The Cold Surgeon's Contract Bride novel Chapter 267

Inside the ICU, doctors and nurses were scrambling to resuscitate Silas.

Looking at the pale, aging man on the bed with an oxygen mask strapped to his face, my blood ran cold, and my limbs went numb.

That familiar, crushing wave of despair hit me like a tsunami, threatening to drag me under. It felt like an invisible hand was wrapped around my throat. Unbidden, the memory of Maxwell being rushed into surgery flashed through my mind.

I was absolutely terrified.

Dr. Julian Zephyr, who was leading the resuscitation, turned around abruptly. "It's bad. We need to get him into the OR immediately—"

A nurse looked absolutely panicked. "But we still can't reach Director Sterling! What do we do? Who's going to perform the secondary surgery?"

Dr. Zephyr frowned, thinking for two agonizing seconds. "Prep him for the OR first. I'll call Dean Davidson right now and figure this out."

I watched them frantically wheel Silas out, feeling like an ant on a hot pan, utterly paralyzed with indecision.

I forced myself to snap out of it.

I was the patient's family, yes, but I was also an anesthesiologist.

A family member could afford to fall apart during an emergency, but as a doctor, I had to stay calm and fulfill my duty.

With that thought, I took a deep, shuddering breath and marched straight toward the sterilization room.

By the time I had scrubbed in and entered the trauma bay, the frantic, high-pitched alarms of the ventilator filled the air. Looking at the monitors, I realized Silas was hanging by a thread.

"What do we do? We still can't reach Director Sterling."

"The complexity of this surgery is too high. If Director Sterling isn't here, the patient might..."

Dr. Zephyr's grim assessment made my knees buckle. I nearly collapsed onto the floor, but Leon rushed in just in time to catch me.

It quickly became clear why Dr. Hudson was considered Ferris's equal. His craniotomy technique wasn't as agonizingly meticulous as Ferris's; it appeared bold and sweeping, yet his execution of the micro-details was flawless. From a neurosurgical perspective, this was a level of mastery that couldn't be achieved through hard work alone.

Like Ferris, Dr. Hudson was a natural-born prodigy.

The surgery dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Every passing second was pure torture, until I finally saw Dr. Hudson step away from the table. Only then did the agonizing knot in my chest loosen slightly.

In the scrub room, Leon and I asked about Silas's condition.

"The procedure went smoothly, but whether he wakes up is entirely up to him," Dr. Hudson said plainly.

Hearing that, I felt like all the air had been knocked out of my lungs. My voice cracked. "What do you mean, 'whether he wakes up'?"

"Post-operative hydrocephalus is a relatively common complication for this type of surgery, but remaining comatose for thirty-six hours should have raised massive red flags," Dr. Hudson said tactfully. "The sooner you catch it, the better the outcome."