Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 439

440. Nowhere to Retreat

Tae-kyung was momentarily speechless at the unexpected response.

“You don’t know? How could you not know, Hyung?”

“Why else? I specialized in spine to make money. Don’t you remember?”

When specializing in neurosurgery, you choose a subspecialty, and Park Joon-suk had chosen the spine.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

“You didn’t ask!”

Tae-kyung asked with a dumbfounded expression, and Park Joon-suk retorted as if it were obvious.

“Ha!”

He was truly dumbfounded and dumbstruck, and a sigh escaped him involuntarily. It felt like navigating a series of endless mountains.

For a moment, he felt blocked by a wall, but he couldn’t shut down now. He had to focus.

What could he do? He had come all the way to an unfamiliar hospital and even entered the operating room to save a patient; he couldn’t just give up now.

“Hyung?”

In the end, Tae-kyung looked straight at Park Joon-suk and continued.

“Let’s just drill through it.”

“What!? Drill through it?”

Park Joon-suk asked again, as if to confirm he’d heard correctly.

“Of course. We have to drill through it.”

“Hey! Tae-kyung! Are you even thinking straight? What if the bleeding doesn’t stop inside? How are you going to control those blood vessels? Things will get much bigger than they are now.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration.

Even if they carefully drilled through, if the bleeding didn’t stop, Lee Joon-hyuk’s outcome would be dire.

The thought alone made him dizzy.

“Tae-kyung. It’s the head, of all places!”

As if reminding him how dangerous the area was, Park Joon-suk emphasized ‘head’ and raised his voice.

“I know. But we have to at least try!”

“Isn’t Tae-kyung right? We have to at least try,” Lee Jae-hyun, who had been listening to the serious conversation, suddenly interjected.

“If you don’t know, just stay quiet.”

“I’m saying this because I don’t know. If I knew, would I be standing here like this?”

“At least *you* be quiet. Tae-kyung, you’re going to control the blood vessels? Do you think this is the abdominal cavity? It’s the head! The brain!”

As if emphasizing it several times wasn’t enough, Park Joon-suk kept repeating like a parrot.

“It’s the brain! The brain! Even a small mistake can leave lifelong aftereffects!”

“Hyung, I know very well what happens when the brain is damaged. But if we just stay still like this, what happens to this patient? As you know, it’s already been almost an hour since the CT scan. Maybe an hour at most, or even just 30 minutes, and the patient’s brain will die from the pressure. Or the brain will herniate [slip out of place] downwards before that. Are we just going to give up? We’ve already opened up the head!”

Tae-kyung knew better than anyone what Park Joon-suk was worried and anxious about.

And Tae-kyung’s own feelings were just as complicated. But the game had already begun, and the patient was lying on the operating table.

There was nowhere to retreat.

“Hyung? Are you going to give up here?”

Tae-kyung continued, with eyes that were pleading rather than scolding or angry.

“We’ve already opened up Lee Joon-hyuk’s head. Do you really want to stop here?”

The only thing he wanted to say to Park Joon-suk right now was to just try it once, with the single-minded desire to save the patient.

“Let’s do it. Let’s do it! Huh? Hyung!”

“Ha! I’m going crazy. Fine, damn it! There’s nowhere to retreat, so let’s do it.”

Park Joon-suk’s reason, which was telling him not to, was finally overcome by Tae-kyung’s persuasion and the patient’s condition, and he spoke.

“Let’s do it! Do it!”

Having made up his mind, Park Joon-suk gently placed the instrument on the skull, and Tae-kyung began to turn the handle.

Soon, as he turned the handle, ground skull and blood became a mess, flowing down the operating bed and onto the floor.

“Ha! Damn. There’s a lot of blood.”

Unlike Lee Jae-hyun, who was quite surprised by the flowing blood, the two who had already expected it were solely focused on the patient.

Tae-kyung continued to turn the handle of the instrument he was holding, little by little.

“Hyung, vision.”

“Yeah, okay.”

At Tae-kyung’s words, Park Joon-suk reached out a hand, picked up a 50cc syringe, and squirted saline solution onto the grinding skull.

Because the bone was covered in blood and couldn’t be seen at all.

Tae-kyung and Park Joon-suk’s eyes were extraordinary. They were so focused that it seemed like all the nerve cells in their bodies were concentrated, and their nerves were on edge.

