Unexpectedly, the patient remained still, his gaze turned away.
“Mmm, mmm.”
He flinched. Small tremors.
Weak groans and tiny movements.
Thanks to the morphine, it was more a reaction to an unfamiliar touch than pain.
There was no sign of refusal.
Once loosened, his guard did not easily return to its place.
*Hmm. Is that how it is?*
Taesu got a firmer sense of things.
Even so, cleansing the wound continued swiftly and meticulously.
As the cleansing progressed, the wound revealed itself.
The moment he saw it, Taesu’s expression soured.
Burns covered roughly thirty percent of the patient’s right face.
Severe enough to guess second to third degree.
At the center of those burns, grenade shrapnel was embedded.
*Damn.*
The sight of the festering burns was anything but pleasant no matter how he looked at it.
Then the arms and legs were likely in a similar state.
Now that he had roughly gauged it, it was time to begin treatment.
Clack.
Taesu pulled antiseptic, gauze, and DeBakey forceps from his deployment bag.
He poured antiseptic onto the face bit by bit, pressed firmly with gauze, and drained the exudate.
Then.
Swoosh.
With careful movements, he manipulated the DeBakey forceps and probed the pieces of grenade shrapnel.
Some came out; some did not.
Taesu removed what he could and left the rest as they were.
It was minimal emergency care.
Important as the young man was, he could not invest a long time.
He had examined everything up to here, and the most urgent parts were sorted.
Now it was time to wrap up.
Taesu decided to cover the wound.
“It looks better, and it’ll reduce the risk of infection.”
Even if the patient couldn’t understand, he explained everything anyway.
His hands moved busily all the while.
Clack. Clack.
First, he pressed gauze soaked in antiseptic against the skin.
Over it, he sprinkled liquid hemostatic agent and anti-inflammatory to stop bleeding and prevent the spread of inflammation.
Finally, he pulled out a compression bandage and wrapped the face as loosely as possible.
Rustle, rustle.
“Slowly, relax your neck…….”
He kept talking because his tone of voice could convey his state of mind.
It had an effect.
The patient entrusted his body to the flow of Taesu’s movements.
In that moment, Taesu realized clearly.
Composure.
No matter the situation, he had to maintain composure and minimize agitation.
That was to reassure the patient.
It also helped him, as a doctor, proceed sequentially through the emergency treatment.
He understood it clearly in his head.
He felt it in his heart.
But Taesu was too young.
His personality was prickly, and his mental discipline lacking.
*Composure my ass.*
Inside, he was burning with anxiety.
The effort to hide it was almost painfully touching.
Hiding his urgency, he administered emergency treatment to the patient’s other wounds in the same order.
Soon, Taesu finished the emergency care for the young patient.
He was administering the final injections.
“Sting.”
Prick.
As the needle pierced the flesh, a somewhat unique sensation was felt.
Strangely enough, a suppressed scream escaped, as if he had felt the needle.
“Ungh.”
“You brat.”
Taesu, looking at him, smiled faintly.
The patient had his exposed left eye squeezed tight.
Rather than feeling pain, he seemed to have been scared of the needle beforehand.
If he’s in his early twenties?
*Must be the age when shots are scary.*
Taesu wore a bland smile, kept the needle in place, and simply switched medications, administering continuously.
Antibiotics, hemostatic agent, and then painkiller.
Now the emergency treatment was finished.
Literally, it was only enough to buy time.
The unfinished emergency care was replaced by leaving a message.
On the compression bandage wrapped around the arm, he wrote with a thick blue pen:
— 2nd EC
EC was an abbreviation for emergency care.
The deliberate use of blue indicated a lightly wounded patient.
— A patient who doesn’t need to be rushed but requires a second round of emergency care.
That was what it meant.
Classifying his injuries as minor might have seemed unreasonable.
But that was the reality.
These days, even such wounds had to be considered minor.
Now it was time to part.
“I’ll come back later.”
Pat, pat.
He spoke in a gentle voice and lightly tapped the uninjured shoulder.
The moment he turned away from the patient, he checked the time.
*About 2 minutes 30 seconds.*
That was the time spent on emergency treatment for the young patient.
Considering the chaos, it had progressed quite quickly.
But Taesu was not satisfied.
He intended to treat the patients filling his sight even faster.
“Guhh.”
Just then, a groan was heard nearby.
Without delay, Taesu turned and stepped in that direction.
At the same time.
