Chapter 10 – If Healing Magic Fails, Then Let Me Handle It!

  Carriage. Silk robes. Silver goblets. Wine?

  “Don’t worry, you’ll have all that soon too.”

  Gret could only ugh bitterly.

  Did I become a doctor for the perks?

  If that were the case, why did I stay in Emergency Medicine for over a decade—working my way up from resident to deputy director? Pulling night shifts every third day, living in a fog of arms and sirens, heart racing to 180 BPM every time an ambunce came in?

  And it wasn’t even one of the better-funded departments. Not by a long shot. Don’t even get me started on the paycheck.

  If I wanted benefits, why didn’t I switch departments? Why didn’t I jump ship?

  Ortho? Smells like money. Oncology? At least you get grants. Private hospitals? Even better.

  And don’t even get me started on this damn world.

  What “perks” are we even talking about here?

  First-css flights? Nope. High-speed rail? LOL. Air conditioning? Dream on. Smartphones? Games? Bilibili? TikTok? Good luck.

  This pce doesn’t even have flushing toilets, for crying out loud!

  He rolled his shoulders and was about to make a sarcastic quip, when—

  A woman’s scream ripped through the air.

  Everyone turned. A farmwoman burst into the hall, cradling a limp child in her arms as she ran straight to the priest at the head of the table.

  “Help him! Please! Save my boy!”

  Patient in distress.

  Gret was already sprinting before the sentence finished in his mind.

  He was fast. The trained warriors were faster. Raymond, Tonn the archer, Wally the spearman—they all shot past him in a blur.

  By the time Gret shoved through the crowd, a full circle had already formed. In the center, the young priest knelt calmly, hands csped before him, head bowed in concentration. With a soft chant, a gentle white light bloomed from his fingers and bathed the boy.

  Nothing happened.

  The child, around seven or eight years old, slumped bonelessly in his mother’s arms. His face was pale, his breathing shallow.

  As the light settled over him, he suddenly threw his head back with a desperate gasp—sucking in air with a wheeze so sharp and hollow, it cut through the crowd and smmed directly into Gret’s ears.

  His skin prickled. Cold dread ran down his spine.

  Stridor.

  Clear, powerful, unmistakable.

  That kind of sound? Audible through bodies, walls, a whole crowd of people? This wasn’t just a sore throat. This was life-threatening airway obstruction.

  He elbowed his way forward.

  As soon as his head poked through, he got a clear look—and instantly, his heart sank.

  The boy’s face was purplish-blue. Arms and legs filed wildly. And every time he gasped, Gret saw it—those depressions.

  The skin above the sternum, the hollows above the colrbones, the space between the ribs—all of it sucked inward as he tried to breathe.

  Triple retraction signs. Inspiratory muscle colpse. And that shrill, high-pitched stridor…

  Severe upper airway obstruction. Stage 4. Maybe worse.

  If they didn’t intervene now, he’d be dead from hypoxia in minutes.

  The priest hesitated—clearly baffled that his spell didn’t work. He muttered again and released another incantation. This time, the white light shimmered faintly blue, washing over the child from head to toe like flowing water.

  “Detoxification spell,” someone whispered nearby.

  Still useless.

  The child’s limbs twitched. His face broke out in cold sweat. Even the stridor weakened—his muscles failing, strength fading—

  He was losing the ability to breathe.

  Gret couldn’t wait any longer.

  Magic had failed.

  Healing spells. Detox spells. Whatever divinely sanctioned powers this priest had—they weren’t enough.

  So…

  It’s my turn now.

  He tore the choking child from the panic-stricken woman’s arms and id him ft on the ground, face to the sky. With one swift motion, he yanked off his own shirt, balled it up, and shoved it under the boy’s neck to tilt the airway open. Then, still kneeling, he pivoted around, reached for Raymond’s belt, and yanked out the dagger hanging there without hesitation.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “Gret!”

  “Stop him—stop him!”

  Cries erupted all around him, chaos rising like a wave.

