Chapter 128: Stop [4]
It was strange, when you thought about it. Why me…? Huh? Did I really have to ask them not to do something so obviously reckless? But no… that was true, if you thought about it just a little.
“Pyeong.”
“Yes?”
Did he see the displeasure on my face? Robert Liston looked at me with a slightly more serious expression. I glanced at the old man lying farther down the ward.
“I’m talking about not being able to urinate. It’s harder than dying.”
“Is your brother like that too?”
“Me? I’m still fine. But my father… He suffered terribly from it in his later years.”
“Hm.”
Yeah, it must be hard. Urinary retention was a problem on its own, but when you added aging, other complications arose. Diabetes, for instance, was untreatable until insulin was developed. These days, it was seen as a modern disease, but historically, it caused no small number of problems.
If someone had diabetes… it could damage multiple nerves and affect urination. Not to mention uncontrolled Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia, right?
It felt like God was just ordering people to die once they reached a certain point. That old man probably agreed to surgery because he thought death was better than this. Otherwise, I could not imagine why anyone would risk undergoing surgery in such a shady place.
“I mean, there are so many desperate people. Among my patients, acquaintances… many are willing to try anything. But what’s the current treatment for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia?”
“It’s dangerous. And more than that, it’s not very effective.”
Liston’s words made me think of the tools in the professor’s office, all those books and documents on surgical techniques. A lot of thought had clearly gone into them… but there was not much real progress. That was probably why they considered Castration.
“Well… if that operation actually proves effective, then I don’t have a choice. I’ll have to recommend it.”
“What? Even though—!”
“We can’t just let them die, can we? Look, I don’t like this either. In fact, when I first heard it from you, I seriously considered just killing Harry.”
“…Wow.”
So being a doctor and killing someone might not be so far apart after all. No wonder Harry shut his eyes tightly. He must have felt like he was seconds away from dying. But just then, Liston’s expression changed completely.
“But after hearing more, it makes sense. Our professor is not the type to cut off something important based on a baseless hunch.”
No… he seemed like a bad person, or at least a crazy one, but still.
“Anyway, the point is this. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have said this. But…”
Liston trailed off, shaking his head as he tried to find the right words. It took him a while. It was frustrating, but also a relief, because it gave me time to rationalize the situation in my head.
Okay… we did not know anything about hormones yet.
Hormones were probably discovered in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It was not a critical subject for clinicians back then, but it was important. In modern medicine, few things were studied more. One of my best friends in my past life was an endocrinologist. We called him “the hormone maniac.”
So… if the organ that secreted male hormones was removed, who knew what would happen?
Male hormones. It was no exaggeration to say they were what made a man a man. If you lost them, you became someone who was neither male nor female. Even if you made that choice willingly, the consequences were huge. If you made it without knowing? You would not be ready for what came after.
They did not know… That was why they were doing this. Maybe it was even a reasonable choice.
This was a time of ignorance. They had no idea about most of what modern medicine had achieved. So things like this could happen. That was how I kept calming myself down. I just repeated it over and over.
“I believe in your genius. Please… come up with a new surgical method in the next few months. Until then, I’ll take responsibility for keeping this guy from acting out. I’ll make sure the other patients don’t talk either. If even a rumor spreads… this guy might lose any chance of a future.”
To summarize Liston’s thoughts: if word got out that Castration could relieve urinary retention, then every butcher or quack with a knife would jump at the opportunity. It sounded crazy, but it really was not.
“Anyway, get started on it. Harry.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
The mood had turned heavy, and Harry responded with extreme formality. He even had his knees together and hands folded like a schoolboy in front of the headmaster.
“You did some surgeries today, right?”
“Four, sir.”
“Then why are only two patients here?”
“Well… one died.”
“…Died? You bastard.”
Liston sighed deeply. I did too. Just thinking about someone dying after that kind of surgery made my head spin. What kind of absurd death was that?
“What about the other one?”