Of course. In the human body, all parts are important, but the head is especially so.

Even when operating in a perfectly equipped environment, nerves become sensitive, so doing such an important surgery in a poor environment was bound to make them even more sensitive.

Moreover, it wasn’t a familiar surgery for either of them.

Unlike the two who were focused on the patient with sensitive nerves, Lee Jae-hyun, who had a tense expression, also held his breath and focused on their movements.

‘Brain surgery… Tae-kyung, that guy is something else. Amazing.’

Seeing the brain surgery, which felt so real and raw that he hadn’t even seen it during his internship in medical school, Lee Jae-hyun couldn’t even breathe easily.

Tae-kyung’s gaze was fixed on the surgical site, not even wavering for a second.

‘How much is done? Or a little more?’

He didn’t know how much bone had been ground away or how much more he had to do.

However, the skull was gradually being chipped away, resembling the traces of meteorites on the moon.

A hole about 1 cm in diameter was slowly forming in the skull, and it was at that very moment.

“Stop!”

Suddenly, Tae-kyung stopped and removed the instrument. Everyone’s attention was focused on the area where the instrument had been removed.

It was a skull that had been penetrated by anyone’s standards. Blood gushed out from the skull.

“Tae-kyung, is the blood that just poured out okay?”

Lee Jae-hyun asked in a worried tone, as if confirming.

“Yeah, it’s okay. Hyung, pressure?”

“That’s right. It must have dropped. It dropped.”

Tae-kyung and Park Joon-suk examined the surgical site more closely.

If blood gushed out, the internal pressure would drop first, so the immediate danger to the brain was addressed.

Next, the priority was decompression! Decompression was important.

“Give me a full drip of H/S [Hartmann’s Solution, a type of intravenous fluid] now.”

At Tae-kyung’s words, Lee Jae-hyun took action, and the rest stared intently at the skull.

Although decompression was successful, hemostasis [stopping the bleeding] was the next thing left.

Because the three were doctors, they could immediately tell whether the blood was stopping or whether an artery was ruptured just by looking at the blood flowing. Even ordinary people can sense when blood flow is problematic.

Blood gushed out, and decompression was successful, so hemostasis was now important.

If hemostasis didn’t occur or an artery in the brain ruptured, they would have to catch the blood vessel and ligate it [tie it off to stop the bleeding], but that would be a much more complex problem because it was the brain.

The three stared intently at the hole in the patient’s skull as if their eyes would pop out.

They were so focused that they wouldn’t even notice if someone came and hit them from the side.

‘Please help me,’ Lee Jae-hyun prayed desperately in his heart.

‘Stop. It has to stop,’ Park Joon-suk also prayed for the bleeding to stop.

Drip- Drip- Drip- Drip

“Oh!”

“……!”

And at that moment, everyone’s pupils dilated and contracted, and all three flinched.

“Thank goodness.”

Because the bleeding was stopping. At the same time, Tae-kyung felt that Lee Joon-hyuk’s fifth vital sign had changed.

‘It’s fading.’

The smell that was approaching death, with a stage 4 scent and a strong formalin odor, was losing its momentum as it tried to move to stage 5.

“Thank goodness. Ha! Damn. I thought I was going to die and was so scared. Damn!”

“Who isn’t? Hyung! I was so nervous. Wow! I thought my heart was going to pop out.”

Park Joon-suk, whose legs had lost strength, expressed his worried feelings and almost collapsed without realizing it.

Lee Jae-hyun, who was next to him, also said a word and barely leaned against the sterile table to support himself.

“Ha……”

Tae-kyung, who was watching the two, finally let out a short breath and relaxed his serious expression.

“Haha!”

“Ha! I can only laugh because it’s so absurd.”

Park Joon-suk and Lee Jae-hyun laughed involuntarily as the complex and subtle feelings of liberation, joy, pleasure, and tension were relieved. On the other hand, Tae-kyung laughed purely because he was happy.

“Haha!”

“Crazy bastard! Look at Tae-kyung laughing. He’s really laughing because he’s so happy right now.”

“Anyway, Kim Tae-kyung, you’re a real crazy bastard. A crazy bastard for patients!”

