The OR lights blazed red, casting an eerie glow over the busy buzz unfolding in the Trauma Centre.
The woman on the table, mid-40s, solo hiker, abdomen ballooned with internal blood—lay wide open, her insides a ruptured battlefield.
Nam's scalpel tore down her midline, and the moment the flesh split, a torrent of blood burst out—dark, arterial, steaming hot—splattering Vice's visor, soaking the floor with thick, smacking slaps.
"Splenic artery's gone!" Nam shouted, his voice slicing through the beeeeeep of the flatline.
Vice locked his hands on the suction tube. [NeuroFlux Overdrive] kicked in—his thoughts sharpened to a razors edge, neurons firing in overdrive, but all it gave him was panic in high-definition. Anatomy fragments. Flashcards. Meaningless trivia. Nothing that helped him save her.
"Get the paddles—now!"
Vice spun, stumbling, nearly slipping on blood-slick tile. Gloves sticky, hands steady only due to [Slow to Panic], he grabbed the defib unit.
"Clear!" he shouted, voice cracking, and slammed the paddles down.
Zap.
The woman's body jolted like a rag doll. Arms twitched. Still no pulse.
Nam's voice cut through again—"Reset!"
Zap.
Another jolt. A muted crack from ribs. The stench of scorched skin mixed with iron-rich blood.
Beep… beep…
A flicker. Weak, but back.
"Suction!" Nam barked. "We've got a window!"
He plunged both hands into the abdominal cavity, wrists-deep in gore. Vice pressed the tube in, motor whining, the blood rising fast—spraying across his mask, stinging his eyes, hiding everything.
He couldn't see clearly. Just heat, motion, and red.
"I need a clamp—clamp!" Nam barked.
One of the scrub nurses was already moving. She held the tool out—precise, clean, calm.
Nam's hand snatched it midair, not waiting. Snap. Clamp locked.
"Bleed's slowed. Xong—tie it off."
Vice stepped in. A nurse held out the thread, already prepped. He hesitated again, his brain a storm of bad choices and half-remembered procedures. First loop loose. Blood surged back, a mocking slap across his gloves.
"Too loose! Tighter!"
NeuroFlux jammed his mind with every knot technique he could remember—square, surgeon's, Aberdeen—but it was his hands that lagged. He finally cinched it down, shaking.
"Good," Nam muttered. "Spleen's a goner. Out."
Scalpel moved. The organ peeled free with a sound like ripping meat. Vessels popped. The spleen flopped into the tray with a wet, decisive plop.
A fresh artery sprayed. Vice jumped.
"Clamp!" Nam said again.
"Kelly clamp!" Vice barked instinctively. A nurse passed it to him this time. He nearly fumbled, then locked it down, fingers trembling.
"Hold pressure," Nam ordered.
Vice jammed gauze into the bleeder, pressing hard. His arms ached. His breath rasped under the mask.
Nam tied it off. Quick. Precise. Clean.
The cavity was chaos—coils of intestine, fat, torn muscle, all glistening. Nam irrigated, pink saline sloshing. Vice suctioned, hose gurgling.
"Close her up."
Vice grabbed the suture. A nurse handed him the needle driver. NeuroFlux kicked again, layer by layer: muscle, fascia, dermis, but his stitches were crooked, shallow.
Nam corrected with a glare, his voice a growl. "Deeper."
Vice obeyed. Sweat dripped. The monitor pinged, steadier now.
Finally, the wound was sealed. Sloppy, but holding.
Nam stripped his gloves, flung them aside. "She's alive. Barely. You're sloppy, Xong. Too damn sloppy." He said his voice was somewhere between approving and disapproving. "You're here to know what needs doing. And you almost didn't."
Vice slumped against the wall.
[+100 LP]
The adrenaline crash hit hard. The [NeuroFlux] hum drained from his skull like a pulled plug, leaving only pounding frustration and the ghost of the flatline.
***
The rest of Thursday blurred into a brutal, unrelenting slog.
Nam hauled Vice back into the OR for a crushed leg surgery, no time to catch his breath. The patient, a burly hiker, mid-20s, lay sprawled, his thigh a mess of pulped muscle and bone.
Femur shards jutted like broken glass, white and jagged, blood seeping thick and dark from the marrow.
Nam fired up the drill, the rods gleamed under the lights as he drove them in, each *thunk* vibrating through Vice's skull.
Vice suctioned, the tube gurgling as it pulled up red sludge, he still tried sloppily to follow Nam's lead.
Sweat beaded under his mask, stinging his eyes.
'Keep up, keep up,' he chanted internally, but his fingers fumbled a retractor, nearly dropping it into the wound.
Nam's grunt said it all. Disapproval, loud and clear.
The leg stabilized, rods locked, and Vice earned a quiet [+45 LP], he sighed, ever point brought him closer to his goal.
Between OR stints, Vice staggered to the ward, legs like lead, brain fogged with blood and static.
First up: a wiry man in his 40s, slumped on a gurney, grey-faced and gasping. "Chest hurts," he wheezed, clutching his ribs.
[NeuroFlux] hummed, 'Rib fracture. Tension pneumo. Lung's collapsing.'
Vice grabbed a chest tube kit, fingers fumbling through muscle memory from practicals.
He sliced
Shlick
Skin parted, blood welled. The tube slid in with a wet pop. Air hissed out like a deflating tyre.
The man exhaled, relief washing over him as colour crept back into his cheeks. [+15 LP] blinked soft-blue on the edge of Vice's mind.
"Hang in there," Vice muttered, taping the tube down, but the incision was too wide, clumsy. Rookie mistake. Nam would've nailed it with a flick of the wrist.
'All the more reason to get more points quickly.'
A kid came next—ten, maybe. Blood matted his hair, thick red threads dripping down his neck.
"Rock hit me," he mumbled.
Vice knelt, eyes scanning, mind already sprinting.
'Scalp laceration. Not deep. Stitch it.' He grabbed the suture kit, hands trembling.
The needle danced the wrong way at first—sloppy, uneven, like stitches in a child's drawing.
"Ow!" the boy hissed, flinching.
"Sorry, I'm almost done." He taped it up. Blood smeared across his gloves.
[+15 LP]. Small win. He was getting there.
Nam would've made it look like embroidery. But Vice wasn't there yet, he gazed at the system message briefly.
'it won't be long.'
***
By dusk, Vice collapsed in the break room, gown peeled off, hands scrubbed raw till they stung, the copper reek of blood still clinging to his skin like a second shirt.
His neck throbbed, a dull ache from hunching over tables all day. His eyes burned, gritty and dry, like he'd rubbed them with sandpaper.
The vending machine hummed, a low drone filling the silence as he slumped into a cracked chair, legs sprawled.
The system pinged, crisp and final:
Life Points: 1265
Nam had lumbered by earlier, clapping his shoulder with a gruff, "Better," before vanishing down the hall.
Vice stared at the ceiling, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, and let out a shaky breath.
His fingers twitched, still feeling the slick of blood, the weight of sutures gone wrong, he wondered how worst it would have been without the system traits.
He smirked, faint but real, head tipping back against the wall.
The coolness seeped into his skull, easing the throb just enough.
'Shopping time soon,'
For now he looked forwards to his reward for the completed quest
[Quest Completed: Stabilize the Trauma Centre's Surge]
The grind had bloodied him today, ripped open every weak spot, his inexperience, his fumbling, the gaps [NeuroFlux] and [Slow to Panic] couldn't fill.
He'd held on, though, if barely. By the skin of his teeth, each save a messy victory, granted to his years of sturdy and the help of the system.
Now to raid the system shop and see what his new trait was, but first up his cousin's performance.