An abrupt silence settled over the operating room.
It seemed Taesu wasn’t the only one thinking that.
Perhaps noticing it, Dr. Schmidt spoke in a low, forceful rebuke.
“Since when does an operation have an owner?”
“……”
“If there is an owner, it’s the patient.”
Dr. Schmidt added the words with heavy emphasis.
They struck Taesu’s ears.
It was something he himself often said during surgery.
Back then, he had been the operating surgeon.
No, that way of thinking itself was the problem.
Before a life, there was no need to worry about anyone else’s opinion.
It was the most basic of basics.
‘This operation is my operation.’
Once his mindset changed, Taesu’s atmosphere changed with it.
A regular surgery meant an operation carried out in a formally equipped space.
That was the definition the world had given it.
But by Taesu’s standards?
An operating room could transform into a battlefield with an entirely new environment at any time.
No, he would make it so.
That was all it took.
When it came to adaptability in the field, Taesu was truly unrivaled.
Once he dismissed even the operating room as a battlefield environment, the pressure vanished as if it had been a lie.
Flash.
His gaze instantly sharpened.
And he had a trump card different from anyone else’s.
Caprene’s knowledge.
If left buried, it was idle thought; if used, it was a brilliant plan.
‘Am I going to let it sit and make soup with it?’
He was on a journey to make it his own.
So it was only right to use it freely.
Taesu set his mind spinning at full speed and went back over every symptom the patient had shown.
‘We handled the liver rupture, stopped the bleeding, and after that……’
He chewed over them one by one.
He wasn’t only thinking.
He carefully moved the long forceps, checking with his own eyes to see if there were any symptoms he might have missed.
It wasn’t only Taesu doing that.
Everyone looked at the affected area with suspicion and examined it closely.
Since the main injury was the liver, the doctors’ attention was naturally focused there.
It was then.
Nurse Ellen’s sharp voice rang out.
“Hematochezia.”
“What?”
Whoosh.
Starting with Dr. Schmidt, Taesu and the doctors’ gazes immediately turned that way.
Just as Nurse Ellen had said, dark red, sticky blood was flowing out from between the patient’s legs.
It was bloody stool.
A phenomenon in which intestinal bleeding was discharged outside.
That meant they could suspect a problem in the digestive system.
They could say they had taken one step closer to the cause gnawing away at the vitals.
Yet Dr. Schmidt’s expression wasn’t exactly bright.
His reaction suggested he had expected it to some extent.
He also stated the basis for that briefly.
“It looks like the small intestinal bleeding is only just coming out now.”
“Yes. It seems so.”
“Dr. Oliver. Still, just in case, let’s take one more look at the intestine around the liver we operated on earlier.”
“Understood.”
Dr. Oliver, the assistant, answered from the opposite side.
Then Dr. Schmidt and Dr. Oliver personally began focusing their examination on the intestine around the liver.
Taesu and Brad Kim were temporarily pushed back.
There was no sign of disappointment on their faces.
With their hands free, they could think more deeply.
‘Right. Earlier, the ascending colon.’
Taesu chewed over the intestine they had operated on.
The bullet, with its powerful rotational force, had dug inside, not stopping at a liver rupture but even affecting part of the intestine.
The pressure had torn the duodenum, and part of the gastroepiploic artery had burst.
Everyone had already confirmed that.
In particular, they were bleeding points Taesu himself had found.
He excluded them from the list of suspects causing the current vital sign problem.
Then……
He was in the middle of considering another possibility.
As Taesu pieced together the scattered puzzle pieces, he arrived at an absurd conclusion.
“Well, damn.”
Taesu muttered quietly, as if even he found his own thought ridiculous.
Perhaps hearing it, Dr. Schmidt glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
“Dr. Choi, what is it?”
“What? It’s nothing.”
“Did my advice not really get through to you?”
Dr. Schmidt asked heavily.
When he put it that way, Taesu couldn’t avoid answering.
With a slightly embarrassed expression, Taesu opened his mouth.
“When I combined the symptoms, absurdly enough, diverticulitis came to mind.”
“Diverticulitis.”
Diverticulitis occurred when a pouch-like diverticulum bulged out from the large intestine and then became contaminated, causing inflammation.
At that moment, Dr. Oliver’s expression tightened slightly.
“Dr. Choi, keep it reasonable. That’s not an emergency.”
“I know.”
“Then how can you connect this to diverticulitis?”
“……”
As Taesu only listened, Dr. Oliver pressed him more coldly.
“Do diverticula just pop into existence, and does contamination inside them happen in an instant? Even if that were true, the timing doesn’t match at all.”
“……”
He didn’t openly show irritation, but spoke in a roundabout way.
For the one listening, that was even more grating.
Since Taesu himself thought it sounded absurd, he remained silent.
It was then.
Dr. Schmidt’s brow suddenly furrowed.
His eyes even shifted as if he were thinking something over, and then he asked aloud.
“Dr. Choi, you think it might be diverticulitis?”
“It was only my limited opinion……”
“No. It’s hard to say that hypothesis is completely off the mark.”
When Dr. Schmidt showed a certain degree of acceptance, Dr. Oliver calmly added his view.
“Doctor, even if it progressed rapidly, the timing doesn’t fit.”
“If the diverticulum had been created by the gunshot, of course it would make no sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“What if he originally had diverticulosis?”
Dr. Schmidt put forth a new hypothesis.
It was an incredibly unexpected approach.
But Brad Kim, a surgical specialist, had a glint in his eyes that was no longer ordinary.
“It’s not entirely impossible. I think I saw a similar case in the association’s records before.”
“It would be nice if we at least had an X-ray, but I don’t think we can go all the way to the imaging room.”
“I don’t think stopping the operation now would be feasible.”
