Chapter 25
Wen Yan’s sleep wasn’t particularly deep. Just after seven in the evening, she woke on her own.
The bedroom was so quiet that only her breathing remained.
She got up, changed into workout clothes, and, following her body clock, headed to the apartment gym for an hour of iron pumping.
After her shower, refreshed and clear-headed, she sat down at her desk.
Her computer screen lit up, reflecting rows upon rows of dense experimental data and imaging files.
Writing papers was the relatively "quiet" part of her work, but it was no less demanding.
When Wen Yan was fifteen, she had been singled out by the renowned orthopedic authority Professor Wang Fu and taken under her wing for careful guidance.
The old professor often patted her shoulder and said she had a quick mind and even quicker reflexes; she was a rare talent who could do both research and clinical work well, and the path Wang Fu planned for her leaned heavily toward academics and teaching.
But Wen Yan knew very well that compared with the lab, she was more addicted to the operating table.
So when she graduated with her doctorate at twenty-four, she politely declined the offer to stay on at the university and plunged straight into frontline work at Peking University Affiliated Orthopedic Hospital.
With her solid skills and strong research output, she was promoted to attending physician two years ago.
Behind that speed were countless nights like this one, spent alone in front of a computer screen, weighing every word.
Her phone had lain quietly at the corner of the desk the whole time.
Only at eleven o’clock that night did Wen Yan rub at her sore eyes and let her gaze drift over to it.
After a moment’s thought, she picked it up, opened her chat with Jin Zijin, and typed: “Are you still working?”
The message was marked read almost the instant it was sent. A few seconds later, a reply popped up: “Just woke up?”
Even through the screen and the miles between them, Wen Yan could almost see the other woman’s raised eyebrow.
She curved her lips into a small smile. “Mm. I’m writing a paper. What about you? What are you doing?”
This time, the reply was a photo.
Wen Yan opened it. Jin Zijin was wearing a sharply tailored dark gray suit, her long hair neatly swept back as she stood on a brightly lit stage giving a speech.
The woman’s side profile was clean-lined and focused; behind her was a huge projection screen and a faintly visible audience.
She looked exactly like the kind of radiant, powerful woman who seemed born for the financial news.
Under the photo came a line of text: “Just finished a meeting; I’m at a banquet. A little noisy.”
Wen Yan looked quietly at the person in the picture.
She could almost see the woman in the midst of the name-and-profit spectacle, surrounded by people, dazzling and brilliant.
A strange, steady sense of reassurance spread gently through her heart, carried there by the cold screen.
After thinking it over, Wen Yan replied, “Got it. Then you go ahead and handle your side.”
The conversation ended there.
She set the phone down and turned her attention back to the papers.
The sound of her fingers typing on the keyboard echoed rhythmically in the silence of the study, and that faint sense of restlessness in her heart quietly settled.
——————
The next morning, Wen Yan woke as usual before dawn.
Outside the gym’s enormous floor-to-ceiling windows, the light of daybreak was slowly spreading across the sleeping city skyline.
A sharp beam of light split through the clouds like a sword; it happened to strike the spire of the Pearl Tower in the distance, scattering brilliant points of light.
The whole city seemed to wake in that instant.
Wen Yan went downstairs, preparing to head to the gym for boxing.
She watched the scene for a moment, then lifted her phone, aimed it out the window, and took a photo.
After sending it, she added: “The morning sun looks beautiful.”
When she finished training and came out of the gym wiping sweat from her face, her phone rang.
Jin Zijin had sent back a moving image.
In it, she wore a silky deep-purple robe, loosely tied at the waist, leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window in a hotel room.
Nancheng’s rich, full morning light flooded in without restraint, gilding her entire figure with a soft golden outline.
She tilted her head slightly toward the camera; as she moved, the robe collar slipped open a little, revealing a delicate collarbone and a faint, tantalizing curve.
The background was an unfamiliar city bathed in sunrise. Jin Zijin smiled gently. “The morning light here is beautiful too. [wink]”
Wen Yan’s gaze paused for a second on that bit of "spring light," then she laughed helplessly and shook her head.
This person… really never stopped crossing the line.
She went to the island counter and started making breakfast.
While preparing a simple meal, she replied with one hand: “Saw it. Very dazzling.”
The other person replied quickly: “Just the morning light is bright?”
Wen Yan took up the thread. “You’re brighter than the morning light.”
Jin Zijin was satisfied. “You know how to talk.”
Wen Yan smiled, then asked, “Is your schedule tight today?”
“Not bad. I have one final technical coordination session this afternoon.” Jin Zijin seemed to rein in the teasing a little. “What about you? Are you busy in surgery today?”
