It was a night of raging storm.

Connor was the doctor of a small hospital in the countryside and the only doctor in the village—a timid and gloomy man. After graduation, he briefly worked as a hired physician in the capital, but soon grew tired of the hustle and bustle and fled to this small rural village.

Regardless of what others said, it was a satisfying life for Connor. There were no critically ill patients or people with terminal diseases. Except for very elderly people passing away with the flow of time, he rarely had the opportunity to witness death.

In this village that literally embodied the word tranquility, Connor, despite being the only doctor, had plenty of free time.

Especially during this season when farming was winding down, there weren’t even the occasional patients who came in with injuries from agricultural work. Much less on a night like this, at such a late hour. The villagers, who still preferred folk remedies, usually handled even somewhat severe colds or illnesses on their own.

So despite it being past midnight, Connor was drinking a warm cup of tea and reading the newspaper with the sound of heavy rain as background, simply because he couldn’t fall asleep.

Today is ending peacefully and uneventfully as always. Just as Connor was thinking about heading to bed while reading the trivial articles in the newspaper, urgent footsteps echoed through the hallway and his bedroom door burst open without a knock.

“Brother!”

It was Rosemary, Connor’s younger sister who worked as a nurse at his hospital.

It must be some bug or insect. Knowing his talkative and energetic sister well, unlike himself, Connor was about to scold her for opening his door without knocking at this hour, but he froze the moment he looked up and saw her.

“Brother! Something terrible has happened!”

“Wh-what’s wrong? Rosemary, good heavens! There’s blood on your cheek…”

“It’s not my blood.”

To the stammering Connor, Rosemary’s face contorted as if she might cry at any moment, and she anxiously said.

“A, a patient came in… Their condition is serious. Bl-blood, there’s so much blood…”

“A patient came?”

Connor looked at the window. The rain was still pouring fiercely. The raindrops frantically tapping against the glass were proof of that. What kind of patient would come in such weather? Moreover, judging by the blood splattered on Rosemary’s face and her expression, it was certainly not a minor injury like their previous patients.

“We don’t have time for this!”

Frustrated by Connor’s hesitation, Rosemary grabbed his arm and headed downstairs.

“I’ve stopped the bleeding as best I could. But you’re the doctor! Come down quickly and take a look!”

Rosemary was right. Connor was the doctor. However, the distinct smell of blood coming from his sister had left Connor in a half-dazed state. He weakly allowed himself to be led down the stairs to the first floor.

Though he thought he knew the hospital well enough to walk the stairs with his eyes closed, Connor doubted whether this was truly his hospital when he saw the scene before him. Bloody footprints were all over the small carpet by the door and across the floor, and the air was thick with the pungent smell of blood.

“Over here! Patient! I brought my brother… I mean, I brought the doctor!”

It was Rosemary who once again led the stiffly frozen Connor. She pushed him into the examination room. Connor stumbled inside only to receive an even greater shock.

“Good Lord…”

A woman was lying on the bed in one corner of the examination room. That much was ordinary. The problem was her condition.

The collapsed woman wasn’t just suffering from an injured foot. Far from it—blood was flowing profusely from her neck. The bleeding was so severe that half her face was covered in blood, making it impossible to distinguish her features. As Rosemary had said, she had applied pressure bandages and sterilized cloth to the neck, and hemostatic agents were scattered nearby, but the condition clearly hadn’t improved at all. This woman was definitely an emergency patient.

Or perhaps already dead… Connor shuddered with an ominous feeling as he observed the woman’s fingers that showed no movement.

“Are you the doctor?”

Connor, who had been distracted by the woman’s condition, regained his senses when a hand gripped his shoulder, and he turned around. And the moment he looked back, he nearly fainted on the spot.

“Are you the doctor?”

“What? Ah, th-that…”

A blood-covered man was gripping Connor’s shoulder and staring intently at him.

The man was covered in blood from head to shoulder, no less than the woman. When Connor met the man’s wide-open green eyes, he held his breath. His gaze was as anxious as someone about to die, yet with a strange hint of madness. His lips were blue, and his hair, wet with rain and blood, reeked of a watery, bloody smell.

Connor had never before seen a man so desperate and terrified. He clutched his shriveled heart and barely opened his mouth, but the man seemed to have no patience to wait for Connor to calm down.

“I asked if you’re the doctor.”

“……”

Connor swallowed hard. When Connor delayed his answer, the man even bared his teeth. It was a face like that of a beast. Not just a simple expression—the man looked as if he would pounce and bite if Connor shook his head. Connor quickly nodded. Then the man grabbed Connor and dragged him toward the woman.

“Th-this! Just a moment, please!”

The man held Connor’s shoulder as if about to break it and dragged him to the bed. He was so strong that Connor, despite being somewhat stocky, was dragged like a rag doll to the bed where the woman lay.

“What on earth happened—”

“She was shot.”

“Wh-what did you say!”

The man spoke without waiting for Connor to finish. Connor shouted with a face turned pale. A gunshot? Connor hadn’t examined a gunshot wound patient since he last worked in the capital nearly five years ago.

“I said she was shot! D*mn it, aren’t you a doctor? Do something quickly!”

As Connor still failed to grasp the situation and just stared with a stupid expression, the man shouted again, baring his teeth. He looked as if he wanted to strangle Connor for not moving quickly enough. It was terrifying to be glared at by a man with a blood-slicked face who was visibly struggling to contain his emotions.

Connor, feeling threatened for his life rather than out of any sense of medical responsibility, examined the woman. When he lifted the gauze and other materials pressing on her neck, blood gushed out again. A clicking sound came from the man’s lips. The man, his face as pale as the bleeding woman’s, was gasping with a terrified expression. Though it was the woman who had collapsed unconscious on the bed, the man looked closer to death.

“Sir! This isn’t going to help the patient! I need to perform emergency surgery, so please wait outside!”

Rosemary was the first to regain her composure instead of Connor. Knowing her timid brother’s personality well, she bravely grabbed the man’s arm and pulled him away from Connor. Though she expected resistance, the man listened to Rosemary and obediently went outside as she instructed.

“Brother, start quickly! She’s going to die at this rate!”

After the man left, Rosemary urged Connor. At his sister’s words, Connor pulled himself together and began the surgery.

Connor’s face grew serious as the injury was more severe than he had initially thought. He took out surgical tools from under the bed, sterilized them, and examined the wound. His hands trembled at this unprecedented major incident. Lorelai , the novice nurse, was also flustered beside him. Like Connor, most of the patients she had dealt with in the rural hospital were those with colds, mild indigestion, or farmers who had injured their feet with hoes while working. She had never seen a critical patient bleeding so profusely.

“Go-got it… This… this seems to be the bu-bullet…”

Fortunately, thanks to his experience as a doctor in the capital, Connor was able to extract the bullet from the woman’s neck. The large size of the bullet was both unfortunate and fortunate. Additionally, it must have been a poor-quality gun, as the bullet hadn’t penetrated deeply into the thick neck muscles, allowing Connor to remove it quickly.

The surgery itself ended earlier than expected. However, the severity of the wound was unrelated to the duration of the surgery. The woman had lost too much blood, and the weather conditions during her way  to the hospital had been terrible.

Having done everything he could, Connor sat with a completely exhausted expression, forgetting even his duty to explain the situation to the guardian, the man. Rosemary glanced at the man outside the room through the small window above the door.