Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Hope? (1)
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God's Scalpel: Never mind that. Just trust me and do it. Possess him.
That single line glowed ominously amid my despair-filled vision.
Solving it?
This clusterfuck from five minutes ago.
No, this situation where the clusterfuck was already over and only ashes remained?
I tightened my grip on the pressure bag.
Reason and common sense screamed inside my head.
That guy's just a psycho.
A delusional maniac who hadn't come to his senses even in death.
No god could save this situation now.
> OR Ghost 3: Wow, he's soloing again. Hell Slave, use me instead lol
> Latte's All Talk: Tch tch. Hell Slave, think this through carefully. How the hell's he gonna save that thing?
> Bone Fanatic 88: When's my turn! I wanna see fractures too! Marrow!!! Slides!!
I shoved the gallery screen aside and stared at the monitor.
Right then.
Beep, beep.
The blood pressure reading on the monitor began to twitch ever so faintly.
55… 60… 65…
“Blood pressure's rising! It's in the 60s!”
Lee Min-jae shouted in elation.
The O-type blood they'd just transfused was starting to show miraculous effects.
“Oh, thank goodness!”
The frozen air in the resuscitation room thawed, if only for a moment.
Everyone clutched at that spark of hope and sprang back into frantic motion.
“One more fluid line! Hurry! We gotta get it in while the BP stabilizes!”
“Prep the next blood pack! Have it ready for immediate swap!”
“How much longer on the portable X-ray?!”
But that hope was as fleeting as a mirage.
“When the hell is Trauma Surgery getting here?! The patient's crashing!”
Lee Min-jae howled into the intercom.
The patient's blood pressure refused to climb past the 60s, teetering on the brink.
The blood going in was nowhere near enough to stem the gushing outflow.
They were still pouring water into a bottomless bucket.
At this rate, either the blood bank would run dry or the patient's heart would give out first.
The situation had improved a little, but it was far from good.
Gripping the pressure bag, I steeled myself.
Let's do it.
It's a gamble.
But doing nothing meant certain death.
Even a gamble—even 1% odds—I had to take it.
I'd done it once before.
That horrific memory of the laparotomy.
The bizarre sensation of my body no longer being mine.
But in the end, the patient had survived.
And he'd even kindly drilled some etiquette into me—told me not to screw up my life again…
At the very least, he wouldn't pull that stunt of talking shit informally to the seniors like last time.
I talked myself into it like that.
I closed my eyes.
All the noise around me faded away.
‘Possess, God's Scalpel.’
In that instant, every light in the world went out.
Blackout.
Perfect darkness.
No sound.
No sensation.
Not even the flow of time in the void space.
Just as the thought Am I dead? flashed through my mind—
Light flooded back in.
Yeah, this feeling shouldn't be familiar, but it was.
Fuck. Something's seriously wrong with my life.
I could see through my body's eyes, but it felt like all control had been stripped away.
I was watching the world through my own eyes, but I wasn't the one moving them.
The stage was my body.
Director: God's Scalpel.
Star: God's Scalpel.
Audience: me.
Fuck, what the hell is this.
My fingertips twitched, entirely against my will.
This time was different.
Last time, the sudden possession had caught even God's Scalpel off guard.
But now, he clearly knew I'd summoned him.
The decisive difference between this possession and the last.
God's Scalpel seized complete control of the body without a single second of hesitation.
And there was one more crucial difference this time.
Politeness.
Respectful speech.
Please, just let respectful words come out of that mouth, you ghost bastard.
Whether my desperate prayer got through or not, the first movement from God's Scalpel controlling my body was astonishingly calm.
He slowly set down my hand that had been squeezing the pressure bag.
Then he swept his gaze across the entire resuscitation room. His eyes scanned the beeping monitor, the blood-soaked patient's abdomen, and the faces of the panicked medical staff in sequence.
Good job.
At least he didn't spit out informal speech right away like last time.
And then my mouth opened.
“Where is the REBOA kit?”
…No, you crazy bastard.
“No, where is it, please?”
God's Scalpel awkwardly tacked on the polite form, as if correcting himself.
At that clumsy politeness, the me inside let out a sigh of relief along with bloody tears.
Yeah, good on you.
You socially shattered ghost.
You've got the bare minimum manners equipped now.
But hearing that question, Lee Min-jae's face twisted into an expression that screamed, This guy's finally lost his mind for real.
“Right now? REBOA? Why bring that up out of nowhere? You planning to do it?”
REBOA.
Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta.
