When Chen Junnan walked out of the operating room alone ahead of time, he realized without noticing that dusk had fallen—three hours had passed.
Chen Junnan ran to the rooftop and lit a cigarette, his hands still trembling uncontrollably. Che Mingming followed him with a smile and struck up a conversation: "Not bad. I always thought you were all show, but you’ve got some real skills."
Chen Junnan said, "Actually, after working for so long in a hospital that’s behind in everything, we’ve all become tough and resilient. There’s no research, no learning—everything we do is just routine work. Since he came, he’s dragged me along and got me motivated. Now I study every night, like I’m being reforged. But I also regret being with him. I probably won’t be able to slack off anymore—it’s bound to be exhausting, always on edge. Wouldn’t it be better if I just took it easy, clocking in and out, living a peaceful life? With him around, there’s no such thing as a good day."
Che Mingming laughed and said, "What’s there to regret? Soon you’ll be a top expert in neurosurgery, hitting the mark with every needle. You’ll be known as the 'One-Needle Clearance of Fushun.'"
After the intracranial pressure medication had gradually taken effect, Liu Zhengliang asked a nurse to summon Dean Long and said, "This young woman’s family is quite poor. I’ve thought of a solution and would like to discuss it with you. Instead of using a titanium alloy artificial skull, could we use the bone fiber fragments removed during the surgery to refill the area? You see, she has multiple fracture points from the head impact. If I use an artificial skull, even a tiny gap during installation could lead to infection later, which poses a greater risk. It would be safer to wait a few months until the patient’s condition improves and then perform another surgery to install the artificial skull."
Dean Long quickly asked, "But what about the patient’s appearance? If the surgery is successful and she’s discharged, she’ll have depressions on both sides of her head. That won’t look good. She’s only in her thirties—how will she live with that? Have the family members agreed to your plan? We don’t want to end up with a lawsuit later."
Liu Zhengliang replied, "When her life is at stake, what does appearance matter? I haven’t spoken to the family yet. I was hoping you could handle that—you’re the expert in this area."
Dean Long said, "You decide on the professional matters. I’ll take care of communicating with the family."
Liu Zhengliang saved the patient thirty thousand yuan by carefully grinding and reshaping the bone fragments that had been removed earlier, piecing them together like a tangram puzzle and packing them back in. After all, it was the patient’s own tissue—these bone fragments would soon fuse back into a new skull. Of course, since they had been fractured, the upper temporal areas on both sides remained very fragile and somewhat sunken after the surgery.On the third day, the patient regained consciousness. When Chen Junnan went on rounds, he found the patient - a beautiful young woman - with bilateral pupils equal and round, able to make fists when asked and wiggle toes when instructed. Only then did the heavy stone in Chen Junnan's heart finally drop. Previous procedures had been simple, but only fellow doctors could understand how difficult this particular operation had been. The patient's family members commented on how skillfully the probe had been inserted into the head, marveling at the doctor's precise technique that hit the exact spot without any deviation.
Chen Junnan offered an analogy: It was like shooting birds in heavy fog, catching fish in muddy water, or pushing a cart through a green train during Spring Festival travel season, calling out "peanuts, beer, sausages, roasted chicken, instant noodles, mineral water" while navigating from the first carriage to the fourteenth. You know your destination is the fourteenth carriage, but how to get through the crowded train presents a philosophical question, even a metaphysical one, or perhaps a probability problem. Anyone who has traveled by train knows the vendor will eventually reach the end of the train - even if you haven't done it yourself, you've seen it done. But given a cart to push yourself, not everyone could manage it successfully.
Difficult as it was, the journey had to be made. Without reconnaissance troops reaching their positions, battlefield intelligence remains unclear. Should they opt for conservative treatment to preserve the young woman's appearance, or remove two large skull bones to save her life? Without measuring ventricular intracranial pressure, it's nearly impossible to assess surgical outcomes. The brain isn't like an arm - you can't simply open it up for inspection, manually adjust things, or put everything back. You can only use physical methods to trigger internal causes rather than external forces to restore normal positioning before suturing.
Faced with the brain's complex computer-like system, all doctors are merely refrigerator repair technicians. You understand short circuits, grounding errors, and burnt motherboards, but you can't disassemble the CPU for repairs. At most, you can replace a memory module - you can't even repair that properly, only electroplate broken points.
Several years ago, an Italian scientist published papers about head transplantation experiments, proposing to connect a patient paralyzed from the neck down with another terminally ill patient's body. Liu Zhengliang had discussed this experiment's feasibility with colleagues and teachers at Union Medical College back then. Their conclusion: utterly impossible. Setting aside lymphatic and blood system rejection issues, even assuming these could be resolved and the donor body was cloned from the patient, spinal cord connection alone would be unachievable. How could you possibly reconnect millions of neural pathways after cutting them with a single slice?
Therefore, when dealing with such patients, while they appear to be performing rescues each time - occasionally achieving miraculous results - ultimately everything depends on the patient's own vitality. This particular patient demonstrated remarkable resilience. After thorough cleaning of the extensive intracranial hematoma, no significant sequelae are currently anticipated. With midline restoration complete, the risk to her life has substantially decreased.Both Chen Junnan and Liu Zhengliang understood that this patient would have a depression in the top of her head in the future. Her family would have to spend money to install a titanium alloy artificial skull—after all, a young woman couldn’t walk around with two dents in her brain like an alien, being pointed at on the street. But it seemed her family definitely couldn’t afford this money. Never mind for now; they’d deal with it in a few months.
