Chapter 3398: Miraculous Doctor (Part Five)

"Anesthesia?" Shiller asked, looking up.

Strange was already arranging his gloves and preparing to rinse when he replied, "Are you sure you can get the dosage right?"

Shiller sized up the woman's height and weight, then said, "Pretty close. If we don't anesthetize her, I'm afraid we won't be able to hold her down."

He then bent down to closely examine the wound and the woman's current condition, remarking, "I'm afraid we may need to give her some adrenaline. I remember the healing manual mentioned a few plants whose juice has a similar effect, so we'll have to take a chance."

"Can't you use your professional skills as a psychiatrist?"

"What good would that do? Persuade her to lie still in bed while being cut open, and think happy thoughts?"

Shiller spoke while searching through cabinets, while Strange took on some of the assistant's duties, alternating between rinsing the abdominal cavity with saline solution and medication.

"The situation is worse than I thought," Strange said, "Her organs show signs of impact, and there are already signs of bleeding. We might have to remove one of the kidneys, and I don't think we've got the conditions for that kind of surgery."

"We still have to try. This group is usually tougher than the human race when it comes to vitality, right?"

"That's a question you'll have to ask the fireplace."

"Yeah, and our stomachs too."

Shiller brought several plants to the operating table, preparing them while flipping through the manual. After a while, he brought over some needles and said to Strange, "Inject half of this one, all of this one, and then pray to God."

Strange took them, injecting into his arm as he said, "You must know how to give injections, otherwise I won't be free to administer anesthesia later."

"I'll give it a try." Shiller tied the woman's limbs to prevent her from struggling too violently and causing secondary injury during the surgery if she woke up.

"Wait, what's this?" Shiller discovered a bloody bite mark on the woman's calf while tying her down, resembling a dog bite.

"I always say, God won't bless anyone who meets me. There's no rabies vaccine here." Shiller examined the bite wound, "The bite on the calf is much fresher than the abdominal stab wound; this female warrior was probably fighting up until she passed out."

Strange just glanced at it, then said, "Worrying about rabies is premature. If we can't control the internal bleeding and deal with the kidney issue, she won't live to see rabies develop."

"The problem is, it might not have been a dog that bit her."

After the preparations were complete, the two began the debridement. Strange slowly excised necrotic skin, Shiller helping him secure the wound while cleaning the debris on the tray.

Strange was very quick with his hands, which almost seemed to leave afterimages. After skin removal, he reached out his hand, "Forceps."

Shiller handed him a pair of forceps, and Strange froze as he was about to extend it toward the wound. He looked at the forceps in his hand speechlessly and said, "Why didn't you just bring over an excavator?"

Shiller also paused, then realized the forceps might be too large. But he wasn't sure what Strange wanted; saying 'forceps' doesn't specify which one.

Strange waved his hand impatiently and said, "Push the tool cart over here, I'll pick them myself."

Shiller pushed the cart over. Strange continued his work, his hands unwavering. He grabbed a hemostatic clamp to clamp a blood vessel, placing it towards Shiller's direction, then said, "Hold that and don't move."

Shiller held the clamp while Strange continued his work. Soon, the wound was visibly cleaner despite still being swollen and red.

"We can't stitch it up now," said Strange, "First, let's drain the abdominal effusion, then I'll make an incision on the side of the abdomen to check the kidney."

Strange took a long, thin needle, ready to withdraw the abdominal effusion. Since the effusion was caused by infection, it had to be drained and the abdominal cavity washed. But before starting, Strange hesitated.

"What's wrong?" Shiller, who was bandaging the woman's leg wound, looked up at Strange, who had stopped moving, and asked.

"The condition of the organs is too bad. Any slight change might cause internal bleeding. But if we don't intervene, she will quickly die of infection." Strange hesitated for barely a second before continuing his actions, then said, "It's a disgrace for a surgeon to pray to God."

"If she were human, she certainly wouldn't have held on long enough to come see you." Shiller said while wrapping the gauze, "Doesn't that make you feel any better?"

"Not at all," Strange replied.

"That's because I'm not good at cheering doctors up in the operating room," Shiller said with a smile, "Shouldn't you, who spends all your time in the operating room, be the one encouraging me?"

"Encourage you? To send more people into the fireplace?"

"Look on the bright side, I've got plenty of experience destroying evidence. Otherwise, the game would have ended for us both right at the start, beaten to death by the head nurse."

Strange finally laughed, but then snorted coldly and said, "My surgical skills won't give you many chances to destroy evidence."

"Right, and my efficiency in covering up evidence won't give your surgery many opportunities. We're practically the perfect pair."

