Friday morning in Binhai was a bit overcast, looking like it was about to rain.

Just after seven, Yan Feifan and Yu Suye, who was drinking soy milk and eating a savory crepe, happened to run into each other at the south gate of the Affiliated Hospital.

They looked at each other and asked in unison, “You didn’t sleep well either?”

Both of their eyes were a little bloodshot.

Yan Feifan explained first, “My downstairs neighbor had a sudden mesenteric artery embolism last night, so I brought him to the hospital for an examination and surgery.”

“I was up with him until one or two in the morning.”

“What about you?”

Yu Suye replied, clearly frustrated, “Someone was having a party. You know how it is—the soundproofing in the apartments isn’t great. They were so loud I couldn’t get to sleep until late.”

She then asked with concern, “Feifan, this is an eight-hour surgery and you’re the lead surgeon. Can you handle it?”

Yan Feifan said confidently, “No problem.”

“For the estimated eight-hour surgery time, I’ve already built in an hour of buffer.”

“This surgery on Guo Fan can be paused at any time.”

“If the one-hour break at noon isn’t enough, we can just pause the operation again around three or four in the afternoon and take another half-hour break…”

After Yan Feifan completed the preoperative examination on Guo Fan, the surgery began promptly at eight in the morning.

The operation was performed in Operating Room Six of the Trauma Surgery Department.

Yu Suye was the surgical assistant, while the anesthesiologist and nurses were all from the Trauma Surgery Department.

Because it was a full-body muscle trauma repair surgery and expected to be lengthy, Guo Fan was placed under general anesthesia.

Yan Feifan began by making an incision in the skin of Guo Fan’s upper right arm.

He pulled back the incised skin, revealing the bright red, clearly defined muscle in his field of view.

He found that the actual situation was even more complex than what he had perceived through palpation.

The muscle fibers he saw were a mess: some had snapped in the middle and atrophied, while others were tangled and adhered together.

There were also muscle bundles that had torn directly from their tendons.

In the shoulder tendon area, Yan Feifan also discovered inflammation…

Next, Yan Feifan became a muscle cosmetologist.

He trimmed away the severely atrophied muscle fibers, meticulously separated the tangled and adhered ones, and sutured the torn tendons.

He also cleaned up the inflammation…

All of this work required precise technique, as well as immense care and patience.

For Yan Feifan, who had been trapped in a world of consciousness for an unknown number of years, technique, care, and patience were things he had in abundance…

Yan Feifan spent the entire morning performing this seemingly simple and repetitive work…

As the surgical assistant, Yu Suye actually didn’t have much to do during this operation.

Her main job was to use surgical forceps to hold open the incised skin, giving Yan Feifan enough room to work.

Because there was so little bleeding from the skin, she didn’t even have to use the suction tool, the most common instrument for a surgical assistant, a single time.

As for suturing, to minimize scarring, Yan Feifan handled it all himself using an intradermal suture technique.

Feeling a bit bored and trying not to fall asleep, Yu Suye focused her attention on Yan Feifan.

Yu Suye watched Yan Feifan, who was completely absorbed in his work.

She had to admit, she was thoroughly impressed by the man before her.

He was the one who had made the proud and arrogant Yu Suye understand for the first time that there was always someone better, a higher mountain to climb.

Through their subsequent interactions, Yu Suye had come to feel that Yan Feifan was so far ahead of her that they weren’t even in the same league.

There was the cleft lip repair surgery that truly showcased his skills, and also the thumb replantation surgery he had taken over under unexpected circumstances.

When Yu Suye replayed the events in her head, putting herself in Yan Feifan’s shoes, she realized she truly could not have done what he did.

Especially with the thumb replantation surgery; Yu Suye wouldn’t have had the courage to boast to Chen Yu that she could handle it.

She didn’t have that confidence in herself…

As for the operation at hand.

Yu Suye understood that while it looked simple, the very first step—locating the injuries purely through palpation—was something very few people could do.

This kind of minor muscle damage, apart from the patient noticing it through soreness and other sensations, was undetectable by medical instruments.

If the patient couldn’t feel it themselves, then there was no way to know.

Yan Feifan had already made nearly forty incisions on Guo Fan’s body, and Yu Suye hadn’t seen a single one miss its mark.

There are three things a surgeon dreads most: making an empty incision, a patient dying on the operating table, and leaving a foreign object behind.

An ’empty incision’ refers to a situation where a problem or tumor diagnosed preoperatively requires surgery, but upon opening the patient, nothing is found.

Thanks to detailed and meticulous preoperative investigations, as well as the widespread use of diagnostic tools like imaging tests, lab work, and various minimally invasive endoscopic examinations, ’empty incisions’ have become rare.

But for Yan Feifan to have located all these injuries with just his two hands, without a single incision being misplaced, left Yu Suye no choice but to be impressed.

‘Just how detailed must his understanding of human musculature be, and how sensitive must his hands be, to reach such a level?’

Yu Suye admitted to herself that she could never reach that level.

She also noticed something else.

The surgery had been going on for three and a half hours, and Yu Suye could see the fatigue in Yan Feifan’s eyes.

But the movements of his hands hadn’t changed at all; they were just as precise and meticulous as they were when the surgery began.

That level of control was something Yu Suye was confident she could also achieve, but she couldn’t match the degree of meticulousness in his work…

The more she observed, the more Yu Suye realized that the gap between her and Yan Feifan was all-encompassing. It seemed there wasn’t a single area where she held an advantage.

This made her feel a little discouraged…

“What time is it?”

The sudden voice snapped Yu Suye out of her daze, and she quickly glanced at the clock on the wall.

“Eleven forty-two!”

“Alright, Side A is done. Intermission. At one this afternoon, we’ll start on Side B.”

A ripple of soft laughter spread through the operating room at Yan Feifan’s words.

Yu Suye volunteered to stay in the operating room to watch over Guo Fan just in case, while Yan Feifan and the others left to get some lunch.

As the lead surgeon, Yan Feifan made sure to inform Guo Fan’s parents and girlfriend that the surgery had been going smoothly so far.

On his way to the employee cafeteria, Yan Feifan received an unexpected call from Lo Jun.

“Xiaoyan, Mr. Pan suddenly found himself unable to get up after sitting down this morning.”

“We just got the MRI scans back, and the results aren’t good!”

Yan Feifan asked in a somber voice, “Mr. Lo, how much time does he have?”

“Three days, at most. After that, it’s hard to say.”

Yan Feifan decided immediately. “Then we’ll do the surgery on the third day.”

“Mr. Lo, Ms. Liu’s surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll go perform the tumor biopsy and take a sample this evening.”

A heavy breath came through the phone, followed by Lo Jun’s voice again. “Xiaoyan, are you confident?”

Yan Feifan said after a moment of thought, “Mr. Lo, I can only say that I have a certain degree of confidence…”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep