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

The next morning. Today is Sunday, a rare day off for Ye Zhen.

Zhao Shuya wore a newly made navy blue woolen coat, over which she wore a floral shirt, and on her feet were worn black leather shoes. Before leaving, she looked at herself in the mirror again and again, then wrapped the twenty eggs she had collected in the enamel basin in old newspaper and put them into a faux leather handbag.

She stood at the entrance of the military compound for ten minutes before walking toward the building where Ye Zhen lived.

There was a pungent smell lingering from a burnt coal stove in the stairwell. Zhao Shuya carried her handbag and climbed the stairs one step at a time, her heels echoing dully on the concrete steps.

The security door on the right side of the second floor was ajar.

Zhao Shuya stood at the door, took a few deep breaths, and knocked three times.

Gu Yue opened the door.

Who are you looking for?

Zhao Shuya handed the bag containing the eggs forward, forcing a smile: "I'm Zhenzhen... I'm looking for Doctor Ye."

"My sister-in-law is looking at some documents." Gu Yue blocked the doorway and didn't move aside.

"Yueyue, let them in." Ye Zhen's voice came from the inner room, neither warm nor cold.

Gu Yue wrinkled her nose and stepped aside.

Zhao Shuya entered the house and looked around the living room. A pile of forms covered in writing was spread out on the table, and the bookshelf in the corner was crammed full. The conditions weren't great, but it was clean and tidy.

Ye Zhen came out of the inner room, holding a fountain pen in her hand. She was wearing a gray crew neck sweater, and her hair was loosely gathered at the back of her head.

When Zhao Shuya saw Ye Zhen, her lips moved, and the speech she had prepared on the way back turned into a jumbled mess.

The two people were standing opposite each other.

Ye Zhen didn't offer her a seat, nor did she take the bag of eggs. She placed the pen on the coffee table, leaned back in her chair, and waited.

Zhao Shuya swallowed hard and broke the silence first.

"Zhenzhen..."

"Ye Zhen," Ye Zhen corrected the way she addressed her.

Zhao Shuya's face twitched, and she changed her words, saying, "Dr. Ye, I came today because of Wanwan's matter."

Ye Zhen remained silent.

Zhao Shuya placed her handbag on the edge of the coffee table, rubbed her fingers together, and after a long pause, finally managed to squeeze out a string of words. She spoke quickly, as if afraid she wouldn't be able to get the words out if she slowed down: "You know Wanwan, she's been staying at home for over half a year. Your dad… Lao Lin's idea is to find her a proper job. I heard your office is hiring, answering phones, registering information, and stuff like that, it's not too difficult. Wanwan graduated from high school, after all, and her handwriting is neat; that should be enough for her."

She paused, secretly glancing at Ye Zhen, but couldn't discern any attitude from her face.

Zhao Shuya gritted her teeth, her voice softening slightly: "Zhenzhen... Dr. Ye, no matter what, you lived in the Lin family for eighteen years. Your food, clothing, and school fees were all paid for by our Lin family. No matter how bad your life was all those years, we never let you go hungry or cold, right?"

Gu Yue's face turned red as she listened. Just as she was about to speak, Zhao Lanlan pulled her under the table.

Ye Zhen sat in the armchair, her expression extremely calm.

Seeing that she didn't speak, Zhao Shuya mustered her courage and continued, "I admit that sending you away back then wasn't handled very elegantly. One hundred yuan was too little. But at that time, Wanwan had just returned, and the house was in chaos. I acted impulsively..."

"Ms. Zhao," Ye Zhen said.

Zhao Shuya's words were cut off, and she instinctively shrank back.

"I don't want to bring up that hundred yuan." Ye Zhen's tone was exactly the same as when she faced patients' families in the special clinic—calm, businesslike, and devoid of personal feelings. "You said Lin Wan wants to work in the 'Heart of China' office, fine."

Zhao Shuya was taken aback.

She was fully prepared to be ridiculed and kicked out, and she even prepared her story for crying to Lin Weiguo when she got back.

She didn't expect Ye Zhen to agree.

"But let me make this clear from the start." Ye Zhen stood up from her chair, walked to the bookshelf, pulled out a blank triage form, and slapped it on the coffee table.

"This office isn't a place for idlers. Lin Wan is here, and she'll be treated the same as Zhao Lanlan and Gu Yue. She'll have a one-month training period; if she doesn't pass the assessment, she's out. I don't give preferential treatment here, and I don't owe anyone any favors."

Ye Zhen looked down at Zhao Shuya.

"I settled all those scores from the past the day I signed the agreement to sever ties. You don't need to bring it up again."

Zhao Shuya stood there, her expression changing several times before finally turning bright red. She picked up the bag of eggs and started to walk out. But she stopped at the door and turned to look at Ye Zhen.

