My guess was that he was flying the aircraft that had crashed in the field. The wound on his head wasn’t too bad, but his blood loss was severe, and worse than that, his internal organs were all messed up. A few organs had ruptured with the shock of the fall, and there were lacerations where shrapnel from the airplane had struck him all over. If I was honest with myself, they didn’t look like survivable wounds.
“Hng…” the old man grunted softly. “Is that you, Law?”
“Don’t talk right now,” I told him. “Just lie back and stay still.”
“Am I hurt bad? Damn. I was testing that electric airplane, thinking it could be fun for you boys to mess around with, but I got hit by a gust of wind and lost control. This’ll damage my reputation as a genius,” he mused haltingly.
“Stay quiet!” I ordered him again. “We’ll have plenty of time to listen to you natter on after we get this taken care of!”
“What should we do, Law?” Penguin asked. “Hurry back to town and call for the doctor?”
“Don’t bother, Penguin. It’ll take close to an hour just to get there. We don’t have that kind of time,” I told him.
“Then what can we…” he trailed off.
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Law…” Bepo said, with concern in his voice.
“I’ll perform the operation,” I announced again, as firmly as I could manage. First I had to confirm what injuries he had sustained, and where.
Damn, I can’t even see which of his internal organs are ruptured because there’s so much blood coming out!
“Shachi! Penguin! We need a blood transfusion! I need to take some blood from you,” I told them.
“Sure thing!” said Shachi.
“You got it!” said Penguin.
As quickly as I could, I prepped Wolf for the transfusion and got Shachi’s and Penguin’s blood flowing. But this was just triage; close and sew up his wounds, and he’d kick the bucket within minutes from hemorrhagic shock. The problem was, I wasn’t experienced enough to know how and where he was injured. Even if I could figure that out, I probably couldn’t perform the necessary surgeries fast enough.
Thump. My heart thudded. It felt like it was being constricted. I was terrified. My hands were trembling. When I worked on Penguin and Shachi, the actual procedures I had to do to save their lives were simple. But this was different. It was going to require extremely advanced analytical and technical skills.
Do I really have the skills to do this? I’m scared—I’ve never done this before. My actions now will result in the life or death of another person.
Just thinking about it made me dizzy, and I nearly toppled over on the spot.
What do I do? Think, think.
My breathing grew ragged and perspiration poured from my skin. My thoughts were confused and jumbled.
I can’t— What if I— Gotta move quick— He’ll die— Wolf won’t make it— What do I…
Something clenched my left hand. I turned to see Penguin, Shachi, and Bepo, enveloping my hand in theirs, fighting back tears.
“We’re sorry, Law. We can’t help you with anything. All we can do is stand back and put the burden on your shoulders. But we know you can do it! You saved me and Penguin—you can do it again! I’m sorry we can’t help more…but you gotta do it, Law! Save the old man, please!” Shachi begged.
Suddenly all of my panic evaporated. My friends’ warmth flooded through my hand—and the warmth of their desire to save Wolf.
That’s right, there was no reason to hesitate in the first place. There’s no other option, so it’s pointless to wonder about what would happen if I failed. Right now I just have to put everything I have into performing the operation. My hands were no longer trembling.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Stand back. Trust me, and watch what happens.”
I felt the weight of their hands lifting from mine. Then I took a deep breath.
“Room.”
My powers were deployed: The domed film expanded to encompass the whole living room.
“Huh? W-what’s that?” asked Penguin.
“This happened the first time we met Law,” Shachi noted.
“That’s right! When he rescued me!” Bepo cried.
The three of them were alarmed by what they saw, but explanations would have to wait until later.
“Law, is this…?” the old man said weakly.
“Shut it, Junker! I’m doing what it takes to save your life!” I responded.
I knocked the old man out with a strong anesthetic, then focused my thoughts within the Room.
“Scan!”
I could see it now. The damaged parts of his internal organs were as familiar to me as the palm of my hand. His intestines were torn. His stomach was ruptured. There was a piece of metal jammed into his liver. I could see it all!
“Takt!” I cried, causing five scalpels resting beside the operating table to float into the air. Another one was clutched in my right hand.
“Here goes…” I murmured.
With a total of six scalpels at my command, I proceeded with Wolf’s operation. The tools moved exactly as I envisioned they would, including the needle and thread for sutures, the forceps, and the retractor. Inside the Room I could use them all as I pleased.
Maybe I can do this!
