The Reborn Tycoon: Taking Back My Life

Surgery Without General Anesthesia

Without a single second of hesitation, Sienna grabbed a razor-sharp number ten scalpel. She pressed the small blade against the skin of Martin's abdomen, dead center of the initial stab wound, and dragged it horizontally with immense pressure. Martin's skin, thick fat, and muscle layers were forcefully and mercilessly sliced open, emitting a sickening, wet tearing sound.

"Aaaaaaarrrghhh!" Martin's agonized scream echoed deafeningly, piercing right through the violent thunderclaps booming outside the wooden cabin.

The sheer agony pierced infinitely deep into his neural pathways, making it feel as though every single vein was being violently ripped out of his body. His hands gripped the edges of the wooden table so tightly that his fingernails snapped and bled.

"Hold on! Just a little more!" Sienna completely ignored his heart-wrenching screams. Her hand, coated in thick blood, plunged entirely into Martin's abdominal cavity. Her fingers aggressively probed blind amidst the slippery, still-warm internal organs. "Come on... where is your severed artery... show yourself..." Sienna muttered under her breath.

Blood continued to gush uncontrollably, soaking through Sienna's pants and forming a thick, crimson puddle on the cabin's wooden floor.

Martin began to convulse slightly. The pain, having long surpassed the limits of human sanity, sent his central nervous system into severe shock. His eyes slowly rolled to the back of his head, leaving only a terrifying, empty white stare.

"Martin! Stay with me! Open your eyes and talk to me! Who was the man that did this to you?!" Sienna desperately searched for the source of the bleeding, trying to tether his consciousness so he wouldn't slip away into death.

"Miller... my own flesh and blood... he took... he took my place..." Martin deliriously mumbled, his voice so utterly broken it was barely audible to the human ear.

"Your own brother? How classic and cliché. A betrayal by your own flesh and blood always makes for the most satisfying revenge story in the world. Now prove to the universe you deserve to take your revenge on him! Don't you dare die a pathetic death on my table!"

Sienna's thumb and index finger finally felt the faint, vibrating pulse of the severed major artery buried deep below.

"Got you, you bastard vein!" Sienna exclaimed triumphantly. She swiftly grabbed a steel surgical clamp from the tray with her left hand and pinched the bleeding vessel tightly, sealing it shut.

The torrent of fresh blood that had been flooding his abdomen slowly ceased spurting.

"The main hemorrhage has stopped. We did it, Martin. Now all I need to do is stitch this vessel and sew your torn muscles back together..."

The relieved words leaving Sienna's lips were abruptly cut short. A sudden, dead silence blanketed the stuffy room. The sound of Martin's groans had completely vanished into thin air. The once-arrogant man's head slumped limply to the left, his eyes shut tightly, and his broad chest was no longer rising and falling for oxygen.

Sienna immediately snapped her head up to stare at the portable monitor screen in the corner of the room. The blood pressure digits that had previously shown dangerously low numbers now blinked and vanished into a terrifying, empty dotted line.

Beep... beep...

That slow ticking suddenly morphed into a single, highly piercing, ear-splittingly continuous tone ringing throughout the room. The green dot on the monitor stopped bouncing, drastically flatlining into a straight horizontal line devoid of any signs of life.

Beeeeeeeeeepppp.

"No, no, no! Damn it! You don't get to die on me after I went through all the trouble of slicing you open, Martin!" Sienna cursed in panic, her eyes wide with frantic emotion.

Sienna immediately ripped off her blood-soaked gloves, throwing them to the floor. She quickly hopped up onto the blood-slicked wooden table, positioned both of her palms over Martin's broad chest, and began performing incredibly forceful chest compressions.

"One! Two! Three! Four!" Sienna shouted, counting out loud.

Beeeeeeeeeepppp.

"Come back to me! Wake up, you weak bastard!" Sienna screamed, pressing down on Martin's chest in a frantic rhythm, forcefully pumping whatever blood was left inside his heart.

The machine's continuous shriek pierced the night, announcing to the world that the body of the mighty Whitlock Group's ruler was now nothing more than an empty, lifeless shell amidst the savage storm of the Zwartebos Forest. Sienna kept pumping his chest with a relentless rhythm. Sweat poured profusely from her forehead and neck as her slippery, bloodstained hands continued to press down on his ribs with all her might. Her jaw was clenched tight in fury, refusing to surrender to the death attempting to snatch her patient away.

"One! Two! Three! Four!" Sienna yelled at the top of her lungs.

The flatline on the monitor remained stubbornly still, refusing to offer even a glimmer of hope.

"Come back! Wake up, you weakling! You said you wanted to take revenge on your brother, didn't you? Prove it to me!" Sienna screamed frantically.

Using her entire body weight, she delivered one final, brutally hard compression strike right to the center of Martin's chest.

A moment of dead silence.

Then, a tiny green dot suddenly spiked at the edge of the monitor screen.

Beep.

Sienna held her breath. She slowly lifted both her hands off Martin's chest.

Beep... beep...

The green dot began forming the waves of life once more, beating in a slow but steady rhythm. The deafening, continuous shriek had ceased, replaced by the incredibly faint cadence of a beating heart.

"Gaaasp!"

Martin suddenly took a massive, ragged intake of breath, his chest arching upward as if his soul had just been violently yanked back into his physical body. The man collapsed limply back onto the wooden table. He was still completely unconscious, but air was once again flowing to fill his lungs.

"Good job, Martin. Don't you ever try to die on my table again," Sienna whispered, letting out an impossibly long sigh of relief. Her legs felt so weak she had to grip the edge of the table just to keep herself from collapsing.

However, Sienna's work was far from over. Martin's major artery had been clamped, but the man's abdominal cavity was still split wide open in a gruesome, cross-shaped wound.

Without wasting another second, Sienna quickly swapped her gloves for a fresh, clean pair. She grabbed thick black surgical thread and a sharp curved needle. Under the blinding glare of the portable lights, Sienna began meticulously stitching the severed artery. Her medical composure and precision took full control once again.

After ensuring there were no more leaks from the deep artery, Sienna moved on to the abdominal muscle layers and the outer skin tissue. She closed the massive incision using a highly dense, robust zigzag stitch to ensure Martin's internal organs remained safely in place.

The entire process took over two hours. As the final knot was tied securely, dawn began to break outside the cabin window. The violent rainstorm had finally subsided, leaving behind a thick mist that blanketed the Zwartebos Forest.

Sienna wiped away the remaining dried blood on Martin's skin, then wrapped his entire torso and waist in thick, heavily layered medical bandages. With the stomach dealt with, Sienna turned her attention to Martin's ruined face. She cleaned the deep knife slash spanning from his cheek to his jaw, pulling the separated edges of skin together as best as she could, and wrapped his entire head in white bandages, leaving only small gaps for his right eye, nose, and mouth to breathe.

"Now, all we can do is wait," Sienna muttered in exhaustion, draping a thick wool blanket over Martin's bare chest. "If you're strong enough, you'll wake up. If not, your body will reject these stitches within a few days."