Chapter 72
God of the Scalpel: That's none of your business. Just trust me and go. Possess me.
That one line glowed ominously in my despair-filled field of vision.
Solve it?
This mess, five minutes before disaster.
No, this situation where the mess was already over and only ashes remained?
I squeezed the pressure bag harder.
My reason and common sense in my head screamed.
That bastard is just insane.
A delusional madman who still can't get his head on straight even after dying.
This situation can't be saved even if God himself came down.
ㄴ Operating Room Ghost 3 : Wow, he's running off on his own again. Hell slave, use me instead, yeah.
ㄴ Back in My Day : Tsk tsk. Hell slave, think carefully. How on earth are you supposed to save that?
ㄴ Bone Nerd 88 : When is my turn! I want to see a fracture patient too! Bone marrow!!! Slide!!
I turned away from the gallery screen and looked at the monitor.
That was when it happened.
Beep, beep.
The blood pressure reading on the monitor began to move ever so slightly.
55… 60… 65….
“Blood pressure's up! It's into the 60s.”
Lee Min-jae shouted in a jubilant voice.
The O-type blood that had just gone in was starting to work like a miracle.
“Oh, thank goodness!”
The frozen air in the resuscitation room thawed for just a moment.
Everyone started moving like mad again, fueled by hope.
“One more IV line! Hurry! We need to get it in while the blood pressure's holding!”
“Prepare the next blood pack! So we can swap it out right away!”
“How much longer until the portable X-ray gets here?!”
But that hope was as fleeting as a mirage.
“No, when the hell is trauma surgery coming? We're going to lose the patient!”
Lee Min-jae screamed toward the intercom.
The patient's blood pressure wouldn't rise beyond the 60s and was only barely hanging on.
The amount of blood going in was nowhere near enough to keep up with the blood gushing out.
We were still pouring water into a bottomless jar.
At this rate, either the blood bank would run dry or the patient's heart would stop first.
The situation had improved a little, but it was still far from good.
I made up my mind, still gripping the pressure bag.
Let's do it.
This is a gamble.
But if we stay like this, the result is 100% death.
Even if it's a gamble, even if there's only a 1% chance, I have to bet on it.
I've already tried it once.
The memory of that horrific laparotomy.
That bizarre sensation of my body no longer being mine.
But in the end, the patient lived, didn't he?
And he very kindly gave me an etiquette lesson, telling me not to ruin my life from now on...
So at the very least, I wouldn't do anything insane like talking casually to my seniors again like last time.
That's how I desperately comforted myself.
I closed my eyes.
All the noise around me receded.
‘Possess me, God of the Scalpel.’
At that moment, all the light in the world went out.
Blackout.
Perfect darkness.
Sound
Sensation
A void where even the passage of time could not be felt.
The instant the thought of ‘Did I die?’ flickered through my mind.
Light came back again.
Yeah, this feeling shouldn't be familiar, but it is.
Shit. Something about my life is going wrong.
It felt like I could see through my body's eyes, but the control had been completely taken away.
I was seeing the world through my own eyes, but I wasn't the one moving my pupils.
The stage was my body.
Director: God of the Scalpel.
Lead: God of the Scalpel.
Audience: me.
What the fuck is this.
My fingertips moved ever so slightly, independent of my will.
This time was different.
Last time, God of the Scalpel had been flustered by the sudden possession, but this time he clearly understood that I had summoned him.
The crucial difference between this possession and the last.
God of the Scalpel's consciousness seized control of this body completely without even a second of hesitation.
And this time, there was one more very important difference.
Honorifics.
Polite speech.
Please, let polite speech come out of that mouth, you ghost bastard.
Perhaps my desperate prayer had worked, because God of the Scalpel's first movement in my body was astonishingly calm.
He slowly lowered the hand that had been squeezing the pressure bag.
Then he swept the entire resuscitation room with one look. His gaze scanned the beeping monitor, the blood-soaked patient's abdomen, and the panicked faces of the medical staff one by one.
Good.
At least he wasn't blurting out casual speech right away like last time.
And then my mouth opened.
“Where is the REBOA kit?”
…No, this crazy bastard.
“No, where is it?”
God of the Scalpel awkwardly added honorifics, as if correcting himself.
At that awkward polite speech, the me inside let out a sigh of relief and shed tears of blood.
Yeah, good job.
You socially inept ghost bastard.
You've at least got the bare minimum of manners installed.
But when he heard that question, Lee Min-jae's face wore the expression of 'This bastard has finally gone completely insane.'
“Hyunjae? REBOA? Why are you suddenly bringing that up out of nowhere? Don't tell me you're actually going to do it?”
REBOA.
Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta.
