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

Lin Yi had never realized that the floor of the catheterization lab was so big.

After dinner, he carried a tin bucket and a mop out of the logistics department. The bucket was more than half full of water, with two scum of soap floating on the surface. He pushed open the door to the pipe room, dipped the mop into the water a couple of times, wrung it out, and started wiping from under the innermost workbench.

The floor is terrazzo, and the seams are filled with lead powder and dried iodine residue. These marks cannot be wiped off with a regular mop; you have to squat down and use a brush to pick them off bit by bit.

Lin Yi squatted on the ground, pressing his left hand against the ground while rubbing back and forth with a stiff-bristled brush in his right hand. The brush made a harsh scrubbing sound as it brushed against the lead powder, and he rubbed a large gray-white patch on his trousers above the knee.

"With this kind of wiping technique, will you pass Teacher Ye's inspection tomorrow?"

The sound came from the doorway.

Lin Yi turned his head.

Li Hong stood by the door, holding a mop in her hand. She was wearing faded old military pants and a blue-gray cotton shirt, her hair tied into a neat ponytail at the back of her head, with a few stray hairs sticking to her forehead, probably having run all the way here.

"Why are you here?" Lin Yi stopped brushing his brush.

Li Hong didn't answer him. She walked straight into the catheterization lab, picked up a mop, and looked around. She silently scanned the areas that needed cleaning: the base of the angiography machine, the lead apron hanger, and every nook and cranny of the operating table.

"You couldn't finish cleaning by yourself even if you stayed up until midnight." Li Hong dipped the mop into the tin bucket, wrung it out until it was half dry, and started cleaning from the left side of the imaging machine, her movements a bit faster than Lin Yi's.

"Teacher Ye punished me, it has nothing to do with you."

"Do I need to be a friend to help you mop the floor?" Li Hong said without looking up.

Lin Yi paused for two seconds, then didn't refuse again.

The two of them wiped the floor one after the other, their mops leaving long wet streaks on the terrazzo. The catheterization room was small; it was difficult for the two of them to turn around inside. The metal buckets were moved around, and water splashed out, soaking Lin Yi's shoes.

"Be careful," Li Hong said, pursing her lips at him.

"Put the bucket in one place and don't kick it around."

"Who kicked it? You're the one with the big feet blocking the way."

The two were arguing when footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the door.

It wasn't just one person.

Sun Jianjun pushed open the door and came in, carrying a dry rag and half a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Gu Yue followed behind him, holding an enamel mug in both hands, with a new stiff-bristled brush stuck in it.

Lin Yi nearly poked the mop in his hand onto the leg of the workbench.

"What are you two doing here?"

Sun Jianjun didn't reply. He went straight to the lead apron rack, took a dry cloth, and began wiping the dust off the apron. The lead aprons were heavy, each weighing nearly fifteen pounds. He held the hem of the apron with one hand and carefully wiped the creases on the shoulders with the other.

Gu Yue squatted down, took out a new brush from the enamel mug, and brought it close to the floor where Lin Yi had just squatted, scrubbing vigorously at the iodine stains in the seams.

"Teacher Ye punished Lin Yi." Li Hong straightened up, dragging her mop, looked at Sun Jianjun, then at Gu Yue, "You..."

"Lin Yi stood up for me." Sun Jianjun turned his lead apron over and continued wiping, his tone flat.

Gu Yue didn't even look up, rubbing the brush back and forth in the cracks of the floor, gradually fading the iodine stains. "He mops the floor and we help him scrub, it's not much trouble."

Four people were crammed into a catheterization lab of less than 30 square meters. A metal bucket was pushed to the corner, and a mop leaned against the imaging machine stand. Li Hong wiped the operating table, Lin Yi mopped the floor, Sun Jianjun cleaned the lead apron hanger, and Gu Yue lay on the floor scrubbing the stubborn stains in the crevices.

No one said any more polite words.

The catheterization lab was filled with the pungent smell of soapy water and hydrogen peroxide mixed together. A window was pushed open a crack, and the cool breeze of early autumn rushed in from outside, driving out the dampness that had been trapped inside.

Lin Yi finished mopping the last corner, straightened up, his arms aching so much he could barely lift them. He looked back—the entire floor was spotless, revealing the natural terrazzo finish, and the six lead aprons on the rack were neatly arranged; even the rust on the hooks had been treated with hydrogen peroxide by Sun Jianjun.

He glanced at Gu Yue, who was still squatting on the ground, and then at Sun Jianjun, who was wringing out a rag.

After wiping the last piece of the countertop, Li Hong stood up and rubbed her lower back.

