The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 16

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 16
The Rusty Anchor.
The largest tavern in Danford was far more than a mere gathering place for drinkers.
Bankers, lawyers, and other pillars of the city often held their meetings here.
One corner of the tavern housed a large private room that felt entirely removed from the noise of the main hall.
Instead of wooden chairs, plush sofas lined the walls, and the table at its center was mahogany.
Some unknown artist’s work hung framed upon the walls.
This was the night of the surgeons’ gathering.
About five surgeons sat around the room, Claret Wine glasses before them, engaged in easy conversation.
“I hear a fever’s been running through the dock workers lately. Has anyone here seen cases of it?”
“I performed a leg amputation yesterday, and the patient survived till the third day. Seems he’s got a robust constitution.”
“Word is, there’s a new Anatomy textbook out of Habeln. Has anyone managed to procure a copy?”
“Some fellow came through Litten’s district claiming he could extract teeth, but I sent him on his way.”
The stated purpose of the gathering was to share interesting cases and deliver lectures, but in practice it had become little more than a social club.
The talk had drifted, as it always did, toward wine, wives, and the trifles of fashion.
Creak.
The door swung open, and a middle-aged man in a bowler hat entered.
The surgeons immediately ceased their conversation and turned toward him.
“Dr. Robinson.”
They all inclined their heads in unison.
The man who entered wore an immaculately groomed mustache and a fine waistcoat.
He was Robinson, the patriarch of the Greenhills District.
“Are we sharing interesting matters this evening?”
Robinson settled himself into the seat of honor with perfect ease.
The hierarchy among them was determined by the patient district each man oversaw.
Robinson, who served the wealthy quarters, naturally held the highest place.
“Not at all, sir. We were simply waiting for you to arrive.”
Denver, second in rank and physician to the Western Market District, spoke up.
The other surgeons nodded in agreement.
They were all, in truth, on edge.
Because of the recent “unfortunate affair.”
Robinson’s mood was obviously foul.
“In most cities, surgeons quarrel and compete with one another. But not here, not in our city. We remain cordial.”
The surgeons nodded at his words.
“We pursue no needless rivalry. Each of us dutifully maintains his own territory. In essence, each man is the physician of his district.”
A murmur of assent rippled through the room.
Robinson, warming to his theme, fanned himself with his hand, then took a sip of Claret Wine.
He continued.
“Yet recently, something has emerged to shatter this peace. You all know what I mean, I’m sure.”
At Robinson’s words, the surgeons all swallowed hard.
That “unfortunate affair” had been the doing of one man—the only surgeon in the city not present in this room.
Edward Gordon.
Some worthless barber who had crawled up from who knew where.
Unlike the others, who were all connected to some prominent master or teacher, Edward was clearly of a lower order.
He had trained under a barber and served as an army physician—an inauspicious pedigree indeed.
Naturally, he had been shunned by the surgeons’ association, and no district had been assigned to him.
There was no reason his practice should prosper.
No one had paid him any attention; everyone expected he would eventually close his doors.
But then…
“He deceived the Chief Secretary, sir. He stole away the Chief Secretary’s patient right under your nose.”
One of the surgeons spoke up.
The others nodded in agreement.
“His so-called treatment is peculiar—he hardly seems to do anything, yet the patient simply recovers, as if by some natural process. How is that even possible? The truth is, that patient would have healed on his own.”
“I concur entirely. The man’s a charlatan. Since his skill is inadequate, he’s resorted to fraud and deception—just like those street-corner quacks you find in any alleyway.”
The condemnations piled on.
Robinson listened quietly, then raised his hand to silence the murmuring.
“But the truth is, his ‘fraud’ is working. Public opinion has shifted considerably. And it’s undeniable that he’s actually saved lives. Did none of you notice the tube hanging in the hall on your way in?”
The surgeons nodded.
The incident where he “pierced a man’s throat and saved his life” had become famous throughout the city.
Bruno, the tavern owner, had even mounted the tube in a frame and hung it in the main hall.
“That man has certainly changed. Three months ago, there was no comparison. His eloquence and skill have both grown. If we let him run unchecked, he’ll tear apart the very foundation of this profession.”
Robinson’s unexpectedly favorable assessment of Edward left the others visibly deflated.
They’d anticipated a harsh condemnation.
But Robinson was thinking with cold clarity.
When he’d first heard that the Chief Clerk had sought treatment from that man, he’d flown into a rage—but he’d quickly recognized that anger solved nothing.
The answer lay in analysis.
“What do you gentlemen make of it? Did that fellow receive some sort of Divine Inspiration? What’s the secret behind such a transformation?”
Robinson’s question met only silence.
How could they possibly know?
They had no dealings with Edward whatsoever.
Robinson’s lips curled into something like a smile.
It seemed he alone had grasped the heart of the matter.
“An apprentice.”
The others exchanged puzzled glances.
“Now that you mention it, he did take on an apprentice, didn’t he?”
“But what bearing does that have on anything?”
Robinson drained the last of the Claret Wine without answering.
He poured fresh wine into his glass and began to speak slowly.
“Three months ago, some aging young man became his apprentice. Goes by the name of Allan Wright.”
Robinson swirled his glass.
