Chapter 35
My shoulder felt heavier than usual.
I couldn't tell whether it was all because of those crazy ghosts or just my chronic fatigue.
‘Anyway, I do have a trump card now.’
I comforted myself with that thought and headed back to the station.
The backlog of charting hell was waiting for me.
It was while I was killing time pointlessly, tapping at the keyboard.
The phone in the center of the ER station rang. Everyone's eyes turned that way.
The most senior nurse nearby picked up the receiver.
The nurse's expression hardened in an instant.
“Yes, this is the Emergency Medical Center.”
“...”
“Yes, a male in his 30s. ... Understood. Highway multi-car pileup... rollover... what's his level of consciousness?”
The nurse's voice grew faster and more urgent.
All movement in the station came to a stop.
“What about the field vitals? Yes... yes... understood.”
The nurse hung up and shouted so loudly it seemed to shake the whole station.
TA
(*Traffic Accident, traffic accident)
patient ETA
(*estimated time of arrival)
9 minutes! A 34-year-old male was in a multi-car pileup on the highway, the car overturned, and they say it took some time to extricate him! At the scene he was confused, blood pressure 80 over 50, pulse 130! Abdominal distension observed and left femur deformity suspected!”
With that one sentence, the ER sprang back to life.
“Clear resus room bed 1! Bring out the trauma cart!”
“Call them! Tell them to bring the portable X-ray down right now!”
“The ICU is empty, right? You checked the messages properly, didn't you?”
The ER turned into a battlefield in an instant.
Shouts erupted from all directions, and the medical staff hurried about.
I stood there dumbly in the middle of that chaos for a moment.
Someone slapped my shoulder hard. It was fellow Dr. Park Se-young.
“Get a grip, would you? Put on your lead vest first.”
“Ah, yes!”
I hurriedly ran over and put on the heavy lead vest.
Over that, I pulled on a disposable PPE gown and strapped on a face shield.
In an instant, my whole body was soaked with sweat.
When I returned to the resus room, the team had already been assembled.
The team leader was Park Se-young. Airway went to Yoo Seong-hoon, a fourth-year resident. Circulation went to Nam Joo-hyun, a second-year resident.
And another intern and I were designated as backup hands under them, there to handle all the grunt work.
“I'm assigning roles. Yoo Seong-hoon is in charge of airway management and cervical spine protection. Nam Joo-hyun handles IV lines in both arms and checks for bleeding. I'm the team leader, so I'll report the overall situation and handle the ultrasound. Han Hyun-jae.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“When the patient comes in, you and the intern cut off all his clothes first. And when I give instructions, just keep up and do as you're told. Got it?”
“Yes! Understood!”
In trauma care on this scale, a first-year resident isn't the one who solves everything.
He's just a pair of hands and feet that have to move as fast and efficiently as possible.
I accepted my role and stood by the side of the resus bed, waiting for the patient to arrive.
Those nine minutes felt like forever.
At last, the sound of an ambulance siren came from far away.
The ER automatic doors opened, and the paramedics came rushing in, pushing the stretcher and shouting as if their voices were being torn out.
“His blood pressure dropped again during transport, down to 70!”
The patient came into the resuscitation room.
It was a horrible sight.
His whole body was covered in dirt and blood, and his left leg was bent at a bizarre angle.
“One, two, three!”
The paramedics and we worked together to move the patient from the stretcher to the resus bed.
At the same time, everyone began moving in perfect lockstep according to their assigned roles.
While Yoo Seong-hoon checked the patient's consciousness by shaking his shoulders, the intern and I began cutting away his clothes.
As the blood- and sweat-soaked clothes were torn away, the patient's body was exposed.
His abdomen was swollen, and blue-black bruises and abrasions covered his entire body.
“Breath sounds are good on both sides!”
“I got an 18-gauge line in the right arm, but I can't get a vein on the left!”
“I'll get the other line through the femoral vein!”
At the same time, Park Se-young took the ultrasound probe in her other hand and brought it to the patient's abdomen.
“Ah... Morrison's pouch”
(Morrison's pouch, the subhepatic space between the liver and the right kidney)
“… ruptured.”
Everything was happening all at once, at a breakneck pace.
I just mechanically handled the kinds of things a first-year resident would do on command—wrapping a blood pressure cuff around the patient's arm, attaching the pulse oximeter, and so on.
