The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 17

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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 17
“A surgeon’s hesitant hand is deadlier than the scalpel itself.”
Edward walked into the clinic and spoke.
“Let your teacher here observe you. I need to see with my own eyes whether your hand is truly less lethal than the blade.”
Edward cleared his throat with an affected sound.
Allen, stifling a grin, settled before the pig’s leg again and moved his hands.
“Too slow.”
“…I know.”
“These aren’t natural hands.”
Allen’s expression hardened.
He’d known it for some time, if he was honest with himself.
Over the past few days, correcting patients with dislocations and fractures, watching Edward slip him the scalpel—he’d felt it keenly in every fiber of his being.
His hands were sluggish.
Quite sluggish, in fact.
For someone who had heard nothing but “genius” since his academy days, this reality was hard to swallow.
“You’ve got a cute side to you, haven’t you? Sulking like that because you weren’t born with natural talent?”
“It’s not that. I’m just frustrated.”
Allen sighed as he spoke.
Edward snatched the thread and needle from Allen’s hands in one fluid motion.
“Here, watch me.”
Whisk. Snap. Whisk. Snap.
His hands moved faster than the eye could follow.
“The knot—snap! That’s how you snap it tight. That way the thread stays taut.”
In moments, Edward had produced a neat suture line and set down the needle with obvious pride.
“Did you see my cutting technique during today’s surgery? There can be no hesitation. Incise, spread, extract. That flow cannot break. If you’re thinking through each step as you go, you’ll never finish the procedure on time.”
“It took you fifteen minutes.”
Allen replied matter-of-factly.
“That’s right—fifteen minutes! In all of Danford, there isn’t a surgeon besides me who could extract a stone in that time…”
Edward trailed off.
“…Well, there are two or three others, I suppose. Still, for a first surgery, it wasn’t terrible, was it? There’s room to improve the time!”
He flared his nostrils.
Ever since Allen had saved a man’s life by drilling open an airway at the tavern, Edward had clearly felt the spark.
He’d begun attempting difficult surgeries he once feared.
Though the process was far from smooth.
Just last night, Allen remembered him by candlelight, chanting the locations of perineal muscles and blood vessels, thrashing his hands in the air and crying, “Aagh! If I fail, my reputation goes up in smoke!” while banging his head against the wall.
The memory rose unbidden, and Allen found himself laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Just—remembering last night.”
Edward tilted his head in confusion.
Allen suppressed his smile and asked with a more serious look.
“Edward.”
“Mm?”
“Have you ever believed your own hands were naturally gifted?”
Edward gazed silently at the needle embedded in the pig’s leg.
Then he answered plainly.
“Never.”
“Then do you often wish you’d been born with natural hands? A sense of hitting a wall, of a limit you can’t overcome no matter how hard you try?”
Now that it was clear his hand skills were not innate, and given that he’d be holding a scalpel for the rest of his life, Allen wanted to know.
If he wasn’t a genius, did that mean he’d always have a ceiling?
“No. Not at all.”
Edward’s answer was clean and direct.
“Of course, fast hands are useful. But I don’t think natural talent is essential to becoming a good surgeon.”
“Why not?”
“Because any hand skill, if you bleed for it hard enough, will eventually climb to a certain level of mastery.”
Edward tapped Allen’s shoulder.
It was a rough but warm reassurance.
“They say a surgeon needs the heart of a lion and the hands of a woman. But the older I get, the more I realize it’s the eagle’s eye that moves that heart and those hands. The knowledge to see precisely what to avoid, what to cut, and what to take.”
He tapped his own head and smiled quietly.
“In that sense, you already have the greatest weapon. Hands—well, a few more pig’s legs and you’ll have those down in no time.”
It was a warm thing to say.
For Allen, those words were comfort beyond a hundred knots tied perfectly.
Sincere advice from a senior who had walked that path before him.
“Edward.”
“Hmm?”
“You sounded like a master just then.”
“What! So you’re saying I don’t sound like one the rest of the time!”
Edward bristled with exaggerated indignation.
Allen smoothly changed the subject.
“When you performed the surgery today, you used day laborers as assistants, didn’t you.”
“I did. Ugh! Incompetent fools, the lot of them. All brute strength, not a shred of finesse. The patient thrashed about and they panicked, flailing uselessly. They blocked my view. I resented paying them, I tell you.”
Edward shook his head in frustration.
“Every surgery, hiring those ignorant brutes by the day—it wastes money, our movements don’t coordinate, and I’m left anxious. How can one work like that.”
“Now I understand why surgeons keep several apprentices.”
“Exactly. The more you practice, the better your technique becomes. In that regard, apprentices are worth their weight in gold.”
When surgery begins, the patient thrashes.
Holding them steady requires skill.
“If the clinic grows larger later, we should keep several apprentices.”
Edward’s eyes narrowed at those words.
“Will you run away?”
“Of course not. But if things grow too large, won’t we need more hands than just ours?”
“How big are you planning to make this place?”
Allen smiled instead of answering.
In the Danford he had seen, there were several clinics, but nothing worthy of being called a hospital.
Though still distant, Allen’s ambition reached that far.
“…The larger, the better, wouldn’t it be?”
But Allen restrained his ambition for now, speaking conservatively.
He didn’t want to startle Edward unnecessarily.
