Chapter 5 – I Died from Overtime and Woke Up in Another World
Saline? Finally?
Wu Zhou turned his head—and was instantly nauseous.
A rough, calloused hand held out a wooden bowl in front of him. The soldier’s hands were full of thick corns and deep cracks. Even though he’d tried to wash up, there was still dark grime caked under his fingernails. His yellowed thumb pressed firmly against the rim of the bowl—his bck-streaked nail dipped into the water.
Wu Zhou’s stomach flipped.
But what choice did he have?
In this gods-forsaken hut with stone walls and a thatched roof, this wood bowl was probably the cleanest vessel they had.
He bent down, sipped the salty water, and nearly wept from the taste.
This is what field surgery looked like when you didn’t have proper saline.
Boil the water on the spot. Cool it. Mix in salt. Manually eyeball the amount. No tools, no measuring spoons—he was literally doing salt concentration math in his head.
He tasted again, then checked the temperature.
Salt might’ve been a bit under, but the warmth was decent—close enough to 37°C.
Was it off by half a degree? Was the concentration 10% too low?
Too bad. He didn’t have time to care.
More salt. Then more. Then even more.
To be safe, Wu Zhou had them adjust it three separate times before he was satisfied.
Then he directed the clumsy, calloused warriors like a head chef at war with a team of toddlers:
“Wipe down the waterskin mouth with liquor—no, not there, the rim—yeah, now pour!”
They lifted the skin and began flushing the abdominal cavity, from the upper abdomen to the lower, slowly, methodically.
As the st rinse trickled in, Wu Zhou gently cradled the intestines and shouted again:
“Help me lift him—one at the shoulders, one at the legs, one at the back!”
The red-haired archer propped up the patient’s shoulders.
The young man who’d originally cradled the intestines grabbed the legs.
And the poor little cleric—who had spent the entire operation twisted like a pretzel, pressing on the patient’s brachial and posterior tibial arteries—was finally allowed to let go. Most of the bleeding from the arm and leg had stopped by now.
He tucked his freckled face under the patient’s back and lifted with both arms.
“One, two, three—tilt him toward me!”
Whooosh—
The saline, now cloudy and tinged with blood, gushed out of the patient’s abdominal cavity.
Wu Zhou could only weep inside.
No suction. No drainage tubes. No nothing.
What, was he supposed to suck it up with a reed straw?
Just imagining one of these dudes—with their big, yellowed teeth and strong “halitosis energy”—trying to siphon fluid from a human body was enough to make Wu Zhou nope out hard.
He opted for the most brutal but simple method:
Flush the cavity, tilt the patient, let gravity do the rest.
When the fluid was mostly drained, Wu Zhou gave everything one final inspection. Luckily, no new bleeding.
Or, in proper surgical terms: “No active hemorrhage observed.”
Finally—he exhaled and straightened up slightly, stretching his back.
Then reached out his hand and called: “Sutures!”
…
No one responded.
No forceps. No suture kit. No sweet OR nurse with gentle eyes pcing a needle holder into his palm.
Wu Zhou: “…”
t_t
He should’ve known better.
This wasn’t a hospital. This wasn’t an OR. There were no scrub nurses, no assistants, no circutors. Hell, there wasn’t even someone nearby who knew what he meant by “sutures.”
Fine.
“GIVE. ME. THE. NEEDLE. AND. THREAD.”
“Ah? O-Oh! Right!”
The freckled little cleric jumped up and began frantically rummaging through his robe pockets.
Wu Zhou’s eyes lit up.
He’d figured this rundown shack—trashed as it was—was still a home. Surely someone had sewing supplies. But to think the cleric himself carried some on him?
Nice. As a higher-ranking member of society, maybe the stuff he used would be better quality…
…
Wait, wait, wait.
What the hell was this?
One look, and Wu Zhou’s whole soul left his body.
That’s not a sewing needle.
That’s a quilt needle.
It was bent.
Bent!
The needle was already warped—twisted from sewing clothes.
And the thread—that thread! Wu Zhou didn’t expect antimicrobial barbed sutures or fancy pre-tied monofiments, but this?
This was rough-spun hemp. Frayed. Uneven. Lumpy.
It wasn’t even thread—it was rope’s sad, skinny cousin.
He took a deep breath and tried to console himself. It’s a crap pce. Can’t expect much…
Gripping the bent quilting needle, he began stitching as fast as humanly possible.
Each time he pierced the flesh, a vein bulged on his forehead.
No absorbable sutures. No silk. Just low-grade rope and a needle made for patching bnkets.
No needle holder. No curved needle. Just his fingers jabbing a thick, blunt spike into raw tissue.
Only those who’ve stitched skin with a sewing needle can understand this pain.
Wu Zhou focused all his willpower, threading each yer slowly but precisely—peritoneum, superficial fascia, skin and subcutaneous tissue…
No shortcuts. Every stitch counted.
He tied the final knot, exhaled like a man resurfacing from a near-drowning, and colpsed backward onto the floor, limbs shaking with fatigue.
“Bandage him up…”
Not even a single soul around to wipe his sweat.
Tragic.
No one to mop his brow mid-op… but thankfully, once the surgery ended, people did rush over to help.
Several rough hands reached out at once, lifting him gently. The warriors he’d been barking orders at all this time were now fussing over him, voices overpping—
“Little Gret, you’re amazing!”
“Little Gret, when did you learn to do that?!”
“Little Gret—”
Wu Zhou: “……???”
His foggy, overworked brain spun once… then again… and finally pulled a memory to the surface.
Right. They were calling his name.
His name was Gret. Full name: Gret Nordmark. A rookie guardsman assigned to the City Watch.
Today, he’d gone on a patrol outside the walls, escorting a young cleric—yep, the freckled kid named John—on his trip back home.
The man he just operated on was their squad leader—Uncle Karen, the one who’d always looked after him.
The guy who cradled his intestines earlier? That was Karen’s nephew, Raymond, a spearman. The red-haired archer? Ton. And the shield-bearer Wu Zhou had barked at earlier for boiling water? Wally.
Altogether, they made up the full roster of this little squad.
So…
I’ve really transmigrated, huh.
In the end, all that back-breaking overtime in the ER really had turned him into a corpse.
He’d survived being an intern, survived becoming an attending, survived residency, board exams, rotation hell—and still dropped dead as an associate chief.
Wu Zhou wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. He looked around at the rolling green hills in the distance, the old-world shack with its thatched roof, and the fair-skinned, sharp-featured warriors who all looked like live-action Western RPG NPCs.
Then he lowered his gaze.
Mourned in silence.
And whispered to himself—
“From now on… I am Gret.”
When Gret raised his eyes again, he saw a row of warriors—plus one cleric—all staring at him intently.
Every single one of them.
Eyes full of awe, confusion, and curiosity.
Because what they’d just seen—the gut slicing, the wound repair, the whole operation—they’d never witnessed anything like it.
Gret: “…”
How the hell am I supposed to expin this?
That I got these skills from 12 years of primary and secondary education, followed by 7 years of med school, and then another decade of trauma surgery?
If I actually said that, they’d probably…
burn me at the stake.
There was a cleric here, too. And he’d seen everything. Once he reported this back to the Church?
Forget hiding. They’d drag him straight to the inquisition.
Gret, internally: Shivering in holy fire .jpg
He was halfway through imagining torture chambers and bonfires when someone interrupted his spiral:
“L-Little Gret… will the Captain live?”
