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

Seventy-two hours have passed since that shocking Tetralogy of Fallot surgery for severe outflow tract stenosis.

In these three days, the Beicheng Military Region General Hospital became infamous throughout the national medical system. The transfer letter from Shanghai First People's Hospital, the cross-provincial pick-up by a large Air Force transport plane, and the black-and-white photo on the front page of the People's Daily, pushed this field hospital, which was originally only famous within the Northern Military Region, into the very center of a storm in the national medical community.

The eye of the storm was surprisingly quiet.

On the innermost bed in the intensive care unit on the first floor, a six-year-old boy brought from Shanghai was lying flat. His chest was wrapped in thick white gauze, and the various tubes that were originally densely connected to the head of the bed had all been removed, except for the necessary intravenous infusion line and closed chest drainage tube.

The child's complexion was no longer that despairing cyanosis, but instead radiated a healthy rosy glow. The swelling in the clubbed fingers would take some time to subside, but the slight rise and fall of the chest and the steady, fluctuating waveform on the monitor proclaimed an undeniable fact—this child, who had been given a death sentence by a top Shanghai hospital, had truly survived.

Ye Zhen, dressed in a snow-white coat, stood by the hospital bed. In her hand, she held a notebook, quickly recording various data from the morning rounds with a fountain pen.

"Heart rate 95, blood pressure 110-170, blood oxygen saturation 98%." Ye Zhen turned a page. "The drainage volume has decreased from 50 ml yesterday to 15 ml today, the fluid color has changed from dark red to light red, and the coagulation function has returned to normal."

Standing behind her was Liu Jianmin, the director of Shanghai People's Hospital. This surgeon, in his fifties and a leading expert in the Yangtze River Delta region, had been accompanying Ye Zhen on rounds every day without fail these past few days, meticulously recording every postoperative order given by Ye Zhen in a small notebook.

After hearing the data reported by Ye Zhen, Liu Jianmin let out a long sigh of relief. He looked at the child on the hospital bed, his eyes reddening.

"He survived. Not only survived, but his hemodynamic parameters are not much worse than those of a normal child." Liu Jianmin tucked his pen back into his breast pocket, his voice a little hoarse.

Ye Zhen closed the notebook, turned to the side and handed it to the head nurse of the ward next to her.

"Go and inform the family that you can be transferred to a regular ward this afternoon. Start with liquid foods to transition to a balanced diet, and don't put too much strain on your digestive system." After instructing the head nurse, Ye Zhen turned to Liu Jianmin, "Saving lives isn't just about having a pair of hands; it also depends on postoperative infection control and cardiopulmonary resuscitation management. Go and get the details of your anti-rejection medications from the past few days. I'll do a systematic postoperative medication review for you after my outpatient clinic this afternoon."

Liu Jianmin nodded repeatedly in agreement.

At 8 p.m., the large, insulated tent in the backyard of the main hospital was sweltering.

The high-altitude combat tent erected by Gu Zheng's engineering corps has become the most valuable medical base in all of China these past few days. Thirty-seven top surgeons from hospitals across the country, aside from their daytime triage in the outpatient hall and their time assisting in the operating room, have spent all their rest time here, including eating and sleeping.

Five large cast-iron coal stoves in the center of the tent glowed red-hot. Long tables were pieced together, piled high with manuscripts, worn-out English original medical anatomy atlases, and dozens of rough porcelain teacups for keeping one awake.

The air was filled with the strong smell of dry tobacco and the bitter taste of cheap tea leaves that had been steeped for too long.

Gao Haiping sat on the middle stool, his hair disheveled, a layer of bluish-black stubble on his chin. His eyes, which had been somewhat sunken from recovering from a high fever, were now filled with frenzied bloodshot veins.

He held in his hands a thick stack of handwritten manuscripts, more than fifty pages long. To prevent the ink from seeping through, it was all written in tiny, single-sided characters. Each page had a neat page number in the header, and next to it were several high-precision anatomical perspective drawings of the heart, redrawn by military surveyors based on descriptions from veteran experts.

The heavy canvas curtain of the tent was lifted.

A cold wind carried Ye Zhen into the tent.

The thirty-seven people in the tent stood up in unison. No one made a sound; the only sounds were the rustling of papers being turned and the scraping of stools on the ground.

Gao Haiping held the thick stack of manuscript paper in both hands, and walked with his somewhat stiff old legs to Ye Zhen.

"Dr. Ye." Gao Haiping's voice was extremely hoarse from three consecutive days and nights of intense editing, but every word was emphasized. "We old guys kept our promise for the three days. 'Application and Clinical Verification of Glutaraldehyde-Tanned Autologous Pericardium in Right Ventricular Outflow Tract Reconstruction in Tetralogy of Fallot,' the manuscript is 53,000 words long. Anatomical theory, extracorporeal circulation ratios, parachute suture techniques, and even detailed pre- and post-operative data comparisons of that Shanghai child as the core case of extremely severe illness—it's all included."

Gao Haiping handed over the manuscript paper, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

This weighty manuscript not only records a groundbreaking skill in Chinese medicine, but also embodies the hard work of these thirty-seven elderly men who, in this drafty early spring, set aside all prejudices and perfectly integrated their lifelong learning with emerging technologies.

Ye Zhen took the manuscript paper. It was quite heavy.

She walked to an empty table next to the stove and sat down. Liu Jianmin immediately poured a cup of hot water and placed it beside her.

Ye Zhen didn't touch the water glass. She turned to the title page. Ye Zhen was listed as the first author and the corresponding author. On the second page, the names of thirty-seven people were listed, followed by "Compiled jointly by the research group."