Brad Kim was right about that.
Strictly speaking, they had only just escaped the emergency situation.
The bleeding they had suppressed by carrying out multiple treatments at once was slowly increasing again.
It was fortunate that it was still not enough for the anesthesiologist to react sensitively.
But it was certain to worsen eventually.
Dr. Schmidt made his decision without further delay.
“Let’s widen the scope and check the entire large intestine.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll proceed quickly, so everyone keep up closely. Scalpel.”
Sssrk.
Dr. Schmidt widened the affected area a little more with the scalpel.
Then everyone carefully examined each part of the large intestine together.
A short while later.
Dr. Oliver’s eyes shook violently as he examined the descending colon.
“D-Doctor.”
Sssrk.
At the tip of Dr. Oliver’s finger as he called out in a daze, they saw a mass of inflammation larger than a finger joint.
That was the diverticulitis.
The problem was that it was several times larger than ordinary diverticulitis.
Part of the inflamed mass was also torn, and red blood was welling up from inside it in soft surges.
The anesthesiologist had said the transfusion rate wasn’t decreasing.
The amount he had mentioned and the bleeding from the diverticulitis were almost the same.
Brad Kim, who had examined it right beside Dr. Oliver, spoke in a low, forceful voice.
“Huh? I think that’s it.”
“Mm. It looks that way to me too.”
“To think it really was diverticulitis. And such a large one, at that.”
Brad Kim seemed a little flustered as well.
But Dr. Schmidt spoke calmly, as if he had some idea.
“In the middle of a war like this, what could he have eaten properly?”
“Irregular eating habits are quite dangerous.”
“Let’s leave talk like that at that and deal with the cause we worked so hard to find first. Dr. Oliver.”
Dr. Schmidt called his assistant in a heavy voice.
Then they moved their hands themselves, quickly beginning surgery starting with the diverticulitis and extending to the surrounding area.
As Taesu watched the operation, he thought.
‘So mindset really is this important.’
He once again reflected on how he had stood by, even if only for a moment.
In that process, he realized something truly important.
There was no king in front of a patient.
Now and in the future, he would never forget that realization.
It was a realization that would immediately be a great help in communicating with Jeong Minsu and Kim Hyeokgwon.
And one day, when he became a specialist himself, even if he performed surgery with younger juniors, he vowed that he would listen to their opinions.
The diverticulitis operation was quickly wrapped up.
After that, Taesu and Brad Kim finished dealing with the minor issues.
That was Dr. Schmidt’s consideration.
It meant he hoped they would look at, touch, and feel the affected area even one more time, so they could help similar patients in the future.
It also contained his gratitude toward Taesu, who had come in as a helper during the emergency and given them a great deal of assistance.
For the first time in a while, Taesu and Brad Kim stood across from each other at the operating table on their own.
Snip, snip.
Their hands moved back and forth with such good coordination that no gap could be felt.
“Brad.”
“Here? Okay.”
“Where do we go next?”
“I think it’d be better to go this way.”
“Then……”
The sight of them deciding the direction forward through discussion was unusual as well.
Dr. Schmidt seemed to feel a little curiosity too.
“Shall I do some nagging?”
“Thank you. Here……”
“There, in my opinion……”
“Ah, then……”
“Just because I say it doesn’t mean it’s always right. Come up with ideas.”
Dr. Schmidt even urged them on.
Through his participation, they learned how to look from a slightly different perspective as well.
Meanwhile.
Dr. Oliver, who was watching from a step away, furrowed his brow slightly.
In particular, the look he directed at Taesu was complicated.
“Dr. Choi.”
Both curiosity and jealousy flickered in his eyes.
Because of Taesu, who had appeared out of nowhere like a wild animal, he was showing no small amount of confusion.
A short while later.
Dr. Schmidt brought the surgery to its conclusion.
“We’ll end the operation here.”
“Good work. Whew.”
Everyone staggered as the tension left them.
Taesu especially so.
Because he had set his mind spinning at full speed in an instant, the aftereffects were beginning to crash over him.
At that moment, Dr. Schmidt said to Taesu,
“Good work. Wash up, then let’s have a cup of tea.”
“Yes.”
“Ellen will show you the way. I’ll hand the patient over to the ward and come, so rest a bit. Dr. Kim, you come too. Then I’ll see you later.”
After saying that, Dr. Schmidt turned away first.
Taesu quickly bowed his head in farewell.
Beside him, Dr. Oliver passed by.
“……”
It felt as though he had something to say but swallowed it down.
Since Taesu had his head bowed, he couldn’t see it. Brad Kim must have seen it instead, because he came closer and quietly spoke in Korean.
“Oliver’s expression didn’t look too good.”
“Is that so?”
“Looks like you didn’t see it. Anyway, an invitation from the doctor. I’m looking forward to what he’ll say. Come on, let’s go.”
Brad Kim leisurely led Taesu along.
Taesu didn’t refuse and moved with him, smiling faintly.
Before they knew it, an hour had passed.
Taesu and Brad Kim were sitting on folding chairs inside Dr. Schmidt’s tent.
Their clothes had been changed into clean surgical scrubs.
Of the two, Brad Kim was in the middle of animatedly talking about the surgery.
“When Dr. Schmidt declared the operation over, I really thought, now I can finally live.”
“I felt the same. My legs almost gave out.”
“Dr. Choi, you’re not allowed to say that. Do you know how absurd and dumbfounded I was during the emergency?”
“No. I have absolutely no idea.”
At Taesu’s brazen response, Brad Kim got slightly heated.
“I’m seriously only saying this now.”
“No. Please hold back.”
“What?”
“I’m telling you to keep it to yourself.”
Whoosh, whoosh.
Taesu quickly waved his hand and teased Brad Kim.