Duel at Trafalgar Square, Part Two
Snick.
Snip.
Snick.
Snip.
As I have said time and again, I was currently locked in a duel in the middle of Trafalgar Square.
Right here in this historic plaza, built to commemorate Admiral Nelson crushing Napoleon—that master of continental Europe—at the Battle of Trafalgar, I was fighting a surgical duel against Dr. Josef, the self-proclaimed savior of the Jewish people.
Of all the names under the sun, his had to resemble Paul Joseph Goebbels. Being dragged into a contest against such a fellow—and over a nose reconstruction, of all things—left me feeling thoroughly petty.
Snick.
Snip.
Snick.
Snip.
To make matters worse, this was hardly a proper modern rhinoplasty. Cartilage? I hadn't touched it. Earlier, I had actually tried grafting a strip of auricular cartilage that Liston had harvested with uncanny, demonic precision, but the reconstructed nose ended up twisting slightly askew.
Anchoring cartilage required securing it to the bone above and below with sutures, which was far easier said than done.
"How do we anchor it to the bone?"
"The holes pierce cleanly enough, don't they?"
"How did you manage that?"
"Overwhelming strength and technique."
"Ah."
Fortunately, having a swordmaster like Robert Liston on our side meant we could punch needle-sized holes straight through bone without needing an orthopedic drill. The real issue, however, was the suture material that would have to remain behind inside those perforations.
Bone is an organ notoriously vulnerable to infection. While it enjoys better vascularity than one might expect, compared to mucosa or muscle, it practically receives no blood at all. In an era completely devoid of antibiotics, blood circulation was our only real weapon, and taking one look at the wretched constitution of these patients made it impossible to tell whether sufficient blood would reach the graft in the first place.
"Well, it is nearly finished..."
"It certainly looks far better than before."
"Though I doubt his original nose looked anything like that. Ah, Pyeong, I'm not criticizing your work. I simply lament what was lost."
And so, we opted to reconstruct it purely from soft tissue. Doing so, however, made the operation feel somewhat anticlimactic. If this was supposed to be a duel, shouldn't we be performing something spectacular... something truly jaw-dropping? What on earth was this modest little sewing job?
Are we going to lose this?
I glanced across the platform at the men sweating and straining on the opposite side. Anesthesia had been administered to their patient in a manner virtually identical to ours. Naturally so; in this era, no other viable technique for general anesthesia had been developed yet. Aside from that, however, our approaches were worlds apart.
"Oh..."
"What on earth is that contraption?"
"It binds the head in an iron armature," Josef declared pompously. "By this method, one can reconstruct the nose without inflicting any additional scarring upon the face, leaving only a mark on the arm."
"Oho... What a truly magnificent ssibal."
"I am German, sir, and have no notion of what ssibal signifies."
"Neither do I, in truth. Some Joseon word, I fancy, but once you hear it, it rolls off the tongue with extraordinary relish..."
"Pray quiet down for a moment! I must concentrate from here on."
"Ah, quite so."
Up until a few minutes ago—when I pivoted the forehead flap down to drape over the nasal defect—the atmosphere had been squarely in our favor. Even to my eyes, the paramedian forehead flap was a fascinating sight. But not anymore. Now they were clanging away with iron bands and bolts, hammering metal right beside a living man's skull. How could such noisy blacksmithing fail to steal the entire spotlight?
This was my mistake...
Surgically speaking, my technique was vastly superior. From any rational medical perspective, it wasn't even a contest. What Josef was doing was an archaic procedure destined for the dustbin of history—neither a true free flap nor a modern local pedicle. It was a technique doomed to extinction.
"Hooray!"
"Bravo, Dr. Josef!"
Yet this duel inevitably possessed a theatrical element. No, not merely an element—it was sheer, unadulterated entertainment. Which meant that what truly mattered was how thoroughly we entertained the spectators: the good citizens of London.
