Hospital Life

The voice of a nurse echoes through the faculty area of the hospital, reaching N's ears as he lay in his room.

"Mr. N, please wake up. Doctor Vesalius is calling for you at his office."

After a moment of struggle, N opens his eyes.

He contemplates, "A harrowing week is set to start once more," and exhales deeply.

A week has passed since he joined Vesalius, and each day brought forth new challenges.

N's role in the hospital was far from conventional. Wanting N to master, or at the very least learn, many different skills, Vesalius forced N to assist in a wide variety of tasks in the hospital.

The routine was relentless. From observing surgeries one moment to assisting someone maintain electrical machines the next, N found himself doing ridiculous amounts of work.

Only once a week was N was exempted from work, in which he spent every hour either sleeping or extensively exercising.

That day already passed by before N could fully rest.

First thing every morning, N had to meet Vesalius for a thorough examination, on his blood and body's condition.

As days piled on, so did the data, but the more Vesalius delved into the information, the more elusive the answers became.

N would once again get up from his bed, brush his teeth, wear a loose white coat and head towards Vesalius' office expecting another blood sample collection.

To N's surprise, Vesalius was sitting quietly on his chair with an uncharacteristically large amount of documents surrounding him.

Vesalius decided today was the day to reveal his findings, after researching N's blood for a week.

"Alright then, all these documents are the results of your blood tests. Not a single one of them show any abnormality, which makes no sense given the insane feat your body was able to accomplish not too long ago. Y'know. casually reviving your muscles and tissues." Frustration could be heard in Vesalius' tone.

"So that got me thinking, what if normally there's nothing wrong with your body normally, its only in extreme scenarios where it goes crazy. So with that in mind, how about we see your body's reaction to certain stimulus eh?" Says Vesalius as he grabs a small knife and asks N for his hand.

Without hesitation, N offers up his hand to be cut which surprises Vesalius, "Hahaha, not even going to ask what I'll do to your hand with this knife?"

In an emotionless tone N replies, "You do not have anything to gain from killing me and you are close friends of Hiro so I do not believe you will harm me unnecessarily. Hence, I trust you."

Vesalius' laugh gets louder as he exclaims, "One crazy fella you are," and decides to tell N about the experiment he is going to conduct.

"So I'll cut this area," as he points the back of N's forearm.

"After leaving a somewhat nasty cut, I'll let your body do it's thing. Every hour I'll take another blood test and monitor the wound to see if any abnormal changes happen."

With extreme precision and void of any hesitation, Vesalius cut N's forearm.

Vesalius notices N's lack of reaction to the cut and asks, "Did you not feel any pain from that? You showed zero reaction."

N's reply is, "I did feel pain, but I have become used to it. That is why I showed no reaction."

Vesalius lets out a simple chuckle and does not press the subject further.

He then takes pictures of the wound and then wraps it up with bandages.

As soon as Vesalius is done bandaging N's arm, a nurse comes rushing in, "Doctor, we have a high class emergency patient waiting for you in B-10."

Vesalius immediately gets up saying, "Alright, I'll head there right away. N you're with me, keep up."

While they walk, Vesalius decides to use this opportunity to discuss the hospital's unique patient class system to N.

"I know you're curious why some patient could be considered high class. Well, let's first talk about finances. Every patient that comes into this hospital for treatment of any kind receives it for an unbelievable low cost. In this day and age, running such a model is pretty much a golden ticket straight to bankruptcy."

"Yet we have been going strong for decades. How do you reckons that's possible?"

N takes a minute but is not able to answer the question Vesalius posed.

Vesalius continues, "This entire operation is bankrolled by... well, let's just call them mafia for simplicity's sake. The big boss overseeing the gang that funds this hospital, 'Orion', goes by the name of 'Sofia Falcone.' Sofia, or anyone from that gang is considered high class."

Before N has a chance to ask any questions, Vesalius decides to clear up any potential misunderstandings that could have been drawn by his remarks earlier, "Let me be perfectly clear—I do refer to them as the mafia or a gang. But, they don't fit the conventional mold of 'bad guys.' They're not involved in petty crimes and they don't go around terrorizing random people."

"In a way, you could say they're quite a civilized bunch. Unless you mess with them," Vesalius says as he let's out a hearty laugh.

While they conversed, time seemed to slip by. Before they knew it they were standing in front of their destination, the room where the high class patient waited. Vesalius decides to caution N before going in, "Alright, we've arrived. Keep your composure, N. Also only a handful of the staff are privy to the hospital's secrets, I want it to stay that way. And while they might not be your enemies, a single misstep could turn them hostile. You don't want that."

They enter a spacious white room, partitioned into two distinct sections. A large glass panel serves as a boundary between the two spaces.

Within one part of the room, individuals move about freely. On the other side of the glass is an operating room. There is one door on the corner of the glass plane so people can travel between the two rooms if need be.