The last-resort hemostatic procedure where a balloon catheter is shoved in through the femoral artery to block the aorta from the inside.
In other words, it acts as an internal tourniquet to stop massive bleeding in the abdomen and pelvis.
It's one of the hardest procedures in trauma surgery, one even most fellows can't easily touch, let alone a first-year.
“Uh.”
…
“…No, no.”
My mouth stammered before I knew it.
I apparently still hadn't fully gotten used to God of the Scalpel speaking politely yet.
“Yes. I will do it.”
At those words, Han Jae-eon, who had been squeezing the Ambu bag beside me, cut in.
“Are you out of your mind? The indication is right, but this isn't a procedure you can do. It's completely different from securing an airway.”
That was right, one hundred percent.
REBOA was insane.
At least for a second-year emergency medicine resident.
“This isn't just a different level from opening the abdomen. You use ultrasound or C-arm to look at the vessels, insert the guidewire, push the catheter all the way up to the aorta, and then balloon it at the exact spot—are you really saying you can do that?”
Han Jae-eon's voice sharpened further.
“If you tear the aorta, the patient dies on the spot. Can you do it or not?”
A desperate rebuttal.
But Lee Min-jae wasn't listening to her.
“Wait... ah, shit... ha... just a second....”
Lee Min-jae grabbed at his own hair.
“You... were you like this even when you opened the abdomen last year? No, what am I saying. Ha, shit... can you really do it? Really?”
Lee Min-jae was asking me.
Not second-year resident Han Hyunjae, but the nameless something that had worked that miracle back then.
“Can you do it?”
At that question, an answer slipped from my mouth without the slightest hesitation.
“…Yes.”
At that moment, all of Lee Min-jae's reason snapped.
“Dammit, okay.”
He shouted at the nurse.
“Nurse Nam! Bring the REBOA kit and the C-arm to the resuscitation room right now! Hurry!”
“Hyunjae.”
“Yes.”
“I'm not taking responsibility?! Seriously! If something goes wrong later, I never told you to do this! I don't want to end up in prison with you because you're doing something crazy, got it? So from now on I'm just... an active bystander, or whatever that is! Understand?!”
Was this dodging responsibility, or wasn't it?
On the surface, it was dodging responsibility, but at the same time it also meant, 'I'll let whatever nonsense you do slide.'
What a sly bastard.
The air in the resuscitation room shifted once more.
The most bizarre operating room in the world, where one crazy ghost, an even crazier second-year resident, and a senior gambler who had decided to stand by and watch were all making a scene.
The moment Lee Min-jae gave his permission, the resuscitation room grew noisy again.
The medical technicians bustled about and, with much grunting, dragged the huge C-shaped mobile X-ray machine, the C-arm, into the resuscitation room.
The heavy wheels rolled forward with a loud rumble.
God of the Scalpel left all that commotion behind and calmly prepared the next step.
A hand moved.
God of the Scalpel picked up the ultrasound probe, covered it with a plastic sheath, and coated it generously with sterile gel.
“Ultrasound over here.”
The nurse pulled the monitor stand to the side of the bed.
God of the Scalpel slightly lifted the sterile drape covering the area where the patient's right groin femoral artery ran.
Then he placed the probe against the skin.
A faint black-and-white image appeared on the monitor, showing a wriggling cross-section of the blood vessel.
“Position the C-arm toward the patient's pelvis and set it to AP view
(* frontal view)
please. Yes, yes. Like that.”
The radiologic technologist adjusted the C-arm without a word.
Lee Min-jae was frantically tearing open the REBOA kit packaging beside him.
“Damn it, why won't this open?”
The sound of the transparent plastic wrapping tearing was especially sharp.
The blood pressure reading on the monitor began to creep downward despite the blood continuing to go in. 65… 62… 59…
“Shit, it's dropping even though blood's going in! Hyunjae, how much longer?”
Lee Min-jae's anxious voice rang out in the darkness.
Just then, Han Jae-eon, who had been squeezing the Ambu bag beside him, cut in.
“Hyunjae, wait a second! The patient's blood pressure is too low right now. Let's get it up into the 70s first with the blood from the MTP, then start, please.”
That was reasonable and perfectly textbook.
Sorry, senior.
The current owner of my body is a man who used textbooks as kindling decades ago.
“Isn't the current blood pressure sufficient for the procedure, doctor?”
His voice was ice-cold.
“No, even so, it's still too dangerous, Hyunjae.”
“Enough, enough.”
Lee Min-jae stepped between the two of them.
“It's already been decided. Just leave it. Right now, we have no choice but to trust that crazy bastard.”
And just like that, every objection was brushed aside.
God of the Scalpel opened his mouth.
“I will begin.”