The patient was named Cui Jia. She said she had been with her man for seventeen years, yet she was only thirty-three this year, and that was counting the nine months in the womb as a full year. No matter how you calculated it, her man was old enough to be sentenced. Back when she was fifteen or sixteen, she hadn’t studied properly in middle school, spending her days hanging out with so-called “big brothers” from the streets—today at the arcade, tomorrow at the internet café, the day after at the roller rink, and the next at the swimming pool.
In those earlier years, the big brothers had a pretty rough time too, riding bicycles around the neighborhoods as “street toughs,” their hardware never quite keeping up. They were mostly a bunch of drifters from laid-off worker families. Drifters usually had a drifter for a father, and those fathers typically spent their days flirting with young girls at work—taking a swing whether there was a chance or not. If they hit, they’d take a bite; if they missed, they’d go home, drink, and beat their wives. They lived with the mindset that life was fleeting, and if they didn’t beat their wives now, they might never get the chance again. So in those years, in the Khrushchyovka buildings of the worker communities, pots would clang against ladles, or there’d be howls and wails every few days.
Northeasterners once had a kind of philosophy: love grows and strengthens through hardship—the more you fight, the more inseparable you become. A woman needs to be kept in line. But this philosophy had two sides: beating was beating, but it couldn’t just be emotional venting. It had to express the sentiment, “I hit you because I love you.” This was different from beating a son out of frustration that he wasn’t living up to expectations. When beating a wife, you generally couldn’t slap her face—it wouldn’t look good if outsiders saw. Usually, you’d hit the limbs and buttocks, and after beating her, you could caress and lick the wounds. Then, sweet words were needed, basically expressing, “I lost control because I love you so much.” Sometimes, you even had to kneel and apologize. The kneeling had to be like a child who finally realized they were wrong, which could trigger the woman’s maternal instincts, leading to tenderness after the storm in the embrace and licking.
Whether it was a man or a woman, after beating or being beaten a few times, they’d become familiar with this routine. No one was a fool. You’d come at me with a rolling pin, then cry and say you loved me, telling me, “Can’t you stop chatting with Old Wu next door? I can’t stand the way he looks at you. Why don’t you learn?”
Treating someone like a fool and playing the same trick a few times—that wasn’t in line with the spirit of science.
Men learned to play the game, and women understood it too. But why not get a divorce?
Some did, some didn’t. Those who saw clearly knew this was a scumbag, and the sooner they left, the better. Those who didn’t see clearly thought, “This person loves me. He’s had a hard time too. He loves me so much it’s driven him crazy. I should be understanding.”
If you’re sick, you need treatment.
Cui Jia’s mother-in-law was beaten like this and ran away.
Cui Jia’s husband was just like his father, so now she was lying here.
Che Mingming asked Cui Jia’s mother, “Did you call the police?”
Cui Jia’s mother said, “Yes, they took him away on the spot.”Liu Zhengliang called Cui Jia's father outside the ward and said quietly, "Your daughter's condition is only temporarily controlled with intracranial pressure management. She still needs follow-up surgeries, and after her condition stabilizes, we'll need to implant an artificial skull. This will still require considerable expenses."
Cui Jia's father, a retired worker rehired by a private company, began trembling where he stood.
Before the surgery, Liu Zhengliang had asked Cui Jia's parents to prepare thirty thousand yuan, which was nearly depleted that same day. Just the intracranial pressure monitoring alone was billed in twenty-minute increments, not to mention the subsequent anti-infection medications and wound disinfection costs.
The titanium alloy artificial skull, designed in a grid pattern to cover the cranial defect, allows screws to pass through the grid and secure it to the skull. These hadn't even been installed yet—if they were, the cost would far exceed the current amount.
As soon as patient Cui Jia regained consciousness, she began moaning softly about being discharged.
Chen Junnan walked over cheerfully, leaning close to her bedside, and said, "Little sister, do you know how much risk I took to save you? In all my years practicing medicine, I've never lost a patient. Not a single person has died on my operating table. Do you know why?"
Cui Jia listened without responding.
Chen Junnan continued spinning tales to comfort her: "I used to only handle Appendicitis, tonsillectomies, hemorrhoids, and anal fistula surgeries—never touched hearts or brains. I broke my own rule for you."
Cui Jia whispered, "My family truly has no money left. If I stay any longer, my parents will end up sleeping on the streets."
Chen Junnan said, "Don't worry, you'll only need to stay at most fifteen more days. After that, even if you want to stay longer, we won't keep you."
Che Mingming, standing nearby, asked, "Why did your husband hit you so brutally?"
Cui Jia's father sighed deeply. "We were scammed. We invested in some 'national asset unfreezing' scheme, transferred all our hundred thousand yuan savings, promised a share of five hundred million in national assets. We haven't seen a single cent—not even a hair. When her husband found out, he was so enraged that he beat her."
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