godfather of surgery

Chapter 1463 Coming to See You

Chapter 1463 Coming to See You

On Monday morning, as soon as Yang Ping pushed open the office door, his eyes were drawn to a light blue envelope on the desk.

The envelope bore a line of elegant handwriting: "To Professor Yang Ping." He didn't need to read the signature to recognize the handwriting—Sisi.

He opened the envelope; inside were three pages of letter paper and a photograph.

The girl in the photo is standing at the gate of a prestigious middle school. She is wearing a white school uniform shirt, has short hair that reaches her ears, a gold medal around her neck, and a bright smile that seems to capture the sunlight in her eyes, which are curved into two crescent moons.

Yang Ping sat down and unfolded the letter.

Professor Yang:

Hi, this is Sisi. I'm fifteen years old this year and have completed four years of junior high school. I have some great news to share: I won a gold medal in the International Biology Olympiad and have been accepted into the eight-year clinical medicine program at Nandu Medical University, a combined bachelor's, master's, and doctoral program. My goal has never changed, and now it has finally come true.

……

I hope that in a few years, I can officially become your student and follow you in doing scientific research and clinical work.

……

Enclosed with this letter is a photo of me with my Olympiad gold medal. It's not to show off, but to let you know that your student hasn't been slacking off.

……

I will study hard and then come to see you.

Best regards!

Your student: Sisi

Yang Ping finished reading the letter but didn't put it down immediately. He read it again, word by word, as carefully as he had reviewed experimental data years ago. Then he picked up the photograph, walked to the window, and gazed at it for a long time in the early summer sunlight.

The girl in the photo overlaps with the nine-year-old child in my memory.

She was lying in her hospital bed then, her right thigh severely deformed by osteosarcoma, her face as pale as a crumpled and unfolded piece of paper, but her eyes were bright, like a candle flame that refused to go out on a winter night. She asked him, "Big brother, will I die?"

He said, "No."

At that time, he wasn't confident at all. Although the data from animal experiments for K therapy was very good, this was the first time it had been used on humans. He was just gambling, gambling on a probability, gambling on hope. But he had to say "no." Not because he wanted to lie to her, but because, at that moment, the words "no" were themselves part of the treatment. Hope, sometimes, is more important than any medicine.

My phone vibrated; it was a message from Tang Shun: "Professor, the results of Weber's functional validation experiment are in. Both versions of the recombinant protein are positive. We can finalize the paper's framework."

Yang Ping didn't reply immediately. He carefully folded Sisi's letter, put it back in the envelope, and then took out a metal box from the deepest part of the drawer. Inside the box were neatly stacked more than a dozen letters, some of which had slightly yellowed edges, like marks gently touched by time.

In a letter from a few years ago, she mentioned that she skipped a grade to enter a special program for gifted children, becoming the youngest student in her class, yet consistently ranking first in biology. At twelve, she participated in her first biology competition, winning first prize in the province. At thirteen, she won a national gold medal and joined the national team. At fifteen, she won a world gold medal, standing on the international podium, delivering her acceptance speech in fluent English…

Every letter is the sound of a seed sprouting.

Yang Ping put this year's letters into the tin box, locked it, and then replied to Tang Shun: "We'll discuss the thesis this afternoon; I'll be going out this morning."

He walked out of his office, through the institute's corridor, and into the clinical ward. The corridor was quiet; a few nurses were talking quietly at the nurses' station. Upon seeing him, they immediately looked up: "Hello, Professor Yang!"

"Just browsing," Yang Ping said. "Didn't Sisi come by last month?"

The nurse smiled: "She came for a follow-up check-up, and all her indicators were normal. She just really wanted to see you, but when she heard you were very busy, she thoughtfully left. Before she left, she even asked us if Professor Yang had any new research findings coming out soon."

Yang Ping nodded without saying anything more. He returned to his office in the clinical ward and stood by the window for a while.

“This child,” the nurse followed, her voice filled with emotion, “during her treatment, you came every afternoon to chat with her, explaining how cells work, how the immune system fights battles, and how K therapy tricks tumor cells into ‘committing suicide.’ While other children listened to stories and fell asleep, she listened and took notes. When she was discharged, her notebooks were three full volumes, densely filled with notes; we were all astonished.”

Yang Ping recalled those afternoons.

