The Genius Doctor Who Lives Twice - Chapter 46

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

Chapter 46
Allen and Edward made their way to the Manor in Greenhills.
When they arrived, William was at the child’s bedside, monitoring his condition.
Beside him stood the boy’s mother, her expression hollow, barely upright as her husband supported her weight.
The father, his face etched with anguish, pressed a glass of strong brandy to her lips and rubbed her shoulders in a futile gesture of comfort, but her anxious gaze never left the child.
Allen rushed immediately to the boy and assessed his state.
‘Severe respiratory distress.’
The deep recession of the ribs and collarbones made clear the use of accessory muscles of respiration, and from the throat came a stridor—the ragged wheeze of a narrowed airway being forced shut.
Even as he gasped, the child’s consciousness clung to him; his dimmed eyes darted about the room, taking in everything and nothing.
And there, on his arm, the vaccination mark from the inoculation they had administered was vivid and unmistakable—a sight that twisted Allen’s chest.
“Surgery is necessary. There is no alternative.”
Allen turned and spoke with unflinching resolve.
Edward translated his words to the couple.
“You mean to cut open the child’s throat—while he lives?”
The father’s voice trembled with shock.
The mother beside him pressed her hands to her mouth and collapsed against her husband’s chest.
“Yes. It is the only way he survives.”
The father’s fists whitened as he clenched them, then he looked at his son—struggling, gasping for each breath.
There was no deliberation.
He could not sit and watch his child die.
“Do it. Please, Doctor, save him. If we lose this child too, we cannot—”
The House Owner’s eyes reddened with tears.
His wife, cradled in his arms, made no sound—only silent tears streamed down her face.
“Our eldest daughter taken by smallpox. Our son by dysentery. If we lose this last child to epidemic disease, then I have no reason left to live.”
He gazed at the Sun Cross hanging on the wall with bitter resentment, then wrapped his arms around his wife’s shoulders and exhaled a shuddering breath.
Faced with such desperate pleading, Edward’s voice grew heavy as he spoke.
“We will do everything in our power.”
The room descended into urgent activity.
Following William’s instructions, the father half-carried his wife—who could barely stand—far from the bed.
Candles were brought in to flood the dark chamber with light, and water churned violently over the brazier they had carried in.
The surgical instruments were plunged directly into the boiling water.
Among them was the long, curved silver urethral catheter.
“We’ve brought this in a pinch, but I’m not certain it will serve its purpose,” Edward muttered uneasily, watching the silver catheter through the steam.
The custom tube he had commissioned from the blacksmith remained unfinished.
“We’ll have to section part of this and use it as a temporary tube. But the dimensions are perilously close. We won’t know if the child’s airway can accommodate this diameter until we attempt the insertion.”
A child of six years. The throat so impossibly small and slender.
The thought that even the smallest miscalculation could lead to death weighed upon Allen’s mind with crushing force.
The surgical instruments were arranged in neat rows upon white cloth.
Scalpel, curved hook, gauze and sponge, and the silver curved tube.
When a servant slipped rolled cloth beneath the child’s shoulders, his neck tilted back and the thin trachea rose into prominence beneath the skin.
Edward took his position on the child’s right side; Allen stood on the left.
William gripped the boy’s head between both hands at the headboard, while the remaining servants bore their weight upon his limbs, pressing him down with their combined strength.
“William. His head must not move an inch.”
Allen’s voice dropped low and steady.
“If the neck twists, the trachea shifts away from the midline. If the blade goes even slightly wide, there lies the carotid artery and the jugular vein.”
William swallowed hard and nodded.
As the servants held him down, the child’s condition worsened with each moment.
“Gasp—hack—hrhh……”
The boy’s chest heaved with terrible force, his ribs sucking inward until the hollows seemed to swallow themselves.
With every desperate inhale, only the flesh drew inward; scarcely a whisper of air reached his lungs.
His lips darkened to a sickly blue-purple, and his eyes began slowly to lose focus.
To any observer, Death itself was closing its hands around the child’s throat, tightening with each moment that passed.