Ah... I've fallen short.
The moment that realization struck, a wave of impatience washed over me. Why? Those with some degree of standing—people privy to parliamentary gossip—already referred to this place as Trafalgar Square, but to the wider public, the name hadn't even been officially settled yet. Nor was the construction finished. Piles of masonry and building materials lay scattered all across the grounds, yet a massive throng had gathered nonetheless.
They had shown such devotion to come watch, and here I was, merely rotating a forehead muscle and stitching a little nose...
Should I just crack his ribs right now?
Just then, the final suture came to a close. I was sorely tempted to conclude the surgery as it was, but hearing the raucous cheers erupt every time iron clanked against iron across the way only frayed my nerves. Without realizing it, my gaze drifted toward the patient's chest.
Just as Colin's sharp, perceptive fingers reached toward the man's tunic to bare his torso, Liston spoke up.
"Pyeong. Did you become a physician merely to entertain the mob?"
"Ah."
A pang of shame hit me. To think that I—an elite surgeon from the twenty-first century, educated in a country boasting some of the world's finest medical care—was entertaining such base, quackish thoughts.
"That mindset is commendable, mind you."
"Pardon?"
It seemed Korean wasn't the only language where one had to listen until the very end of the sentence. Perhaps because the British hailed from an island, there was an eccentric, baffling streak to them that someone from a mere peninsula found hard to fathom.
At any rate, while I stood frozen in confusion, Liston continued speaking, turning his head. Between his imposing frame and the heavy aura he exuded, it was impossible not to follow his gaze. Colin and the other assistants turned their heads as well. Meanwhile, Alfred was quietly, methodically turning down the anesthetic gas. Seeing that I had no intention of cracking open the ribcage, he had sensibly decided to wind down the narcosis.
"Uh..."
"Looks bloody dangerous, wouldn't you say?"
As I mentioned, the square remained incomplete. Even when finished, it wouldn't be an immense, sprawling expanse. In a city like London, where carriages still ruled the streets and land prices were skyrocketing maniacally, how large could a public square possibly be? Regardless, our proud Londoners—utterly incapable of enduring boredom—had surged out in droves.
To make matters worse, the aristocrats, who couldn't bear to mingle with the common rabble, had cordoned off a generous prime area with private guards.
"Falling off is the least of their worries... Good heavens, why are they climbing that in the first place?"
"Is not the spirit of adventure the very engine that forged the British Empire? I, for one, applaud their initiative."
Consequently, those stuck in the rear could see practically nothing. Under normal circumstances, sensible folk would have simply gone home. But these poor wretches either had no homes to return to, or lived in squalid dens hardly worthy of the name, and so they scrambled desperately for a vantage point. Had there been trees, they would have scaled the branches, but the ground had been cleared for the plaza. What else was there?
Nothing should have been left behind. And yet... there were half-finished, shoddy sculptures. Calling them sculptures was generous; they were little more than stone debris. Wandering stonemasons seemed to have chiseled away at them before real artists took over. Had they left the stone alone, it might have held, but someone had clearly hammered away at it.
Crack.
Look at that. A distinct snapping sound. Dust and pulverized stone began puffing out like smoke!
"Hold on, Liston! You should have stopped them!"
It wasn't particularly tall. Had it been a truly towering pillar, they wouldn't have been able to climb it in the first place. Still, a fall from that height was guaranteed to break bones. Worse, what if it crumbled as it fell? Anyone struck by the falling stone would be crushed.
"Would they listen if I told them to stop?"
"Ah."
"Perhaps they'd obey if I battered them into submission. But treating the injuries I inflicted wouldn't be any easier. These citizens aren't the sort to heed reason without a merciless thrashing."
"I suppose that's true. Then... what do we do?"
"Now, we simply compete to save the wounded. First, we must pull them out..."
"We hold the advantage there, at least."
"Indeed. And I'm not the only one here."