At that time, he had just started clinical research on K therapy, and the pressure was immense. He couldn't sleep night after night, staring at the experimental data, afraid of missing any abnormal indicators. His most relaxing moments each day were sitting by Sisi's bedside, breaking down those complex medical concepts into small stories in language she could understand. He never imagined that those casual conversations would be recorded so carefully by her, let alone that these records would become the cornerstone of her future studies.

"Her mother later told us," the nurse continued, "that after Sisi was discharged from the hospital, she would listen to your 'lecture' recordings every night until she had completely memorized the content. Sometimes, even in the middle of the night, the light in her room would still be on, and her mother would push open the door and find her muttering to herself in front of her notebook, like a little teacher preparing a lesson."

Yang Ping fell silent.

He never imagined that his casual words would be so cherished, so repeatedly pondered and absorbed. This made him feel a heavy responsibility; he realized that the words you speak casually could become the compass of someone else's life. At the same time, he felt a warmth, like a pot of charcoal fire on a winter night. You don't know who it illuminates, but it is indeed burning, passing on light, emitting a faint yet firm glow in the darkness.

After leaving the clinical department, Yang Ping did not immediately return to the laboratory.

He walked out of the research institute, past the experimental animal center, past the newly built research building, and past the outpatient clinic with long queues at the entrance. He had seen these scenes for so many years, they were as familiar as the lines on his palm, but today, they seemed to have taken on a new meaning.

Behind every patient who walks through here lies a story. Some are brief interludes, some are long battles; some have ended, some continue. And the doctor is merely a character in these stories, a character trying to turn the tide at crucial moments. Sometimes you can turn it around, sometimes you can't, but you must stand there, you must try.

Sisi's story is one of the few that has been successfully reversed. But Yang Ping knows that this success is not his achievement alone. Behind K therapy lies years of research by the team, countless late nights in the laboratory, the accumulation of countless failed experiments, repeatedly verified data on animal models, the careful consideration of the ethics committee, and the cooperation of countless people in the pharmacy, nursing, and radiology departments. Even more importantly, it is Sisi herself, that child's body with a certain indomitable vitality, a stubbornness that chooses to believe even in the face of despair.

He walked to a bench in the garden of Sanbo Hospital and sat down.

The ginkgo tree's canopy cast dappled shadows on the ground. The early summer breeze, carrying the scent of grass and trees, brushed against his face with a gentle, almost dreamlike quality. In the distance, children laughed and chased each other, their voices as clear and crisp as wind chimes. He recalled his first surgery as the lead surgeon—an appendectomy, as simple as it could be. But he had mentally rehearsed it ten times beforehand, considering every possible contingency: what if the appendix perforated? What if there were adhesions? What if there were anesthesia complications? What if there was intraoperative bleeding? The surgery went smoothly, and the patient was discharged the next day. The family brought a basket of fruit, which he accepted, unable to refuse, and shared with the nurses in his department. Back then, he was young and assumed every surgery would be this successful.

He recalled his first failure: a severely injured patient with a ruptured spleen and massive bleeding. He performed a splenectomy, but the patient developed a rare coagulation disorder post-surgery and ultimately could not be saved. That night, he sat in the corridor outside the operating room all night until dawn. No one came to comfort him, because everyone knew that some hurdles had to be overcome alone.

These memories are like pebbles at the bottom of the water, invisible most of the time, but they ripple slightly as the water flows by, reminding you of their existence. They make you humble, and they also make you resilient.

Sunlight filtered through the ginkgo leaves and reached his feet before he stood up, brushed the dust off his trousers, and walked back to his office.

When he returned to his office, it was already noon. He ate something quick at the cafeteria, then called a meeting with Tang Shun, Mainstein, Weber, and Lu Xiaolu to discuss the paper.

Weber reported: "Both versions of the recombinant protein were positive, and interestingly, the mammalian cell version showed approximately 40 percent higher activity than the E. coli version. I suspect that the difference in glycosylation modification affected the protein's stability and receptor binding ability."

“The paper should focus on functional validation,” Mainstein said, “while also discussing the impact of glycosylation on activity. This is not only our discovery, but also enlightening for the entire field; in future recombinant protein therapy, the choice of expression system may be more important than we imagine.”

