Chapter 69
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 69
Chapter Title: Even So, I Fix It
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Even so, I fix it.
The path to becoming a doctor isn't one where you simply get into medical school and call yourself a "doctor."
Six years in medical school, to start with.
Then a year as an intern, followed by at least three or four years of residency. Depending on the specialty, even a fellowship.
Even if luck is on your side and the road ahead is straight, it's around ten years.
Only those who endure that grueling stretch earn the right to be called "Doctor" in the operating room.
And most of that time is a survival competition dressed up as studying.
Anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology.
Simply memorizing what you've learned won't cut it.
You have to instantly link the reason someone in the next bed is collapsing—cause, mechanism, response.
Yet med school doesn't just teach those "skills," surprisingly.
You also learn the history of medicine—how it evolved into its current form.
Early medicine was less a proper science and more a mishmash of religion, superstition, and empirical rules.
Visible deformities or disabilities were treated as "punishments" rather than diseases, and problems inside the body were chalked up to divine will.
So "treatments" were prayers, incantations, folk remedies... and relying on luck.
Naturally, most failed.
But ironically, those repeated failures taught people bit by bit.
Some illnesses don't heal with prayer. Some pains aren't divine retribution. The body moves by structure and function, not faith.
Medicine grew up on the brink of death.
And.
The reason I'd suddenly recalled that lecture from my student days was simple.
Alain, the Family Head, was a patient created by that exact "old-school thinking."
A man who refused to see a weak heart as an illness, believing it had to be "overcome" through willpower and training.
That belief might seem like a virtue, but in front of a heart... it was nothing short of a disaster.
"Why are you doing this, Lucas Argent...?"
"Alain, Family Head."
I spoke without taking my eyes off the heart.
"There's more than one hole in this heart right now."
"Y-Yes?!"
A week before the surgery, Alain had described his condition like this.
From childhood, even slight movement left him breathless, his insides feeling chilled and constricted.
So he'd pushed his body to the limit whenever he could, training until he was gasping for air to build his current sturdy frame.
On the surface, he must have looked perfectly healthy.
Muscular build, rock-solid stamina.
But.
Continuously overloading a congenitally defective heart riddled with holes wasn't training—it was grinding it down.
One defect multiplies. Surrounding tissues weaken under the strain.
The fact he'd survived this long was the real anomaly.
...No.
Only now, seeing this heart, did I understand why "survived" was the wrong word. "Endured" fit better.
"You said you've always received healing magic from temple priests or family mages."
I said in a low voice.
"Without that, he'd have died ages ago."
Healing magic seals wounds and restores damaged tissue.
But.
It can't fix inherent structural flaws.
It doesn't patch holes in the heart or thicken thinned walls.
It's just held things together through each breakdown, postponing the next collapse.
So what lay before my eyes wasn't an untreated illness, but a heart barely kept alive by healing.
"Sir Lucas...?"
Aira's voice rang out cautiously.
"From a little while ago... I can hear a sound like water boiling from the heart."
"No surprise there."
I gritted my teeth.
"The blood flow is mixing abnormally."
Not a single hole.
Multiple defects scattered across the ventricular septum.
Multiple ventricular septal defects—VSD.
And the surrounding tissue couldn't maintain normal thickness, thinned to paper-like frailty.
Myocardial thinning.
One wrong touch—even a fingertip—and it could tear.
A total disaster.
"Master... then, should we close the chest for now?"
Piel, peering into the chest cavity beside me, asked cautiously.
Over the past week, this girl had stuck by my side without a hint of slacking, diligently learning the basics of modern medicine.
She was commendable.
Determined to help her master somehow, she'd volunteered at such a young age to study something as dry as medical knowledge.
I recalled her scooting right up next to me when I opened a book, nodding eagerly with her tail wagging at every explained term.
That was why.
I'd only taught her the most basic principles—ones even a child could grasp.
One of them being—
Don't proceed with surgery in an uncertain state.
The first rule any doctor must etch into their body.
Piel's question was textbook-perfect, both medically and in judgment.
But this time... that rule didn't apply.
"If Alain had a normal heart, that might be the right call."
"Meaning... we can't now?"
"Right."
