Chapter 11: Makeshift Intubation

Chapter 11: Makeshift Intubation

From the seating arrangement in the hall, it was obvious that the cleric held the highest status among the group.

So when he said, “Let him go,” even the knight obeyed without protest. With a dark expression, the knight stepped aside. The pressure on Garrett’s body immediately vanished. He staggered to his feet, nodded hastily toward the cleric in a token gesture of thanks, then scrambled forward on hands and knees toward the child.

“Hmph! No manners at all…”

The knight snorted coldly.

But the cleric hushed him. “Quiet. Look!”

Garrett’s timing couldn’t have been better. Just a few steps away, the boy—his throat freshly cut—suddenly awoke as if from a nightmare. His limbs flailed and he began to wail.

Though the sobbing was fierce, it made hardly any sound. That only terrified the boy more—his face streaked with snot and tears, arms and legs twitching wildly, on the verge of passing out again.

That’s when Garrett arrived.

He lunged forward, pinning the child down with his own weight, trapping the kicking legs beneath him. One hand grabbed the boy’s wrists; the other gently stroked his cheek as he murmured softly:

“Don’t be scared, you’re okay now, it’s over… you’re breathing again, everything’s going to be fine… just breathe with me, in… and out… in… and out…”

His voice shifted from sharp to calm, from rushed to soothing, filled with quiet warmth. Slowly, the child calmed down, blinking up at him with wide, watery eyes and beginning to follow the rhythm of his voice—inhale, exhale, inhale again, exhale…

In just a short while, the tremors began to fade. Though the pain in his throat made the boy whimper and sob, the panic in his expression had subsided—his breathing was steady, and his body relaxed.

You wouldn’t find this technique in any surgical textbook or treatment manual. It was passed down to Garrett by his old ER mentor in his previous life:

“After performing a tracheotomy without anesthesia, always calm the patient.”

Someone who’d just suffocated and then got their throat cut open—if they panicked and started thrashing, their oxygen consumption would skyrocket. Without proper reassurance, they could slip into shock within seconds.

—And while you’re at it, calm down the patient’s family, and everyone else nearby.

Otherwise, you might put down the scalpel only to be beaten up by a self-righteous bystander—or even get cuffed by the police. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Garrett’s mind raced through memories, heavy with emotion.

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten his mentor’s advice just now—he’d never had the chance. That knight had sent him flying before he could say a word. Thankfully, the knight had shown some restraint and hadn’t killed him outright, or else… well, he might’ve had to reincarnate again.

As he thought of the knight, he heard a voice behind him—low and hushed, clearly meant for the cleric beside him:

“You can save someone… by cutting their throat?”

“…I’ve never seen that method before,” the cleric replied. His voice was clear and soothing, unlike the knight’s deep and gravelly tone. Even though Garrett had only met them today, he could already tell their voices apart with ease.

“But… he does seem very confident. And the boy really did stop choking. His throat’s cut, sure, but he didn’t immediately bleed to death…”

Well, obviously.

I’ve been studying neck anatomy since med school—it’s second nature by now.

A cricothyrotomy that hits a carotid artery? Yeah, if that happens, I might as well be dead already!

Garrett snorted silently.

He gave the boy one last reassuring pat and let out a long breath, finally relaxing. As he straightened up, he noticed the cleric still watching him with curious interest. When Garrett finally stopped moving, the cleric asked:

“Is that all? He’s fine now?”

“Not yet,” Garrett replied, still panting slightly.

He looked around but didn’t see what he needed. So he dropped to his knees, tilted his head back, and shouted to the surrounding onlookers:

“I need a tube! Rigid! Clean! — Hurry!”

“Didn’t you hear him? A hard tube! Clean! Go, now!”

A deep voice picked up the call. Garrett glanced over—it was Uncle Edmund, the farm owner who had welcomed them earlier. He was clearly a respected figure here; the moment he gave the order, seven or eight people scattered in all directions to search.

Garrett felt a bit of relief. He turned to see the farmwife—who had carried the boy in—huddled to one side, her face streaked with tears, arms half-raised as if she wanted to hold her child but didn’t dare. He sighed and asked her gently:

“When did he start feeling unwell?”

“Around dinnertime… He got worse and worse, so I just…”

About an hour ago. Garrett silently noted it as part of the medical history and continued:

“What did he eat for dinner? Or drink? Anything unusual?”

“Black bread, beans… Same as everyone else, we eat that every day, he’s never had trouble before…”

“Okay. Did he touch anything strange? Any painting going on nearby? Did he pick any fruit? Smell any flowers?”

Garrett kept at it patiently. He was used to tracing allergic reactions—starting with food, then environmental factors, down to whether the person touched, smelled, or did anything even slightly out of the ordinary. No detail was too small.

He once had a patient with a severe allergic reaction—and after a frantic investigation, the cause was discovered to be a gust of wind that blew peach fuzz from a nearby fruit stand as the patient walked by.

Peach fuzz allergy.

That case had turned him from a doctor into a full-blown detective.

So now he questioned everything, soft-voiced and methodical. The farmwife shook her head tearfully at each point. As he worked, part of his mind remained focused on the boy’s breathing, while another part dealt with the inquisitive cleric:

“What do you need a tube for?”

“To stick into his trachea! —Where’s that tube? Why’s it taking so long!”

“Coming, coming!”

Someone burst out of the kitchen, waving with his left hand to clear a path through the crowd and holding something high in his right. He rushed over, panting, and shoved it into Garrett’s hand:

“Here! A tube—see if it works! Took me ages to clean it!”

Garrett looked down.

Lying in his palm was a chicken leg bone—the ends sliced off to reveal the hollow center. He tilted it to the side and saw that the marrow had been scraped out pretty thoroughly. He could even see candlelight shining through from the far end.

…Alright. Guess it’ll do.

No sterile packaging. No disposable PVC tracheal tubes. Not even bamboo—probably didn’t grow around here. But a hollow chicken bone? He could make that work.

Garrett shrugged.

He ran his thumb across one of the cut ends, frowned, and handed it back.

“The edges are too sharp. Smooth it out.”

“Uh…”

Uncle Edmund hesitated. Then a hand, graceful and unhurried, reached over—the cleric plucked the bone from Garrett’s hand and casually passed it to the knight beside him:

“Roman, be a dear, would you?”

The Knight expression darkened again. He didn’t reply, just took the bone.

Then, with a simple motion, he pressed the pad of his thumb against the cut end and gave it a quick rub. Flipped it, did the same on the other side. Bone shavings fell away in a soft cascade. The jagged, knife-hewn edges visibly smoothed out.

Garrett’s eyes went wide.

He couldn’t help letting out a soft “Whoa.”

He just used his thumb.

His bare thumb. Like a whetstone.

With just a gentle touch!

Are knights in this world really that physically powerful?

His mouth was still open in awe when the cleric handed the smoothed bone back, all the while asking with growing curiosity:

“Insert it into the trachea? How? And why?”

And just then—

“—Whoa! It actually went in!”