Strange stopped for a moment, took a breath, and said, "Come to this side, I need to check her kidney."

The two switched positions. Shiller looked at the wound and felt it appeared better than before, possibly because the previous state was too dire. However, judging by Strange's complexion, it seemed things were extremely poor.

Just as Strange made an incision from the side of the abdomen, the sound of the nurse's footsteps came from the corridor again. Strange put on his mask, while Shiller came to the door.

"Give me the report ... before the end-of-shift bell rings..." the nurse's hoarse voice resonated.

"Report?"

"Yes... Haven't you written it?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am. Elegantly worded and rich in emotion. I'll hand it to you in a bit."

The nurse's eyes swiveled around, and then she left the observation window.

"Why do we have to write a report?!" Shiller let out a wail and then said, "You said we're playing some medical-themed game! Are we here to play games or to work overtime?!"

"You write it, I don't have time." Strange said, "I want to try to save her from the infection, may even need to remove one of the kidneys."

"I knew it..." Shiller muttered and walked over to a desk next to the bookshelf at the deepest part of the operating room.

He had just sat down when he seemed to remember something and said, "If the report is handed to the nurse, then we probably can't fill it in truthfully..."

"Of course not, that's why I need you to write it." Strange said, "Make something up and fool her with it."

Shiller resignedly sighed and began to write diligently.

He had no idea how to write an operation report of this era, so he just wrote it like a modern one, splendidly worded and full of emotion, nearly perfect if not for a few minor inaccuracies.

Finally, before another bell rang, Shiller pushed the fully filled parchment through the crack of the door.

The nurse merely glanced at it, without scrutinizing the details. But before she left, she said pointedly, "Those who catch the plague are cursed. They're a bunch of shameless liars and ruffians, whatever they tell you is just nonsense. You best not let me find out you've taken their words to heart..."

"Don't worry, ma'am. That chance won't come."

With a click, the door closed. In his mind, Shiller added the last sentence: "After all, so far there's not been a single one who survived to speak."

Shiller keenly noticed that the red light above the door in front of the operating table was lit. That was supposed to mean that their work for the day was over and no more patients would be coming in.

But Strange was still working overtime, likely facing another sleepless night.

While he was busy there, Shiller wasn't idle either. They had run out of mandala anesthetics, which needed to be mixed anew. Also, the various drugs used today needed to be prepared again.

Most crucially, previously brewed sulfuric acid was also insufficient. He had to make enough for an entire day during the resting period, which was quite a task and would keep him occupied for half the day.

While waiting for the drug preparation and sulfuric acid production, Shiller went to the fireplace and picked out some bone remains. As he used the fire poke to stir the wood, he vaguely saw a shadow inside the soot-stained fireplace.

Shiller bent down to look inside, and a ghostly shadow emerged from the dense smoke and abruptly charged toward him. Shiller wasn't scared, but he was quite choked up, covering his mouth and coughing a few times.

When he looked inside again, there was no longer a wall at the deepest part of the fireplace, replaced instead by a mouth as big as the abyss.

"Give me..." Shiller faintly heard a sentence.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"Food..."

"God, you really can eat," Shiller couldn't help but exclaim, "Aren't three and a half people in a day enough for you?"

It seemed like his question stumped the other party, who didn't make another sound. When Shiller looked into the fireplace again, the large mouth had disappeared, as if it were only an illusion.

It seemed like this was a forced cutscene that would trigger if enough people were thrown into it. But they had already met the conditions in one day, and it seemed the other party realized they had come a bit too early.

Shiller glanced around the room again and realized Strange was right. The lights in the room had dimmed significantly compared to when they first arrived, and the putrid smell was becoming increasingly intense, enough to cause unease.

He remembered the parchment mentioning that destroying patients could lead to unpredictable serious consequences; perhaps it referred to some abnormalities that would appear in the room.

Now he finally had time to check the books on the shelf. Indeed, at the very bottom row of the shelf, he found entries related to emergency procedures. This book mentioned that some patients might become delirious or exhibit various contagious aberrations due to their illness, and in such cases, they must be destroyed.

The process of destruction was essentially to stuff them into the fireplace, but the manual also mentioned that destroying plague-ridden patients could lead to unknown horrors descending, so it had to be done cautiously.

Naturally, Shiller started thinking: "What if I don't follow the procedures to destroy the patients?"

Things were indeed urgent during the day, so they directly stuffed the patients into the fireplace, inadvertently conforming to the destruction procedure described in the manual.

But actually, if there wasn't such a hurry, Shiller had many other ways to dispose of the bodies. If he didn't operate according to the destruction procedure, would it still count as destruction?

Shiller stroked his chin and gradually came up with an idea.