The ultimate hemostasis technique: shove a balloon catheter up the femoral artery and block the aorta from the inside.
It acted like an internal tourniquet to stop massive bleeding from the abdomen and pelvis.
Even most fellows wouldn't touch it—it was known as one of the highest-difficulty procedures in trauma surgery, let alone for a first-year.
“Yeah.”
…
“…No, no.”
My mouth fumbled unexpectedly.
He hadn't fully adapted to speaking politely yet, it seemed.
“Yes. I'll do it.”
At those words, Han Jae-eon, who'd been squeezing the Ambu bag nearby, cut in.
“You out of your mind? The indication fits, but this isn't a procedure you can handle. It's nothing like securing an airway.”
She was right, a hundred times over.
REBOA was insane.
At least for an Emergency Medicine second-year.
“This is on a whole different level from just slicing open the belly. Ultrasound or C-arm to visualize the vessel, insert the guidewire, advance the catheter all the way to the aorta, then balloon at the precise spot—you sure you can pull that off?”
Han Jae-eon's voice grew sharper.
“If you tear the aorta, the patient's dead on the spot. Can you do it or not?”
Desperate pushback.
But Lee Min-jae wasn't listening to her.
“Wait… fuck… ha… hold on a sec…”
Lee Min-jae clawed at his own hair.
“You… you were like this last year when you cracked open that belly too? No, what am I saying. Fuck… can you really do it? For real?”
Lee Min-jae was asking me.
Not second-year Han Hyun-jae, but whatever mysterious force had pulled off that miracle back then.
“Can you do it?”
That question drew an answer from my mouth without the slightest hesitation.
“…Yes.”
In that moment, every shred of reason in Lee Min-jae snapped.
“Fuck, okay.”
He bellowed at the nurse.
“Teacher Nam! Get the REBOA kit and C-arm in here right now! Hurry!”
“Hyun-jae.”
“Yes.”
“I'm not taking any responsibility for this! I'm dead serious! If shit goes south later, I never told you to do it! I don't wanna end up in jail with you over your crazy bullshit! So from here on out, I'm just… an active bystander or whatever! Got it!”
Was this dodging responsibility, or not?
On the surface, yeah.
But it also meant, I'll turn a blind eye no matter what insane crap you pull.
What a shady bastard.
The air in the resuscitation room shifted once more.
A mad ghost, an even madder second-year, and a senior resolved to spectate it all—a gambling bystander set to witness the world's strangest operating theater.
The moment Lee Min-jae's approval dropped, the resuscitation room erupted in noise again.
The radiology techs bustled about, grunting as they dragged the massive C-shaped mobile X-ray machine—the C-arm—into the room.
Its heavy wheels rumbled noisily across the floor.
God's Scalpel ignored the commotion and calmly prepared the next step.
His hand moved.
God's Scalpel picked up the ultrasound probe, slipped a plastic cover over it, and slathered on sterile gel.
“Ultrasound over here.”
The nurse wheeled the monitor stand to the bedside.
God's Scalpel slightly peeled back the sterile drape covering the patient's right groin where the femoral artery ran.
He pressed the probe to the skin.
A faint black-and-white image of the wriggling vessel's cross-section appeared on the monitor.
“C-arm to the patient's pelvis, AP view please. Yes, that's it.”
The radiographer adjusted the C-arm position without a word.
Off to the side, Lee Min-jae tore into the REBOA kit packaging like a maniac.
“Fuck, why won't this rip open.”
The sound of the clear plastic tearing rang out sharply.
Despite the steady blood transfusion, the monitor's blood pressure reading began to creep downward bit by bit. 65… 62… 59…
“Shit, it's dropping even with the blood going in! Hyun-jae, how much longer?!”
Lee Min-jae's anxious voice echoed from the darkness.
Right then, Han Jae-eon, who'd been working the Ambu bag beside him, jumped in.
“Hyun-jae, hold up! Patient's BP is way too low right now. Let's at least get it up to the 70s with the incoming MTP blood first before we start. Please.”
Her words were perfectly reasonable—straight out of the textbook.
Sorry, senior.
The current owner of this body burned textbooks for kindling decades ago.
“The current blood pressure is sufficient for the procedure indication, sir.”
His voice was ice-cold.
“No, it's still too dangerous. Hyun-jae.”
“Enough, enough.”
Lee Min-jae wedged himself between them.
“It's decided. Let it go. Right now, the only option is to trust this lunatic.”
With that, all objections were dismissed.
God's Scalpel opened his mouth.
“Let's begin.”