  But Gret didn’t lift his head. His left hand nded on the boy’s throat, sliding just slightly downward, his fingers gently pressing and feeling.

  There it is. Thyroid cartige… and below that, cricoid cartige.

  The kid’s smaller, with a short neck and no Adam’s apple yet, but for someone like him—who’d mapped the human body inside and out a thousand times over—locating the ndmarks was child’s py.

  After all, he was once an emergency surgeon at the top-tier First Provincial Hospital. Deputy Chief, with more than a decade of battle-tested clinical experience.

  He spread his index and middle fingers, anchoring the skin beside the cricothyroid membrane. His right hand gripped the dagger—bde vertical.

  And drove it straight down.

  A chorus of gasps and shrieks rose, not least from the woman whose scream tore through the room at the same time that a jet of blood spurted from the child’s throat.

  Don’t jump me. Please, not now.

  Gret locked his gaze on the boy, focusing completely on the bde’s resistance, whispering to himself like a mantra. Just one second. That’s all I need—one second!

  The bde met resistance, then suddenly gave way—a soft pop of release, the telltale sign the membrane had been punctured and he’d reached the airway.

  Without a second thought, he pulled the knife out and flicked it aside.

  A sharp hiss of air escaped.

  Relief smmed through him like a wave. Cricothyrotomy, successful. Airway, established. Emergency, stabilized.

  That kid had been a heartbeat away from suffocating to death—and he’d hauled him back from the edge.

  As soon as the adrenaline let go, Gret’s whole body felt like it was colpsing in on itself. Muscle fatigue, ctic acid, a tidal wave of exhaustion hit him like a freight train. He knew this feeling too well—he’d felt it after every marathon resuscitation shift in the ER back on Earth.

  There was still plenty to deal with—but the most urgent danger had passed. The child was alive.

  And then, without warning, a fsh of blinding white light.

  Gret didn’t even get a chance to register what hit him. Pain nced through his chest as he was hurled backward, tumbling off the raised ptform in a clumsy roll, shoulder over knee over elbow, all the way to the packed-earth floor below.

  He nded in a heap, one shoe missing, skin scraped raw, and the breath knocked from his lungs. Blinking through the daze, he looked up just in time to see the knight seated beside the priest retract his boot.

  Did… did you just kick me off the ptform?

  Before he could even voice the question, he spotted the young priest bending low, murmuring a prayer. His pale blue ceremonial robe shimmered in the candlelight, eyes serene, fingers glowing as they reached for the wounded child.

  “Don’t touch him!” Gret shouted hoarsely.

  The priest didn’t even look at him. His lips moved softly, white light gathering at his fingertips.

  Gret panicked. In a desperate move, he snatched up his fallen shoe and hurled it.

  “Whap!”

  The shoe arced through the air and missed the priest by a hair, but it startled him enough to halt the spell. He stepped back, the light at his fingers winking out. Beside him, the knight’s face darkened, and he raised his sword—not even unsheathing it, just lifting the ft to point it straight at Gret’s chest.

  “You—”

  The knight’s roar echoed across the room. Soldiers from the priest’s retinue sprang to their feet, trained fighters far beyond the likes of the city guard. In the blink of an eye, Gret was smmed to the floor, arms wrenched behind his back.

  The knight approached slowly.

  Gret didn’t look at him.

  He craned his neck, straining to see past the armored legs toward the priest.

  “Don’t heal him!” he shouted. “You’ll kill him if you do!”

  “What did you just say?”

  “What?!”

  The priest’s voice held confusion. The knight’s voice held fury.

  Gret shouted again, louder this time, even as they pressed his face to the dirt:

  “His throat was blocked! I cut it open so he could breathe! If you heal that cut—you’ll close the only airway he has left!”

  The priest froze.

  Then, slowly, he bent down and took a closer look at the child—still wheezing, but now with pink returning to his lips and the desperate heaving of his chest easing into rhythm.

  The priest exhaled slowly.

  “…He might have a point. Release him.”

  ?? Chapter 11 – Improvised Tracheal Intubation is already out on Patreon!

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