The crimson wine caught the light, rolling gently against the sides.
“Once that apprentice arrived, Edward transformed. So the cause becomes obvious, doesn’t it? That apprentice has been filling Edward’s head with ambition.”
The surgeons paused, searching their memories.
One physician’s face lit up as something surfaced.
“Come to think of it, the man who rescued someone in this very tavern—he was said to be the apprentice, wasn’t he?”
Robinson nodded.
“Precisely. This fellow poses as an apprentice, but he’s a seasoned veteran. He merely wears the formal façade of serving under Edward—in truth, he manipulates Edward like a puppet.”
“But then… if he possessed such skill, why not establish his own practice? Why go to such lengths?”
“Exactly. A man of genuine ability would forge his own fortune directly.”
Robinson’s lips twitched.
“There must be a reason he cannot step into the light himself. Perhaps he lacks proper credentials as a surgeon. Or perhaps he’s fled another city after committing some grave transgression.”
Much as one might resist admitting it, Edward was a legitimately credentialed surgeon.
Military physicians were automatically granted surgical credentials without requiring formal guild examinations.
But this apprentice would have no such protection.
So he operated from the shadows, invisible and concealed.
And certainly his past would be stained as well.
“Do you see? Edward isn’t worth our concern. The man has always been a fool, and a fool he remains. That ‘apprentice’—he’s the true puppet master. Unmasking his identity is what matters.”
Robinson swept his gaze across the assembled surgeons.
“We must capture that shameless scoundrel to preserve order in this city. I intend to dig into his background thoroughly. We’ll watch him closely—every wild move he makes—and keep our eyes open.”
He lifted his glass of Claret Wine.
And he raised it in a toast.
“To the Danford Surgical Association.”
“To it.”
“And to the reckoning we shall visit upon this unlicensed charlatan.”
“To it!”
Glasses rose into the air.
* * *
The night had grown late.
Most of the lights in Edward’s Clinic had been extinguished, though candles burned bright in one corner of the treatment room.
Allan sat before a pig’s hind leg.
It was something he’d requisitioned from Edward’s intended dinner for tomorrow evening.
In a small city like Danford, there was no way to obtain a fresh cadaver, so this was the best substitute available.
Tap. Tap. Slice.
Allan’s hands moved with practiced speed.
He cut through the tough outer tissue with the blade’s edge, then drove a thick needle through and began to stitch.
He’d visualized this movement thousands of times in his mind, yet the sensation that traveled through his fingertips felt entirely different from his imagination.
It was stiffer than expected, more slippery, and above all—his hands refused to obey his mind.
“Too slow.”
He muttered the words quietly to himself.
It wasn’t mere petulance about lacking speed.
Allan was certain of it.
At this pace, amputating the leg would kill the patient from death by shock before the surgery even ended.
“Phew.”
Allan relaxed his throbbing fingers and leaned back in his chair.
His joints were scraped raw from working with thread for so long—raw enough to draw blood.
‘They say a surgeon must have the heart of a lion, the eyes of an eagle, and the hands of a woman.’
Thanks to Dreamland’s knowledge, he possessed the eyes of an eagle.
But the heart of a lion and the hands of a woman—those lay beyond the reach of mere knowledge.
They could only be earned through endless repetition and the rigorous discipline of refining oneself.
‘If only I had anesthesia, half these worries would dissolve.’
Then came a memory, sharp as a terrible thirst.
The operating room in Dreamland.
A vast, bright chamber without a single shadow.
There was anesthesia in that place.
A divine medicine that plunged patients into deep unconsciousness, erasing their suffering.
With only that, there would be no need to rush against time like this.
One could observe the anatomical structures calmly, find the blood vessels, suture the tissue with precision—and that would be all.
But Allan shook his head and cast out the idle thoughts.
‘For now, I have to act as though it doesn’t exist.’
The image of Dreamland’s operating room flickered through his mind in fragments.
Masks and gas.
Clear liquid, syringes, and patients drifting into sleep.
Yet he could not recall exactly what those medicines were made of, or how they were formulated.
Even if he did know, the technology of this era would never reproduce them.
He had only a vague recollection that somewhere in Dreamland’s records lay some far cruder “early anesthetic.”
But what it was, how it was made—that lay shrouded in fog.
‘Even if a method existed, whether it could be made in this remote corner of nowhere is another matter entirely.
It might be something that yields only a pittance through enormously complex processes. If so, it would have no practical use.’
Dreamland had been too vast.
Even its most humble remedies would never reach the hands of this squalid world—or so he had already come to believe.
The thought that the answer might lie sleeping on some apothecary’s shelf, or in a single passage of an alchemical text, never came to him.
‘Without anesthesia, then simply reduce the time the patient suffers.’
In the end, it came back to the beginning.
Medicine is a variable; technique is a constant.
Cut through flesh before the patient screams, close it before shock takes hold.
That crude and simple conclusion was the only truth that would hold sway here for a long time to come.
Allan added only rigorous hygiene and proper sterilization to that stark formula.
He knew what caused infection.
“Hmm, your master stands before you—what are you doing sitting there alone?”
At the voice from behind, Allan turned his head.
It was Edward, dressed in nightclothes and a nightcap perched on his head.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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