Tang Shun noted in his notebook: "Paper framework: 1. Discovery and mass spectrometry verification of unknown factors; 2. Expression and purification of recombinant proteins; 3. Functional verification: stem cell differentiation, neuronal survival, and axonal growth; 4. The effect of glycosylation modification on activity; 5. Mechanism exploration and clinical translation prospects."

"What about the target journal?" Yang Ping asked.

“Nature Medicine?” Weber probed.

"This discovery is significant beyond nerve regeneration," said Yang Ping, "and is published in the journal *Cell*. If the unknown factor is indeed an endogenous repair signaling molecule, its regulatory mechanism may be applicable to various tissue injuries. The possibilities are vast—heart, liver, skeletal muscle…"

Lu Xiaolu cautioned, "The review process for *Cell* is very long and the competition is fierce. Should we submit a preliminary report first to gain priority?"

Yang Ping pondered for a moment: "We can prepare simultaneously. Submit the newsletter to *Nature* or *Science*, and the main paper to *Cell*. But the content of the newsletter should be controlled; only report the core findings, without elaborating on the mechanism. The main paper will tell the complete story."

The discussion lasted two hours, during which the division of labor and timeline were determined. Weber was responsible for supplementing the experiments related to glycosylation, Mainstein organized the mass spectrometry and proteomics data, and Tang Shun drafted the paper framework, established the mathematical model, coordinated the overall work, and was responsible for communication with the journal editors.

The meeting ended, and everyone packed up and left. Only Yang Ping remained in the meeting room. He checked the time; it was four in the afternoon, still some time before he had to leave work.

He turned on his computer and began drafting a reply to Sisi.

Sisi:

I received the letter and saw the photos. He's grown so much taller, I almost didn't recognize him.

Congratulations on winning the award and being admitted to your desired university!

You are very welcome to formally become my student. I am a doctoral supervisor at Nandu Medical University, and I have the responsibility of supervising eight-year doctoral students there every year. I am delighted to accept an international biology Olympiad gold medalist as my student. However, I must solemnly remind you that doctors need not only excellent skills, but also excellent medical ethics, a calm mind, and strong psychological resilience. But I believe you already possess these qualities. You will definitely become an excellent doctor in the future.

I'll be waiting for you to arrive in your white coat.

…… "

After writing the letter, he read it through and felt that the tone was somewhat harsh. But after thinking about it, he didn't revise it.

His strictness stemmed from his care; he saw in her a stubbornness similar to his own, a tenacity that wouldn't waver once she set her mind on something. He knew that such stubbornness, if not restrained by reason, could lead to dangerous consequences. Medicine is a long journey; passion alone isn't enough, it also requires a clear mind and resilient nerves. He had witnessed too many talented young people fail under the pressure of clinical practice, and he didn't want Sisi to become one of them.

Yang Ping leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and let the afternoon sunlight stream in through the gaps in the blinds, casting stripes of light and shadow on the table. His fingers tapped unconsciously on the table, a habitual gesture he made when he was thinking.

My phone vibrated again. It was Xiao Su: "Are you coming home for dinner tonight?"

"Return."

"Da Bao said he wants to eat your cooking, and specifically, the updated version."

Yang Ping smiled and replied, "Okay, I won't let you down."

He turned off his computer and walked out of the conference room.

Yang Ping walked through the corridor and out of the research institute building. The setting sun was painting the sky a honey color, and the clouds stretched across the horizon like burning cotton. He slowed his pace, recalling the evening many years ago when Sisi was discharged from the hospital for the first time.

As she passed the ginkgo tree at the entrance of the research institute, she suddenly stopped, turned around, and said earnestly to him, "Professor Yang, you must remember this: I am your student, and I mean it."

He smiled and said, "I'll remember that."

She thought it was just a child's joke, but she took it seriously.

And she really did come, from age nine to fifteen, from her hospital bed to the podium at the International Mathematical Olympiad, from "Will I die?" to "I will study hard and then come to see you." In six years, she turned a promise into reality and a chance encounter into a teacher-student bond.

Yang Ping quickened his pace. He wanted to go home as soon as possible, to see Da Bao rushing towards him with Ultraman in his arms, to smell the aroma of Xiao Su cooking in the kitchen, and to sit at the dining table painted with the blue Ultraman suit and have a warm dinner.

Life is like this, made up of countless ordinary moments. And those extraordinary moments are often hidden in these ordinary ones: a letter, a photograph, a dinner, a promise, a child getting up from a hospital bed.