American Medicine: I survived the death knell thanks to the devil.

Chapter 90 Metamorphosis

When the words "Please, please" came out of the mouth of this former senior liaison officer of the counterterrorism intelligence section.

Dennis Kowalski's life as a professional investigator, or rather, a private detective, has come to a complete end.

Dark water stains quickly seeped into the crotch of his trousers.

A strong odor indicates a complete collapse of the sphincter defenses.

Lynn looked down into his eyes.

Kowalski's pupils were fixed and dilated bilaterally, and he had complete paralysis of his facial muscles.

These are signs of a complete breakdown of the sympathetic nervous system. In a person whose bladder sphincter has completely failed, the cerebral cortex has lost the cognitive capacity to fabricate lies.

He revealed all his cards.

This also reveals that the trail has completely gone cold.

Lynn carefully placed the Cooley forceps back into the instrument case and put on a brand new pair of sterile gloves.

Take out a 2% lidocaine vial from the box, replace it with an extremely fine injection needle, and pick up the needle holder and No. 4 absorbable suture.

He knelt down on one knee in front of Kowalski once again.

The atmosphere shifted in an extremely bizarre way in that instant.

The oppressive feeling, like an abyss, vanished completely.

The focus and kindness unique to doctors have returned.

"Bear with it, the anesthetic injection will cause some swelling and pain," Lynn said gently.

The needle tip was inserted subcutaneously into the damaged left hand, and the injection was slowly pushed in.

Then came the cleaning and rinsing.

The needle holder holds a curved needle, which precisely penetrates the dermis.

Standard simple interrupted suture.

The stitch spacing is strictly controlled to a perfect 0.5 cm.

Each knot-tying and thread-cutting motion was fluid and effortless.

Lynn looked down at the body that he was stitching up.

In my past life in China, the United States, as portrayed in textbooks and by public intellectuals, was always bathed in the holy light of a beacon.

It represents civilization, order, and an invincible system.

Kowalski's twenty-one years of police service were a standard cog in that massive machine.

Now, the gear lies limp in urine and blood, sobbing like a stray dog ​​with a broken spine.

A sense of superior arrogance welled up in Lynn's heart.

The beacon nation he once looked up to has long since become rotten inside.

Strip away the veneer of so-called rule of law and civilization, and what remains is nothing but fragile, carbon-based flesh and neurotransmitters that crumble at the slightest touch.

He can bestow upon this body the most extreme hell, and he can also bestow the most perfect redemption.

The ultimate destruction and the ultimate healing achieve a chillingly perfect closed loop in these long, clean hands.

Sachi, who was leaning against the corner of the wall, looked away, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

He had killed people, seen blood, and crawled through piles of corpses in Afghanistan.

But he had never seen such a scene before, where one second a demon from hell becomes a savior the next.

The stitching is complete.

Lynn cut the last thread.

I took off the blood-stained gloves and stuffed them into the prepared garbage bag.

"Keep an eye on him. After daybreak, dump him and his bag on a street corner in Queens."

Sachi nodded steadily, his massive body disappearing into the darkness.

The living Kowalski had his psychological defenses completely destroyed, and the memory of extreme pain was deeply etched into his amygdala.

As long as he closes his eyes, the Cooley forceps, gleaming with a cold light, will continuously discharge in his nerve synapses.

He will become Lynn's strongest firewall.

Fear is the strongest form of restraint.

Lynn slung his bag over his shoulder, pushed open the heavy iron gate of the factory, and the cold wind of the early morning rushed into his collar.

Back to the cheap apartment.

Lynn did not turn on the light.

He took off his coat, which smelled of blood and disinfectant, and lay back on the narrow single bed.

My gaze pierced through the dim light and settled on the winding, cheap plaster crack in the ceiling.

The surroundings were deathly silent, with only the occasional dull metallic clanging of the heating pipes.

Memories of my past life flashed through my mind like a black and white silent film.

Parents' strict discipline led to the small town's top students achieving academic success.

The endless, heavy textbooks in medical school, the bloodshot eyes from staying up all night during residency training, and the oppressive atmosphere of seniority-based hierarchy in the department.

-

To secure a specialist appointment, he had to fawn over the department head, stay up all night fabricating worthless, bloated papers, and live cautiously as a mere tool within the cracks of the doctor-patient relationship.

Fortunately, he pulled through, and everyone around him envied his job—it was stable, had a high income, and high social status.

Those thirty or forty years of life were stable, safe, and predictable.

But he always felt something was missing—

And in the short span of less than two months since his rebirth.

From the female corpse involved in organ theft in the recovery room to shrapnel found on gangsters in the ambulance.

From the second-in-command who saves New York to the one who confronts the mastermind of the underground drug network.

From a drug lord who performed an artery fountain act to a former veteran detective who collapsed under his own surgical forceps.

Extremely dangerous, filled with violence and scheming.

His decades of following the rules in his previous life had never given him this feeling before.

This feeling of having one's fate, and the life and death of others, in the palm of one's hand.

It allowed him to truly smell the flesh and blood and touch the skeleton of power.

The sheer volume of life in these two months completely overshadowed the pale decades of my previous life.

For the first time, Lynn felt that she was truly "alive".

He let himself sink into darkness.

Until the horizon was finally torn open by the first rays of sunlight, leaving an orange-red crack.

He then turned and walked to the bathroom, taking off his shirt, which was stained with Kowalski's sweat and blood.

The hot water from the showerhead hit the back of my neck, and the steam quickly blurred the mirror.

In the blur, only the corners of his mouth could be seen.

Two hours later, Lynn will return to the hospital, change into her white coat, and do what a doctor should do.

7:15.

Lynn pushed open the glass door of the orthopedic ward at Metropolitan Hospital.

The air was thick with the mixed smells of disinfectant, cheap coffee, and microwaved cheese rolls.

The nurse on duty at the nurses' station looked up and greeted him.

Lynn nodded in greeting, her smile gentle.

The faded blue short-sleeved scrub suit clung to his skin, while a white lab coat draped over his arm.

Name tag neatly pinned to the left chest: Lynn, Orthopedics, Acting Chief Resident.

The morning meeting proceeded as scheduled.

The on-duty resident physician mechanically reported on the admissions situation for the night.

Lynn opened the outpatient clinic schedule.

Monday morning, general orthopedic outpatient clinic, seventeen appointments.

Public hospital outpatient clinics have always been a living dissection table for the underprivileged in New York.

Patient number one.

Margarita Soris, a 73-year-old Mexican-American woman.

She was helped into the clinic by her daughter.

The right wrist is swollen and deformed, presenting a typical "dinner fork" appearance, with the distal radius displaced dorsally and the side of the wrist bulging like a bent dinner fork.

Lynn glanced at the referral form.

The community clinic's proposed solution is open reduction and internal fixation with a plate, with an estimated cost of $18,000 to $22,000.

The elderly woman belongs to the group without medical insurance.

My daughter works as a housekeeper at a budget hotel in Midtown Manhattan, earning $17.50 an hour. She can't even afford to take paid sick leave.

Three days ago, the community clinic prescribed cheap painkillers and sent the person away.

Seventy-two hours later, the tissue edema worsened, and the golden window for closed reduction was about to close.

>