Chapter 2 – Barehanded Cmp on the Hepatic Pedicle

  “L-Little Gret…?”

  The young man looked up at him, stunned.

  Wu Zhou didn’t even gnce back.

  He dove straight to the patient’s side and did a lightning-quick scan of the surroundings—

  No table. No cart. Not even a halfway decent ptform he could use as an improvised operating bed…

  Screw it—dead horse, live treatment. Wu Zhou gritted his teeth. In a proper OR, anything below the waist was considered a contaminated zone. Kneeling on the ground like this was basically a surgical crime.

  But in this dump?

  Sterility could go to hell.

  Right now, the priority was keeping the patient alive.

  He barked orders while assessing the situation:

  “You! Come here—press down here on his arm! Harder—don’t let go! Good. And you—his leg! Where I was pressing. Yes, there! More pressure!”

  “You! Hold this point!”

  “You! Tear his clothes off!”

  “I—I can’t get them off!”

  “Then rip them! Cut if you have to!”

  The aura of an Emergency Department Deputy Director came crashing down like a tidal wave—undeniable and absolute.

  Three or four people nearby got swept into action. One was pressing down on arteries, another stripping clothing, another boiling water. They were all scrambling, running back and forth like headless chickens. The poor soul assigned to boiling water was darting in and out of the hut like a man possessed, too busy to even speak.

  Even the baby-faced cleric from earlier got caught in Wu Zhou’s command whirlwind. He ended up awkwardly crouched on the ground, left hand pressing down on the brachial artery, right hand mashing the posterior tibial—his whole body twisted into a human pretzel from the bizarre angles.

  No one really knew if this stranger actually understood what he was doing… but in moments of desperation, all it took was someone who looked like they had a pn.

  Like drowning victims clinging to anything—even a floating twig was better than nothing.

  Wu Zhou’s eyes never left the patient. His voice was commanding, his hands decisive. He dropped to one knee and pced two fingers on the man’s neck, timing his own breath with each pulse.

  Pulse was okay. Under 100 BPM. Wait—no. It’s speeding up. Fast. That’s bad. Possible major hemorrhage!

  The carotid pulse was weakening. The patient’s face was pale. Skin cmmy. Breaths shallow and rapid—

  One symptom after another fshed through Wu Zhou’s mind. Every single one spelled trouble.

  What about blood pressure?

  Hell if he knew. This primitive backwater didn’t even have a damn sphygmomanometer.

  He’d have to eyeball it.

  Fortunately, with years of frontline ER experience and countless on-site trauma cases under his belt, Wu Zhou had developed a sixth sense for this sort of thing. One gnce was usually enough.

  And right now?

  Hemorrhagic shock—very likely.

  The patient’s leather armor y in pieces around him. His inner shirt had been ripped open, and the wound beneath was—

  A nightmare.

  A long, vicious gash—at least 20 centimeters—ran diagonally from the upper right abdomen all the way to the lower left.

  Blood gushed out in thick, pulsating waves.

  Wu Zhou took one look and felt a chill shoot through his spine. His blood pressure spiked like a geyser.

  Motherf—this isn’t just surface bleeding. That’s either an arterial rupture, or a shredded liver, spleen, or kidney!

  His hand flew to his waist on instinct. A glint of cold steel fshed in his palm—a dagger.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  Eyes locked on the patient’s abdomen, Wu Zhou raised the bde.

  Thank God this guy had six-pack abs—visible abdominal muscles meant the anatomy was familiar. Skin, then rectus abdominis, then the rectus sheath. If he cut along the sheath, he’d minimize nerve and vessel damage.

  He prayed: Please, please let the anatomy of this world match Earth’s…

  Holding his breath, he aligned his cut along the injured area, slicing down the right side of the rectus abdominis.

  There was no time. No retractors. No assistants. No blunt dissection. Nothing.

  He had to do it all himself.

  The bde sliced clean through anterior sheath, muscle, posterior sheath—straight to the cavity. A ten-centimeter incision peeled open.

  Dark, red-bck blood flooded out.

  “What are you doing?!”

  The young cleric across from him shrieked—his voice nearly cracked.

