The piercing sound of an alarm clock rang through the room. Tang Yuan took quite a while before he rubbed his eyes and crawled out of bed, walking drowsily toward the bathroom while yawning. He skillfully stepped on a small stool, relieved himself, flushed, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, and washed his face. Then he took a comb and scraped at his hair a couple of times in front of the mirror, finally satisfied as he flashed a toothy grin at the cute little shota in the mirror.

“What are you preening for? Hurry up and move.” A large hand unceremoniously patted his head, ruining the hairstyle he had just fixed.

“Ah! Uncle, you’re so mean!” Tang Yuan bristled, covering his little head as he jumped down from the small stool, puffing out his cheeks angrily.

“Good boy, little Tang Yuan. I’ve already bought breakfast and put it on the dining room table—soy milk, fried dough sticks, beef pancakes, and two bowls of small wontons.” The doctor completely ignored the little one’s tantrum, leisurely picking up the soap.

Sure enough, as soon as his words fell, the little shota Tang Yuan cheered as expected and rushed toward the dining room, followed immediately by the clanging sounds of bowls and chopsticks.

The doctor had some occupational cleanliness habits, which led him to spend extra time washing his hands even at home. Of course, it wasn’t as extreme as needing the eight-step handwashing method required for entering an operating room, nor did he need medical hand brushes. He carefully and thoroughly washed both hands, then trimmed his slightly grown fingernails before satisfactorily drying them with a towel. So when he walked into the dining room, he discovered that half the breakfast on the table was already gone, with Tang Yuan wolfing down food with a pancake in his left hand and a fried dough stick in his right.

“Eat slowly. Chewing carefully is good for your health.” The doctor sighed inwardly, thinking about how this child had been picked up from the street and saved at the hospital, yet couldn’t explain his own identity. He only knew his name was Tang Yuan, and as far as he could remember, he had always lived with his master, but that master was nowhere to be found.

Thinking of this, the doctor couldn’t help but silently curse that unreliable master. This child must have been trafficked from a young age. He had even secretly taken Tang Yuan’s photo and posted it on Weibo, asking netizens to help spread it in hopes of finding his parents. But according to what the child said, he had been with that master since he was very young. The difference between a two or three-year-old child and a ten-year-old was significant, so the possibility of finding this child’s parents was very slim.

At the time, Tang Yuan had only been severely frozen. After being revived, there were no medical fees to speak of, and the hospital couldn’t arrange for him to stay. Normally, in such situations, they should report to the local police, get a certificate, and then contact an orphan welfare institution to take in Tang Yuan, while the police would search through massive databases for possible matches to Tang Yuan’s parents.

This was a lengthy waiting process.

The doctor didn’t know what he was thinking at the time. Seeing Tang Yuan’s dispirited expression, his heart softened. He communicated with the beat cop who came to register information and let Tang Yuan stay at his house for the time being.

Fortunately, Tang Yuan was particularly well-behaved and sensible, never causing the doctor any trouble. It even felt like having a pet at home waiting for him to return, giving the doctor a great sense of accomplishment. Of course, speaking of pets, the doctor still wasn’t used to that little white snake that appeared and disappeared mysteriously in his house.

Halfway through eating his fried dough stick, the doctor’s face darkened as he lifted the little white snake that had unauthorized climbed up his calf from his pant leg.

“Haha… Little Lu Lu was originally hibernating, but it’s probably warm in the house, so she woke up.” Tang Yuan laughed dryly while taking the pure white little snake from the doctor’s hands. Looking at the little white snake in Tang Yuan’s arms that was lazily flicking out its red forked tongue, the doctor felt an uncontrollable sense of fear rising in his heart. He unconsciously furrowed his brow.

Having grown up in the countryside as a child, he had long been accustomed to seeing grass snakes slithering through the fields and could ignore them completely. How was it that he didn’t know he would actually be afraid of snakes now?

