Gao Yuan stood in front of the joint simulator, holding the control handle, his eyes fixed on the screen, his entire body like a statue, with only his fingertips moving slightly.
On the screen was a virtual knee joint, with three-dinsional reconstructed anatomical structures vividly displayed: niscus tear, anterior cruciate ligant rupture, typical athlete injuries. His wrist gently rotated, the arthroscope road in the virtual joint cavity like a flexible fish, entering the intercondylar notch, sweeping past the femoral condyle, precisely reaching the posterior angle of the niscus. The simulator’s feedback was realistic and delicate; he could "feel" the subtle elasticity when the probe touched the cartilage, a sign of healthy tissue—when it becos brittle or hard, it indicates cartilage degeneration. This tactile sensation was engraved into his nerve mory over twenty years.
A line of green data popped up on the screen: operation ti 4 minutes 32 seconds, instrunt path efficiency 97.3%, suture tension deviation ±0.2N. This performance would be considered perfect in any surgery. But Gao Yuan furrowed his brow slightly. He thought he could be faster. Revision surgery is different from initial surgery; scar tissue disrupts the normal anatomical layers, leaving him only a few centiters of view under the arthroscope. Any unnecessary movent would disturb surrounding tissues.
"Director Gao, still not leaving?" The nurse on duty peeked in, holding a bag of takeout.
"I’ll practice a bit more." Gao Yuan didn’t look back; his gaze remained locked on the screen. "There’s a complicated revision surgery tomorrow, rehearsing it a bit."
The nurse shook her head and gently closed the door. She was long accustod to it; Director Gao was like this almost every day. In his forties, he’s already a top expert in sports dicine in the country, the head of the sports dicine departnt at Sanbo Hospital, yet he spends two to three hours in front of the simulator like an intern. Young doctors in the departnt privately discussed that Director Gao’s pursuit of surgery had reached the point of "obsession"; before every operation, he would repeatedly rehearse on the simulator, simulate various possible variations, even adjusting the instrunt placent angle to the natural curvature of his fingers.
She didn’t know, Director Gao had always been this determined. Even from twenty years ago, when he was still a resident.
A few years ago, Gao Yuan was already the director of the sports dicine departnt at Sanbo Hospital, a Doctor, associate professor, and a ntor for master’s students. Achieving this position at this age would be considered "successful" in anyone’s career. He managed more than ten doctors, handling over a thousand surgeries annually.
But Gao Yuan did sothing everyone couldn’t understand.
Disregarding his position as Departnt Director, he went to the Institute whenever he had free ti, helping those doctors change dressings, transferring patients between beds, lifting legs before surgery, and pushing patients for examinations. The young doctors at the Institute were shocked the first ti they saw him squatting in the hallway changing a patient’s dressing and nearly dropped the instrunt tray.
"Dir...Director Gao? Why are you here?"
"Changing the dressing!" Gao Yuan didn’t lift his head, his actions swift and clean.
In fact, everyone knew, his real reason for going to the Institute was for one person—Yang Ping!
The first ti Gao Yuan watched Yang Ping perform surgery, he stood by for several hours, completely motionless. After the surgery ended, his legs were so numb he could barely walk.
"Mr. Yang, I’d like to learn arthroscopy from you," he said.
Yang Ping glanced at him, "You’re already a director, learning from ?"
"Skills aren’t divided by status," Gao Yuan said. "Your skills are better than mine; I should learn from you."
Yang Ping said nothing, just nodded. From that day, Gao Yuan beca Yang Ping’s "unofficial student." He stood next to Yang Ping during surgeries, standing for hours, sotis watching three to four surgeries in a day. He observed how Yang Ping established approaches, handled synovial mbranes, protected blood vessels and nerves, and completed complex sutures in narrow spaces. He rembered every movent Yang Ping made, returning to practice repetitively on his simulator.
The people in the departnt didn’t understand.
"Director Gao, what’s the point of this?" the deputy director asked him. "You’re already a director, learning from those young people at the Institute? It doesn’t sound good if it spreads."
"What sounds good or bad?" Gao Yuan retorted. "Skills have levels; Yang Ping’s arthroscopy is better than mine; learning from him isn’t embarrassing."
"But you’re a director, he’s..."
"It doesn’t matter what he is," Gao Yuan said. "What matters is, he can teach things, and that’s enough."
So gossiped behind his back, saying Gao Yuan was "cheapening himself," "lowering his status." Gao Yuan heard it, and he laughed it off. During etings in the departnt, he even proactively brought up the topic.
"I heard soone discussing that my going to the Institute to learn is ’cheapening myself.’" He looked around the eting room at the doctors, "What I want to say is that if a surgeon thinks learning new skills is ’cheapening oneself,’ that’s the true cheapening. I’m in my forties and still learning—what about all of you?"
The eting room was silent.
He knew what he was doing.
Those years, Gao Yuan’s skills rapidly improved. Yang Ping taught him fine operations under arthroscopy, how to suture the niscus precisely in narrow spaces, protect fragile cartilage, and manage complex revision cases. These were practical skills impossible to learn from books. More importantly, Yang Ping taught him the mindset.
"Surgery isn’t the goal; it’s the ans," Yang Ping said. "What you should think is, how to restore the patient’s function, how to get them back to sports. The surgical target of sports dicine directly points to function, it prioritizes function more than any other departnt. Every move asks the question: What benefit does this have for the patient?"
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