“Well, that’s true enough. But the cost of feeding apprentices and such isn’t trivial either… We can’t even afford a servant at present, can we.”
More precisely, he chose not to keep one in order to save money.
He still hadn’t paid off all his debts.
Edward suddenly let out a large yawn as sleep crept over him.
“Will you keep practicing?”
“Yes. I need to do a bit more.”
“Don’t overdo it. You’ll be drowsy tomorrow when the patients come pouring in—don’t accidentally cut someone’s flesh because you’re half asleep.”
The door closed.
Alone again, Allen looked down at the pig’s leg.
The knot Edward had tied showed clearly beneath the candlelight.
Though he’d said he had no natural talent, the Edward Allen had observed was certainly precise and quick, if rough around the edges.
“Good.”
Allen rolled up his sleeves.
The night was still long.
* * *
At the same hour, beneath another light.
In one corner of a tavern, a lanky young man with disheveled fair hair couldn’t tear his eyes from a peculiar ornament hanging on the wall.
Enshrined within the frame was a single slender metal tube.
It was far too incongruous to be called mere decoration.
Curious blue eyes gleamed as they scrutinized every inch of the tube’s form.
“What are you staring at so intently?”
The sickly-looking, gaunt young man seated across from him spoke up.
The fair-haired youth finally turned his head.
“I was questioning the proprietor’s aesthetic judgment.”
“It does look rather odd. There’s not a single element that would make it fit as a decoration.”
The gaunt youth tilted his head thoughtfully as well.
The mystery was soon answered.
The proprietor, bringing their food, revealed the tube’s true nature.
“Ah, that thing? It’s an object that saved a man’s life.”
“…With that tube?”
“A man’s breathing was shutting off, so someone cut a hole in his throat with a blade, then thrust that thing straight in. And wouldn’t you know it, his breathing opened right up, clear as day.”
The fair-haired youth’s eyes narrowed.
‘The trachea is cartilage—it shouldn’t have opened so easily.’
How could he have secured the airway of a suffocating patient with such a simple instrument.
He began to picture the scene in his mind.
“You’re a surgeon through and through.”
The lean young man let out a dry laugh, watching his friend unable to tear his eyes from the metal tube.
“Not yet. I need to pass the Guild examination to receive my official credentials.”
“With you, it’s as good as done, William. Your reputation was already well-known from your apprentice days.”
“You could say the same about yourself, Fred. A country boy who caught the eye of The Capital’s masters through sheer talent alone.”
The two young men regarded each other and smiled faintly.
William had finished his apprenticeship in a city near the southern border and was now traveling to The Capital to glimpse the wider world of medicine.
Fred, too, was a childhood friend from his hometown, accompanying him to pursue his dream of painting.
Both were twenty, standing at the most brilliant crossroads of their lives.
“When we were thrown out of that carriage this morning, I could only sigh—but resting here for a while isn’t so bad.”
At Fred’s words, William let out a heavy sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
“No. I understand. It’s just that… the other passengers couldn’t have.”
It had happened early that morning.
The carriage passing near Danford had struck a rut and lurched violently.
The problem was that one of William’s belongings shattered in the impact.
And the reek that poured from it filled the carriage.
When a passenger demanded to know what on earth that smell was, William had grimly explained the contents.
‘A deformed sow’s uterus.’
What followed was predictable.
They were both thrown from the carriage and ended up drifting into Danford while waiting to board a different one.
“But there’s no chance you’re actually going to throw that away, is there?”
Fred gestured toward William’s bag and asked.
Inside it lay the problematic item—the broken glass bottle meant for specimens.
“It’s hard to come by. I’ve refilled it with preservative, so I have to take it with me no matter what.”
“…Right. That’s just like you.”
“I feel terrible about it. And you’re not even well.”
“No, actually it’s fine. The dust was about to bring on another spell anyway.”
Fred coughed deeply several times as he spoke.
He suffered from chronic asthma.
This morning the symptoms had been particularly severe, and between coughs came a whistling wheeze from his pallid face.
Thankfully, now that he’d caught his breath, he looked considerably better.
“By the way, once you reach The Capital and pass the Guild examination, have you decided what comes next? I have a master waiting for me, but you don’t.”
Fred broached the subject.
William thought for a moment before answering.
“Anywhere. As long as it’s a place where I can meet masters like Robert Liston or Cheselden in person, I’ll go there.”
William gazed at the metal tube on the wall again and continued.
“Even if I can’t study under them, it doesn’t matter. The Capital has plenty of hospitals and patients overflowing. And… far more corpses besides.”
“Look at your eyes gleaming at the thought of dissection.”
“Of course. Back home, seeing a single cadaver in a year was a miracle. You’d need to be blessed with extraordinary luck.”
“Right. In The Capital, even someone like you might count as ordinary.”
Recalling the anecdote of how William had once approached the sight of a body left on the roadside and asked, “If no one intends to claim him, may I perform a dissection?”—an inquiry that had appalled the townspeople—Fred chuckled softly.
The people of his hometown had written William off as a monster or a madman, but Fred knew better.
His friend was simply possessed of an insatiable curiosity.
“They say everything in the world exists there.”
A flicker of candlelight danced in William’s eyes.
“I just want to see it all with my own eyes.”
As wine glasses clinked together, the night in Danford deepened.
Until the candles lit in the hall were snuffed out, the two men’s conversation continued.

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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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