Chapter 235: Craniotomy

~12 min read 2,244 words

I must say, life is sometimes so bizarre, full of twists and turns like the inscrutable will of the Heavenly Father.

For instance, receiving an irresistible mission on a rainy night to find someone, only to discover upon arrival that they had just left for a banquet outside the city.

Cursing the damn decadent habits of those nobles, I finally rushed to the venue and forced my way in through persuasion and pressure to see them. I expected a struggle, but they were surprisingly accommodating, skipping what I thought would be the most difficult step.

Just when everything seemed to be going smoothly, something completely unexpected happened: an attack was launched against the Inquisition's convoy in the suburbs of Dunling.

Before I could vent my pent-up frustration on those blind fools, my horse was struck by an arrow and collapsed, leaving me no chance to act.

Then, by sheer bad luck, my leg was pinned down, and my head slammed heavily against the ground.

Losing consciousness wasn't entirely a bad thing; it fast-forwarded me past the most dangerous part of the battle, but failing to wake up afterward was a different problem entirely.

However, the irony of fate is that if you hadn't been severely injured and collapsed, you would never have known that the banquet you just left was actually a medical school team-building event combined with a medical equipment trade show.

Dramatically, the quantity and quality of doctors in this region are unprecedented. One could say that if a single lightning bolt were to smash through the ceiling and land on the table full of dishes, the medical standards from Dunling to Westminster would instantly regress by ten years.

The bad news is that after examining the situation, a few of the more senior-looking doctors expressed their inability to help. You never know if that was based on professional judgment or some personal grudge, given that relations between the two sides had never been particularly harmonious.

"The scene that follows will be somewhat gruesome. Since you have refused treatment, I hope they can hold me down securely rather than causing interference; otherwise, even a minor deviation could be catastrophic."

I briefly activated my mental senses, narrowing the diagnosis from "God knows where the intracranial damage is" to "a subdural hematoma in the right temporoparietal region."

……

Except for Kupri, who truly knew nothing about the Kraft family, everyone present wore expressions of understanding—so it was a medical dynasty; producing such a figure was only to be expected.

The monk responsible for securing the head witnessed a long, slender pair of forceps being inserted into the cranium, suppressing the urge to let go.

A series of shallow grooves gradually formed a deep octagon carved into the skull, accompanied by the production of red and white debris that required repeated cleaning. The speed was too optimistic, but this was work that simply could not be done slowly.

This required considerable control and acute awareness; every strike made one's heart tremble, involuntarily immersing the observer in the operator's pressure.

My hair was still wet; I had just cleaned up and changed into clean clothes. "Your suggestion is to open up a large section of the skull and clear out the blood clot."

Apart from the lost hair and the slightly fewer sutured corners, the patient looked perfectly fine.

The difference was that Kraft felt his plan was still quite conservative. Ultimately, none of the operations involved more than a tiny bit of the cerebellum, staying within the constraints, and the equipment could be taken freely.

Seeing the patient's condition, I knew I had to put aside the dissection of this structurally unique corpse and focus on the living first—otherwise, there would soon be no need to consider it at all.

"Instructor Viren, if you can, help clean up the tools. Kupri, while they wash my head, don't shake it too hard."

Although, standing on the grounds of professional ethics, I couldn't say something like "If the Church kills seven, let them die," weighing the pros and cons was necessary. The risk of botching the treatment wasn't that bad, but making a mistake would definitely be very troublesome.

Viren felt his palms sweating; this was completely different from those attempts to drill holes in the skull to treat "evil spirits entering the brain."

"Tweezers."

Even if it sounded unconventional, questioning a professor's treatment plan within the professional field is something anyone can do.

Facts proved that psychological preparation lacked foresight. When Kraft picked up a large chisel from the tray, the surgical field indeed began to become unstable.

……

Flipping open the injured person's eyelids, the pupils had not yet dilated, and their reaction to light was not very sensitive. No more "maybe"; these were clear signs of intracranial injury.

"Indeed, there aren't many treatments involving drilling into the skull, but they were previously used mostly for mental illnesses and are now used more frequently." Viren, seeing that Kraft was seriously proposing this, stepped forward to offer support.

"The fracture is actually secondary; the professor handled it timely and appropriately. At my age, it shouldn't be impossible to heal." Viren also gathered around, pressing on the unconscious monk's head lying on the ground.

The scalp was swollen; pressing on it revealed not a hard lump, but a sense of fluctuation, indicating bleeding at the site of impact.

However, Kraft offered another option, one that might sound particularly unfriendly.

That step didn't cause much trouble; after clearing out a shallow layer of white and red clots from the bottom of the tray, the flap was sutured back into place, cleaned, and bandaged.

The internists present, being the most numerous, were willing to offer a few prescriptions for treating the blood stasis, though their practical value was slightly questionable.

The few surviving monks looked at each other, and someone took the initiative to give an answer. In fact, the fact that they didn't jump up and crack open the head of the doctor proposing the treatment first was a testament to their restraint.

The monks present were not the type to show mercy on the battlefield. But sending an opponent to meet the Heavenly Father with a swift strike of the blade is completely different from watching someone carefully and steadily cut open a flap and peel it away from under the skull.

After a faint hissing sound, the bleeding stopped, the red was wiped away, exposing the white curved surface above.

