Zeno kept walking until he arrived at the safe area.
“Move,” he said, and they all created space for him.
Selina, who had regained consciousness because of all the blood rushing to her head with Zeno’s carrying method, was preparing to get cared for by him.
However, she was quickly tossed to the side.
“Give her some oxygen,” Zeno said to the two first-aiders. They looked at each other for a second before nodding and going to Selina.
“Wait, I want you to help me,” Selina whined from the side, but Zeno ignored her.
– Is this scripted?
– I swear, the way he walked a while ago was epic. It looked like a real disaster scene!
– Since when was this guy handsome?
– You’re right. He did get handsome, or maybe that’s just because he saved two people from a fire.
Zeno felt everybody’s eyes on him. Sooner or later, he knew they would be asking some questions, too. He didn’t want that.
“Stay back and stay quiet,” he said, and fortunately, they all followed.
Ian watched with wide eyes as Zeno assessed the sound guy.
“Are the doctors here already, or are you still incompetent?” he asked Jiho, who appeared as pale as a sheet of paper.
“They’re still not here,” he muttered.
Chaewon PD walked closer to him and plopped on the ground a few inches away. “Is it—Is it bad?” she stammered.
Zeno merely sighed and grabbed the stethoscope from the remaining first-aider. He pressed it against the sound guy’s chest wall and listened. However, he couldn’t hear anything, which could only mean one thing.
“Smoke inhalation injury,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Is Kwong going to die?” the cameraman asked while being comforted by his colleagues.
Zeno glanced at his watch. “Yeah, there’s a high chance,” he said.
Their eyes widened in surprise. Hyunbin’s old heart couldn’t take it, too. He lost his balance and was helped by a nearby staff.
“They were stuck there for quite some time. It’s only a matter of minutes before he dies of Carbon monoxide poisoning and hypoxemia1,” Zeno said, laying out the facts. He said it so nonchalantly that the others didn’t know how to react.
However, the cameraman began sobbing uncontrollably.
“Help him, please! Do something. His kid is still in kindergarten, and his wife is currently pregnant. He’s the sole breadwinner of the family.”
“Goodness,” Zeno muttered.
Rex was still livestreaming at this point, and the comments were going at an indescribable speed.
– This is heartbreaking.
– There are no doctors there. How will the man get saved?
Zeno sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. He then faced the first-aider, who appeared fresh out of college.
“He has a smoke inhalation injury, CO poisoning. Absent breath sounds on bilateral lung fields. He doesn’t seem to be responding to stimulus. In a few minutes, he’d probably go into a coma because of oxygen deprivation to his brain.”
“Now, can you perform an emergency intubation on him?”
The first-aider gasped. The others, too, didn’t understand a word he was saying. However, they could tell the situation was dire.
“H–how do you know all of these?” Minseok exclaimed from the side. “Are you a doctor?”
At that moment, Zeno wished he never had any medical knowledge or practice. He sighed and ignored Minseok.
“Well,” he continued. “Do you know how to?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “I don’t have any experience with that. Besides, we don’t have an intubation set in the kit. We only have a bag-valve-mask.”
Zeno bit his lip. Then, there was only one answer to this.
Death.
It was unfortunate, but it was a normal part of life. Of course, dying like this wasn’t normal. However, it still happened.
“What do we need to do then?” Chaewon asked.
“Is he really going to die?” the cameraman cried.
Just then, a sudden gust of wind blew over them, and a photo came out of the guy’s pocket.
Zeno shouldn’t have glanced down, but he did. There, he saw the ultrasound of what seemed to be his unborn baby.
At that moment, he felt something tug at his heart again, similar to what he felt with Maxie’s illness. He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath.
“Earth is really testing me,” he muttered.
Then, he knelt back down, picked up the ultrasound photo , and placed it inside his pocket, making sure it was safe. He glanced at his watch again. It seemed he was still breathing when he carried her. So, it wouldn’t have been long since he stopped spontaneously breathing.
“Two minutes.”
He needed to do a lifesaving procedure in two minutes.
“Scalpel,” he said to the first-aider, who still appeared lost.
“Umm, we don’t have a scalpel,” she muttered.
He pursed his lips and looked around, spotting something on Ian’s white coat. “Give me that pocket knife.”
Ian quickly gave it to Zeno. “Douse it with saline,” he said to the first-aider.
This time, the first-aider acted quickly, and she did as she was told.
– Is he going to do what I think he’s going to do?
– What is he going to do?
– A cricothyroidotomy with no equipment at all?
– A what now?”
“Do you have a tube of some sort?” Zeno asked.
The first-aider shook her head. “We only have an IV tube.”
“That’s too narrow,” he muttered. Then, he spotted Jiho this time, who tapped his foot on the ground.
“Give me that,” he said, pointing at his chest pocket.
Jiho’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked.
“Your pen,” Zeno said, getting impatient.
“This was given to me by my late grandma.”
Zeno clicked his tongue and stood, grabbing the pen from his pocket. “Thank you, Grandma,” he said before going back to Kwong. He then placed his hand over Kwong’s neck.
“To the queasy people out there,” Zeno called out as he palpated the sound guy’s neck. “Look away if you can’t handle blood.”
“What?” they began murmuring.
Zeno closed his eyes before opening them again. “Here,” he muttered.
With that, he thrust the knife into Kwong’s neck.
low blood oxygen