Possession, Part 3
While Yoo Sung-hoon lifted the patient's jaw to secure the airway, Nam Juhyeon silently mouthed a self-deprecating curse, desperately trying to find a vein in the patient's arm. However, because the patient was in profound shock, the blood vessels had completely collapsed, and the needle repeatedly pierced empty air.
"I can't get a line! Han Hyeon-jae, get over here and apply direct pressure to the wound! Press down with everything you've got!"
I clasped my hands together over the wound, where blood was gushing out in thick, hot spurts, and threw my entire body weight into pressing down like a madman.
"Performing a FAST scan! Move!"
Park Se-yeong grabbed the ultrasound probe. She dragged it across various points of the patient's abdomen, her brow furrowing in sheer despair as she stared at the monitor.
"The entire peritoneal cavity is a bloodbath. This is even worse than the last patient! He won't last ten minutes like this!"
The monitor shrieked with a frantic, high-pitched alarm. I held my ground, desperately putting all my weight into the wound. Hot blood continued to seep and squeeze through the gaps of my fingers.
I stole a glance at my seniors' faces. Cold sweat drenched the forehead of Park Se-yeong, who was usually so cool-headed, and the hands of the highly experienced Yoo Sung-hoon were trembling ever so slightly.
"I got a line!"
The numbers on the blood pressure monitor plummeted mercilessly past the sixties. 58, 55, 52...
"His blood pressure is dropping into the fifties! At this rate..."
Park Se-yeong's voice cracked with despair. They were squeezing bags of O-negative blood into him as fast as they could, but it was like throwing a cup of water onto a raging forest fire. The patient's body was hemorrhaging blood like a bottomless pit, and all our efforts were doing nothing more than delaying his inevitable death by mere seconds.
"Did anyone page Trauma Surgery? When are they getting here?!" Yoo Sung-hoon shouted, his face slick with sweat.
"The fastest team will take at least fifteen minutes! They're in the middle of another surgery right now..." The nurse's reply was practically a death sentence.
Fifteen minutes. In this state, he wouldn't survive five minutes, let alone fifteen. The patient's face had already lost the color of the living. Everyone in the room knew it. We were losing. This battle was slipping entirely out of our hands.
I felt the strength slowly draining from my hands as I pressed down on the wound. The warmth of the blood seeping through my gloves felt heavy, suffocating. Was this really the end? Was a person about to die right here, right before my eyes, right under my hands?
It was at that exact moment. A cold, foreign possibility sprouted in my mind.
Possession
Cost: 5,000 LP
Fuck. I had no choice. My pride, the eyes of my seniors, hospital regulations, and the twelve hours of hellish, agonizing pain that would follow the use of this skill—I threw them all onto one side of the scale. On the other side lay this man's life. The scale tipped instantly.
...Do it. Keeping my hands pressed firmly against the blood-soaked wound, I closed my eyes. I shut out all the noise in my head. Then, channeling every ounce of my willpower, I summoned a single name.
Possession. God of Scalpel.
In an instant, the world flipped upside down. It wasn't a blackout, nor did I lose consciousness. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Everything became blindingly clear. The cold air of the Resuscitation Room, the metallic stench of blood piercing my nose, the shrieking alarms of the monitor. Every single one of my senses felt amplified tenfold.
So this is what possession feels like. It's my eyes, but it doesn't feel like I'm the one looking...? The world was still visible through my eyes, but the entity perceiving it was no longer me. It was like being pushed into the furthest corner of the cockpit of my own body, reduced to a terrified spectator. My arms, my legs, my voice—everything that belonged to me was no longer mine. A foreign presence had seized absolute control of my body.
My hands moved. No, his hands moved. And then, my mouth opened.
"...What is this place?"
It was my voice, but the intonation was completely foreign. With those few words, all movement in the chaotic Resuscitation Room ground to a halt. Park Se-yeong, Yoo Sung-hoon, Nam Juhyeon, and even the nurses—everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at me in utter shock.
"What? Han Hyeon-jae, what the hell are you talking about all of a sudden?" Park Se-yeong asked, dumbfounded.
"...Intra-abdominal bleeding?"
"We just told you that! Han Hyeon-jae, pull yourself together!" Yoo Sung-hoon barked, unable to hold back. His eyes held the firm conviction that this pathetic first-year resident had finally snapped under the immense pressure of this chaotic situation.
Inside my own mind, I screamed. Hey, you socially inept ghost bastard! Use honorifics! Honorifics! Those people are all your seniors... no, MY seniors, you son of a bitch!
But my desperate cries didn't reach him. The master of my body completely ignored Yoo Sung-hoon's shouting as if it were mere background noise, his eyes scanning the stainless-steel tray. Then, he finally revealed his true objective.
