Golden Time

‘There is a man dying before you. Only you can save his life. You must do something for him immediately because he is an emergency patient to whom even a second is urgent. What must you do?’

‘I have to save him.’

The masked man laughed with a half-moon smile.

‘Yes, I have to save him. Definitely I should, because I know what would happen to him later If he were left without any treatment.’

He nodded, and his words continued, ‘You can save his life if you can take action in an urgent situation like this. Just looking at him without doing anything is a crime…’

Suddenly, the masked man’s words went through his head. ‘Yes, now or never. I have to take action in a minute, no, in a second.’

“Knife?! Lighter?! Anybody who has a skin toner?!”

Despite Suhyuk’s shouting, the students were standing blankly. Suhyuk’s face hardened gradually. There was no sign that the health teacher and an ambulance would come anytime soon.

A shrieking voice came out from Dongsu’s mouth, who had been watching Suhyuk all along,

“Hey, you bastards! Are your ears all shut up? If I find out any of you have something Suhyuk asked for, I’ll chew your ass!”

That was the typical tone he used to shout with at others in the past.

Only then did the students begin to bring out the stuff Suhyuk wanted. Various kinds of cutter knives, disposable skin toners, etc, were poured out before Suhyuk.

“Are you okay?” Dongsu asked Suhyuk, with an uneasy look because he was looking for a knife.

Suhyuk met Dongsu’s eyes. ‘Trust me.’ His glittering eyes suggested he was confident. Dongsu nodded instantly and clenched a MacGyver knife. That shone in Suhyuk’s eyes. The cutter knife is easy to break because its edge is weak.

“Dongsu.”

Suhyuk quickly reached out his hand.

“This?”

“Yes.”

He handed it over, and Suhyuk pulled out the knife and heated it with a lighter.

The thin blade quickly became hot. Next is the skin toner. He took off the lids of the disposable skin toners to put them together. Without any other replacement available, a skin toner can be used as a disinfectant as it has alcoholic ingredients.

‘Cotton pad.’

He noticed a cotton pad among a lot of the stuff mixed together.

Did they guess what he would be doing?

These kids at Jaemyung HS already knew what he’d do because they were smart.

Suhyuk immediately soaked the cotton pads with skin toner. Then he wiped the hot knife blade carefully. He also rubbed Inbae’s throat with the skin toner.

“Huh…” Suhyuk shortly took a deep breath.

Now he had all the material needed to treat Inbae.

Cricothyroidotomy. The only thing he had to was to incise his throat to open the airway. Suhyuk did not hesitate to take his hand to his neck. And he could locate the convex part of his neck by touch. A thick shield-like thyroid cartilage located in the middle of the neck, and a cricoid cartilage located beneath it. The point at which these two intersect, namely the depressed part, which is the radial thyroid, he had to make a cut right here.

Suhyuk took his larynx firmly with his thumb and middle finger. If Inbae’s body moved while Suhyuk was using the knife, it could touch other organs, which might cause a serious situation. That was a surgical technique that must be done free of errors at all. Suhyuk moved the knife toward his neck to incise the skin.

“Gasp!” “Don’t we stop him?”

Those students, who had been watching him all along, screamed and got restless. It seemed as if they were rushing to stop him but did not, because Dongsu was standing right at that spot.

“Bastards! Be quiet!”

Shouting at them, Dongsu looked down at Suhyuk. The pupils of his eyes trembled a little. Suhyuk taking a knife to a person’s throat was reflected in his eyes. He seemed quite uneasy. ‘Do not make any trouble. I trust you.’ Dongsu thought to himself. It was Suhyuk who helped him out along the way. He had to trust Suhyuk to the end even though others could not. Dongsu began to look at them with a cold stare.

In the meantime, Suhyuk’s knife was getting close to Inbae’s neck.

“It will hurt a little. You’ve got to endure the pain.”

Inbae could hardly hear his voice because he found his eyes getting cloudy.

Soon, Suhyuk’s knife touched his throat.

‘Only 2cm or less incision.’

If the movement of the knife is rough or deep, it could be dangerous enough to touch other organs. Light but accurate incision.

At last he cut through a red blood line around his neck. About 1.5 cm deep from the skin to subcutaneous tissue. Suhyuk confirmed the cirrhosis of the thyroid gland with an incision.

‘1 cm horizontally…’

The upper and lower circumference thoracic artery and vein are relatively located in the upper area, so incision of the lower membrane is less risky.

As soon as the membrane broke apart, the blood gushing into the air sprayed over his face. At the same time, he heard a breathing sound coming and going through Inbae’s throat.

Suhyuk hurriedly inserted right there a ballpoint pen with its contents dismantled and wrapped around it in a cotton pad.

“Tape! Anyone with tape!”

Getting tape quickly, Suhyuk fixed his throat by sealing the pen joints tightly. Bubbles came up from the ball-point pen and his throat joints, but soon went down. Suhyuk, who sat down in his seat with a thump, took a long breath.

His role was all over. Now the only thing left was Inbae’s determination to open his eyes. Around Suhyuk were some girls watching him closely, with their mouth shut, and others who looked at him as if he were crazy.

Did they realize that Inbae’s face, which had become very pale, was increasingly going back to red?

“That’s an unauthorized illegal surgery, right?” A quiet mumbling came from someone.

And the bell ringing the start of class filled the classroom strangely.

Teachers and the ambulance arrived at the same time. The emergency crew who had seen a ballpoint pen stuck in Inbae’s throat were astonished.

Was there a fight? What kind of psycho put a ballpoint pen in a friend’s throat?

“Who the hell did that?” one of the teachers asked.

At his words, the students at the scene pointed their fingers at the place where Suhyuk was standing.

Frowning his face bitterly, the teacher snatched his hands, “You too should go with me!”