After entering the room N's eyes shifted to a few red stains that stood out on the white surrounding. His eyes darted towards the source of that redness where he saw a woman laying on an examination table, bleeding profusely. She was the mafia boss, Sofia, surrounded by a high-level personnel from the gang – guards and close associates, many of whom bore visible injuries.

Vesalius, accustomed to such situations, remained unfazed. However, it was N's first encounter with such hostility, and to Vesalius' surprise and delight, N too remained unfazed.

"Alright lads, I see familiar faces so you should know how this goes. Since it looks like Sofia's taken a serious hit, we start with your boss. After that, I'll attend to each of you one by one. Now, this guy right here," as Vesalius points to N, "is my assistant. Only he and I stay. Everyone else waits outside while I perform the surgery."

The associates in the room expressed their discomfort at having a stranger like N in the operating room with their injured boss. One of them spoke up, "We trust you to take care of our boss because of the countless years we've been associated with you, but this random guy? We don't know him. We won't trust him to be in the same room with our boss."

Without skipping a beat, Vesalius addressed the concerned associate, "Listen here. Every minute you spend pissing about, your boss' condition worsens. I will not perform the operation with you guys in here, and this assistant of mine will stay. Don't trust him? Couldn't care less. Trust me, or get your boss to some other hospital. In the state she's in, she won't survive."

No one has any choice in front of Vesalius' demands so they all back out, glaring at N as they leave. Vesalius asks N to set up the necessary equipment for the operation in the other room that was separated by a big glass pane.

While he has N do that, Vesalius decides to quiz him on Sofia's condition.

"N. Why do you think she's unconscious?" asks Vesalius while pointing at Sofia.

N had taken part in a few operations with Vesalius and had developed a good understanding for the human body.

He replies in a confident manner, "She has two bullet wounds. One in the abdomen and one in the leg. She most probably lost consciousness because of excessive blood loss."

By the time N was done answering, Vesalius had gone and picked up Sofia to be transferred to the surgical table in the other room.

"Good. Glad to see you've been paying attention and not daydreaming all this time." remarks Vesalius in a snarky manner.

After placing Sofia on the operating table, Vesalius goes on to get into his scrub to get ready for the operation.

Within a five minutes, all the necessary equipment has been assembled by N and Vesalius comes back into the room with his scrub on.

Vesalius' face then gets blanketed by a stoic and serious expression. A sight N had seen many times before in the operating room, yet still, seeing Vesalius in that manner filled N with a sense of gravity and intensity of the situation.

Vesalius double checks if all the necessary equipment is present and then proceeds with the surgery.

His biggest and most urgent concern was the bullet wound in the abdomen area since there was a high chance that the bullet hit some organ. If that were the case, Sofia's situation would turn exponentially more critical and dire.

Quickly, yet not losing precision, Vesalius cuts through layers of skin and flesh to get to the bullet and luckily, the bullet trajectory had spared both bones and organs.

The few blood vessels that were damaged because of the bullet were quickly stitched up by Vesalius, and the bullet was extracted.

After closing the wound up, he asks N, "Monitor this wound, and tell me right away if it opens up."

Then Vesalius shifts his attention to the other bullet injury that Sofia sustained, on her leg.

One look and Vesalius could tell that the situation here was bad.

In the leg, there is a major artery, the femoral artery, that has the responsibility to supply oxygen rich blood to leg and thigh muscles.

Since it is a major artery, a lot of blood flows through it and has extreme importance in the circulatory system.

The bullet had hit Sofia's femoral artery. Every second, Sofia's chances of survival dropped so Vesalius had to act fast.

Once again Vesalius picked up the scapple and started to remove layers of flesh to reach the artery.

One look at the bullet and he could understand that the situation was tricky. The major artery that carries blood in the leg had been impaled by the bullet causing extensive bleeding.

With precision, Vesalius quickly extracts the bullet.

However, removing the bullet meant removing the one barricade that plugged up the hole in the blood artery, and so blood rushed out.

Vesalius quickly grabs the vascular clamps, stops the bleeding of the artery and sutures the artery that had been damaged because of the bullet.

He now has to remove the clamp that he used to block blood flow; however, there is a chance that the incoming blood could rush into the artery and cause the suture to open.

Knowing this, Vesalius opens the clamp very slowly and monitors the artery to see if the suture would start to open up and blood would start to flow out again.

Slowly but surely, Vesalius is able to remove the clamp completely and the suture holds up.

With Sofia's leg wound now taken care of as well, Vesalius takes a glance at her abdomen wound and lets out a deep sigh when he sees that it is holding up well.

"Good work, N. I couldn't quiz you this time, given Sofia's critical condition – and yeah she's the mob boss I mentioned earlier. Good thing I'm a genius doctor haha," says Vesalius with again a noticeable shift in his demeanor now that the surgery is completed.

Vesalius proclaims, with a big smile on his face, "Surgery successful! She should wake up in a few hours when the anesthesia wears off. Let's go deal with the gentlemen that are waiting outside now shall we."