"Scalpel."
The air in the Resuscitation Room instantly froze at that single word.
"...What?" Nam Juhyeon asked, disbelieving.
"I said, give me a scalpel." This time, it was clearer, laced with irritation. In that instant, everyone's patience snapped.
"Are you out of your mind?" A low curse slipped from Park Se-yeong's lips.
"Hey, Han Hyeon-jae! Have you lost your damn mind? What are you going to do with a scalpel here? What, are you going to slice open the patient's stomach right now? Did you watch too many medical dramas yesterday? Do you want to lose your license? Do you want to ruin your entire career?!"
"Are you really not going to snap out of it?" Nam Juhyeon's face flushed bright red with fury. He looked ready to grab me by the collar at any second.
"Hey! Just because people call you a genius and talk about you preparing for a Double Board, do you really think you're some kind of drama protagonist? This is madness! Absolute madness! If you touch this patient with a blade right now, we are all finished!" Park Se-yeong's frantic screams filled the Resuscitation Room. Sensing the anger, contempt, and the faint trace of fear underlying her words, the consciousness trapped inside my own body despaired.
Fuck... I'm doomed. This ghost bastard is ruining my life!
Ignoring all the vitriol being hurled at him, the God of Scalpel reached toward the tray and spoke.
"Number 10 blade."
"Oh, you are driving me absolutely insane! Hey! You're a first-year resident! In Emergency Medicine, no less! You are in no position to hold a scalpel right now, you lunatic!" Park Se-yeong shrieked, practically weeping in frustration.
"Han Hyeon-jae! Hey, someone grab Hyeon-jae! He's not in his right mind, hold him down!" Yoo Sung-hoon's desperate shout pierced the room. Taking that as a cue, Nam Juhyeon and an intern standing nearby lunged forward to restrain me.
We're screwed. If a physical scuffle breaks out here, this patient is as good as dead. Please, just listen to this ghost bastard for once! But as if mocking the surrounding chaos, the God of Scalpel began to move at a terrifying speed.
The God of Scalpel reached over the stainless-steel tray. The first thing my hand—no, the God of Scalpel's hand—grabbed was not the number 10 blade. It was a pair of sterile forceps tightly clamping a massive cotton ball, and a bottle of reddish-brown betadine.
"Hey, you—!" Before Nam Juhyeon could say another word, the cap was already off. In the next instant, the God of Scalpel simply tilted the bottle and poured the betadine solution directly over the cotton ball in a heavy stream.
You crazy bastard! You're supposed to conserve hospital supplies! But the God of Scalpel possessed no such trivial sense of frugality.
Holding the dripping, betadine-soaked cotton ball, the God of Scalpel leaned over the patient's abdomen. In a single, fluid motion, he swept across the entire belly from the xiphoid process down to the pubic symphysis, drawing a massive circle. The movement was swift, sweeping, and utterly unhesitating.
"..." At that sight, both Nam Juhyeon, who had been lunging to grab me, and Yoo Sung-hoon, who had been screaming, froze in their tracks. The moment the disinfection was complete, his other hand was already tearing open a pack of sterile drapes. The blue sterile drape unfurled in the air with a crisp rustle. The God of Scalpel draped the massive sheet precisely over the patient.
"Crazy..." someone muttered under their breath.
The movements did not stop. Like a possessed master craftsman, the God of Scalpel laid out the sterile drapes over the flanks and upper body in the blink of an eye. Unfolding the drapes, positioning them, and spreading the next—the entire process flowed seamlessly, as if it were a single, continuous motion. The consciousness inside my body could only watch the show in absolute awe.
Ah, so that's how you do it. That fast, yet that precise.
Finally, the God of Scalpel secured the edges of the four drapes with towel clips. *Click, click, click, click.* It took a mere thirty seconds. A process that would have taken me at least five minutes of clumsy fumbling was completed in just thirty seconds.
Silence fell over the Resuscitation Room. No one in the room was looking at a "crazy first-year resident Han Hyeon-jae" anymore. They were witnessing something that transcended their common sense entirely. To them, I must have looked like some otherworldly entity—one that completely ignored every senior in the room, draped the patient in seconds, disinfected the abdomen, and prepared to make an incision.
And finally, the God of Scalpel's hand picked up the number 10 blade. Under the cold lights of the Resuscitation Room, the silver blade gleamed chillingly. Han Hyeon-jae—or rather, the God of Scalpel occupying my body—looked down at the perfectly prepared surgical field, holding the blade. Well, to be precise, calling it a surgical field was generous; it was a makeshift operating table at best.
The moment he saw this, Yoo Sung-hoon's face turned deathly pale. He had realized it. This was no joke. This crazy first-year bastard was actually going to cut him open.