“Morning rounds, then a multidisciplinary consultation in the afternoon. If everything goes smoothly, I should get off work normally in the evening.”
The conversation continued in this scattered, everyday way, drifting from breakfast to the weather in two different cities.
At one point, Wen Yan paused with her fingertips on the screen and asked, “Do you think it’s boring when I tell you these things? They’re all meaningless little scraps of nonsense.”
Jin Zijin’s reply came quickly: “No. I like hearing you talk about these things. The more detailed, the better; tell me everything.”
“I want to know how you’re living.”
Wen Yan looked at those two lines. The morning sun happened to fall across the fingertips holding her phone, warmth seeping through her skin and slowly into her heart.
——————
At exactly eight o’clock, Wen Yan stepped into the department on time.
After she put on her white coat, she led the resident physicians and nurses on their routine rounds.
The patient conditions, postoperative reactions, and medication details all formed a clear pattern in her mind on their own.
After passing through the general ward under her care, she arrived at the intensive care area.
The female patient with multiple injuries from a car accident, admitted in the middle of the night two days ago, had stabilized after emergency surgery and intensive care. This morning, she had been transferred to the sub-intensive ward under Wen Yan’s name.
Wen Yan stopped at the ward entrance and noticed there was no one by the bed; not a single family member in sight.
She looked at the nurse accompanying her, Lin Xiao. “Where are the family members?”
Lin Xiao lowered her voice. “Dr. Wen, we still haven’t been able to reach any direct family.”
“The patient’s name is Zhang Yue. She came here from out of town for work, and it seems she doesn’t have many relatives in the city. The police said they’re still trying to contact people from her hometown.”
The young nurse sighed, sympathy in her voice. “Sigh, it’s really tragic.”
“She was on a food delivery run, crossing an intersection on a green light, when a refrigerated truck trying to beat the yellow light hit her from the side.”
“And the driver isn’t a bad person either. His wife has ALS, and long-term treatment costs a lot of money. He’s been driving nonstop by himself to make ends meet; he was fatigued, and that’s how the accident happened…”
“The trouble is, the insurance on his truck was bought through a company affiliation, so the process is complicated. The insurance company is still wrangling about it, and the compensation money won’t come through anytime soon.”
After she finished, Lin Xiao stole a careful glance at Wen Yan’s expression and leaned in a little closer, dropping her voice even lower. “Dr. Wen, I know you’re kind-hearted, but this situation is too complicated.”
“Please don’t do what you did last time and quietly pay the medical bills out of your own pocket. You’re married now; you have to think more about yourself and your family.”
Wen Yan’s hand, as she flipped through the chart, paused almost imperceptibly.
She lifted her eyes and gave Lin Xiao a slight nod, her expression calm and unreadable. “I know. Thanks for the reminder.”
She gave a few more instructions on nursing points, let her gaze rest for a moment on the female patient still asleep in the bed, her body wrapped in bandages and tubes, then turned and left.
——————
The afternoon brought a large multidisciplinary consultation.
The atmosphere was heavy.
A retired old leader had a complex hip fracture; the surgery itself already carried a high risk, and on top of that, he had severe coronary artery disease.
The cardiology department insisted on doing a cardiac intervention first, then considering orthopedic surgery after stabilization.
Orthopedics worried that delaying would worsen displacement at the fracture site, increasing the difficulty of later reduction and the risk of complications.
Arguments flew back and forth in the conference room, all kinds of medical terms and risk probabilities colliding in the air.
Most of the time, Wen Yan stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the constantly changing images, her fingers tapping lightly against the table without awareness.
Only when the debate narrowed to the orthopedic surgery “time window” and the “possible circulatory impact during the operation” did Dean Wang Fu, who was chairing the meeting, call on her. “Wen Yan, from the perspectives of orthopedics and trauma stress, give us your judgment.”
Everyone’s attention turned to her.
Wen Yan looked up; her tone was steady, with no embellishment at all, cutting straight to the core. “Based on the current imaging, the fracture is unstable. If surgery is delayed beyond seventy-two hours, the risk of secondary displacement and secondary vascular or nerve injury will rise by more than forty percent.”
“During the operation, we can use a minimally invasive approach and strictly control blood loss. At the same time, with close cooperation from anesthesia and controlled hypotension, we can minimize the procedure’s impact on circulation.”
“In terms of timing, I’m confident I can complete the key reduction and fixation within two hours.”
She paused, then added, “Of course, that assumes our cardiology colleagues can adjust the patient’s heart function to the borderline level tolerable for surgery beforehand.”
