Chapter 221

Episode 221 Hell Chosen (4)

ㄴ Korean Slave 1: What should I prepare first??

ㄴ Mes of the God: I’ll find the Vascular Surgery ghost first.

ㄴ Mes of the God: Good. Hell Slave. Prepare 20cc of 1% lidocaine first and perform local anesthesia.

ㄴ Korean Slave 1: Because we can't do general anesthesia?

ㄴ Mes of the God: Yeah. We have to keep him just barely breathing and slice him open while he's fully conscious. As wide as possible. Spread the anesthetic all the way down below the inguinal ligament.

The ghost’s instructions were cold and precise. Only then did I recall the piping-hot new function I had just purchased from the shop.

ㄴ Korean Slave 1: But I can do simultaneous possession of two people now.

ㄴ Mes of the God: You should've told me sooner, fuck.

An advance notice of a combo play by the ghosts that wasn't just reassuring—it sent shivers down my spine. I closed the window and turned my head back to reality.

The patient, a teenage boy, was in a state where his blood pressure had dropped slightly more than before. Walking a tightrope right on the edge of the normal range, he had his eyes halfway closed in a daze due to the pain and early symptoms of ischemic shock.

Time was running out. I called out to the Trauma Surgery fellow who was frantically issuing orders from the opposite side of the bed.

"Trauma Surgery teacher."

"Ah, yes?"

Lim Seong-hyun wiped his sweat-beaded forehead and looked at me.

"Let's puncture the blood vessel right away."

"Yes... puncture right... puncture right away? Yes?! What?!"

Lim Seong-hyun's eyes grew so wide they looked about to pop out. He looked with a look as if he were running a translator inside his brain to check if the words that came out of my mouth were actually Korean.

"Trauma team teachers!"

"Yes!"

The nurses dedicated to severe trauma patients answered all at once.

"Please set up Minor Operating Room Trauma Bay 2!"

"Yeees~"

...

...

Once a certain amount of preparation was done, the patient's bed started to be pushed into Resusc Bed 2, where the surgical lights and equipment were ready.

"Eunseo."

"Yes, Teacher Han!"

Baek Eunseo pressed close to my side.

"While they're setting up the trauma bay, go to the Emergency Operating Room and borrow some instruments. Two DeBakey Vascular Clamps, a TIVS line, and a 3-French and 4-French Fogarty catheter each."

"Ah, yes yes! I'm taking notes. DeBakey... TIVS... Fogarty catheter..."

Baek Eunseo's hand moved so quickly it was a blur.

"And 5-0 and 6-0 Prolene round needles. Most importantly, tell them to absolutely pack a Fine Vascular needle holder."

"Yes yes!"

"I'm counting on you. Run quickly!"

"Ah, yes! Understood!"

Baek Eunseo kicked open the Emergency Room automatic door and dashed out like a bullet. And looking at her retreating back, Lim Seong-hyun from Trauma Surgery hurriedly approached and grabbed my shoulder firmly.

"Emergency Medicine doctor...?"

"Yes?"

"I heard wrong, right? Those orders just now. You're saying you're going to do that here, right now?"

An Emergency Medicine resident holding a mes in the middle of the Emergency Room, slicing open the femoral artery to drive in a temporary shunt.

However.

I.

Do not have time to persuade you, teachers.

Normally, I would have spent a long time trying to persuade them, struggling to make them understand somehow. But right now, let's just move past it quickly.

"If so, perhaps you, teacher..."

"No, I'm a 1st year fellow... I've never done it alone before."

Oh boy.

"Even so, we can't just leave the child until an operating room opens when he's already in a state of ischemic shock, can we?"

"Professor Song from Vascular Surgery will also be here in 15 minutes..."

"Teacher."

"Yes?"

"I know how to do it."

My skill. To be precise, the background backing me up that knew the ghost's skill had grown too numerous. That was why it was a gamble I could throw out. Sorry for lying. But we have to save the kid's leg, don't we?

"...Yes?"

"I stepped forward because I know how to do it."

At my brazen words, Lim Seong-hyun’s mouth fell wide open. Surely, he must be confused. A non-surgical resident had boldly stepped forward to perform a procedure that no one except Vascular Surgery or Trauma Surgery would ever have to do.

One saving grace was that the crazy things I had pulled off so far weren't just one or two, so rumors had circulated quite a bit within the hospital. That was why he was trying to place a bet on it just this once.

"Uh...? You... you know how to do it...? Weren't you talking about TIVS just now? Temporary Intravascular Shunt.... But even I haven't done it alone..."