As the patient's blood pressure kept dropping, Park Se-young finally shouted.
“Bring four units of O-type PRBC right now! Skip the crossmatch and start transfusing immediately!”
The intern rushed off.
A moment later, blood bags arrived, and red blood began flowing quickly into the patient's veins.
The patient needed emergency surgery.
A surgical consult was called, and the operating room started preparing.
We were only there to keep him alive until he could be taken up to the OR.
Ten minutes passed like an hour.
At last, the surgeons arrived.
“Let's take him up!”
With tubes and monitors hanging all over him, and without even getting a CT, the patient headed for the elevator.
The elevator doors closed, and the patient's figure disappeared from view.
Phew.
Back in the resus room, the tension eased and all the strength drained out of my body.
“What a madhouse.”
I murmured softly while leaning against the wall.
No one died.
The patient left our care alive.
I replayed the scene from just a moment ago.
Yeah.
Even a trauma patient that severe could be handled just fine within our hospital and our team's capabilities, so did I really need that possession skill?
What would I even do if I suddenly awakened as the 'God of the Scalpel' all by myself in a team like that?
I'd only end up being a hindrance, getting in the way of the teamwork.
As if that skill would ever come up in my life as a doctor.
I gave a little snort of laughter and started picking up the trash from the floor.
Cleaning up the resus room was always as futile and exhausting as ever.
The traces of the struggle to keep a person's life just moments ago were now nothing more than bloodstained gauze on the floor, empty IV bags, and scraps of antiseptic cotton giving off a sharp smell.
Once I threw off the sweat-soaked PPE gown and lead vest, my shoulders, crushed under the weight of the lead, ached.
“Ow, my shoulders.”
My whole body was screaming in protest, but I didn't feel bad.
If anything, I felt a strange sense of fulfillment.
We did it.
We moved flawlessly in our respective positions and pulled one fading life back from the brink.
Yes, this was the power of a system.
Not one genius, but a well-coordinated team saves the patient.
There didn't seem to be any room for that alien, powerful possession skill to wedge itself in.
‘As if that skill would ever come up in my life as a doctor.’
I snorted and tied off the opening of the last remaining trash bag.
This was just a very expensive insurance policy.
One I should hope I'd never have to use in my lifetime.
Just then.
“Aaaagh!!”
A sharp scream burst from the triage desk near the ER entrance.
It wasn't the sound of sirens or the paramedics' shouts.
A pure, raw scream.
Everyone in the station reflexively turned their heads that way.
The ER automatic doors were open, and a man was staggering inside.
He was wearing work clothes, like a construction worker, and the area around his abdomen was soaked dark red.
Pale-faced, he clutched his stomach and couldn't even take a few steps before crumpling to the floor with a heavy thud.
“Someone...! Please save him! He... he...!”
The other man who came in behind him shouted, almost wailing.
“What? There wasn't even an ETA!”
Park Se-young's voice split the ER.
There was no time to prepare.
A disaster that had struck without warning.
It was chaos itself.
“Don't panic! Lay him down on Resus Bed 2 right away! It's open, right?”
“Yes, doctor!”
“Yoo Seong-hoon, Nam Joo-hyun, Han Hyun-jae! Put your lead vests back on! Right now!”
Damn my luck.
I swallowed my complaint and ran back to the resus room.
I threw the damp, heavy lead vest I'd just taken off back over my shoulders.
It felt like I had returned to hell.
Resus Bed 2 was an utter scene of chaos.
Nurses were frantically moving the patient onto the bed, and shouts were erupting from everywhere.
“The patient is almost unconscious! He barely responds to stimulation!”
“Pulse 140!!”
The same team from earlier had regrouped, just as before.
But the atmosphere was completely different.
Anxiety and bewilderment were written all over everyone's faces.
“Han Hyun-jae! Take the intern and cut off all his clothes first! We need to see what caused the injury!”
At Park Se-young's shout, I snapped to my senses and grabbed the scissors.
As I cut away the work clothes caked with blood and dirt, the patient's abdomen was exposed.
And all of us swallowed hard.
There was a grotesque wound on the patient's abdomen, roughly 2 to 3 cm across.
The skin around the wound had gone black, and dirty scraps of cloth, as if someone had tried to stop the bleeding in a hurry, were stuck to it.
“Rebar... He says he was stabbed by rusty rebar at the construction site!”
Along with the hectic air of the ER, my brain stalled for a moment.