspapers.

Normally, Gao Haiping would never have been able to stand staying in this godforsaken place without even heating for a second longer. But tonight, the sight in this corridor made him stop in his tracks.

No one went back to sleep in those drafty rooms. Nearly twenty department heads and vice presidents from major hospitals across the country all found seats in this corridor. Since there were no chairs, they sat on overturned wooden buckets or simply on newspapers on the cement floor.

Liu Jianmin from Shanghai People's Hospital, still in his white coat, was sketching on the cement floor of the corridor, holding half a burnt honeycomb briquette. The charcoal ash left black lines on the rough ground, quickly outlining the cross-sectional shape of an adult heart.

"No! The right ventricular outflow tract reconstruction Dr. Ye drew on the blackboard today, using glutaraldehyde-tanned autologous pericardium as a patch, the incision angle here is definitely not a straight line!" Liu Jianmin pointed to the black outline on the ground, looked up and shouted to the doctors beside him, "If you cut in a straight line, combined with the physical tension of the pericardium itself, during the heartbeat and right ventricular systole, the suture edges will definitely tear locally due to uneven stress!"

Director Wang from the Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University was holding a chipped enamel mug filled with coarse tea. He squatted opposite Liu Jianmin, staring at the drawing on the ground and shaking his head.

"Old Liu, you're thinking about this like you would with traditional Dacromet patches. The chemical formula Dr. Ye gave us today, soaking it in 0.6% glutaraldehyde for ten minutes, has already changed the mechanical strength of the pericardium. It's not that it's lost its elasticity, but that its elasticity has become controllable. This incision isn't a straight line, it's an arc with a 15-degree angle. Look at the pressure differential she drew on the blackboard, a pressure differential of 15 mmHg, it's this arc that buffers the hemodynamics." Director Wang dipped his finger in tea and drew an arc next to the diagram on the ground.

The water quickly dried on the cement floor. Liu Jianmin grew anxious and wiped the dust off his face with his sleeve.

"Fifteen-degree inclination? You're talking nonsense. If you make an arc-shaped incision, how do you control the stitch spacing when suturing in situ? If the endometrium doesn't align properly, a mural thrombus will form within hours after the surgery. How can you guarantee that the edges of this arc-shaped suture won't wrinkle?" Liu Jianmin slapped his thigh in rebuttal.

The argument in the corridor grew louder, and seven or eight experts gathered around, joining the discussion. Some insisted on a straight incision with double-layered pads for decompression, while others supported an arc-shaped incision with continuous suturing. These medical giants, who were usually absolute authority in their respective fields, were now arguing heatedly over the angle of the incision and the spacing of the suture stitches, their faces flushed.

Standing on the periphery of the crowd, Gao Haiping listened to these heated debates. The academic passion in his chest, which had long been worn down by administrative meetings and endless paperwork, was ignited like dry tinder meeting a raging fire.

He shoved the walking stick in his hand into Director Ma's arms, unbuttoned his military overcoat, and strode into the center of the crowd.

"Neither straight lines nor curves can solve the fundamental problem." Gao Haiping's voice was loud and clear, carrying the authority of someone who had been giving orders for many years, instantly drowning out the noise in the corridor.

Everyone turned around and looked at the Beijing expert who had been so picky about the accommodations that afternoon.

Gao Haiping picked up the half-coal briquette and drew a circular cross-section diagram of the patch directly on a clean cement floor next to Liu Jianmin.

"Old Liu is afraid of wrinkles, and Old Wang is afraid of uneven stress causing tearing. You've both overlooked the premise of the last mechanics formula on the blackboard today. The tension of the pericardium is not distributed in a planar pattern, but radially." Gao Haiping pointed to the diagram he had drawn, the pen tip making a screeching sound as it scratched the cement floor.

"To widen the patch at the right ventricular outflow tract, the incision must be a modified 'Y' shape. A two-millimeter obtuse angle should be made at the bottom for freeing, and the patch should be cut into an inverted teardrop shape. When suturing to the bottom corner, where the stress is greatest, continuous suturing cannot be used. Instead, interrupted mattress sutures with a pad should be used as the base, distributing most of the mechanical tension to the pad. The remaining straight edge is then closed with continuous suturing. This ensures that it won't tear or wrinkle."

After these words were spoken, the corridor fell silent for a few seconds.

Liu Jianmin stared at the "Y"-shaped incision and the water-drip patch on the ground, his brows furrowed tightly as he rapidly deduced the feasibility of the plan in his mind.

He pondered for a long time, then shook his head. "Old Gao, your plan is too complicated. Suturing the patch at the corner requires a high degree of hand stability from the doctor. The heart has a limited time to stop beating, and your interrupted mattress sutures will add at least five minutes to the cardiopulmonary bypass time. For an infant a few months old, those five minutes are the boundary between life and death."

"If we don't spend these five minutes, and the pericardium tears after the operation, we'll still die!" Gao Haiping said without backing down.

"You're judging a baby by adult standards!"

"Old Liu, how many cases of tetralogy of Fallot have you performed? Our Fuwai Hospital's case database from last year..."

The debate escalated again. The entire corridor became a battlefield without gunfire. It was divided into Gao Haiping's faction and Liu Jianmin's faction, each citing numerous cases from domestic and international medical journals over the past decade. Neither side could convince the other.

The night grew deeper. The north wind howled into the corridor through the holes in the newspaper pasted on the windows. To explain the anatomical structure clearly, Gao Haiping even took off his military overcoat and threw it on the bench, wearing only a gray wool sweater, and squatted in the windy spot with several doctors from the south to calculate formulas.

Director Ma tried several times to put his coat on him, but Gao Haiping pushed it away, finding it in the way. In this dim, dilapidated, and drafty corridor, Gao Haiping felt twenty years younger. He was transported back to the early days of the People's Republic of China, to those arduous years when everyone crammed into a simple laboratory, working through the night for a technological breakthrough.

The lights are out, so let's light candles and continue.

It was past midnight, and the debate over suture tension remained unresolved. Both sides produced several drafts, which were revised more than ten times, and ultimately neither dared to claim their approach was absolutely safe in clinical practice.

"You won't get anywhere arguing like this." Gao Haiping leaned against the wall to stand up; his legs were numb from squatting for so long. He rubbed his stiff knees, his voice hoarse from the loud argument.

"Take these drawings to Dr. Ye tomorrow morning," Gao Haiping said, pointing to the messy pile of cinder lines on the ground. "We'll discuss her proposed method with her tomorrow."

Everyone nodded in agreement. After a night of intense debate, they had thoroughly grasped the difficulties of this new technology and were now waiting for Ye Zhen to provide the final key to unlock the knot.

A gust of cold wind blew through Gao Haiping, causing him to sneeze loudly. A chill ran down his spine. He then realized that he had been standing in the draft for three whole hours wearing only a thin wool sweater.