Chapter 253: Channels and Scales

The light inside the subway carriage was a stark white, flickering in and out with the vibration of the rails. Lin Chen leaned against the partition at the connector between cars, the old injury in his left leg aching dully in the cold air. He took out his phone and opened the ticketing app. Tomorrow afternoon, 2:15 p.m., Capital Airport. Economy class. Pay. Send itinerary to email. The screen went dark. He closed his eyes, and the deployment log for the sandbox environment automatically surfaced in his mind. Su Man's code framework was already in place, but a top-tier hospital's internal firewall policy was completely different from the test environment. The feature-vector extraction interface would most likely be blocked. Before boarding, he needed to revise the network tunneling plan.

It was almost eleven when he got back to the rented room. He did not turn on the ceiling light, only twisted on the desk lamp. The old laptop's fan gave off a faint hum. He connected to the jump server and entered the hospital sandbox's test node. Red errors rolled across the terminal: Connection timed out. SSL handshake failed. As expected. He opened the configuration file, commented out the default direct HTTPS connection, replaced it with the state-cryptography channel permitted by the hospital information department, and repackaged the certificates. His fingers struck the keys quickly, but every few keystrokes he had to pause and loosen his stiff neck. At 1:20 a.m., the log finally printed a green line: Handshake success. Feature extraction pipeline started. He sent Su Man a message: Channel is up. Latency is under 200ms. Run the first batch of desensitized data at eight tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on vector-dimension alignment. Su Man replied instantly: Got it. Be careful on your way to Beijing. He closed the laptop and did not answer. Getting up, he went to the kitchen, poured a glass of warm water, and swallowed two ibuprofen tablets. The medicine would take time to work. He leaned back in the chair, listening to the occasional truck passing outside the window, and waited for drowsiness to arrive.

At seven in the morning, he woke before the alarm rang. The numbness in his leg was heavier than the night before; when he walked, he had to deliberately put more weight on his right foot. He packed his luggage: two changes of clothes, the laptop, its power adapter, the sodium valproate sustained-release tablets he had bought at the pharmacy the night before, and a thick stack of copied medical records. The hospital transfer procedures for Beijing were more complicated than he had imagined. He called the neurosurgery consultation line at Beijing Tiantan Hospital. The hold music played for four minutes before someone picked up. The other party's tone was businesslike. “A bed can be coordinated, but we need the original hospital's transfer certificate, as well as recent EEG results and MRI films. The deposit is twenty thousand yuan up front. After arrival, we will reassess.” Twenty thousand. He glanced at his bank balance, then at the TS draft he had just signed. The countdown on the bet-on-performance clause and the beeping of his younger brother's monitor overlapped in his mind. He opened online banking and transferred the money. Note: Xiaoman transfer deposit.

At noon, he dragged his suitcase out the door. Each step of his left leg felt as if sandpaper were grinding inside the joint. He called a ride-hailing car and headed straight for the airport. Traffic on the expressway was steady. Outside the window, the city's skyline gradually receded, turning into low factory buildings and farmland. He leaned back in the seat with his eyes closed. His phone vibrated; it was a report from finance. Last month's server rental fees and the wages for two outsourced engineers had already been deducted. The company account had less than four hundred thousand left. Zhao Qiming's next payment would not arrive until three hospitals went online in Q2. If his brother needed surgery or long-term medication after this trip to Beijing, that money would not last three months. He was not anxious. He simply rearranged the numbers in his head. Technical debt could be repaid, cash flow could be split apart and reassembled, but a family's illness could not wait. He opened his eyes, took the book Deep Learning and Medical Image Analysis from his bag, and turned to a marked page. The paper edges were curled, and dense pencil notes covered the margins. The elevator offered by the times was fast, but he could only climb one step at a time.

At 3:40 p.m., the flight landed. Capital Airport's announcements were noisy, and people streamed in every direction. He followed the crowd out, walking slowly but with a clear direction. He took a taxi straight to Tiantan Hospital. At five in the afternoon, on the seventh floor of the inpatient department, the corridor smelled of disinfectant mixed with old bedding. His mother sat on a plastic chair, her eyes sunken, her hair messily pinned behind her head. When she saw him, she stood up. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She only reached out and grabbed his sleeve. Lin Chen patted the back of her hand. “Mom, sit down. I'll handle the paperwork.” He went to the nurses' station and handed over the transfer certificate and deposit slip. The nurse checked the information, stamped the forms, and gave him back an inpatient wristband. Holding the wristband, he walked toward the ward. When he pushed open the door, the monitor's beeping was regular and urgent. Xiaoman lay on the hospital bed, his face pale, an oxygen tube in his nose, adhesive tape from an indwelling needle on his arm. Hearing movement, Xiaoman slowly opened his eyes. His gaze was a little unfocused, but after he saw it was Lin Chen, the corner of his mouth barely pulled upward. “Ge… you're here.” Lin Chen walked to the bedside, set down his suitcase, and reached out to tuck in the corner of the quilt for him. “Mm. I'm here.” His voice was very soft. He pulled over a chair and sat down, his eyes falling on the monitor's waveform. Heart rate 98. Oxygen saturation 94. The numbers were temporarily stable.

At seven that evening, the attending physician made rounds. White coat, glasses, rapid speech. “The lesion is in the temporal lobe. Repeated seizures indicate that medication has reached a bottleneck. We recommend doing the preoperative evaluation as soon as possible to see whether resection of the epileptogenic focus is possible. But the position is close to the language area, so the surgical risk is high. There may be cognitive or language impairment after surgery. Discuss it as a family. Sign the informed consent form tomorrow morning, and we'll arrange multimodal imaging reconstruction.” Lin Chen nodded. “Understood. How much will it cost?” “Initial evaluation plus surgery, roughly eighty to one hundred thousand. Medical insurance can cover part of it, but the out-of-pocket ratio is not low.” After saying that, the doctor turned and went to the next bed. The ward fell quiet. His mother lowered her head and wiped away tears. Xiaoman stared at the ceiling, his fingers curling unconsciously. Lin Chen said nothing. He took out his phone, and the screen lit up. Two unread messages. One was from Su Man: The first batch of sandbox data is done. Feature-vector dimension alignment is at 92%, but Zhao Qiming suddenly demanded that we submit the data-compliance audit report tomorrow morning, otherwise the payment process will be suspended. The other was a bank text: Your account ending in 7749 has completed a transfer of RMB 20,000.00. Current balance: 41,200.35. Lin Chen stared at the screen, his thumb hovering above the keyboard. The fluorescent tube in the corridor gave off a faint electrical hum. He stood, walked to the window. Outside was Beijing's gray-blue night sky, with no stars visible. He took a deep breath, turned back to the bed, and said to his mother, “Mom, I'm going to ask the doctor for the evaluation forms. I'll figure out the money.” He pushed open the ward door and stepped into the corridor. The pain in his left leg had already gone numb, but his steps did not stop. The phone in his pocket vibrated again. He took it out. It was a voice message from Zhao Qiming. He pressed play, and the voice echoed down the empty corridor: “President Lin, the audit report must be on my desk by noon tomorrow. Capital doesn't wait, and neither do hospitals. Weigh it yourself.” Lin Chen put the phone away and walked toward the doctor's office. The corridor was very long, and the light stretched his shadow thin. He knew there was no way back tonight.