I continued without looking away.
"A malformed heart like this... just exposing it to the outside means bracing for serious aftereffects already."
Especially one this weakened.
Close the chest now and reopen later?
That wasn't treatment—it was handing down two death sentences to the heart.
Besides, this wasn't an operating room where cutting-edge equipment was always ready.
It was the Raltos family's underground sterile chamber, painstakingly recreated to mimic a modern OR as closely as possible.
Halting now... no one could guarantee when we'd recreate these conditions again.
But the deadliest factor was time.
This heart could hold out a year at best.
By the time the original story began, he was already dead.
He'd endure just a bit longer than now, then collapse suddenly one day.
That vacancy in the Family Head position would shake the Raltos family.
And his only blood relative, Misha.
Still so young, with paralyzed lower body.
Forcing herself to protect the family in that state, she'd get dragged into political infighting, framed... and by the story's start, executed along with the entire house.
That was the plot I remembered.
When I first read Vengeful Goddesses, I'd dismissed it as mere setup—a MacGuffin to tidy up the early plot.
How could one of the empire's four great families vanish so pathetically?
But now, seeing this heart, I got it.
No coincidence. No contrived twist.
The ending was set from the very beginning.
In other words, stopping the surgery here wouldn't delay the risk—it would seal it.
"Then...?"
This time, Evelyn spoke up.
"Can't we just patch all the holes?"
I shook my head at that too.
"The heart wouldn't survive it."
If it were a single defect—a standard VSD—maybe.
No, that had been the original plan.
But this was multiple VSDs.
Holes everywhere, with the surrounding myocardium already bereft of normal thickness.
What happens if you "patch" them all in this state?
Blood flow shifts abruptly. Pressure surges to one side.
The thinned myocardium can't withstand it and ruptures.
Ventricular rupture.
Instant death.
Any ordinary doctor would have closed the chest as Piel suggested, sequelae be damned.
Yeah.
If it weren't me.
"Phew... this procedure demands insane stamina and focus."
I took a short breath and said.
"Honestly, I really didn't want to do it with this young body."
I set down the microsuture needle I'd been holding to close the defects and picked up the scalpel again.
At that moment—even with the heart fully exposed—Evelyn and Piel's faces visibly stiffened at the sight of my blade-wielding hand.
As I moved the scalpel toward the heart, Evelyn cried out reflexively.
"W-What are you doing right now?! Lucas Argent! Pointing a knife at the heart—!"
"He'd die."
I answered with utter calm.
"That's why I'm not touching the heart."
"...Pardon?"
"The pericardium."
I continued without looking away.
"I'm just cutting a piece from the sac around the heart—the 'pericardium'."
A moment of silence.
They looked like they didn't grasp what that meant.
I adjusted the scalpel's angle.
What I was about to do was insane by any standard sense.
Bringing a sharp instrument near the heart was the ultimate taboo in any OR.
Normally, the assisting surgeon or anesthesiologist watching from the side would have lunged to stop it.
...Unless they were a surgeon like me, who could precisely calculate the outcome.
I wasn't targeting the heart muscle.
The thin membrane encasing it—the pericardium.
Just millimeters thick, yet tough, elastic, and perfectly attuned to the heartbeat.
I planned to excise exactly as much as needed.
And use it as a "patch" to cover these multiple defects.
Because that was the only way to save this heart right now.
Of course, it was risky.
Go even slightly too deep from the pericardium, and you'd hit the heart's surface.
Graze a coronary vessel, and it was near-instant death.
Plus, with the myocardial thinning, the heart wall itself was already perilously fragile.
One slip, and it'd tear.
Truly, far more precise than picking individual grains of rice with chopstick tips to fill a bowl.
But.
I could do it.
No—I had to.
I steadied my scalpel hand with excruciating slowness and murmured.
"I promised to save him."
"Master...!"
"Lucas Argent...!"
"Magnificent, Sir Lucas."
I let those voices fade behind me and stared at the heart once more.
A patient who'd endured to the end, desperate not to die.
Since I'd promised to take his hand first, running away was never an option.
A doctor doesn't turn away a patient who wants to live.
And I'm the one they respect most.
A surgeon.