  He didn’t just scream. The kid lurched forward, arms spread wide, blocking the wound like a human shield. His face was lit with the same tragic resolve you’d see in a martyr’s portrait. Every freckle on his cheeks seemed to shout:

  “If you want to hurt him, you’ll have to go through me!”

  Wu Zhou: “…”

  This. This is exactly why we don’t let family members into the OR. They see us cutting and stitching and immediately think we’re trying to kill someone!

  Wu Zhou barely had time to mentally roast the situation.

  Right hand gripping the dagger, he shoved his left palm against the young cleric’s shoulder, pushing him clean off bance. The kid toppled backward with a yelp.

  Wu Zhou roared, “Who told you to let go?! Get back on him! You want him to bleed out?!”

  “B-But you—”

  “I’m trying to save him! He’s bleeding inside, too! I need to stop the internal bleeding—MOVE!”

  “Uh… o-okay…”

  The young cleric scrambled awkwardly back into pce, twisting himself into the same weird pretzel pose as before, his neck craning to watch the surgery. Wu Zhou spared a gnce—his hand pcement was still correct, pressure decent—good enough for now.

  He turned back to the patient and slid the dagger sideways, using the blunt edge to gently push muscle aside for a clearer view.

  “What’s that?” the cleric asked, wide-eyed.

  “Liver,” Wu Zhou muttered, not even looking up.

  “Oh… the liver…” the kid mumbled, trying his best to peer into the wound.

  Wu Zhou didn’t have the energy to scold him. This whole scene was already a biohazard nightmare—sterility was a joke at this point. As long as the kid didn’t spit into the wound, whatever. The liver was the priority now.

  There it was.

  Thank god. The liver was in the right pce. The anatomy checked out.

  No weird magical organs, no extra spell-casting gnds—just a normal human liver. Left lobe. Right lobe…

  “Aaaahhh! There’s so much blood!”

  “Shut it!”

  Wu Zhou snapped.

  In the center of the right lobe, a deep gash tore straight through the tissue. From within the crack, bright red arterial blood surged out like a fountain.

  His diagnosis had been dead on—a solid organ hemorrhage, and a bad one.

  A liver ceration. Parenchymal tear. From the depth of it—easily over 1 cm—and the rapid blood loss, this was a Grade III injury.

  Not the worst he’d ever seen. But still—serious enough to kill in minutes.

  The kid beside him was on the verge of panic.

  “P-please… save him,” the cleric stammered, eyes trembling with fear and desperation. “Please, just… save him…”

  Of course I’m trying to save him.

  This kind of injury would be manageable in the ER—hell, routine, even. But out here in the wilderness?

  No anesthesia. No cauterizer. No suction. No nothing.

  Wu Zhou’s heart pounded in his chest like a jackhammer. He could practically feel his ribs rattle with each beat.

  He leaned forward, one hand pulling open the wound wider, the other plunging into the patient’s abdominal cavity. He lifted the liver, pushed aside the stomach, swept past the intestines—

  “What… what are you doing?” the cleric whispered, barely holding it together.

  His voice was faint, on the verge of fainting himself—but he still watched.

  Brave little dude, Wu Zhou thought. He didn’t mind expining.

  “I’m checking for other internal bleeding. Gallbdder’s fine. Spleen looks good. Kidney’s further back—not likely, but I’m checking anyway… Nope. No signs of active bleeding. That’s a relief.”

  “And… and then what?”

  Then?

  Then comes the real challenge.

  In all his years as a trauma surgeon, Wu Zhou had only done this twice. And even back at the top-tier provincial hospital, only a handful of doctors dared to attempt it.

  He whispered to no one in particur:

  Buddha. Daoist Saints. Holy Mother. Jesus. Odin. Anyone. Please don’t let this guy’s anatomy be weird.

  He took a deep breath—and with meticulous care—

  cmped the hepatic pedicle with his bare fingers.

  The moment he pinched down—

  “Whoa! It’s working! The bleeding—it's slowing down!”

  The cleric’s shout was half-joy, half-disbelief.

  The blood, which had been gushing out like a red geyser, slowed to a trickle, then to drips… and finally, just a faint ooze.

  It worked.

  The bleeding had stopped—visibly, measurably, undeniably.