Perhaps it was the partial recognition gained from our shared experience fighting the enemy, or the credibility bonus of being the person Green was looking for, but the scales gradually tilted toward the side Kraft hoped to see.

That instructor gave Kraft a look, implying that if the procedure was necessary, they might as well directly urge them to proceed. "The risk will be very small; is there anyone among you who can make the decision for me?"

To clear the surgical area, a small patch of hair centered on the anticipated incision was completely shaved off, opening up a small patch of bare ground on the densely haired crown.

The timing of the conditions could not have been more perfect. Whether others knew it or not, for those who understood the situation, it was hard to accept watching a salvageable case deteriorate step by step while doing nothing.

"Since your grandfather's generation, your family has begun exploring the brain, possessing relatively advanced knowledge of cranial structure and considerable practical experience."

That question was difficult to answer; to be honest, it was a first for me, but if the monks could consider accepting it, it wasn't a major difficulty. If I spoke the absolute truth, it might fail to reassure them.

"No need, leave it for me to remember when I wake up." Kraft washed the blood from his hands and began preparing for the next procedure. I need to figure out what happened to this attacker.

"All you need to do now is clear the blood stasis between the bone plate and the membrane above it; you are far from reaching the interior."

The surgery required cutting out a piece of the skull to create an octagonal bone window, providing space for decompression and cleaning. Too shallow and it wouldn't work, but the deeper one went, the more cautious one had to be to prevent a single hammer strike from piercing through.

The light converging here revealed the situation above, with white and red substances filling the field of vision. I had seen this more than once before, but only on the dead.

Metal pressed against the underside of the skull, emitting a crisp, untimely clinking sound as the large hammer fell, carving a shallow groove. It sounded a bit like a small, muffled wooden fish.

After a brief internal discussion, the monks quickly reached a consensus.

I hope that person won't worry about their appearance for a while after waking up. However, balding is quite popular among middle-aged clergy, so one could comfort him that this is just accelerating an inevitable future.

"How is it?"

In less than ten minutes, Kraft returned to the room, having selected the necessary tools from the adjacent warehouse.

Considering that those people really tried their best to play a protective role amidst the chaos and very likely delayed stepping into a trap set against themselves, it was necessary out of conscience to give them a hand, even if it might bring some trouble to myself.

Since that was said, all that remained was to pray to the Heavenly Father.

I could still feel the patient's somewhat chaotic breath flowing over my fingertips while the doctor was extracting something from the window in the skull. It was a blood clot, still semi-congealed with a texture like fermented dairy products, and more of it was accumulating inside the incision.

The monk who let out a long sigh noticed a large, seemingly forgotten white octagonal object nearby.

It was something similar to a flathead chisel, with a relatively sharp head, used much like a carpenter's chisel: striking the end with a hammer to carve out an opening. In the absence of a bone drill, this was the only option.

"This is just a proposal; if no treatment is administered, we can only hope for the Heavenly Father's mercy."

I quickly picked up the tweezers and handed them to the outstretched hand, watching as Kraft clamped onto one corner of the octagon, which was very indistinct from its surroundings, and carefully and steadily lifted it aside.

Wiped away the pooled blood with cotton cloth; vision blurred for a few seconds, yet redness continued oozing rapidly. I took the thick steel needle Lecturer Weilun handed me, held it over flame until it glowed hot, and pressed it against the major bleeding edges.

"No, you need someone to hold me steady." Kraft picked up the first set of tools for today—not surgical instruments, but standard barbering equipment.

Anyone could tell the patient's colleague's face was grim, even regretting it before the procedure ended.

As personnel long active on the front lines, we inherently understood the severity of such injuries.

"The key is outside—the skull may have internal bleeding. You've seen patients who lost consciousness after head trauma but later regained it; prior evidence shows the cause of death was likely intracranial hemorrhage compressing the brain, shifting it out of place."

The former seemed to understand my meaning, nodded in thanks, then turned to the cultivators and said: "Go prepare for post-op first, don't waste time. They'll make their worst decisions after you return. After all, I'm always here—the injury won't wait."

It sounded suspicious, especially the part about how he knew the cause of death. But even if he doubted the moral bottom line of that group, he still had to acknowledge our professional integrity.

Simply put, bleeding occurred between the skull and dura mater, and the space inside the skull is finite. Now it appeared the blood volume had grown large enough to compress brain tissue, rapidly forcing them into places they shouldn't be.

"Professor, I apologize for my impertinence—how many such craniotomies have you performed?"

"Is that all we have to do—put it back?"

"Now comes the real difficulty—the hand holding the head must not tremble."

"Surrendering fate to the Heavenly Father means abandoning human effort." One of the cultivators stepped forward, speaking for all: "But we hope to observe."

It felt eerily familiar—surely some renowned physician had once made a similar suggestion at an inopportune moment, becoming an early classic case of poor doctor-patient communication.

Back then there was no medical malpractice review system; if you truly summoned an expert, you'd find the unqualified ones were still the same people—a pure, endless loop.

"Hold it—don't move." Kraft clamped the lifted flap with a toothed hemostat and handed it to Kup for fixation. "Here's the thick needle."

A stir arose among the surrounding doctors. Clearly, insiders harbored doubts, yet at least outwardly they controlled themselves well—some invisible force prevented them from passing judgment.

The words were not wrong, and anyone could understand them. But my own hands-on actions were what truly reassured.