Liston pointed toward the edge of the square. There stood faces that an upstanding citizen like myself ought never to be familiar with. Yet not only was I familiar with them, we were downright chummy. A London gang whose side venture happened to be running slaughterhouses... Would fellows like that really engage in search and rescue?
"Rest assured, they wouldn't dare kill anyone in front of me without permission."
"Ah, true enough."
"Besides, you are here. To them, your curse is far more terrifying than being beaten to death."
"My curse..."
"In any case, it's about to go. Listen to that sound..."
At Liston's words, I looked back toward the column. Crudely carved and hacked into by amateur chisels, the abandoned pillar was far weaker than it appeared.
Craaack—THUD.
With a heavy crash, it snapped and collapsed. The three men clinging to the top plummeted first, crushing the onlookers below, while chunks of falling stone toppled several more like bowling pins. At a glance, there were over ten casualties.
"Whoaaaa!"
"Yaaaargh!"
"Someone's being killed!"
I forgot to mention: seeing iron hammered onto a living man had already whipped the spectators into a frenzy. It was so deafening that we had to shout just to hear each other talk. In that fever pitch, the sight of a crumbling pillar, splashing blood, and frantic shrieks only made the crowd roar with louder excitement.
I hadn't misheard. It was an honest-to-God cheer.
"Hooray!"
"G-good heavens. What is the meaning of this?!"
Getting maimed or killed on an outing is a horrific tragedy, whether in the twenty-first century or the nineteenth. Yet the London mob perceived it rather differently. I'm not the one bleeding, am I? The instant people view an event not as reality, but as a spectacle behind a screen, it turns into first-class entertainment. A full-sensory 4D disaster movie, if you will.
"Excuse me, Commissioner!" Liston boomed.
"Eh? What is it?"
"We can settle the rhinoplasty contest later. Shouldn't both sides be saving those poor wretches over there right now?"
"Ah—ah, yes!"
From the perspective of those in authority, the genre of the spectacle mattered immensely. After enjoying a disaster film, one leaves the theater with a lingering, uncomfortable dread. But a heartwarming tale of rescue leaves the soul feeling warm and content for hours. Grasping Liston's point in an instant, the councilman bellowed:
"R-Round Two! The second round of the duel will be saving the injured!"
Normally, a sudden change of rules throws everyone into disarray. Furthermore, rhinoplasty belongs strictly to plastic surgery, while this was the chaotic realm of severe trauma surgery. In the twenty-first century...
Well, a duel like this wouldn't exist in the first place...
No point overthinking it. Best to simply deal with the chaos at hand.
"Splendid!"
At any rate, the physicians of this era possessed an utterly insane experimental fervor. They never said the word impossible. Regardless of their specialty, if a patient appeared before them, they charged in. They would sprint forward brandishing scalpels and slice the flesh open. If the patient died, so be it; if the patient lived, they were hailed as a master of the healing arts. That was unmistakably the mindset. Otherwise, there was no explaining why every single doctor acted like a maniac.
"Very well, agreed! First, we extract them!"
The first to charge into the fray was Liston. Tearing off his frock coat and waistcoat, he revealed the sleeveless undershirt beneath.
"Whoa."
"Eeeek!"
His sheer, towering presence was more than enough to terrify the crowd into parting like the Red Sea. As the spectators scattered, the slaughterhouse gang surged in behind him.
"Out of the way! Looking to die, are you?"
"Want a blade between your ribs?!"
"Move, before I chop you up for pig feed! Clear the bloody road!"
"We have to reach the scene before Master Liston! It's only proper etiquette!"
I genuinely couldn't tell whether they were charging in to murder people or save them. And me? As for me...
"Look, it's P-Pyeong! It's Doctor Pyeong!"
"F-Forgive me for cheering for the other fellow earlier! Spare my life, please!"
Gripping my scalpels and first-aid kit, I hurried toward the scene of the disaster to perform emergency triage.