“Are you just realizing that now? Okay! Now let’s clean up with gauze and close it up.”

“Yeah, we have to close it. Let’s close it.”

“Wait a minute! Are we just leaving the skull like that?”

At Tae-kyung’s words to finish up, Lee Jae-hyun opened his eyes wide and asked if it was okay.

“Hey! You ignorant bastard. Then what, should we put something in?”

“Ah… Is it not possible?”

Lee Jae-hyun said something as if he was amazed, but Tae-kyung and Park Joon-suk ignored him and pulled the skin to proceed with the suture [stitching the skin closed].

They safely fixed the blood bag inside and prepared to drain any bleeding that might occur later, and the surgery was finished.

Of course, bleeding could still occur afterward, but if they did this and transferred the patient inland, there would be no major problems in saving the patient.

Tae-kyung and Park Joon-suk knew this, so the atmosphere in the operating room was lighter than ever.

“Ahem! Cough!”

“Did you lose your mind? Tae-kyung, look at him. Jae-hyun, are you crazy?”

Lee Jae-hyun, who had been chuckling, quietly laughed and then made a snorting sound. Then Park Joon-suk, who was helping Tae-kyung finish up, frowned.

“I know, Hyung. I think I might be a little crazy.”

“Hey, hey! If you’re going to go crazy, go crazy after you get home. I’m already overwhelmed with just Tae-kyung here, so don’t go crazy and keep a grip on yourself.”

“No, that’s not it. I honestly… I didn’t think the surgery would be possible, you know?”

“This bastard must not have trusted you, Tae-kyung.”

“That’s not true!”

Lee Jae-hyun wasn’t saying that because he doubted Tae-kyung’s skills.

He knew very well that Tae-kyung’s skills were excellent, but strictly speaking, this was a different field, and Park Joon-suk had initially shown uncooperative behavior, so he thought it wouldn’t work.

But to overcome all those situations and save the patient, he just couldn’t believe it.

He wasn’t even a family member of the patient Lee Joon-hyuk, but he couldn’t help but feel so proud and happy that he was out of danger.

“Anyway, I’m glad the patient is getting better. Honestly, when the blood poured out on the floor earlier, I thought something big had happened. No joke, my liver shrank to the size of a bean.”

“Jae-hyun, how can you be alive if your liver is the size of a bean?”

“I’m just saying that. Saying.”

“Then think before you speak.”

“So, are you saying that the hyung [older brother/senior colleague] who thinks so much would say he can’t do it because he’s afraid of losing out, whether the patient dies or not?”

“Hey! Why are you bringing that up?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Park, Mr. Lee. We’re not done yet, you know?”

Tae-kyung, who was focused on finishing up, mediated between the two.

“Yes, Dr. Kim, I’m sorry.”

“Cough!”

The middle-aged nurse who had been helping the three in the operating room until now chuckled softly under her mask.

“The surgery and we were all 정신없으셨죠? [so hectic/ 정신없다 is a Korean expression for being in a mental state of chaos] I’m sorry.”

“No.”

When Tae-kyung spoke, the nurse added with a soft expression as if it wasn’t at all.

“I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve done surgery in this operating room. In fact, I’ve always been managing the operating room in case a sudden emergency might occur.”

Unlike Oh Sim-bo’s words that there were no surgical patients, Tae-kyung thought that the operating room was clean and well-managed when he saw it earlier.

“The surgery went well because the teacher [term of respect for a senior nurse] managed it well and cooperated today.”

“Don’t mention it. The teachers [doctors] did it all. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a patient saved by surgery, so I feel something hot inside me too. Everyone really worked hard.”

“Teacher, you worked hard too.”

“Thank you for your help.”

As the middle-aged nurse 인사하자 [said her farewells/ 인사하다 is a Korean expression for greeting or saying goodbye], Tae-kyung and his friends 인사했다 [greeted/said goodbye] to her who helped.

“Suturing is all done. The end!”

And Lee Joon-hyuk’s surgery, which was 긴박하고 장담할 수 없었던 [urgent and unpredictable/ 긴박하다 and 장담할 수 없다 are Korean expressions to describe the situation], so it was more 쫄렸던 [nerve-wracking/ 쫄리다 is a Korean expression for being nervous or anxious], was successfully completed.