“He… went home. Said he had urgent business.”
“Home? You let him go home after that kind of surgery?”
Liston turned to look, incredulous. Of the two remaining old men, one had a soaked, reddish groin. The other was lying still, with no visible bleeding. Neither looked like he should be going anywhere, let alone home.
“Y-yes. He went home. He’s quite a high-ranking person.”
“Don’t lie. What the hell…?”
“He was originally scheduled for surgery with the professor, but because of some issue, they came to me instead.”
“…Damn it.”
If he was scheduled with the professor, he must have been someone important. Even if not personally, this hospital was now gaining quite a reputation across London, and even all of England. Thanks to Anesthesia, Liston’s amputations, and their work on phantom limb pain, this place was on the map.
“Who is it?”
“Jamie Bell…”
“…Christ. Nobility?”
Liston shook his head, swearing under his breath.
“If rumors spread about this… even I won’t be able to stop it.”
That was shocking. I never thought I would hear Liston say something like that. Just how important was this guy?
“Pray… No, I mean… As a doctor, I can’t make things worse for my patients… ha. That’s it, Pyeong.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think we have more than a few months. If we can show results within even a few weeks, the nobility will hear of it. And if they call for this guy… even I won’t be able to stop it.”
“So you’re saying the butcher’s going to castrate a noble?”
“Yes. We have to do whatever we can to prevent that. Hmm… Okay, let’s kidnap him first.”
“…Sorry, what?”
A little while ago, I would have been shocked to hear a doctor say “kidnap” so casually. But if Castration was really on the table, this had to be stopped.
“First of all—”
Thwack!
Liston struck Harry in the solar plexus. Just like in a cartoon, Harry passed out cold. While Liston, completely unfazed, checked on the unconscious man, he turned to the patients.
“Ugh…”
Of course they were scared. Liston had just knocked a guy out cold. And now he was talking to them like they were his drinking buddies.
“If you can say a good word, come with us, yeah?”
“Uh…”
That only made them more nervous. But still, the two patients got into the carriage, despite being in the middle of recovery from major surgery. I looked at the situation and decided it was better to leave it as it was. In the end, we had three people: one unconscious and two relocated. It was a bit of a stretch, but hey, even in the twenty-first century, patients who could not make informed decisions needed protection. I just did not have time to contact any guardians before arriving back at the hospital.
“We’ve arrived.”
“Good. First, the patients. Send them to the amputation ward.”
“…Sorry?”
“You did cut something off, didn’t you?”
“Ah… well, yes. I did.”
Robert Liston escorted the two to the amputation ward. It made sense. The place had restraints, equipment, and staff to keep post-op patients secured.
“Oh no…”
And Harry? He was headed deeper into the hospital.
“Dr. Kane. Please.”
“You paying me back for being gone? Wait. Harry? The butcher? What the hell is he doing here?”
“Help me!”
Dr. Kane, the stone-removal surgeon, was already sharpening his blade on a whetstone. His appearance was grim, like a shadowy assassin. Harry trembled even more than he had in front of Liston.
“No, no. It’s not an execution. Please just strap him down.”
“What is this, a public hanging?”
“No, it’s not like that. It’s just…”
I glanced at the leather restraints and explained the situation. Even Kane, who had done some of the most horrific surgeries imaginable, stuck out his tongue in disbelief. He treated similar regions, so he had done BPH surgery, but he had never imagined this method.
“You’re insane. But… does it work?”
He looked so intrigued that I had no choice but to continue.
“I don’t know yet! But it might… with some tweaks to the current technique.”
“Hmm… hmm. Well, I can’t do it right now. I’m already booked for surgeries. But if it works… and if it doesn’t? I’ll give it a shot myself.”
…Goddamn it. Was there anyone sane in this whole building?
Well, now I really had to make it work.
But that was fine. I knew exactly how modern surgery would handle this.
Okay. Let’s just do it. I can make this work.