"I know how to do it."

Just then, far in the distance, I spotted Lee Minjae, a fellow and expert on day duty today, wandering around the station.

"If you really can't trust me, you can ask that expert over there. When it comes to trauma in the ER, I practically..."

"Ah... yes... that..."

...

...

In a secluded corner of the trauma bay, Lim Seong-hyun appeared to be urgently holding onto the handset, making an SOS call to the Trauma Surgery Center Director, Kang Hyun-joon.

"Yes? To trust him? Professor Kang? Yes? No, I mean, he's not Vascular Surgery or Trauma Surgery, he's Emergency Medicine! Yes. Teacher Han Hyeonjae... yes?"

Whether from whatever words were heard over the handset, Lim Seong-hyun's expression repeatedly crumpled and smoothed out.

"Sigh... ah... no, right. I'm not rebelling against your opinion. Yes. Yes yes. Yes...."

It seemed Lim Seong-hyun intended to persuade Professor Kang.

"Even so, this isn't right... Yes, ah, yes. I know the rumors. But... ah. You saw it in person. If so... yes yes. Yes."

But he failed.

"Yes. I will stand and watch responsibly so that he doesn't cause any accidents."

Roughly, it probably meant he would take responsibility and switch out if I couldn't do it properly. He was a trained expert, after all.

Finishing the call, Lim Seong-hyun returned to my side, putting on a sterile gown with a thoroughly uneasy and reluctant expression. It was a look that wondered what on earth the professors of this hospital had been held hostage by to give this crazy bastard a free pass.

"Let's drape."

"Uh? But ER teacher."

He flinched as he saw the disinfection range.

"Yes."

I replied, subtly turning my head to look at the window in the void.

Mes of the God: Operating Room Ghost 3 and I decided to possess simultaneously. Yeah.

ㄴ Operating Room Ghost 3: Kiiyaahoo! Sightseeing the current life!

ㄴ Mes of the God: Don't overdo it and give proper blood vessel tutoring.

Forget this. I turned my gaze back to Lim Seong-hyun. Holding the disinfectant, Lim Seong-hyun asked as if puzzled.

"You're doing it terribly wide?"

"Because if we open the groin and bleeding control doesn't work, we have to completely compress the iliac artery inside the pelvic cavity to block the blood entirely."

"That's true."

"And."

I pointed to the patient's intact right thigh with my gloved finger.

"Professor Song, who will arrive later to perform the regular surgery, will need an autologous blood vessel to replace the smashed femoral artery."

"Because the great saphenous vein needs to be harvested right away?"

"Yes, it seems so, that's why..."

I didn't know anything about Vascular Surgery.

‘I didn't know either, shit.’

Not until a certain ghost kindly struck it directly into my mind.

...

...

"Insulin and.... Glucose and... bicarbonate and...."

I scanned the medication cart placed at the patient's head, pointing to them one by one with my finger. Sweat beads were also forming on the foreheads of Baek Eunseo and Lim Seong-hyun as they set up the drugs.

"Yes... there's a lot to prepare...."

Standing opposite me to assist, Lim Seong-hyun swallowed dryly and muttered. Since it was a surgery to puncture an artery, the cart was full of internal medicine drugs that would usually be used for systemic metabolic diseases, rather than medications to stop bleeding or dilate blood vessels.

"Because it's to prepare for reperfusion injury."

When a blocked drain is unclogged, rotten water pours out before clean water flows. The leg muscle cells, which hadn't received oxygen because the blood didn't flow, would be undergoing anaerobic metabolism at this very moment, vomiting out tremendous amounts of toxic substances like lactic acid, potassium, and myoglobin.

The moment a shunt is driven into the blocked blood vessel to let blood flow again, those toxins will pour up all at once through the veins into the entire body.

"Whether the patient falls into a state of metabolic acidosis or severe hyperkalemia is, after all, a problem after releasing the shunt."

"Are the blood packs ready?"

At Ahn Seong-hyun's question, the nurse guarding the front of the blood refrigerator replied.

"Yes! Type O, 4 pints are hung, and the cross-matched ones will also come up right away!"

"What about calcium gluconate and mannitol?"

An osmotic diuretic to prevent acute kidney failure from myoglobin—spewed out as cells are destroyed—blocking the kidneys, and even calcium to protect the heart muscle.

"Here it is! It's all drawn into syringes so it can be shot into the line right away!"

"Yes... well. The verbal order records are written largely on the whiteboard over there so we don't get confused..."