There was no anesthetic.
Opium suppressed respiration—it would only kill the child faster.
Flesh must be cut, and speed alone was mercy.
“Here.”
Edward’s fingers traced downward along the child’s throat.
Past the shield-shaped thyroid cartilage, to the hard ring of the cricoid cartilage beneath, and then lower still.

Cold sweat drenched his skin, slick beneath her fingertips.
Below the knuckles, the small tracheal rings strung together like a ladder came into her grasp.
“Beginning now.”
With the quiet declaration, the scalpel in Edward’s right hand drew across the center of the boy’s neck without hesitation.
“Ahhhhh, gasp, ugh, ack……!”
The blade parted skin and touched the ribboned neck muscles, and the child thrashed, attempting to scream.
His body arched like a bow, but William gritted his teeth and pinned the boy’s head down with both arms.
A sharp tearing sound.
Dark red blood welled up along the incision in a sudden rush.
Edward’s and Allen’s fingers were drenched in the warm flow in an instant.
Allen’s face drained white.
‘He couldn’t have nicked a major vessel.’
But Edward didn’t pause.
“Don’t panic. This is bleeding from muscle tissue. Press it and it stops.”
Alarming to the eye, yet manageable if compressed and contained.
Allen could think clearly again.
He knew no major blood vessel lay in this plane—and yet the moment surgery began, his mind had gone blank white.
“Wipe it.”
Allen thrust gauze into the wound and swept away the blood.
In that instant, Edward drove his fingers into the incision and tore the muscle apart along the grain, spreading left and right.
“Allen! Retract the other side the same way!”
Allen held the living flesh back with nothing but finger-grip against the slick blood, spreading it open.
The tough muscle stretched between her fingers, trembling faintly.
“Krrrgh! Kugh!”
With each convulsion of the boy’s body, the purple tint in his lips deepened.
William’s eyes, positioned at the boy’s head, began to quiver.
“His lips……his lips are turning blue.”
Allen heard it, and Edward must have heard it too.
Yet neither of them withdrew their hands.
Stopping was not an option—only finishing was the sole path to saving the boy in this moment.
A thin, sharp sound.
As the muscle was fully retracted, the white, rigid tracheal rings finally emerged beyond the blood.
“Hook.”
Edward’s word was clipped; Allen pressed the curved hook into his palm.
Edward caught it under one tracheal ring and drew it forward.
The wayward trachea came at last under his control.
“Hold it tight, all of you!”
With the cry, the blade descended against the taut tracheal wall.
A sharp crack.
The sensation of tough cartilage breaking traveled up the blade’s handle to his fingertips.
“Cahhhhgh! Hack! Hack!”
Through the opening poured air and blood and sputum all at once, expelled in violent coughing.
Droplets of blood spattered across Allen’s and Edward’s cheeks and eyes without mercy.
“Tube! The tube, quickly!”
Edward held the opening gaping with the hook while his other hand received the silver curved tube and slid it through the gap.
The curved end of the tube lodged between cartilage ring and cartilage ring, and the blockaded airway finally opened.
Whoooooosh!
The harsh sound of sucked-in air filled the room.
Air drawn through the tube inflated the boy’s lungs at once.
The chest, which had been heaving erratically, swelled once with great expansion, then slowly, finally found its rhythm again.
“……The color is returning to his lips.”
William spoke, exhaling a trembling breath.
The darkened pallor receded like a tide, and in its place, the flush of blood crept back.
Edward set down the scalpel at last.
His two hands, slick with blood, trembled finely.
He made no effort to hide the tremor as he breathed out long.
“Fix it in place.”
Fine cotton string was threaded through both sides of the tube and tied around the back of the boy’s neck.
Once the tube was secure and steady, Edward turned his body slowly.
The boy’s parents, standing leaned against each other in the doorway, gazed at the scene with faces gone white.
“It’s finished.”
The moment the words left his lips, the tension drained from the woman’s body and she collapsed where she stood.
Her husband lunged to catch her, struggling to support her weight, but she had already lost consciousness and slipped through his grasp.