I cut into the liver with the scalpels while sewing up a wound on the stomach, stanching blood loss in the femoral artery, extracting a rib that had punctured Wolf’s lung, cleaning the blood that spurted all over everything, checking on the state of the blood transfusion, and restoring his tattered kidneys to their normal position.
There we go… It’s looking better. I’ve stopped the blood loss, and his breathing is steady. I can do this… I can do this! Just as I thought it was all going to work out, a splitting pain pierced my skull and I screamed.
It felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer to the inside of my skull. Despite all of my practice, it seemed that this pain was the inevitable cost of using my power at its maximum extent for so long.
Crap, I’m going to lose consciousness. My legs won’t hold me up any longer! I slumped to my knees on the floor, scalpel still in hand.
“Law!” the others yelled.
“It’s…fine. Don’t…worry.”
They had nothing to be concerned about. I would clear away every possible concern that was making them look at me that way. I didn’t remove my Room. I didn’t undo the Takt.
Wolf called it give-and-take. His motto in life was that he did nothing unless there was something in it for him. But none of that mattered to me; I was simply being driven by the power of my own impulse. A dying patient, the old man who’d taken such good care of me for so long, was right in front of me, in dire need of help. So I would do everything I could to save him.
All I had to do was keep standing there, keep being a doctor. I didn’t want any return or reward. The desire to keep Wolf from dying was enough to keep me moving.
Hang in there, I thought, praying as hard as my weary mind could manage.
I don’t know if there’s a God or not, but in that moment I prayed that God would be on my side.
I don’t want to see anyone else I care about die before my eyes! Don’t collapse, don’t stumble. You’re almost there.
“Don’t you die on me, Junker!” I shouted. By then I had treated nearly all the wounds. The last thing I needed to do was stitch him up. My hands were almost numb, and I had to focus hard to keep them moving, to run the thread through the needle and stitch closed his open torso.
Finally, his limbs and chest were no longer bleeding. The stitches were holding. Surgery complete.
“Whoaa…” I gasped, as my right knee suddenly gave way, and I nearly toppled backward. But my friends were there to hold me up.
“Law!” they called out to me.
“I’m all right. Just feeling a little woozy now that the operation is over.”
“The old man’s gonna make it, right?” Shachi asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “The surgery went pretty much perfectly. But he had already lost too much blood when I started. We’ll just have to pray that his will to live is strong.”
We set up four chairs around the old man and sat by his side. It wasn’t time to sleep yet—you never know when a patient’s condition might turn.
I glanced at those who were seated around me. Bepo, Shachi, and Penguin were probably all totally exhausted, but they weren’t showing it a bit. They just stared intently at Wolf’s sleeping face. No one complained about the situation.
These followers of mine aren’t half bad. Three hours passed. Four hours. Five… By this time of night we’d all usually be asleep, but no one seemed like they wanted to go to bed.
“Shouldn’t you get some rest now, Law? We’ll stay here and watch him, and if anything happens we’ll wake you up,” Bepo insisted.
“Don’t be stupid. The boss can’t go for a snooze and make his underlings keep working. That’d be dishonorable,” I said.
After that, no one said another word. But strangely, I felt certain that we were all thinking the same thing: Stay with us, stay with us, stay with us.
When twelve hours had passed since the operation began, light started coming through the windows, and birds sang in the field. Morning had arrived. The sunlight streaming through the curtains hit Wolf’s face.
Then, right on cue, he said, “Hmmph… Morning already?”
The old man was awake. We all looked at one another.
“He’s alive?” “He’s talking?” “He made it?”
“Yeaaaaaaaaaah!” Our quartet of roars joined as one. Even I was bellowing at the top of my lungs.
“You did it, Law! You’re amazing! The old man’s back to life!” Penguin cheered. (Not that he was actually dead at any point.)
“Oh…I thought I might be in heaven by now. Instead, I’m surrounded by the same brats, screaming and carrying on. So I take it I’m alive?”
“Hmph,” I said. “You’re not going to die easy. I thought I was going to be prepping for your funeral.”
“So, Law,” Wolf said to me. “You saved me, I’m guessing.”
“It wasn’t just me. Bepo and Shachi and Penguin helped. We all worked together. If any of them hadn’t been here the operation wouldn’t have been a success.”
“I see,” Wolf said, before drifting back to sleep. That was no surprise; he was greatly weakened by his ordeal. I checked his pulse and his stitches, just to be sure, but didn’t see any problems.
I just saved a human life. A feeling of satisfaction like nothing I’d ever felt before surged through me.