“This is parallel work, not a serial wait.”
Clear, calm, data-based, and still mindful of collaboration.
The room fell silent for a few seconds; then the plan gradually took shape in the direction of her recommendation.
In the final decision, she was assigned the most complex and highest-pressure part.
As she left the conference room, people from the same department glanced at her, some with a bit of schadenfreude.
Wen Yan, however, felt quite good about it. After all, opportunities like this were rare; she was more than happy to be the one on the table for such a complicated surgery.
She ignored their looks and kept walking. Only when she reached the corridor did she realize the sunset had already dyed the window at the far end a warm amber.
Wen Yan stopped, leaned against the window, and looked at the setting sun, letting out a soft breath.
The brief emptiness after high-intensity mental exertion made the fatigue deep in her body surface faintly.
Just then, her phone vibrated in her pocket.
It was Jin Zijin.
The woman had sent a photo that looked like some research center’s laboratory, with complicated circuit boards and a prototype screen in the background.
She wore a fitted suit skirt, standing off to the side as she listened to an engineer explain something. Her profile looked especially focused under the cool light of the instruments.
Along with it came a message: “A real-time physiological monitoring prototype. The precision is very high; you may be able to use it in surgery before long.”
Then the next message popped up, without any image at all, just seven simple characters: “Alright, I’m tired; I want to go home.”
Wen Yan’s gaze settled on that last line.
Outside the window, the city lights gradually came on, blending with the remaining glow of the sunset at the horizon.
That phrase, “I want to go home,” was like a small stone dropped into the calm lake of her heart; ripples spread outward, subtle but impossible to ignore.
She let her fingertips rest on the screen for a moment, then replied: “Mm. I’ll wait for you to come back.”
After thinking it over, she added one more sentence, as if trying out the act of sharing; she wanted to pass a little of what had just happened in her world to the other side: “Today’s consultation; I took on a tough one.”
“I like it a lot.”
The message was sent.
She put away her phone and headed toward the changing room.
Wen Yan’s face was still that same calm, expressionless one, but in her steps there seemed to be a trace of barely perceptible lightness more than usual.
——————
On the days when Jin Zijin was away, Wen Yan’s life returned to the familiar cycle of hectic work. Surgery, rounds, papers, night shifts… over and over again.
Only occasionally, in the gaps between operations, when she pulled out her phone and saw a few words from the other woman or a photo from some distant corner, would she feel a brief daze, confirming that the sweetness and companionship woven through those days were not some illusion born of her busy mind.
After several days of intensive work, Zhang Yue, the car-accident patient, improved steadily and was transferred to a general ward.
That morning during rounds, Wen Yan saw an unexpected figure beside Zhang Yue’s bed.
It was an elderly woman with white hair and a bent back.
She wore a washed-out corduroy jacket, the cuffs worn thin, and was sitting carefully on a small square stool by the bed.
In her hands was an old aluminum lunchbox with chipped paint. Using a little spoon, she scooped some steaming, soft rice porridge from inside, blew on it carefully until it was warm, then gently brought it to Zhang Yue’s lips.
Zhang Yue still had gauze wrapped around her head, bruising on her face, and a brace around her neck. Her movements were difficult, but each time she still made an effort to stretch her neck and swallow obediently.
Both of them moved very slowly, yet there was an odd kind of tacit understanding between them.
The old woman fed her with focused attention; her cloudy eyes held a seriousness so earnest it was almost pious.
Zhang Yue ate with difficulty, but her gaze was clear.
She looked at the old woman, and in that look there was no resentment, only a calm that came after surviving a great ordeal, along with a faint yet resilient light.
Wen Yan walked over with the nurse.
The old woman sensed the movement, hurriedly set down the lunchbox, and stood up. She rubbed her hands awkwardly against her clothes, a humble and nervous smile gathering on her face. “D-doctor… hello, nurse, hello…”
Wen Yan asked gently, “Ma’am, are you Zhang Yue’s family?”
The old woman was hard of hearing; she tilted her head and listened twice before understanding. She waved her hands repeatedly.
Then she pointed at Zhang Yue on the bed. Her dialect was heavy. “No, no… I’m, I’m that old bastard’s mother, the one who hit her.”
She lowered her head, her voice dropping. “What a sin… that little bastard wasn’t careful driving and hurt someone else’s young girl like this…”
“He couldn’t get past it in his head, and he didn’t have time to come himself, so he asked this old woman to come first… to look after the girl a bit.”
“That girl has no family here, no one to rely on. Poor thing…”
As she spoke, her eyes reddened. She used her rough hand to wipe at them, then quickly explained, “Doctor, I made this porridge myself. It’s clean; I put a little minced meat in it to help her recover.”
