The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 18

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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 18
The morning of the second day.
After finishing breakfast early, the two men set out for a leisurely walk to the outskirts of the city.
The crisp autumn air wrapped itself gently around the fields at the edge of Danford.
The fact that clear air was a panacea for asthma patients was a kind of common knowledge even to people of this era.
Fred, who had been suffering from dust for some time, genuinely welcomed this peaceful environment.
“Ah, I feel like I’m coming back to life.”
Fred drew in a deep breath and spoke the words like a sigh of wonder.
With both arms spread wide and savoring the brilliant morning sunlight, his face was alive with vitality for the first time in days.
William, watching the scene, spoke up casually.
“Seeing you like that has made me want to do something once we reach Jedo.”
“What?”
“Perform an autopsy on an asthma patient’s corpse.”
Fred’s face went pale in an instant.
“What did you just say?”
“If we opened the lungs of an asthma patient, we could finally see what blocks the airways, what’s behind that wheezing sound. I want to directly observe the structural changes in the bronchi and the condition of the mucous membrane.”
“Please don’t say such disturbing things next to me. Just hearing it makes me feel like I can’t breathe again.”
Fred shuddered and shook his head.
“I’m not talking about dissecting you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? But your words don’t exactly reassure me. You’re genuinely a peculiar fellow.”
Their footsteps led them to a small riverside that flowed through the outskirts of Danford.
Between the grass thick with morning dew, frogs and fish moved busily about.
Once they settled down on the riverbank, a cool breeze blowing up from the water’s edge brushed pleasantly against their cheeks.
Fred lay back on the ground and gazed up at the clear sky.
“Still, William, you’re going to succeed as a surgeon. Looking at how you dig relentlessly into everything.”
“Of course. I’ll turn Jedo upside down with my own name.”
William replied playfully, his eyes alight.
“Just thinking about what rare specimens we’ll encounter there—it thrills me.”
“That’s so like you. But I have one favor to ask as your friend.”
“Go ahead.”
“If I happen to die first, promise me you’ll never put your scalpel to my body.”
William burst into laughter.
“Don’t worry. I’ll cure your asthma while you’re still alive. I have no interest in your corpse after you’re dead.”
“Remarkable fellow, truly.”
“It’s a quality every surgeon ought to possess.”
The two tilted their heads back and laughed loudly.
It was a morning of perfect serenity.
Then William’s gaze, sweeping across the surroundings, fixed on a single point.
“Ah, that!”
He murmured softly.
Near the riverbank, a salamander he had never seen before appeared at the water’s edge.
Bright red spots were starkly marked across its dark blue-green skin, gleaming in the sunlight.
It was utterly striking.
“So it’s animals over friends now?”
“Just wait a moment. I’ll catch that one and be right back. It’s a species I’ve never seen before.”
William sprang to his feet like a coiled spring.
The salamander proved more agile than expected.
As it slipped and tried to hide into the brush, William pursued it relentlessly until he finally managed to seize it in his hands.
‘Got it!’
The salamander was to him a subject of mystery.
When threatened, it could sever its own tail and escape; moreover, it was a miraculous creature capable of perfectly regenerating damaged organs.
If he were in his laboratory back home, he would have picked up a scalpel at once, but now the circumstances simply didn’t allow it—and this was deeply disappointing.
‘I’ll take it back to the inn and run a few experiments.’
He placed the captured salamander into a leather pouch and tied the opening securely shut.
Small holes pierced through the pouch’s seams served as its only breathing holes.
When William returned to the riverside with his prize, he spotted Fred lying motionless in the grass some distance away.
Watching him gaze upward without the slightest movement, William thought casually to himself.
‘Did he feel so good he fell asleep?’
But as he drew closer, doubt crept in.
Fred’s face and arms were abnormally swollen, his eyes closed and completely still.
“Fred?”
William rushed to his friend’s side.
Up close, the sight was far more horrifying.
His lips were swollen grotesquely, as though about to burst, and his neck and face were covered in a fine scarlet rash.
“Fred, stay with me! Can you hear me?”
He shook the boy’s shoulders, patted his cheeks, but there was no response.
A warning bell clanged in William’s mind.
‘God in heaven. Why is he so swollen?’
At the sight of his friend bloated like a balloon, William’s heart lurched sickeningly.
Every instinct honed by medical training shrieked in alarm.
‘Swelling this severe… his airway is about to close. It’s only a matter of time.’
With trembling fingers, William reached for Fred’s wrist.
The healthy young man’s pulse was nowhere to be found—only a threadlike, irregular flutter brushed against his fingertips.
He brought his hand to Fred’s nose to check for breath, but the flow of air was hanging by a thread.
“Fred… please… damn it….”
Cold sweat cascaded down his spine like rain.
An unknown terror seized him entirely.
He couldn’t fathom what had caused this, couldn’t begin to grasp what he should do in the face of such overwhelming despair.
As a surgical apprentice, he had witnessed countless wounds, but this was his first time watching a life crumble like a sandcastle before his eyes.
‘Breathing. Breathing first. I need to get him breathing.’
William instinctively blew air into his friend’s mouth.
Desperate, prayer-laden rescue breathing.
Yet after a few attempts, Fred’s chest remained utterly still.
His lips were losing color, beginning to take on the sickly blue tint of a corpse.
