Kim Hyeok-kwon’s briefing continued to ring in his ears.
“I stopped the performance and went over right away to ask where it hurt. First she said her chest hurt, then her back, and after that she said her shoulder hurt?”
“……”
“They’re all typical symptoms of arrhythmia. So I ran—”
Kim Hyeok-kwon’s guess had not been wrong.
They were clearly symptoms of arrhythmia.
But hidden among them were symptoms of something else.
A pulse that sounded unusually distant.
And although the pulse had dropped markedly, it was maintaining a balance.
When those signs were put together—
Rustle.
The knowledge of Capre that lay within his mind began to link symptoms that seemed completely unrelated.
And the result was—
Flash.
Tae-su’s eyes gleamed fiercely.
“Cardiac tamponade.”
“Cardiac tamponade?”
“There’s no time to explain. It’s not arrhythmia.”
“It looks exactly like arrhythmia.”
Kim Hyeok-kwon showed strong doubt.
From his perspective, it was a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
Even Tae-su had reflexively diagnosed arrhythmia when he first saw the patient.
But it definitely was not arrhythmia.
Tae-su had just named the exact medical term for it himself.
Of course, it was merely an illness Kim Hyeok-kwon did not know.
Tae-su had no time to explain the symptoms right then.
If they left the symptoms untreated, the patient could die.
CPR was impossible, too.
If they shocked the heart now, they would only worsen her condition and bring on cardiac arrest sooner.
A cardiac abnormality for which CPR was impossible.
It was truly an impossible situation.
Especially here, in a classroom.
No matter how much he looked around, there was nothing.
All he had in his hands was a stethoscope.
He had absolutely nothing useful.
“Ahhh.”
The patient’s agony grew worse.
Watching her, Tae-su could not do anything.
Kim Hyeok-kwon was driven to urge him on.
“Doctor, what are you doing? Why are your hands idle?”
“……”
“Hey, you.”
Kim Hyeok-kwon looked ready to grab him by the collar.
Even so, Tae-su could not use his hands.
It was a condition for which he could do nothing empty-handed.
On the other hand, forcibly carrying the patient toward the hospital was, in a word, “murder.”
The patient was in such a state that she could not be moved at all—that was how harshly accurate the expression was.
Tae-su’s lips grew parched.
Jeong Min-su should have arrived by now, but there was still no sign of him.
That fact made Tae-su even more anxious.
“That damned bastard, where is he?”
Unable to bear his frustration any longer, Tae-su shouted in Korean.
That was when it happened.
Creak.
The classroom door was thrown open, followed by an even rougher reply in Korean.
“I’m here, you bastard.”
Whoosh.
Tae-su’s gaze shot toward the door.
As expected, Jeong Min-su was entering through it.
A large bag hung from his shoulder.
He could not have been happier to see that bag.
Tae-su’s expression suddenly brightened as he urged him on.
“Give me the bag first. Hurry.”
“Hey, you crazy bastard. It obviously looks like arrhythmia. Where did you lose the CPR?”
“Quit your bullshit and hand over the bag.”
Perhaps Tae-su’s urgency had seemed unusual.
Jeong Min-su frowned and hurried over, lowering the bag.
Thud, zip.
He opened the zipper and threw the bag open.
At the same time, Tae-su’s hands plunged into it without hesitation.
Clatter.
He did not merely rummage through its contents with both hands. He also gave Jeong Min-su an order.
“Prepare for intubation.”
“It is arrhythmia after all.”
“You bastard, just hurry and get things ready—Found it.”
Tae-su pulled out a syringe and a small ampoule of painkiller.
With this, he could reduce the pain for a short while and allow subsequent treatment to proceed more smoothly.
It was also the medicine they needed most at that moment.
But he had no time to savor the relief.
He hurriedly drew the transparent medicine from the ampoule into the syringe.
Now it was time to inject it.
There was no time to find a vein or do anything else.
“Damn it.”
Tae-su plunged the syringe into the woman’s thigh.
Ssshhk.
Then he pushed the entire dose in at once.
He had not even had time to calculate the proper dosage of the painkiller.
No—this was a hair-trigger situation in which he did not even have time to calculate.
Only by reducing this terrible pain could they somehow buy even a little more of the precious time they did not have.
After boldly administering the drug, he had to wait a moment for it to take effect.
Fortunately, the wait was brief.
Slightly.
Kim Hyeok-kwon’s eyebrows twitched sharply as he quickly reported the situation.
“She’s lost a little strength.”
“Hnggg.”
The patient’s groans had truly weakened.
The powerful painkiller seemed to have taken effect immediately.
Seizing the opportunity, Tae-su immediately gave an order to Jeong Min-su, who was waiting.
“Proceed with intubation.”
“On it.”
Thud, tap.
Jeong Min-su began the intubation with somewhat rough hands.
Intubation meant inserting a tube into the airway.
The first priority was to force open the patient’s mouth, locate the airway, and push in a long tube.
From the outside, it looked like they were shoving a long tube down her throat.
It was not a pleasant sight.
Perhaps that was why—
“Oh my.”
“Gasp.”
The volunteers nearby let out startled cries.
Tae-su paid them no heed and asked them once more.
“Please hold her hands again. And if possible, don’t turn your heads toward that side.”