I took a final glance at the emergency medication dosages and timings written densely on the whiteboard on the wall of the resuscitation room. I had set up all the internal medicine defensive walls within my power.

Sigh—

Preparation finished. Now it was time to call forth the legendary knife-wielding experts.

'Possession, Mes of the God.'

At my call, a blue system window immediately popped up on my retina.

[Would you like to use 2-person possession?]

[Consumption: 5,000 LP]

The piping-hot new function freshly purchased from the shop. A huge sum of 5,000 points vanished in an instant, but there was nothing to regret to protect the patient's leg.

...

'Yes.'

[Please designate the target.]

'Operating Room Ghost 3.'

Flash—!

Simultaneously with the approval, a sharp bursting sound hit my ears, and my vision went black in an instant. The control of my body ebbed away like the tide, and in its spot, a very heavy, sharp, and alien sensation rushed in like a flood.

The possession was complete.

As soon as Mes of the God took dominance of the physical body, my body bowed its head deeply, then lifted its two hands covered in sterile gloves to eye level. A physical flesh body touched after a long time.

"Mmh."

And then, just as he was about to turn his head. Mes of the God momentarily flinched and shook his shoulders while looking into the void.

I could see it too. Because beneath the dazzling surgical light of the resuscitation room, something translucent and dust-like (?), which doctors or nurses in the operating room could absolutely never see, was floating around in the air. A blurry outline whose shape was hard to discern.

『Wow, shit, this is fascinating. What is this?』

The fussy voice of Operating Room Ghost 3 echoed, hitting my mind directly.

『This is totally like a monitor? It's completely thin? No, we had thin monitors in our time too, but a ultra-high-definition touchscreen wasn't stuck right on the wall of the emergency room resuscitation room like this! The world has really gotten good!』

Surgery was the furthest thing from his mind; he was busy floating around in the air, lost in admiration as he checked out the state-of-the-art trauma bay equipment.

『Shut up.』

At Mes of the God's inner thoughts, Operating Room Ghost 3 quietly shut his mouth. Pushed to the back of consciousness, I cautiously threw a question to Mes of the God, who had occupied my body.

'But wouldn't it be fine for the Vascular Surgery ghost to perform the surgery? Why is that gentleman floating around for no reason?'

Even if it was Mes of the God, the fine anastomosis of blood vessels or shunt insertion would be much more accurate if Operating Room Ghost 3, a vascular surgery expert, directly possessed and moved the hands. No, in the first place, Mes of the God was a trauma surgery subspecialist, so there was no way he couldn't insert a shunt. Did I call both of them for nothing?

『He says his hand sensation is completely dead. It's been so long since he laid down the knife, he's afraid he might burst a fine blood vessel while handling it, so he'll only give advice.』

The excuse was plausible, but it was felt that the body of the possessed Mes of the God was also minutely rigid. Looking down at the green sterile drape covering the surgical site, Mes of the God momentarily let out a deep sigh.

"Haa."

Mes of the God opened his mouth.

"I will start. Give me blade number 10."

"Yes."

Without hesitation, Mes of the God brought the blade over the patient's left groin.

Swwish—

『Uh, uh, you crazy bastard Mes, fuck, hey!』

Operating Room Ghost 3, who was floating in the air, screamed.

『You have to draw a line in a vertical direction from the skin crease directly below the inguinal ligament! While imagining the anatomical course of the femoral artery! Don't stab wildly like you're splitting a belly!』

"No, I'm doing it that way, fuck."

Getting angry, Mes of the God uttered a vocalization in a very small monologue.

『Lower it just a bit more! Don't you see the femoral vein and nerve passing right next to the artery? If you turn just 1 centimeter more to the right from there, the vein will burst and turn into a sea of blood!』

"Ah, yes, yes. I got it, so don't scream right into my ear, you old geezer. I've put in plenty of shunts too."

Muttering very softly, Mes of the God incised the skin and took over the Bovie, beginning to dig deep while burning the subcutaneous fat layer.

The smell of burning blood and smoke rising. In the void, the Vascular Surgery ghost poured out nagging like crazy. From my mouth, the harsh swearing and sighs of a legendary surgeon popped out. In front of my eyes, a situation where the fellow was looking at me as if looking at a crazy bastard.

Stuck in the spectator seats, I held onto my fading sanity and wailed inwardly.

'This surgery. Fuck.'

Staring at the raw flesh where bloody water seeped out in front of my eyes, I prayed fervently.

'Can it turn out well?'