I Am Diagnosed as a Medical Titan

Chapter 21: Chapter 21: More Standard than the Standard Answer

”Xiaoqing, take a break.”

Behind Wang Xiaoqing, Professor Li from the teaching and research office stood up.

He pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to a few of the male teachers beside him. ”We’ve been at this all night, grading hundreds of papers. My eyes are going to give out. Let’s step out for some air and a smoke.”

Several of the older professors agreed, putting down their pens.

”Let’s go, let’s go. This is no work for a human being.”

”The students’ handwriting these days looks like chicken scratch. It takes forever just to decipher it...”

Wang Xiaoqing’s neck was also feeling sore, so she put down the paper she hadn’t started grading yet. ”Alright, let’s take five minutes.”

The group pushed open the door to the grading room and went to the ventilation window at the end of the hallway.

Although ”No Smoking” signs were posted in the building, those were for the students.

This group of veteran professors had long been accustomed to smoking here.

Professor Li exhaled a cloud of smoke and, as if suddenly remembering something, asked:

”Xiaoqing, I heard some kind of prodigy showed up in your exam hall today?”

Wang Xiaoqing paused for a moment, then shook her head helplessly. ”I suppose so. He turned in his paper just forty minutes after the exam started. I’ve been an invigilator for so many years, and this is the first time I’ve seen such an impatient student.”

”Forty minutes?”

Professor Zhang from pathology, standing nearby, flicked the ash from his cigarette. ”Isn’t that just enough time to read through the questions? Students these days are getting more and more impetuous.”

”Tell me about it.” Wang Xiaoqing sighed. ”...Sigh, he probably saw how hard the long-answer questions were and just gave up.”

”What’s his name?” Professor Li asked casually.

Wang Xiaoqing thought for a moment. ”I think it was... Jiang He.”

”Jiang He?”

Before Professor Li could speak, Professor Liu, who had been standing silently in the corner, suddenly looked up.

Professor Liu was in charge of student affairs and was usually the best-informed.

”Did you say the student’s name is Jiang He? From the ’06 clinical class?”

”Yes, he’s in clinical medicine.” Wang Xiaoqing nodded. ”Why? Do you know him, Old Liu?”

The expression on Professor Liu’s face became quite interesting.

He looked around at his colleagues. ”Have you guys not seen the BBS the past couple of days? You haven’t heard about that commendation banner?”

”We have research to do and students to supervise. Who has time to look at that stuff?” Professor Li waved his hand dismissively. ”Don’t keep us in suspense. Spit it out. Did the student get into trouble?”

”Trouble? He performed a heroic deed!”

Professor Liu said, ”The night before last, at Feiyu Internet Cafe on the back street behind the school, a student suddenly suffered a Tension Pneumothorax. He was on the verge of death. Jiang He was right there on the scene. Without a second thought, he grabbed a mineral water bottle and an IV tube, made a simple water-seal drainage bottle, and actually managed to save the guy!”

The hallway fell silent in an instant.

Everyone present was an expert. The moment they heard the description, a clear picture formed in their minds.

”Feiyu Internet Cafe?” Professor Zhang frowned. ”Performing a thoracic puncture in that kind of environment? With no sterile conditions?”

”Exactly!” Professor Liu exclaimed with feeling. ”I heard the patient was already showing signs of cyanosis. He definitely wouldn’t have made it to the hospital in time. That kid is bold, but his hands are incredibly steady. Old Wang from the ER at Affiliated Hospital No. 1 went to the scene and said the needle placement was extremely precise—a textbook-perfect procedure.”

”The family brought a commendation banner to the school yesterday. If the university wasn’t worried about the current tense doctor-patient relationships and the media making an issue out of him practicing without a license, they would have already announced a school-wide commendation. That banner is locked up in Zhang Zhiyuan’s cabinet right now.”

After hearing all this, the older professors looked at each other in dismay.

”Are you saying...” Wang Xiaoqing hesitated, ”that the student who turned in his exam after forty minutes is the same Jiang He who saved that person’s life?”

”Same name, same grade level. It has to be him,” Professor Liu said with certainty.

Wang Xiaoqing subconsciously glanced back at the door to the grading room.

”Strange...” she murmured to herself. ’A student who can perform a thoracic puncture under that kind of pressure must have unshakable composure and excellent clinical skills. Why would he treat a competition so flippantly? Forty minutes... unless he just scribbled nonsense.’

”I doubt he just scribbled nonsense,” Professor Li said, tossing his cigarette butt into the trash can. ”If he has that kind of ability, he must know his stuff.”

”Not necessarily,” Professor Zhang countered. ”Good clinical skills don’t mean a solid theoretical foundation. Many students are great with their hands but are completely at a loss when tested on pathological mechanisms. And the questions this time were written by us old-timers. The difficulty is on par with the postgraduate entrance exam.”

”Alright, enough guessing.”

Wang Xiaoqing wiped her hands on her white coat and turned back toward the grading room. ”I just happened to pick up his paper earlier but haven’t had a chance to look at it. Since everyone’s so curious, let’s all take a look together.”

Hearing this, the professors forgot about their cigarettes and all crowded into the grading room after Wang Xiaoqing.

The once-quiet room was suddenly bustling with activity.

Five or six heads huddled around a single desk, completely surrounding the desk lamp.

Wang Xiaoqing sat back down in her chair and picked up the exam paper again.

”Alright, let’s look at the multiple-choice questions first.”

Wang Xiaoqing picked up her red pen.

Question one, D. Correct.

Question two, C. Correct.

Question three, A. Correct.

She turned the page.

All correct.

She turned another page.

Still all correct.

”Now this is interesting.” Professor Li stroked the stubble on his chin. ”These questions are basic, but they’re full of traps. Especially those few about pharmacological mechanisms. To get them all right means this kid has read his books very carefully.”

”It’s just multiple choice. There are other students who get them all right,” Professor Zhang said, still skeptical. ”The important part is the long-answer section. The short-answer questions and the case study are where you see someone’s true abilities.”

Wang Xiaoqing nodded and turned to the third page.

Short-Answer Questions.

[Briefly describe the pathophysiological changes during the ischemia and hypoxia stage of microcirculatory shock.]

This question was a key and difficult point in the pathophysiology curriculum.

Jiang He’s answer was just a few short lines.

”Low perfusion, low outflow; perfusion less than outflow.”

”Massive release of catecholamines, excitation of alpha-receptors, constriction of arterioles, post-arterioles, and precapillary sphincters...”

”Autotransfusion, autoinfusion.”

It was concise and got straight to the core of the issue.

Every keyword hit a scoring point precisely, without a single wasted word.

”Whoa!” Professor Liu couldn’t help but exclaim in admiration. ”His summarization skills are incredible. It’s rare to see a student with such a thorough understanding these days.”

Wang Xiaoqing didn’t say anything, simply marking it as a perfect score.

She continued on.

As she graded the questions with increasing speed, the expressions of the crowd grew more and more solemn.

This... felt like reading the official answer key.

Some of his descriptions of treatment principles were even more clinically relevant than the model answers.

Finally, they reached the last and most heavily weighted question.

The one that was a huge trap involving abdominal pain, jaundice, and shock.

Professor Zhang had written this question, so he knew all its tricks.

”I set three traps in this question.” Professor Zhang pointed to the blood pressure value in the prompt. ”80/50, that’s shock. Then there’s the latent jaundice. If a student only sees the elevated amylase levels, they’ll definitely treat it as severe pancreatitis. Once they go down the wrong path, the patient is gone.”

Wang Xiaoqing nodded. ”Let’s see how he answered.”