“I asked the nurse. They said she can eat it.”
Wen Yan glanced at the simple lunchbox, still steaming, then at Zhang Yue, silent but with reddened eyes on the bed, and felt a little sourness in her nose.
She turned to Zhang Yue, checked the wound and her vital signs, and said steadily, “You’re recovering better than expected. Keep up your nutrition and cooperate actively with rehab exercises; we can be optimistic about your discharge time.”
That was said to the patient, and also to the old woman.
When she heard this, the old woman immediately wanted to bow again. Then she seemed to remember something and her face became even more awkward and uneasy. She twisted the hem of her clothes, her voice barely louder than a mosquito’s buzz. “Doctor… there’s one more thing I want to beg you about…”
“The money for the surgery, and the hospitalization fees, we… we really can’t put them together right away.”
The old woman lifted her head, hope shining in her eyes. “Could we… could we delay payment a little longer? We’ll raise it, we will, we really will…”
Wen Yan was silent for a few seconds.
The light from the corridor fell across her impassive side profile; after a moment, she spoke, her voice not loud but clear. “Yes.”
“I’ll approve a deferred payment application for you. If you still have difficulties at discharge, you can come find me again.”
The old woman froze; then, without warning, big tears spilled down her face and ran along the creases of her weathered cheeks.
She kept muttering “Thank you, Doctor Buddha,” “Thank you, good person,” almost kneeling down, only to be steadied in time by the nurse beside her.
Wen Yan said nothing more, nodded, and turned to leave the ward.
After a few steps, the accompanying nurse sighed softly. “I really didn’t expect it… for the driver’s mother to be like this.”
“This family may be poor, and something terrible happened, but they didn’t lose their conscience.”
Wen Yan looked toward the bright windows at the end of the corridor and gave a quiet “Mm.”
“Yes,” she said softly, as if to herself, or perhaps as if sighing. “In many situations, conscience is a scarcer resource than money.”
——————
This matter, like a stone thrown into deep water, spread fine ripples through Wen Yan’s heart.
Heavy and lingering, it stirred the calm mood she usually kept.
At lunch, she ate the exquisite meal routinely delivered by the family chef, but it tasted like sawdust.
The sunlight outside was perfect, yet she kept thinking of the steaming bowl of minced-meat porridge in the ward, of the old woman’s rough fingers wiping away tears, of Zhang Yue’s quiet but clear eyes.
After hesitating for a moment, she finally picked up her phone and opened the only chat window.
She wasn’t used to long-winded explanations; she simply condensed what she had seen that morning into a few plain paragraphs and sent them over.
“I have a patient who came in after a car accident. She came here from out of town for work, and she has no family here. Today, in her ward, I saw an old woman taking care of her. At first I thought it was her mother, who had traveled a long way to see her, but when I asked, that wasn’t the case.”
“This old woman is the driver’s mother. The driver’s family is poor too, and because there’s no insurance payout yet, and they were worried the girl would have no one looking after her in the hospital, they sent the driver’s elderly mother to care for her.”
“The driver’s family is pitiful too. The driver’s wife has ALS, and the family doesn’t have much money.”
“But even so, he didn’t refuse compensation, and he didn’t try to flee the accident.”
“I think this family is really good. They’re rare good people.”
“There are a lot of pitiful people in the hospital; sometimes, if you look closely, there are quite a few good people too.”
Wen Yan sent it in a few quick taps, as if setting down a burden. She put away her phone and kept eating.
Not long after, Jin Zijin replied.
Wen Yan opened the phone and saw only one line: “You want to help them, don’t you?”
Wen Yan froze instantly.
Her thoughts were pierced with such precision that it felt as if the deepest, most carefully hidden idea in her heart had suddenly been illuminated by a bright beam of light.
No judgment; only understanding.
A sour feeling surged up her throat, and her eyes inexplicably grew hot.
Holding her phone, she sat quietly in the empty break room for a very long time.
Only when drifting clouds passed outside and the light shifted did she finally draw in a small breath and type a single word on the screen: “Mm.”
After thinking it over, she added one more line: “Can I?”
————————
Wen Yan’s day: surgery, surgery, surgery; consultation, consultation, consultation; busy, busy, busy…
Being this busy and still managing to date; clearly she’s got endless energy [pat head]
No wonder her wife got dizzy.
Anyone want to recommend me someone? [pat head]
Seriously, anyone? [pat head]
[pan-da face] Hehe, give me a recommendation, won’t you? Come on, friends, recommend me one