But even if he was afraid of snakes, this one was only as thick as a finger—he could crush it with one hand. How could he still be afraid? Too absurd!

Right, snakes were cold-blooded animals. It must be that it had suddenly climbed up his calf just now, and that cold sensation had startled him.

While the doctor was making excuses for himself, Tang Yuan had already hurriedly jumped down from the dining table, carrying the little white snake to a corner of the living room where an antique woven medicine basket was placed. Tang Yuan put the little white snake back while pleading in a low voice: “My little ancestor, please don’t cause any more trouble. What if this uncle gets angry and throws us out? It’s freezing cold outside! You can hibernate, but I don’t have that ability!”

The little white snake elegantly coiled several circles in the medicine basket but didn’t sleep. Instead, it raised its head slightly with some arrogance, flicking out its bright red forked tongue with a hissing sound.

“Ah? What are you saying? I can’t speak Parseltongue like Harry Potter.” Tang Yuan scratched his cheek with his finger in distress.

The little white snake rolled its eyes speechlessly.

“Could you be hungry? I don’t see Master feeding you anything normally…” At this point, Tang Yuan suddenly shivered because he remembered that this white snake indeed didn’t eat ordinary things, but would occasionally bite Master’s neck—not to suck blood, but to absorb spiritual energy. Now that Master wasn’t here, who would he find to serve as backup food for this beauty snake? Tang Yuan laughed awkwardly twice, decided to act like he knew nothing, and returned to the dining room with synchronized hand and foot movements to continue finishing his unfinished bowl of soy milk.

Seeing Tang Yuan return, the doctor had just come out after washing his hands again in the bathroom. He supervised Tang Yuan washing his hands once more, and when one big and one small sat back at the dining table, they continued solving the remaining breakfast with gloomy heads.

After devouring everything, the doctor cleaned up the dining table. Seeing he still had some time before work, he pushed his glasses and said seriously to Tang Yuan: “Little Tang Yuan, you can’t go on like this. I contacted that beat cop yesterday, and he said someone in your situation can enroll in school as a transfer student. I’ll help you inquire at the affiliated elementary school these few days—it’s just one street away from our house.”

Tang Yuan was moved by the doctor’s reference to “our house,” but then his big head shook like a rattle drum: “School? I don’t need to go to school.”

The doctor was stunned because Tang Yuan hadn’t said he didn’t want to go to school, but that he didn’t need to go to school: “Nonsense, what child doesn’t go to school?”

Tang Yuan pointed at the stack of books on the bookshelf and said righteously: “I borrowed these books from the city library using your library card. Do you think an ordinary elementary school could teach me anything?”

The doctor looked in the direction Tang Yuan pointed and was instantly shocked speechless by the seemingly profound and mysterious book titles. Elementary school students were already studying astrology, oscillation theory, yin-yang five elements feng shui… The doctor’s mouth twitched twice. Unable to deal with him, he smiled: “Picking books you can’t understand to bring back—they’re quite heavy. Can you even carry them?”

The focus was completely wrong! Tang Yuan suppressed his desire to flip the table, puffed out his cheeks, jumped down from the table, and ran to the bookshelf with stomping steps. He placed that stack of books in front of the doctor, raised his chin proudly, and declared: “Test me on anything.”

The doctor suspiciously picked up the topmost “Yin-Yang Five Elements Feng Shui” book, turned to a page, and had barely said a few words when Tang Yuan smoothly continued reciting. The doctor’s eyes nearly popped out. Unable to believe it, he continuously tested several passages and switched to several books for questioning. Except for three books he hadn’t read, Tang Yuan recited all the others word for word without error.

“You have a photographic memory?” The doctor closed the book, looking at the cute little shota in front of him with envious, jealous, and resentful eyes. He had always thought photographic memory was something made up in novels to fool people. He never expected one to be standing right in front of him now!

“So-so.” Tang Yuan modestly scratched his head. In fact, his facial expression wasn’t like that at all—his nose was practically pointing up to the sky.

