Apothecary He’s fingers dug into Lin Ke’s wrist blood vessel with enough force to bruise the bone.
“Irregular,” He hissed between clenched teeth, his breath hot and sour against Lin Ke’s ear. “Desynchronized flutter. Pulse pressure under thirty. And what’s this reek? Did you try to swallow lightning, you lunatic?!”
With a single slash of his razor-sharp razor knife, the old man cut the leftover ox-hide straps binding Lin Ke to the granite bench. Lin Ke slumped forward, his forehead thudding against the apothecary’s blood-caked apron.
His whole torso was shivering wildly.
Around his waist, beneath his torn tunic, the flesh was not merely bruised. A four-inch-wide band of dark, swollen purple contusions encircled his hip bones—the physical footprint of the Dai Mai solenoid wildly compressing the deep tissues under four point eight Tesla of magnetic flux.
“Acute myocardial deep bruise,” Lin Ke rasped, his voice a dry, gravelly croak. “Severe brain blood loss. Leftover static charge in the heart-sac.”
“Shut your mouth!” Apothecary He barked, shoving Lin Ke flat onto a wooden stretcher hauled in by the apprentices. “You don’t diagnose yourself in my clinic! You should be a corpse! Your sinoatrial node took enough voltage to kill an ox!”