“Breathe, Fred. Please…!”
He checked the pulse again, but felt only a cold, hollow silence.
The pulse had vanished entirely.
His friend’s heart had stopped.
William’s vision darkened with despair.
“This can’t be… it can’t end like this….”
Then it came.
Someone was running through the tall grass, crashing through the brush.
A tall young man with short brown hair.
He took in Fred’s collapsed form at a glance, then immediately felt for his pulse.
Without so much as a glance at William, he spoke in a low growl.
“How long has he been like this?”
“Just… just a few moments ago. I stepped away for only a moment….”
William answered in a shaking voice.
“When I came back, he was… like this….”
The young man asked nothing more.
With no hesitation, he tilted Fred’s head back to clear the airway, then forcefully breathed air into his lungs.
Once, and then again.
Next, he interlaced his fingers and placed his joined hands on the center of Fred’s chest.
Then, putting his full weight behind it, he began a powerful, rhythmic compression.
“One, two, three, four….”
Counting in cadence, his hands rocked Fred’s upper body roughly back and forth.
William watched this strange, overwhelming scene unfold in stunned silence.
There was not a trace of doubt in the young man’s movements.
They were precise, mechanical—as though he had performed this thousands of times before.
“…twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.”
The young man stopped the compressions and checked Fred’s neck for a pulse.
Still nothing.
He breathed deeply into Fred’s lungs once more, then resumed the chest compressions.
“One, two, three….”
By now they were on the fifth cycle.
Sweat poured from the young man’s brow like rain.
Then came a sickening crunch.
Crack.
The unmistakable sound of bone breaking.
William’s face drained of all color.
A wave of nausea twisted through his stomach.
“Wait, stop! I think his ribs are breaking!”
But the young man did not answer.
With his face slick with sweat, he did nothing but repeat the heavy compressions.
“One, two, three, four….”
Thirty compressions completed again.
Then something flickered behind the young man’s eyes as he checked for a pulse.
He quickly brought his fingers to the space beneath Fred’s nose.
“He’s back!”
With that brief cry, the young man collapsed backward onto the ground.
His sweat-soaked hair hung in disarray.
William crawled toward his friend as if entranced.
When he carefully placed his hand on the carotid artery, a miraculous pulse thrummed against his fingertips.
‘It’s beating!’
Faint, but unmistakable and regular.
Thump, thump.
The signal of life striking against his fingertips.
The lungs that had ceased their work began to draw in air again, the chest rising and falling in steady rhythm.
The deathly blue pallor faded, and a faint flush of color returned to the lips.
William’s legs gave way beneath him, and he sank to his knees.
Relief that he had not lost his friend washed over him in waves, flooding through his entire body.
He raised his head and stared at the young man before him.
What he had just witnessed was less medicine than miracle.
“How… how is this even…?”
William’s voice trembled with a wonder that bordered on reverence.
* * *
It was pure chance that Allen had witnessed the tragedy unfold.
He had been taking a walk along the riverside outside the city on a Sunday, seeking a change of air, when a sudden commotion stopped him in his tracks.
He ran toward the sound and found a young man collapsed on the ground, grotesquely swollen.
His features were so distorted that they were barely recognizable.
‘Anaphylaxis.’
A sudden autoimmune response triggered by exposure to a specific allergen.
Blood vessels dilated abnormally, blood pressure plummeted, and as the expanded vessel walls allowed fluid to seep out, severe edema spread throughout the entire body.
Allen did not fully understand the mechanism, but he understood its existence and danger well enough.
Cyanosis was already setting in, and there was no discernible pulse.
‘Cardiac arrest.’
Hesitation was a luxury he could not afford.
Allen immediately began Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.
Through five cycles, the patient’s body showed no response whatsoever.
But as the sixth cycle began, a miraculous change occurred.
The stalled circulation resumed, the heart began to beat, and breath erupted from the lungs.
“Phew.”
Allen exhaled a breath of relief and collapsed onto the ground to wipe away his sweat.
His shoulders and forearms burned and ached.
At that moment, a young man who appeared to be the patient’s friend stared at him with eyes wide with shock and awe, and asked:
“What… what exactly have you done?”
“Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.”
Allen answered tersely.
“I’m sorry… what is that?”
“You compress the chest cavity physically to make blood circulate in place of the stopped heart, and you force air into the brain and organs by breathing into them from the outside.”
He had not expected understanding.
But the young man let out a short exclamation and soon nodded.
“Ah… it’s theoretically possible, isn’t it? If it truly works that way….”
Allen looked at the young man with some surprise.
The youth before him—William—was clearly no ordinary passerby.
But there was no time to marvel together.
“The immediate danger is contained, but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
Allen examined the patient’s condition again.
His pulse and breathing had returned, but both remained faint.
“The airway edema is severe—his breathing could stop again at any moment. If things get worse, I’ll need to open his airway immediately.”
“How do you mean?”
“Make a small incision in the neck and insert a tube.”
Allen pointed precisely to the membrane between the thyroid cartilage and cricoid cartilage, just below the Adam’s apple that protruded slightly.
“We don’t have a proper tube right now, but if it comes to that, we could split a hollow reed and use it in a pinch.”
In that moment, the metal straw William had seen at the tavern yesterday flashed through his mind.
‘Could it be that this man was the owner of that ornament?’

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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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