“Madam!”
“Fetch the warmed wine, quickly!”
The servants released the child and scattered in a flurry of motion.
Edward turned his head to look at Allen and William.
“You two… you worked hard out there.”
Allen nodded silently.
William did the same.
In this moment, Edward was undeniably a master physician.
* * *
The Manor’s Reception Room.
Allen and Edward sat quietly around the table.
Despite the warmth of the fireplace, the room remained cool, yet both men had shed their coats as if by mutual agreement.
Their clothes were already soaked through with sweat.
“It was a living hell.”
Edward muttered, wiping the perspiration from his brow.
“Good God. If I were to name the worst surgery of my life, I’d confidently put this in my top three.”
“It was terrifying.”
Allen’s body still trembled.
Had he been the surgeon instead of Edward, he could never have succeeded.
Even as merely an assistant, his fingertips had shaken uncontrollably throughout—a sensation still vivid in his memory.
Then William opened the reception room door and entered.
“The child is safe. He’s breathing well. I’ve instructed the servants to keep a strict watch and ensure he doesn’t touch the tube under any circumstances.”
“And… how are the House Owner and his wife?”
Both mother and father had clearly lost their minds.
They had just witnessed their son’s throat being cut open before their very eyes.
“The lady is resting in the inner chamber, and the House Owner remains at her side. He said that once she regains consciousness, they will both return to offer their thanks again.”
“No need for thanks anymore. I feel like I’ve received a lifetime’s worth of gratitude all at once today.”
Just moments before.
The boy’s father had wept so profusely, clutching Edward’s sleeve and bowing repeatedly, that Allen and William had barely managed to restrain him and calm him down.
“Tell me, William—in your assessment, how did this surgery strike you? Was there anything that could have been improved?”
Edward posed the question to William gently.
Yet William too seemed unwell, his complexion drained and ashen.
“…Frankly, the only thought that stuck with me was whether the child might die. Everything else was a blur.”
It had been a razor’s edge of a struggle.
Had the Tracheotomy been delayed even slightly longer, the child would have plunged into respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.
“The horizontal incision was wrong.”
At Edward’s quiet remark, both men’s gazes fixed upon him.
“It should have been a vertical incision. By thoughtlessly making a horizontal cut, the visibility suffered and the risk of nicking a major vessel shot up.”
Allen nodded deeply.
The fear of possibly severing the Jugular Vein during the operation remained painfully fresh in his memory.
“There was tremendous bleeding at first. I think we may have caught a vein.”
“It was likely one of the Anterior Jugular Veins.”
“Moreover, when the child’s airway became obstructed, the venous pressure spiked suddenly, which would have made the bleeding far worse than usual.”
Allen analyzed the situation calmly.
“The tube was too large as well. I was terrified the whole time I was inserting it—I thought it might catch halfway and refuse to go in.”
Edward shuddered.
While holding the scalpel, he had operated with composure, but now that it was over, all the hidden pitfalls scattered throughout the procedure suddenly became visible, and a chill ran through him.
“Edward, congratulations nonetheless.”
Allen placed a hand firmly on Edward’s shoulder.
It was encouragement born of genuine feeling.
Without Edward’s experience and courage, this surgery could never have succeeded.
“You’ve saved a Diphtheria patient for the first time in Dunford. It may well be an achievement that goes down in the annals of imperial medicine.”
“Hah, is that so? Well, I’ll be.”
Edward scratched the back of his head, looking embarrassed.
His eyes suddenly gleamed as he looked between Allen and William.
“You know, it was an invaluable experience. Why don’t you take the surgeon’s role next time, Allen? And William, you can’t spend forever just watching. When the next patient comes, each of you should pick up a scalpel and try your hand.”
……
“…….”
Allen and William fell silent as if bound by the same agreement.
The memory of that inferno returned to them, and both their faces drained of color at once.
“I should gain more experience as an assistant at least a few more times before I seriously consider it.”
The words tumbled out at precisely the same moment, as though neither had deferred to the other.

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