Chapter 36
While Yoo Seong-hoon lifted the patient’s chin to try to secure the airway, Nam Ju-hyeon mouthed a self-deprecating curse and tried to find a vein in the patient’s arm.
But because shock had constricted all the vessels, the needle kept stabbing empty air.
“No line! Han Hyeon-jae, get over here and put direct pressure on the wound! Push as hard as you can!”
I stacked both hands over the wound, where blood was gushing out, and threw my weight onto it, pressing down like a madman.
“I’m doing a FAST! Move!”
Park Se-young grabbed the ultrasound probe.
She ran the probe over different spots on the patient’s abdomen, and the crease between her brows deepened in despair as she looked at the monitor.
“The whole abdominal cavity is full of blood? It’s worse than the last patient! At this rate he won’t last even 10 minutes!”
A sharp alarm blared like mad from the monitor.
I held pressure on the wound and endured desperately.
Hot blood kept forcing its way out between my fingers.
I stole a glance at the seniors.
Park Se-young, who was usually so calm, had sweat beading on her forehead, and Yoo Seong-hoon’s once-skilled hands were trembling faintly.
“Got a line in!”
The numbers on the blood pressure monitor were dropping mercilessly after passing the 60s.
58, 55, 52…
“Blood pressure’s dropping into the 50s! At this rate…”
Park Se-young’s voice cracked with despair.
We were shoving in type O blood bags as if wringing them dry, but it was like pouring a bucket of water into a burst dam.
The patient’s body was spilling blood like a bottomless jar, and all our efforts did was delay death by the tiniest amount.
“Has trauma surgery been called? When are they coming!”
Yoo Seong-hoon shouted, his face slick with sweat.
“At least 15 minutes for the fastest team! They’re in another surgery right now....”
The nurse’s answer was practically a death sentence.
15 minutes.
At this rate, he wouldn’t last 5 minutes, let alone 15.
The patient’s face already no longer looked like that of a living person.
Everyone knew it.
We were losing.
This fight was slipping out of our hands.
I could feel the strength draining from the hand pressing on the wound.
The warmth of the blood against my gloves was wearing me down.
Was this how it ended?
Was a person really going to die like this right before my eyes, under my hands?
That was the moment.
In my head, a single, cold, alien possibility began to take root.
[Possession]
[Price : 5,000 LP]
‘Shit.’
There was no other choice.
My pride, my seniors’ eyes, the hospital rules, and the 12 hours of hellish pain that would come after using the skill.
I placed them all on the scale.
And on the other side lay this man’s life.
The scale had already tipped to one side.
‘...I’ll do it.’
I closed my eyes, still crushing the blood-soaked wound beneath my hands.
I shut out every sound in my head.
And with all my will, I thought of a single name.
‘Possession. The Scalpel God.’
At that instant, the world turned upside down.
It wasn’t my vision going black, and I wasn’t losing consciousness.
Instead, it was the opposite.
Everything became far too clear.
The cold air of the resuscitation room, the blood stench stinging my nose, the shrill alarms from the monitor.
It felt as if every sense had been amplified dozens of times over.
So this is what possession feels like.
It was my own line of sight, yet it somehow didn’t feel like my own...?
The world was still visible through my eyes.
But the one looking at that world wasn’t me.
It was like being a terrified spectator shoved into the farthest corner of the cockpit of my own body.
My arms and legs, my voice, my everything—all of it no longer felt like mine.
Something unfamiliar had completely taken over control of this body.
My hand moved.
No, his hand moved.
And then my mouth opened.
“…What is this place?”
It was my voice, but not my intonation.
That one sentence brought the chaos in the resuscitation room to a dead stop.
Park Se-young, Yoo Seong-hoon, Nam Ju-hyeon, and even the nurses.
All of them stopped what they were doing and stared at me in shock.
“What? Han Hyeon-jae, what are you suddenly talking about?”
Park Se-young asked, baffled.
“…Intra-abdominal bleeding?”
“We already told you that! Han Hyeon-jae, snap out of it!”
Yoo Seong-hoon shouted, unable to hold it in.
His eyes were full of certainty that, in this insane situation, the first-year rookie had finally cracked under the pressure.
Inside me, I screamed.
‘You insane, socially crippled ghost bastard!! Use honorifics! Honorifics!!!!! Those people are all your seniors… no, my seniors, you bastard!!!!!’
But my scream didn’t reach him.
The one in my body ignored Yoo Seong-hoon’s shouting like background noise and scanned the stainless-steel tray.
And finally, it revealed its true purpose.
“Scalpel.”
At that one word, the air in the resuscitation room froze.
“…What?”
Nam Ju-hyeon asked in disbelief.
