Inside Yang Xu’s office.

Jiang He bowed slightly. "Professor."

Yang Xu was standing in front of the light box on the wall. Seeing Jiang He arrive, he said, "Perfect timing. Come over and analyze this."

His professor was giving him a pop quiz, but Jiang He was naturally unfazed.

He glanced at the scan and said, "A mass on the head of the pancreas, abutting the superior mesenteric vein with signs of local invasion. The tumor is about 3.5 centimeters. The SMV involvement is less than 180 degrees, so we can resect and perform vascular reconstruction, but the surgical wound will be extensive."

Yang Xu glanced at him, a flash of admiration in his eyes.

’As expected of my student,’ he thought. ’He really knows how to read scans!’

"Correct. That’s why tonight’s pancreaticoduodenectomy will be a tough fight." Yang Xu turned off the light box. "Over in anesthesiology, Lin Peidong is already handling the preoperative preparations."

Jiang He nodded.

A major surgery like this required at least an hour or so for the full prep process.

He recalled a piece of gossip from his past life: about some attending physician, a master of time management, who would use this prep time to go fool around with a young nurse before coming back to scrub in and make the first incision...

"Today’s patient..." Yang Xu began, then paused and shook his head. "Never mind. You head down to the emergency department for a bit. I’ll have the circulating nurse call you once the anesthesia is administered."

"Alright." Jiang He nodded and turned to leave the office.

He took the stairs down to the emergency department on the first floor.

He suddenly remembered a senior colleague from his past life whom he’d been on good terms with. He should be working right now.

Jiang He found him in one of the internal medicine consultation rooms.

He was a male doctor, thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, already showing signs of advanced balding, with heavy bags under his eyes.

He was hunched over, writing something in a blue paper medical record book.

Jiang He went over for a look. The handwriting was classic doctor’s scrawl, completely illegible to the average person...

Hearing footsteps, the male doctor looked up, his eyes falling on the temporary access pass hanging on Jiang He’s chest. He paused for a moment.

"A student?" he asked.

"Clinical Medicine, class of ’06. I’m Jiang He. Director Yang told me to come down and wait for a surgery."

The doctor sized Jiang He up, a trace of curiosity entering his eyes.

"So you’re Jiang He?"

He put down his pen, pulled a cigarette from the pack on his desk, and offered it. "Smoke?"

"No, thanks."

"Good. It’s best for surgeons not to smoke." The doctor tucked the cigarette behind his ear, picked up his tea mug, and took a large gulp. "My name is Zhao Yumin," he said, introducing himself. "I’m an attending in the emergency department."

"Teacher Zhao." Jiang He gave a slight nod.

Zhao Yumin had lived an ordinary life.

Top-tier journal publications, national-level research projects—none of it had anything to do with him.

Day in and day out for ten years, he’d toiled away in the emergency department and on the general wards.

He dealt with countless cases of alcohol poisoning, car accidents, acute gastroenteritis, and pesticide poisoning...

He earned a meager bonus and pulled the most grueling all-nighters, snatching one ordinary life after another from the clutches of death with his years of accumulated experience.

Ordinary, yet great.

"Lin Peidong hasn’t stopped bragging around the hospital these last two days," Zhao Yumin said with a smile. "He said Affiliated Hospital No. 1 got some kind of god-tier third-year student with incredible skills. Seeing is believing, as they say."

"It’s mainly because of Professor Yang’s excellent guidance," Jiang He replied calmly.

Zhao Yumin chuckled again. "Quite humble, aren’t you? You’re destined to wield a scalpel and perform major surgeries, not like us. For people like us, making it to Deputy Chief Physician is probably the end of the line. Our days are just spent dealing with all these strange and bizarre emergency cases..."

Jiang He didn’t say anything.

Just then, a commotion erupted outside the duty office.

"Doctor! Doctor, someone come quick! Help!"

Zhao Yumin reacted instantly, jumping to his feet and rushing out.

Jiang He immediately followed.

In the emergency hall, a middle-aged woman was helping a man stumble in.

The other patients and their families waiting to register or get infusions all backed away when they saw the man.

Mainly because the man’s appearance was truly frightening.

His lips were ink-black, and his exposed neck and arms were all a cyanotic purple.

He looked just like a corpse that had been lying around for several days, except this one could still move!

"Doctor, please, take a look at my husband! He was fine, but then right after dinner he suddenly turned like this, all purple!"

The woman was on the verge of a breakdown.

A nurse quickly pushed over a gurney. "Quick, help the patient onto here!"

Zhao Yumin’s expression was grim. As he helped get the patient onto the gurney, he ordered, "Get him to the resuscitation room! Hook him up to the monitor, start oxygen, and get a bedside EKG over here, now!"

The doors to the resuscitation room were pushed open. Jiang He followed Zhao Yumin inside and stood by the wall, careful not to interfere.

"How are you feeling? Where does it hurt? Are you having trouble breathing?" Zhao Yumin asked as he quickly put on his stethoscope.

Aside from his ghostly complexion, the man was conscious. "Dizzy... nauseous, a little tightness in my chest. Doctor, am I going to die? Why has my face changed color? I look like a purple eggplant..."

A nurse quickly attached a pulse oximeter probe to the patient’s finger.

The monitor started beeping rapidly.

"Dr. Zhao, his SpO2 is only 85%! Heart rate is 110!"

Zhao Yumin’s brow furrowed.

An oxygen saturation of 85% meant severe hypoxia.

He immediately pressed his stethoscope to the patient’s chest.

Left lung sounds clear, right lung sounds clear. No wet or dry rales.

Zhao Yumin froze, muttering to himself:

"Breath sounds are normal, heart sounds are normal, no obvious signs of heart failure, and his airway is clear..."

’Could it be an acute pulmonary embolism? No, a PE patient would have extreme difficulty breathing. So what’s going on?’

He turned to the family member. "Does the patient have a history of heart disease?"

"No! He’s always been healthy, he hardly ever even catches a cold!" the woman said, tears streaming down her face in panic.

"Draw an arterial blood gas! Notify the CT room to prep for a contrast-enhanced chest CT!"

Zhao Yumin gave the orders decisively, preparing to follow the protocol for the most life-threatening possibilities first.

A nurse immediately grabbed a syringe to draw blood from the radial artery.

"Teacher Zhao." Jiang He, who had been standing quietly in the corner, suddenly spoke up.

Zhao Yumin turned to look at him, his eyes anxious. "What is it?"

"Hold on a second, let me ask a question," Jiang He said, turning to the woman. "Ma’am, what did you have for dinner?"

The woman was taken aback for a moment, then stammered, "We... we just had some porridge, some homemade pickled vegetables, and a plate of leftover stir-fried spinach from the day before yesterday. He ate all of it because he didn’t want to waste it."

Jiang He nodded, quickly running through a differential diagnosis in his head:

’Hypoxic but with normal breath sounds, so it’s not a pulmonary embolism. Cyanotic lips but fully conscious, so it’s not cerebral hypoxia from heart failure.’

’Combined with the leftover spinach for dinner, it’s most likely methemoglobinemia.’

’If this were the future, he’d just have the nurse measure the transcutaneous methemoglobin concentration.’

’But in ’08... they could only check the color of the venous blood first.’

"Teacher Zhao, have the nurse draw a tube of venous blood first. We just need to take a look at the color."

Zhao Yumin’s brow was tightly furrowed.

If this were any other student, he would have already started yelling.

But remembering this was Jiang He, Yang Xu’s student, he forced his temper down.

"Fine. Do as he says. Draw a tube of venous blood."