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He rushes into the patient’s room as soon as he hears Foreman calling for help, running to get the defibrillator’s paddles as soon as he can, else he knew the patient was gonna die. As the others are desperately trying to dry him off, he runs to his bedside, ready to kickstart the beating of this guy’s heart.
Technically, he knows that using the shock paddles on the not yet dry patient is dangerous, reckless, but he tells Foreman that he’ll get brain damage if they wait more, and it’s even true (last time he set the patient on fire, but he believes that if the patient could choose, he’d choose burns that will heal over death). Danger be damned, bringing the patient back was more important. He can see Taub and Foreman and the nurses still trying to dry the soaking-wet patient, he hears the noise, the desperation of trying to save a life.
(If something happens to him — the patient’s life is always the priority —
— and he hardly cares about his own anyway.)
So — “He’s dry enough.” He starts fiddling with the paddles, “Clear!” He shouts as he shocks the patient, hopefully, back to life, as he goes flying backwards, the last things he experiences as he gets knocked out being the force of electricity in his body, buzzing in his ears, lightning and static and jolts and pain, his whole body tingling into nothingness.
Unconsciousness doesn’t feel like much of anything, Kutner notes when he wakes. He can feel the cold of the hospital floor, and when he opens his eyes, he sees the familiar mind-numbing white of the ceiling.
He can feel and see Foreman by his side, checking his pulse — that is irregular, but not gravely so(and given that he has just shocked himself, makes sense) — and looking at him with that ever-serious expression of his (he’s only met the guy today, but he’s scarcely seen him smile). He can see Taub too, hands in his pocket, still not knowing how to react.
He can feel tingling in his…whole body, really, pins and needless in his fingers and toes as he tries to wake them up out of the numbness, wiggle them out of sleep. He feels pain, too, an ache in his head. He breathes, as he tries to pull himself up, at least so he doesn’t have to look at the ceiling anymore. He barely feels his arms, but he doesn’t worry about it.
“You nearly electrocuted yourself.” Foreman states, no discernible emotion in his voice, but he’s still by Kutner’s side. “What you did was insane.” Taub finally says, coming near him.
“But I saved the patient, didn’t I?” He grins, tries to assure them that he’s fine. The symptoms of electric shock, numbness or tingling, headaches, breathing problems, loss of consciousness,…, he thinks, and he’s only checked a few of these symptoms. So it’s fine, he’s fine. He likes to think that if it had been more serious, he’d be worried, then.
Foreman sighs, and Taub looks incredulous at him, disbelieving in his recklessness and dismissiveness of the former.
The pain keeps him awake, alert. He even laughs, just another bout of rashness by a young doctor, all in the name of keeping the patient alive. He almost believes himself.
By the time they’re back in the lecture theatre, the numbness has largely gone away, the tingling only ever so slightly still buzzing in his fingertips, his headache almost gone, too. He had been a bit dizzy after, for his first few steps, but nothing he couldn't handle. After enough reassuring the nurses, and Foreman and Taub, that he was in fact alright, they let him be.
Dedication, not thinking things through, being honestly kind of insane, that’s all there is to it.
(When House is talking, it almost reminds me of the nurse that would tend to his bloody noses and whatnot after he’d provoke another kid until he got punched, asking him just why he liked to put himself in danger. He didn’t know the answer, then. He doesn’t want to think about it now.)
Electricity. Lightning bolts. Buzzing, ringing in his ears, tingling in his fingertips. House’s voice, the voices of his colleagues. The fellowship spot he’s trying to win. It’s all whirring around him. He tries to focus on the patient.