“……”
The volunteers could not answer immediately.
To people unrelated to medicine, even the most basic procedure—intubation—could be disturbing.
Tae-su did not press them as he had before.
He asked a little more gently, but sincerely.
“It’ll be over in a minute. That one minute will save her life. Please.”
“……Yes.”
The answer came a little late.
Still, the volunteers followed Tae-su’s instructions.
Tae-su could only be grateful.
Once the volunteers moved, Kim Hyeok-kwon had relatively more room to spare. But Tae-su had not created that space so he could rest.
He immediately gave Kim Hyeok-kwon another order.
“Get the automatic blood-pressure monitor first.”
“Just a moment… Okay. Her pulse is…”
Beep.
Kim Hyeok-kwon immediately read out the numbers.
As expected, both her pulse and blood pressure were abnormal.
It was not an irregular abnormality. The figures showed that the heart’s function had declined overall.
Jeong Min-su, who heard it as well, made a strange expression.
“Hm?”
The odd orders Tae-su had been giving that day, along with the unusual vital signs, seemed to make him realize instinctively that this was no ordinary situation.
However—
Tae-su, already pushed to the limits by the severity of the situation, did not hear him.
Focusing only on the treatment he would carry out next, he gave Kim Hyeok-kwon another order.
“Please give me a medium-sized syringe.”
“What medicine?”
“None.”
At Tae-su’s answer, Kim Hyeok-kwon’s eyes widened.
“You want an empty syringe?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then… Good grief. I can’t make heads or tails of what you’re doing.”
“Quickly.”
Kim Hyeok-kwon’s faint grumbling reached his ears.
Tae-su was too busy urging him on.
For an emergency patient, time was life.
That was true no matter what the symptoms were.
But Tae-su did not urge him again.
“……”
He pressed his lips tightly together and filled his eyes with focus.
He needed that much concentration.
Without mercy, he severed every nerve that strayed toward his surroundings.
He had to overcome this emergency.
He knew how.
All he had to do was put it into action.
Everything was ready, but there was a problem.
This emergency procedure was something Tae-su was attempting for the first time as well.
‘Once.’
He counted the number of attempts he had been given in his mind.
It was not a number Tae-su had decided arbitrarily.
The patient could not be moved in her current state.
There was no time to call in another cardiothoracic surgeon.
The patient’s life rested in Tae-su’s two hands.
He appeared calm enough in such a situation.
But that was only on the surface.
Inside, he was drying up with anxiety.
‘Hoo.’
He even had to exhale silently so no one would hear.
He was suppressing himself, afraid that showing too much anxiety would make him uneasy.
And his hands did not stop moving.
Pop.
He undid two or three buttons on the patient’s top and pulled it open on both sides. Then he spread disinfectant over a wide area of her upper left chest.
It was the position closest to the heart.
As he prepared against infection, Kim Hyeok-kwon handed him the syringe.
“Here.”
“Hoo. Yes.”
“……”
Kim Hyeok-kwon stared at him silently.
He seemed to have realized at a glance that Tae-su was nervous. But rather than say anything unnecessary, he chose to watch carefully.
Jeong Min-su was doing the same.
Whoosh, whoosh.
He had already finished the intubation and was regularly squeezing the Ambu bag.
“……”
His lips were pressed tightly together.
His expression was the most serious it had been all day.
Thus, tension filled the classroom.
Then Tae-su, the center of that tension, moved his hand.
He immediately turned the syringe upside down and pointed the needle toward the patient’s chest.
His hand did not stop.
The syringe needle soon touched the skin and, pushed by Tae-su’s strength, burrowed inside.
At the same time, the volunteers let out a series of startled cries.
“Gasp.”
“Ah—ugh.”
Wisely realizing their mistake, they quickly turned their heads away.
“Hey…”
Kim Hyeok-kwon began to say something, then held it back.
And Tae-su?
“……”
Without the slightest movement, he continued pushing the syringe toward the heart.
He was so focused that the surrounding noise seemed unable to reach him.
Before long, the needle had gone halfway in.
The Tae-su who had been slowly pushing it forward moved his other hand for the first time and separated the needle from the body of the syringe.
Then his touch became even more cautious.
“……”
His sharp gaze seemed capable of piercing straight through to the heart.
His lips were so tightly pursed that they had twisted from the concentration.
Finally, as he pushed in the needle, there was not even the slightest tremor in his hand.
‘Please. Please, let it catch. Please.’
Only Tae-su desperately repeated the incomprehensible words in his mind.
That was how completely he had concentrated every sense into his fingertips.
The emergency procedure he was performing had not been improvised.
It had a proper medical name.
Pericardiocentesis.
In Korea, the procedure was called pericardial puncture.
It was while Tae-su was struggling alone with the procedure that—
Jeong Min-su watched him with a heavy gaze.
Squeeze. Squeeze.
He did not stop compressing the Ambu bag and assisting the patient’s breathing.
The situation inside the classroom was utterly unusual.
At first glance, it seemed remarkably calm and quiet. Yet beneath that, it was filled with taut tension, stretched so tightly it seemed it would snap at the slightest pull.
On top of that, the sight of Tae-su performing emergency treatment with nothing but a needle seemed utterly baffling.