The doctor thought about it. Even he couldn’t handle such a heaven-defying shota, so better not release him to stimulate the flowers of the motherland. “Good boy, Uncle is going to work. Stay home obediently. If you’re hungry at noon, call for takeout. The money is in the entrance drawer. Don’t wander around except to go to the library.”

Tang Yuan nodded hurriedly. It was so cold outside—he didn’t want to go out at all. Although it was already early March, the weather outside was still unbearably cold.

The doctor quickened his pace, practically jogging to the hospital. He changed into his white coat and followed the chief on rounds. Chun Ge, who had already arrived, fell back two steps, handed over a medical chart, and said quietly: “That Program Bamboo Pole from last night came again.”

Hearing this, the doctor frowned and quickly took the case file to read through it.

Program Bamboo Pole was a nickname given to a patient by the little nurses. For the nurses to have an impression of someone and even give them a nickname showed the person was a regular at the hospital. Program Bamboo Pole’s real name was Cheng Xiao—a very imposing name—but he suffered from restrictive cardiomyopathy that was very difficult to cure. The heart was originally one of the most important organs in the human body. Once there were problems, it would cause various complications. Even the mildest symptoms of restrictive cardiomyopathy could only allow someone to live 25 years at most. Cheng Xiao’s condition was very serious. At just over twenty-two years old, he had been in and out of the hospital several times over the past ten years.

“I wasn’t originally responsible for him. Why am I getting his medical record this time?” The doctor looked at the pulsed ultrasound echocardiogram in the medical record while asking in confusion. Cheng Xiao’s surgeries were usually what various cardiothoracic surgeons fought to observe, since an example of a person’s heart beating so strongly in this condition was truly rare.

The doctor felt he lacked the qualifications for such an honor.

“Wasn’t it because you participated in his mitral valve repair surgery at the beginning of last year? The retrograde approach technique you completed independently was simply perfect! You couldn’t tell it was your first time at all, so the chief called you to join.” Chun Ge’s tone carried some jealous envy and resentment. He punched the doctor’s shoulder with his fist and snorted lightly: “You kid, do you need me to praise you in such detail again? Don’t worry, Program Bamboo Pole’s hospitalization this time isn’t because your last surgery had problems, but because new complications appeared.”

The doctor’s hand froze while flipping through the two-dimensional echocardiogram. What mitral valve repair surgery? What retrograde approach technique? Could he say he didn’t remember any of it?

But if he recalled carefully, there were indeed some discontinuous surgical images hazily floating in his mind, yet those images seemed covered by a layer of frosted glass—blurry and impossible to see clearly.

Raising his hand to press his slightly aching temple, the doctor felt his mental state had been problematic lately. But he had specifically gone to the physical examination department for a checkup last week and found no abnormalities. Maybe he was overthinking.

Focusing his attention back on the medical record in his hands, the doctor scanned Cheng Xiao’s densely packed medical history from top to bottom and couldn’t help but feel admiration.

Restrictive cardiomyopathy ultimately leads to death from heart failure or pulmonary embolism. Except for heart transplantation, there were no better or more thorough solutions. But heart transplantation belonged to major organ transplantation in the country. Due to conservative thinking, there weren’t as many donors as abroad. How many people unwillingly closed their eyes while waiting in line? Cheng Xiao was also one of those struggling back and forth on the line between life and death.

“His condition doesn’t look good this time…” The doctor frowned at the examination results. Contrast echocardiography showed microbubbles moving back and forth at the tricuspid valve. According to Doppler examination results, estimating the degree of regurgitation from the right ventricle to the right atrium, this looked like symptoms of tricuspid valve insufficiency.

“I heard he’s about to reach the top of the transplant list. He must hold on,” Chun Ge said quietly, but firmly shut his mouth the next moment because their group had followed the chief into Cheng Xiao’s hospital room.