Chapter 215: Ledgers and Measures

2:05 p.m. The corridor outside the neurology outpatient clinic was packed. There weren’t enough plastic bench seats, so family members leaned against the walls or squatted by the fire exit. The air was thick with the mixed smell of peracetic acid disinfectant and old sweat. Lin Chen stood beneath the queue display, his left toe tapping the floor, all his weight pressed onto his right leg. He gripped the registration slip and medical file in one hand, his knuckles faintly pale from the force. The red number on the screen jumped to “147.” He pushed the door open.

The attending physician was surnamed Zhou, a man in his early forties with rimless glasses. He spoke quickly, but with crisp clarity. “The follow-up EEG results are in. The frequency of spike-and-slow-wave discharges is 15% higher than last month, and the blood concentration of the medication is low. The current sodium valproate dosage isn’t keeping it under control. We need to add levetiracetam, or switch to lamotrigine.” The doctor pushed the report toward him and tapped the waveform chart with his fingertip. “If you switch medications, there’ll be a transition period. It may come with a rash or drowsiness. If you don’t switch, the seizure frequency will rise. You family members will have to weigh it yourselves.”

Lin Chen did not answer at once. He stared at the figures on the report, his mind automatically converting them into costs. One box of the original imported levetiracetam was 420 yuan; a domestic generic was 180. Lamotrigine was cheaper, but slower to take effect. It required two weeks of titration, and during that period the seizure risk would be hard to control. He asked, “If we increase the dose, what’s the probability of drowsiness? Will the insurance reimbursement ratio change? How much strain will it put on liver and kidney function?”

Doctor Zhou glanced at him, and his tone softened a little. “Drowsiness is around 30%. Rash is under 5%. The reimbursement ratio won’t change, but any off-label portion has to be paid out of pocket. Your younger brother’s illness is a long-distance run, not a sprint. The medication can’t be stopped, and it can’t be adjusted recklessly. Let’s increase the dose first and observe for two weeks, then recheck the blood concentration next month.”

Lin Chen nodded. “Increase it according to the original plan. Prescribe one month’s worth first.” He signed the prescription slip. The pen scratched softly across the paper. When he walked out of the consultation room, he lowered his head and ran the numbers: the new medication would raise their out-of-pocket expenses by another six hundred a month. Add the caregiver, follow-up exams, and daily living costs, and by the end of the month the shortfall would be pushing two thousand. Old Zhao’s remaining payment still hadn’t come through. His meeting with Chen Hao was on Saturday. Time felt like a taut string—touch it even lightly, and it might snap.

It took forty minutes of queuing at the pharmacy to collect the medicine. Behind the glass, the pharmacist mechanically checked the name, entered the price, and passed over the drugs. Lin Chen took the two paper bags and checked the batch numbers and expiration dates once through. When he returned to the ward, Xiaoman was already awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling. Lin Chen set the prescription slip on the bedside cabinet and poured a cup of warm water.

“Ge, what did the doctor say?” Xiaoman asked.

“Changing the meds. Just take them on time.” Lin Chen opened the boxes, sorted the doses by schedule, and labeled them. His movements were practiced, without wasted words. He stored the old medicine separately from the new and taped a simple medication timetable to the wall.

He sat back down at the folding table and opened his laptop. Two new emails were waiting in his inbox.

The first was a reply from Old Zhao:

“Engineer Lin, I’ve reviewed the validation report. The client accepts the classification logic for the anomaly list. The final payment will be settled at 87.3%. After deducting the three thousand already paid, the remaining balance is four thousand one hundred twenty, to be transferred to your company account before close of business this Friday. Future batches will follow this standard. A pleasure working with you.”

Lin Chen stared at that string of numbers. Four thousand one hundred twenty. Added to the existing balance of two thousand one hundred, it would be just enough to cover next month’s medication and basic living expenses. He opened Excel and entered “+4120 (pending confirmation)” under “cash flow,” then added a note:

“Rules established. Future billing by item. No rush jobs. No fronting capital. Deliverables must include three things: cleaned files, anomaly data list, and explanation of processing logic.”

The second email was from Chen Hao. The attachment was titled City-Owned SOE Data Middle Platform Compliance Desensitization Project_Additional Requirements.pdf. The body contained only a single line:

“Saturday, 10:00 a.m., Tower B, Phase III, China World Trade Center, 18th floor. The client CTO will sit in. Focus on dynamic masking rules and the audit traceability chain. Bring your logic diagrams, not code. Also, sign the NDA.”