“Give me a scalpel.”
This time, it came out a little clearer.
A voice laced with irritation.
The moment that was said, everyone’s sanity snapped.
“Are you crazy?”
A low curse burst from Park Se-young’s lips.
“Hey, Han Hyeon-jae! Are you in your right mind right now? What are you going to do with a scalpel if you find one here? What, are you going to cut the patient’s belly open? Did you watch a drama yesterday? Do you want to lose your license? Do you want your whole doctor life to be over?”
“Are you seriously not snapping out of it?”
Nam Ju-hyeon’s face turned bright red with anger.
He looked ready to grab my collar right then.
“Hey! Hearing all that genius and double-board-prep talk, do you really think you’re some drama protagonist? This is insane! Insane!! If you put a scalpel to the patient’s body now, it’s over!”
Park Se-young’s scream filled the resuscitation room.
Feeling the anger, contempt, and faint fear mixed in there, the me inside me sank into despair.
‘Shit... I’m screwed. That ghost bastard is ruining my life...!’
Ignoring all the abuse hurled at him, the Scalpel God reached for the tray and said,
“No. 10 blade.”
“No, seriously, this is driving me crazy. Hey!!! You’re a first-year!! And you’re in emergency medicine too!! You’re not in any position to be holding a scalpel, you madman!!”
Park Se-young shouted almost in tears.
“Han Hyeon-jae! Hey, somebody hold Hyeon-jae down! Hyeon-jae isn’t sane right now, hold him down!”
Yoo Seong-hoon’s desperate shout split the resuscitation room.
That shout was the signal, and second-year Nam Ju-hyeon and an intern nearby rushed to restrain me.
Shit, we’re done for.
If there was even a scuffle here, this patient was finished.
Please, just listen to that ghost bastard.
But the Scalpel God began moving at a crazy speed, as if mocking all that chaos.
The Scalpel God reached toward the stainless-steel tray.
What my hand grabbed first—no, what the Scalpel God’s hand grabbed first—wasn’t the No. 10 blade.
A pair of sterile forceps and a huge wad of sterile gauze clamped tightly in them.
And a Betadine bottle filled with a reddish-brown liquid.
“Hey, you…!”
Before Nam Ju-hyeon could shout anything else, he had already popped the cap off.
And the next instant, the Scalpel God simply tipped the bottle and poured the Betadine gushing out of it straight over the gauze.
‘That crazy bastard! You should use hospital supplies sparingly!’
But the Scalpel God had no such thing as petty thrift on his mind.
The Scalpel God bent over the patient’s abdomen, holding the Betadine-soaked gauze as it dripped.
And in one motion, he scrubbed the patient’s entire abdomen in a huge arc, from the pit of the stomach down to just above the pubic bone.
Fast, broad, and without the slightest hesitation.
“…….”
At that sight, Nam Ju-hyeon, who had been about to grab me, and Yoo Seong-hoon, who had been shouting, both froze in place.
The instant the disinfection was done, the other hand was already tearing open the bundle containing the sterile drapes.
The blue sterile drape fluttered open in midair. The Scalpel God spread that huge drape over the patient with perfect precision.
“Crazy...”
Someone muttered under their breath.
The motions didn’t stop.
Like a divinely inspired master craftsman, the Scalpel God laid the sterile drapes over the sides and upper body in a blink. Unfolding the folded drape, setting it in place, unfolding the next one—the whole sequence flowed as if it were a single motion.
Inside me, I could only watch the astonishing show my own body was putting on with awe.
‘Ah, so that’s how it’s done. So fast, yet so precise.’
Finally, the Scalpel God firmly secured the four drape edges with towel clips.
Clack, clack, clack, clack.
In just thirty seconds. Everything that would normally have taken me at least five minutes if I were flustered was finished in thirty seconds.
Everyone in the resuscitation room fell silent.
Everyone in the resuscitation room was no longer looking at the ‘crazy first-year Han Hyeon-jae.’
They were now witnessing something that had leapt far beyond the bounds of common sense.
Wouldn’t they think it was some lunatic who ignored every senior in the room, slapped on the sterile drapes in an instant, disinfected the patient’s abdomen, and was really about to cut him open?
And at last, the Scalpel God’s hand picked up the No. 10 blade.
Under the cold lights of the resuscitation room, the silver blade gleamed coldly.
Han Hyeon-jae, or rather the Scalpel God who had taken over my body, looked down at the perfectly prepared surgical field with the scalpel in hand.
No, to be exact, it was the most makeshift of makeshift operating tables, hardly worthy of the name.
At the sight, Yoo Seong-hoon’s face went white.
He realized it.
This wasn’t a joke.
That insane first-year bastard was really going to cut him open.