"Um... thank you."

The two words looked as if they had popped out from a crack in a rock.

Zhao Shuya is gone.

Gu Yue closed the door, then ran up to Ye Zhen, her face full of indignation: "Sister-in-law! How could you agree to that? I've heard everything Linlin said about Lin Wan. You know what kind of person she is! Won't she just cause trouble if she comes?"

Zhao Lanlan also raised her head, the red pen in her hand hovering in mid-air, waiting for Ye Zhen's answer.

Ye Zhen picked up the triage form on the coffee table, flipped through it, and threw it back on the bookshelf.

"The phone line will be connected next week. I estimate the daily call volume will be at least forty or fifty calls, and sometimes over a hundred. You and Yueyue alone can't handle it. Another person means more hands."

"But that person is Lin Wan!" Gu Yue stamped her feet anxiously.

"Whether it's Lin Wan or not is unimportant. What matters is whether she can work." Ye Zhen picked up the now-cold water on the table and took a sip. "If she can't handle it, she'll leave on her own. I don't need to rush her."

These words were spoken so casually that Gu Yue and Zhao Lanlan exchanged a glance but said nothing more.

For the next five days, Zhao Lanlan and Gu Yue endured a period more brutal than any school they had ever attended.

During the day, the two women accompanied Ye Zhen on ward rounds and took notes. After finishing her outpatient clinic duties, Ye Zhen would spend half an hour sitting in her office, using the letters seeking help as teaching materials, teaching them one by one how to extract key information from the chaotic descriptions.

"The child's lips are turning purple, and he has to squat down and pant after running just a few steps—cyanosis. The condition worsens after exercise due to oxygen deficiency. The preliminary diagnosis is tetralogy of Fallot or other complex cyanotic congenital heart disease, with an emergency level of at least B."

"The baby had a heart murmur from birth and had difficulty feeding—this indicates a congenital heart defect, possibly a ventricular septal defect with pulmonary hypertension. The younger the baby is, the higher the risk. Find out exactly how old the baby is."

Ye Zhen speaks quickly and doesn't repeat herself. Zhao Lanlan frantically takes notes in a small notebook. Sometimes, when she doesn't understand a term, Ye Zhen draws a simple cross-section of the heart on paper and points to it with the tip of her pen to explain it to her.

Gu Zheng cooked dinner. Three dishes and a soup were served on the living room table, and Zhao Lanlan and Gu Yue ate while flipping through the book "Practical Pediatric Cardiology" that Ye Zhen had lent them.

"Sister-in-law, how do you distinguish between 'pulmonary valve stenosis' and 'pulmonary atresia'? If a parent says on the phone, 'The doctor said that a certain opening in the heart is blocked,' which direction should I ask?" Zhao Lanlan asked, her mouth full of half a steamed bun.

Ye Zhen put down her chopsticks, picked up the draft paper next to her, and drew a simplified diagram of the right ventricular outflow tract in a few strokes.

"It's narrow, but still open. It's completely blocked. You don't need to be so precise; you just need to ask one question." Ye Zhen wrote a line on the paper and pushed it over.

Zhao Lanlan looked down and asked, "When the child is quiet and still, do their lips also turn purple?"

"If the skin turns purple even at rest, it indicates severe oxygen deficiency, which is classified as a Level A emergency. If the skin only turns purple after crying or activity, it's a Level B emergency. Memorize this standard; it will save you half the time spent arguing on the phone."

Zhao Lanlan neatly copied this line into her triage quick reference manual. This manual was made by herself using a ruler to draw tables on white paper and binding them together. On the cover, she wrote four words in ballpoint pen: "Triage Treasure Trove".

Gu Yue wasn't idle either. She borrowed a worn-out "Practical Handbook of Dialects from Various Provinces" from the main hospital library and spent every night lying on her bed reciting it over and over again, following the phonetic table at the back of the book.

"Goose...goose rascal..."

Zhao Lanlan put down her pen, turned to look at her, and asked, "What were you reading?"

"Shaanxi dialect!" Gu Yue looked up, her face filled with despair. "The book says this phrase means 'my child.' My sister-in-law said that more than half of the callers are relatives from the Northwest and Southwest, and they don't speak Mandarin fluently. We can't have them frantically trying to understand something on the other end while I can't understand a word, can we?"

Zhao Lanlan picked up the manual and flipped through it, stopping at the page with the Sichuan dialect.

"Let's learn these phrases first." Zhao Lanlan circled a few words with her pen. "'Wa'er' means child, 'nao huo' means serious, and 'mo de fa' means there's no way to deal with it. Hearing these words on the phone will give you a sense of what's going on."

Two girls huddled on either side of the octagonal table, their shadows stretched long by the lamplight. Their notebooks were filled with various dialect annotations and medical shorthand symbols.