The four people stood in the middle of the cleaned-up catheterization room, looking at each other in bewilderment.

It's impossible to say who laughed first.

It might have been Gu Yue; she had been squatting for too long, and when she stood up, her legs went numb. She stumbled and almost fell into the tin bucket, but Sun Jianjun quickly pulled her back. It could also have been Li Hong; she noticed a grayish-white soap stain on half of Lin Yi's face, like a half-painted face in Peking Opera.

In short, all four of them laughed.

"Hey." Lin Yi suddenly remembered something, his smile fading. "Jianjun, have you finished reviewing that Faro's case?"

I watched it three times.

"Professor Ye will have you on second assistant duty on Monday." Lin Yi slammed a mop on the floor. "That level of open-heart surgery, ventricular septal defect repair and right ventricular outflow tract unblocking. If the pulmonary artery dysplasia is more severe than written in the medical record, do you know what you'll face after the open-heart surgery?"

Sun Jianjun did not respond.

"I'll ask you one more time," Lin Yi said seriously, "What is the maximum time allowed for aortic clamping?"

"The textbooks say it should be within sixty minutes," Sun Jianjun said, draping a rag over the horizontal bar of the lead apron rack. "But Teacher Ye's habit is to keep it under forty-five minutes."

"Have you calculated her average speed for stitching a single stitch?"

"Seven seconds."

Lin Yi raised an eyebrow.

"I've checked the video recordings of her previous Faro procedures," Sun Jianjun said, tightening the cap on the hydrogen peroxide bottle. "Right ventricular outflow tract unblocking takes an average of eleven minutes, and ventricular septal defect repair, including continuous sutures and pad reinforcement, takes an average of fourteen minutes. I've mentally rehearsed the order in which she might use all the instruments during the procedure six times."

Lin Yi offered no comment; he turned and glanced at Li Hong.

Li Hong nodded slightly.

She also verified these data.

"Don't just memorize the data," Li Hong said. "Professor Ye's surgical habits are different from the textbooks. She has several unique surgical details to reduce bleeding, which cannot be found in external teaching materials."

"First, before cutting open the right ventricular outflow tract, she will use a 4-0 Prolene suture to make a pre-traction suture at both ends of the incision, which can increase the width of the field of vision after the incision by nearly three millimeters."

Li Hong gestured with her fingers.

"Secondly, when she repairs a ventricular septal defect, she doesn't start suturing from the center of the patch, but from the most dangerous stitch next to the conduction bundle. This is because that stitch is most likely to damage the conduction bundle and cause postoperative atrioventricular block. She is used to finishing the most difficult stitch first when she has the most energy and concentration."

Sun Jianjun was silent for a few seconds, then took out a palm-sized notebook from his white coat pocket, opened a blank page, squatted down, and began to take notes.

"You continue."

Li Hong looked at his notebook filled with dense writing; the front pages were already full, and some places even had rudimentary surgical procedure diagrams.

"The third, and most important, step," Li Hong paused, "is that after she sutures the ventricular septal defect patch, before releasing the clamp for reperfusion, she uses a syringe to expel air from the left ventricle. Many surgeons skip this step or do it carelessly, but Professor Ye always expels air three times to ensure there are no residual air bubbles in the patch or the heart chambers. Even a tiny air bubble entering the coronary circulation can cause a postoperative myocardial infarction."

Sun Jianjun memorized it all word for word.

Gu Yue stood quietly to the side and listened. She didn't understand the technical terms, but she could sense that what these people were saying was very important.

Sun Jianjun closed his notebook, put it back in his pocket, and stood up straight.

Thanks.

"Don't thank me." Li Hong placed the mop on the metal bucket to drain. "If you did a good job handing over the instruments during that surgery on Monday, Teacher Ye will give you more opportunities in the future."

The four of them were quiet for a while.

Outside the catheterization lab window, it was completely dark. The fluorescent lights in the corridor emitted a faint humming sound. From the next room, the voices of the night shift nurses changing shifts could be heard, intermittently.

"Let's go, it's time to lock the door." Lin Yi bent down and picked up the tin bucket.

The four people filed out of the catheterization lab, with Lin Yi closing the door behind them and locking it. They walked along the corridor to the fork in the road between the annex and the main building.

Gu Yue followed Sun Jianjun for two steps, then suddenly turned around and shouted at Lin Yi and Li Hong.

"Shall we mop the floor again tomorrow?"

"Damn, there are still six days left."

"Then I'll bring some mung bean soup tomorrow, chilled."

"Okay." Lin Yi chuckled. "The working people need the care of the organization."