Chapter 129: Stop [5]
I returned to the lab, a space cluttered with research materials left behind by previous professors. Just looking at it irritated me, so I started cleaning. There was so much of it that it took ages just to sort through, but I could not bring myself to throw it all away.
“Hmm.”
Still, tossing everything seemed wasteful, so I decided to keep the tools for now. They were used for treating enlarged prostates and Hemorrhoids. But I had no intention of using them as they were. If I did, I would just be another bad imitation of the old professors. So, I started sketching.
“Is this… the prostate?”
“Yeah.”
“But… it looks kind of weird with all that detail.”
Joseph stared at my drawing, visibly impressed. Even the old man who had been castrated seemed fascinated just by the sketch. It was absurd, and yet oddly satisfying. I could not help but shrug a little, taking it as a compliment to my drawing skills.
“Alright, let’s think about the flaws of keeping it in a straight line.”
Naturally, I could not stop there. I began adjusting the professor’s original tool around the drawing.
“Ah.”
“Ha, don’t do that.”
“Professor…”
The three of us groaned at once, as if just imagining it made our spines tingle. It was a sensitive area, and their empathy was going haywire. It hurt me too, but for a different reason. Once, when I collapsed from overwork, they had to insert a catheter. The pain was not imaginary for me. It was a memory. Still, I could not stop here.
That damned surgery…
Castration. Orchiectomy. Whatever you wanted to call it, it worked, at least against prostate enlargement. If you cut off the supply of Male Hormones to a prostate growing under their influence, it would not get worse. In fact, it should improve.
That cursed operation… I had to overcome this.
But it was not easy. First off, the existing tools were crude. Honestly, they might work better as weapons than medical instruments.
“This part here… maybe it shouldn’t be sharp. What if it’s a bit more blunt?”
“Wouldn’t that still hurt?”
“It’ll hurt anyway…”
“This looks painful.”
“You’ll be under Anesthesia. The pain isn’t the issue. The actual tissue damage is what matters.”
My students, or rather, my friends, reacted with vague discomfort. That was fine. I was not explaining this for them. I was working it out for myself. Our old professor used a version of this tool. It seemed crazy, but it was effective.
Same principle as a polypectomy snare… all modern endoscopes have rounded ends.
As I talked through it, memories came back. One regret? None of my close friends had been urologists. It sounded odd to say, but I had never seen a surgery for an enlarged prostate. I might have skimmed a few textbook chapters at most… but urology was a minor field even among specialists. I did not learn much about it until residency.
Alright, round it like this…
I reshaped the sharp tip in my mind. Then I tried simulating it again and ran into a different problem. You could not just cut the prostate out. You had to shave it down carefully, avoiding accidents.
Wait… don’t ENT surgeons use a debrider?
As a surgeon, I was familiar with endoscopic tools. Laparoscopic surgery had been the norm for a while. Any young surgeon had plenty of experience with it. But that did not help me here. The abdominal cavity gave you a lot of space to work with, so those instruments were more complex. I was thinking of something more specific. Like a debrider. My ENT friend once used one.
I should have paid more attention that day instead of rushing him to eat lunch…
I was not just a bystander back then. Some knowledge had stuck with me.
“Here… if we make this tip blunt, it’ll be safer.”
“But don’t you need something sharp to make the opening? Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia is the one that blocks this area, right?”
“Yeah, exactly. So… what if we make it blunt but add teeth?”
“Teeth?”
They stared at me, clearly not understanding. What kind of magic let you attach teeth to a surgical tool?
“Like this.”
It was not magic. It was just mechanics. I was not sure if nineteenth-century technology could manage it, but blacksmiths back then were more skilled than you would think. Mass production would be impossible, but handcrafting it should be doable.
“We build an outer cylinder and an inner cylinder separately. Then we put a small sideways opening on the outer one. Now, if the inner cylinder has little teeth and moves back and forth…”
“You’d be gnawing away at the tissue. Ohh…”
“Oh!”
“Wow, that’s… pretty clever.”
They were not geniuses, but they were not stupid either. Even with just a diagram, they grasped the basic concept.
Click.
That was when Robert Liston walked in. He looked like he had just amputated a limb. His face was streaked with blood.
“Hmm? What’s this?”
As always, he was intrigued by my drawings. It proved that his reputation as a genius was not just talk. He genuinely thought about these things. Honestly, I wanted to steal his brain. Instead, I explained everything while he looked on with keen eyes.
“Hmm…”
He rubbed under his nose, clearly intrigued. When he got like this, he always said something.
“Pyeong.”
“Yes?”
Most of what I had said might have sounded like nonsense to him, since I lacked the mechanical knowledge, but Liston was not dumb. If he had been born in twenty-first-century Korea, I was sure he would have been someone.
“Why does it have to be a straight line?”
I froze. That one question felt like a slap to the face.
“Uh…?”
“This teeth idea is great. Safer, and you can remove more tissue. But look.”
He picked up the professor’s old straight-line tool and started using it over my sketch. Instead of moving it back and forth in a straight line, he introduced variation. Just by changing the angle, you could affect more of the surrounding area.
“Oh.”
“Now, what if we bend it here?”
“Bend it?!”
Liston actually bent the metal instrument. Was that even possible? Before I could react, he started moving the curved tool over the prostate drawing. Then—
“Eureka.”
“This… This could work better, right?”
“It could. The only issue is—”
“Yeah, if it’s bent, a straight cylinder won’t move properly.”
“Well, then that’s a problem for the guy making it.”
A rough solution. Still, I looked at Liston. He grinned, still with blood on his face. It was terrifying.
“Don’t worry. He’ll do whatever I ask.”
“…Right.”
With Liston by my side, it felt like I had a whole army. So we went straight to the blacksmith. But by then, the shop was closed.
“Should we come back tomorrow?”
“Huh? No. Look, there’s still a light on upstairs.”
“Yeah, but he’s probably off work by now—”
Bang.
Liston knocked, no, slammed, on the door with his fist.
“What the hell?!”
A scream echoed from upstairs. The terrified Blacksmith peeked out, eyes wide.
“Whew.”
He was holding a hammer, which was oddly reassuring. That is, until Liston casually took it from him.
“Hey.”
“What now? I saved your mother’s life, didn’t I? You remember me.”
“Of course, but… is something wrong? I paid everything last time…”
“I’m not here for money. I want you to make something.”
Liston barged in, sat down, and handed over a drawing, our new surgical design. The Blacksmith squinted at it.
“What is this…?”
“Ah. Like this.”
I stepped in. First, I showed him the professor’s tool.
“Oh, I made this one.”
“You did? Perfect. Now, we want to upgrade it.”
“Why?”
“I want to do better surgeries.”
“I heard a guy named Harry was already doing amazing prostate procedures…”
“What?! Where did you hear that?”
The Blacksmith glanced at me, then shut his mouth. If he kept talking, he would probably let something slip. But more importantly, Liston waved it off.
“It probably leaked from Sir Jamie’s side. Either way, we need this fast.”
“Alright, can you make it?”
Honestly, I felt like a liberal arts major tossing blueprints at a mechanical engineering student. I half expected him to scoff. But surprisingly, he chuckled.
“It’s not hard. With a few adjustments… yeah, it’s possible. But it’ll take time.”
“How long?”
“Two weeks? There might be some trial and error.”
“Ugh.”
Two weeks… That was a long time without testosterone. No, maybe even one week would be enough for results. I turned to Liston, uneasy.
“Professor…”
“Let’s form a vigilante group.”
“A what?”
“A vigilante group. To protect something.”
“Protect what?”
“Let’s call it… the Testicular Vigilantes.”
“…Please don’t.”