Lin Chen clicked open the attachment. The requirements were more detailed than he had expected. They wanted not only field-level desensitization, but also evidentiary preservation for operation logs and permission isolation for cross-department data transfer. He rubbed the space between his brows. This was not a purely technical problem. It was the art of balancing compliance against efficiency. What a state-owned enterprise wanted was not “the most advanced” solution, but “nothing goes wrong.”

He created a new mind map and broke “dynamic masking” into components: rule engine, policy configuration, audit interface, rollback mechanism. Every piece had to map to a concrete implementation path and boundary condition. He deleted the differential privacy algorithm he had originally planned to include, replacing it with dynamic masking rules based on roles and fields. Academic concepts only lost points in procurement reviews. Certainty was what earned them.

6:00 p.m. The caregiver came to change shifts, and Lin Chen went downstairs to the cafeteria and bought a meal with two meat dishes and one vegetable. The food was greasy. He picked out the fatty pieces and chewed slowly. Only when there was some warmth in his stomach did the tension in his nerves loosen a little. He leaned back in the cafeteria’s plastic chair and looked out the window. The sky was darkening, and the streetlights were coming on one by one.

The city was vast, vast enough to hold countless ways of living; the city was also small, so small that a single hospital bed, one final payment, one presentation, could determine the direction of a person’s next half year. He thought of the sentence in his notebook of corrected mistakes: “Delivery standards are governed by the contract. The bottom line is not negotiable.” There was no warmth in the business world, only contracts and bargaining chips. He could not rely on luck. He could only rely on certainty. Technology was the foundation; rules were the guardrails. Every step had to land solidly.

When he returned to the ward, Xiaoman was already asleep. The monitor still ticked with steady regularity. Lin Chen sat down as quietly as he could and dimmed the laptop screen. He began drafting the outline for Saturday’s presentation. There were no florid phrases, only structured logic: current-state assessment, desensitization architecture, implementation path, risk control, cost estimation. Every page was marked either “deliverable” or “to be confirmed.” He knew the client would not listen to technical principles. They would only ask: Can it be used? How much does it cost? If something goes wrong, who is responsible? He had to have the answers ready in advance.

His left foot began to throb again. He stopped typing, lifted it up, and rested it against the edge of the bed. The pain was real. It reminded him of the limits of this body. But he could not stop. His younger brother’s medicine could not be interrupted. Old Zhao’s job had to be taken. Chen Hao’s meeting had to be cleared. Life was not thought into existence. It was endured out of one line of code after another, one ledger entry after another, one follow-up visit after another. All he could do was keep writing, stroke by stroke.

11:00 p.m. The outline was finished. He exported it as a PDF and renamed it Government and Enterprise Data Desensitization Proposal_Presentation Version_v2. He checked it three times for typos and alignment. Once he confirmed there were no problems, he shut the laptop and leaned back in his chair. The ward was quiet, filled only with the faint airflow from the air conditioner vent.

His phone screen suddenly lit up. It was a bank text message:

“Your savings card ending in 7749 received RMB 4120.00 on November 14 at 23:08. Current balance: RMB 6254.30.”

Lin Chen looked at the string of numbers. The final payment had arrived. A day earlier than promised. He let out a long breath. He did not smile. He simply turned the phone face down on the table. Money was leverage, and it was responsibility too. He opened the notebook of corrected mistakes and wrote on a new page:

“Article 215: Cash flow is the lifeline. Once a rule works, replicate it. Don’t chase speed. Don’t count on luck. Next step: Friday’s meeting—win the pilot. Simultaneously evaluate my brother’s long-term medication plan. The road to monetizing technology has only just laid its first brick.”

He closed the notebook. Outside the window, the city was still loud, but inside the ward, time seemed to slow. He closed his eyes, and in his mind he began rehearsing Friday’s conversation—every question, every possible rebuttal, every fallback route. He knew that when he woke tomorrow, it would be another new day. And the road could only be walked one step at a time.

1:20 a.m. His phone vibrated again. A WeChat message from Chen Hao popped up:

“Last-minute notice. The client CTO moved the meeting to Friday at 3:00 p.m., online. They want to review the materials in advance. Also, there’s internal disagreement on historical data migration. Some advocate full-scale cleansing; others want masking only, with no migration. Prepare two versions of the pitch. Saturday’s in-person meeting is canceled and changed to Friday online. Reply when received.”

Lin Chen opened his eyes. The cold glow of the screen fell across his face. Friday, 3:00 p.m. Moved up by two days. Two versions of the pitch. He straightened in his chair. His left foot touched the ground, and the stabbing pain came into sharp focus at once. He did not hesitate. He reopened the laptop and created a new folder:

Plan B_Full Cleansing_vs_Plan C_On-Site Masking

In the quiet ward, the tapping of the keyboard sounded light and steady. The wind had shifted. He would have to trim the sails.