She flipped through the pages quickly, her eyes scanning the dense data and deductive formulas. The tent was utterly silent, save for the crackling of the coals burning in the stove. The veteran experts held their breath, their eyes glued to Ye Zhen's hands as she turned the pages, like a group of children waiting for their teacher to grade their exams.

Twenty minutes later, Ye Zhen turned to the last page of data comparison charts.

She picked up a red and blue pencil from the table and went back to page twelve.

"The overall argumentation logic is extremely rigorous, and the anatomical diagrams are very accurate. Vice Dean Gao's manuscript editing skills are indeed top-notch in the country." Ye Zhen gave her conclusion first, and a very low breathing sound immediately filled the tent.

Immediately afterwards, Ye Zhen placed the tip of her pen on the paragraph about the concentration ratio of glutaraldehyde on page twelve.

"But these details must be rigorously verified before being incorporated into clinical guidelines." Ye Zhen's voice was clear and crisp in the spacious tent. "You wrote that at a room temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, tanning should be done with a 0.6% glutaraldehyde solution for ten minutes. But you overlooked the variables brought about by regional climate."

Ye Zhen looked up at the elderly people in front of her.

"During the rainy season in the south, the humidity is high, or in places like Harbin where indoor heating is set above 25 degrees Celsius, the rate of cross-linking reaction varies. This paper is intended for grassroots doctors across the country. If they rigidly adhere to the ten-minute suture regardless of room temperature, and the pericardium becomes excessively calcified and loses its elasticity, the suture will tear directly under pulmonary hypertension."

Gao Haiping leaned closer for a look, then slapped his thigh. "Right! Chemical reagents are extremely sensitive to temperature. When we were doing it in the operating room at the main hospital, the room was heated and kept at a constant temperature. Missing this variable would be fatal!"

Ye Zhen quickly wrote a line of supplementary notes on the edge of the paper with her red pen: "Note: The tanning time must be reduced by 45 seconds for every two degrees of increase, or a constant temperature water bath should be used for standardized treatment."

Then she turned to page 30, which contained the section on suturing techniques.

"For the parachute-style continuous suture, you only wrote down the parameters for stitch length and edge distance, but omitted the key points for applying force during the tightening stage." Ye Zhen drew a simple diagram of force analysis on the paper. "Polypropylene sutures have low friction. If the suture is tightened too much when tying the knot at the pulmonary artery bifurcation, it will cause the entire teardrop-shaped patch to wrinkle in the middle. Here's an additional point: Before tying the knot, you need to use a needle holder to perform a suture-pulling test in the middle of the suture to ensure that the tension is even before tightening the last knot."

After pointing out three extremely hidden blind spots in clinical practice, Ye Zhen finally stopped writing and pushed the manuscript back to Gao Haiping.

The experts in the tent were completely convinced. Without Ye Zhen's guidance, other doctors who received this paper and tried to copy it would inevitably have to pay the price of several lives on the operating table before they could figure it out.

"I'll go back and correct these three places immediately." Gao Haiping carefully hugged the manuscript to his chest. "Dr. Ye, with these corrections, this manuscript will be an impeccable case!"

Gao Haiping became more and more excited as he spoke. He turned around and looked at the old friends surrounding him, waving his free hand.

"Old buddies! Our three days of hard work paid off! Once this gets published, it'll be a bombshell that will shake things up in this era!" Gao Haiping turned back, his eyes fixed intently on Ye Zhen. "Dr. Ye, I'll finish revising the final draft tonight. Tomorrow morning, I'll contact a professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University to translate this paper word for word into the most authentic English!"

Ye Zhen picked up the hot water on the table and took a sip to moisten her parched throat. Hearing this, she put down the cup.

"Find a professor from another department to translate?" Ye Zhen looked up. "Where does Vice Dean Gao plan to submit this manuscript?"

Gao Haiping was so excited that he banged his cane on the ground.

"The Lancet! Who else can we submit to besides The Lancet?" Gao Haiping loudly proclaimed the name of that journal, which holds a supreme position in the modern medical field. "Dr. Ye, our country's surgical techniques have always been looked down upon internationally. This time, we hold this trump card—a groundbreaking technique that surpasses those foreign devils! If this paper is published in The Lancet, it means our technique has received the highest international recognition! Who will dare say that Chinese surgery was done with a machete?"

A chorus of agreement rose from inside the tent.

Liu Jianmin, beaming, nodded in agreement: "Yes, Dr. Ye, Lao Gao is absolutely right. Currently, cardiac surgery internationally is dominated by Europe and America. If we publish this article, full of Chinese data, in *The Lancet*, it's like slapping the Westerners in the face, and they'll willingly hand over their international reputation to us. Our country's medicine desperately needs this opportunity to be acknowledged and respected by the West!"

The experts chimed in, each sketching out a grand vision for this manuscript to be sent to the British Isles and astound the entire Western academic community. It represented the most basic yet urgent yearning of an older generation of intellectuals who had suffered greatly from technological backwardness and struggled to survive in the cracks, for a sense of triumph.

Ye Zhen sat behind the long table, listening to the enthusiastic planning around her.

The northwest wind outside the tent made the canvas flap loudly. Ye Zhen's expression remained unchanged despite these impassioned words.

She stretched out her long, slender, fair hands and tapped them lightly on the table twice.

The crisp tapping sound pierced through the noise of the crowd. The tent quickly quieted down, and thirty-seven pairs of eyes refocused on her.

"Translate it into English and send it to *The Lancet*." Ye Zhen repeated these words in a very calm tone. Leaning back in her chair, she looked at the group of top experts in the country before her. "Let me ask you all a question: Are there no medical journals in China anymore? Has the *Chinese Journal of Surgery* ceased publication? Or has *Chinese Medicine* gone bankrupt?"