“Huuuh. Huuuuh…….”
Taesu froze at the sudden sound of sobbing.
It was crying from very close by.
He froze.
It seized Taesu’s feet.
Looking back, the young patient was sobbing.
Grip.
He was crying, clutching Taesu’s clothes in a crushing grip.
Taesu offered a light gesture of encouragement as if by habit.
That touch seemed to have strongly stirred the young man’s heart.
“It’s nothing.”
Taesu looked at his own hand, tilted his head, and left for another patient.
That was something Taesu didn’t yet understand.
Sincerity.
Isn’t something you show deliberately.
It could be conveyed more strongly through a single trivial action.
As Taesu agilely closed the distance to the second patient.
Crackle.
Along with the radio noise, Jeong Min-su’s flustered voice came through the earpiece.
— Crackle. Taesu.
“Emergency?”
— Crackle. Emergencies everywhere……. No, I mean, urgh…….
Finding Jeong Min-su’s reaction odd, Taesu turned to look.
Near the container, Jeong Min-su was floundering.
In front of him was a female patient, estimated to be in her forties, trembling faintly.
If Jeong Min-su approached even slightly?
The female patient would recoil in shock—something even Taesu could see.
Their eyes happened to meet.
Jeong Min-su hurriedly pressed the radio and vented his frustration.
— Crackle. See? Her leg’s broken and torn, but she won’t let me touch her.
“Min-su, smile.”
— Crackle. You punk, smiling in this situation makes you a thug.
“You don’t have the makings of a thug, so settle for looking like a jar of pickles.”
Taesu explained what he had just experienced.
But Jeong Min-su didn’t understand at all.
Instead, he choked up and yelled at Taesu for talking nonsense.
— Crackle, do you really want to do this right now? Hurry up and tell me how to calm her down. ……Please don’t cry. I’m not saying that to you, patient. Oops, the radio.
“Dr. Jeong, I’m serious. Calm down and smile.”
— Crackle. You really want me to do that?
“Yeah. Smile for real. Smile and good things happen. Arrived at the second patient, beginning emergency care.”
Taesu spoke quickly and ended the radio call.
This patient was in worse shape than the young one.
A middle-aged man who looked to be in his fifties.
Blood had flowed from his left thigh down to his foot and clotted.
His right shoulder was also dislocated.
It was a sight only possible with a fractured clavicle.
*Everything’s broken.*
While diagnosing, he examined the thigh bleeding more closely.
There was no bleeding above the thigh.
Then it could be seen that the bleeding had started from a specific spot.
In such cases, one situation could be determined.
Gunshot wound.
A stray bullet had undoubtedly struck the thigh.
Besides that, faint burn marks were visible here and there.
But those were old, healed scars.
Just as Taesu was surveying the whole with sharp eyes.
The wary middle-aged patient opened his eyes slightly.
Then he cautiously opened his mouth.
“Real doctor?”
The language of the question was English.
At the sound, Taesu immediately faced him and responded.
“Yes. I am a doctor. Can you speak English?”
“I ran a food business.”
“English, thank you. I’ll show you proof I’m a doctor right away.”
Snap.
He opened the front of his coat to clearly reveal the NGO logo embroidered on his gown.
Fortunately, as if he had seen it before, tears welled in the middle-aged patient’s eyes.
“Save, save……. me. Please. Save us…….”
“I will. That’s why I came.”
“Huuugh.”
Grip.
The middle-aged patient clutched Taesu and wailed.
Tears spilled out as his suppressed emotions unraveled.
But Taesu couldn’t leisurely entertain those feelings.
Now that he could communicate with the patient, he pressed even harder.
“First, where does your thigh hurt?”
“Huu, huu.”
“You mustn’t weaken. What about all these people here?”
“Ahem. I……. I want to cry too……. that’s what I’m saying.”
“Grit your teeth if you have to, but don’t lose your tension.”
Taesu pressed fiercely.
A realization?
As expected, Taesu still had a long way to go.
By nature, he was the type who gained more energy from pushing aggressively.
At Taesu’s rough pressing, the middle-aged patient desperately tried to swallow his tears.
“Huu, huu, huuu…….”
“But if you really want to cry, tell me exactly where you were shot.”
“I never said it was a gunshot. I-it’s the back of my thigh.”
“Lie face down. I’ll let you cry your heart out.”
The nuance of Taesu’s words was a bit strange.
Whether he had the mind to gauge it or not, the patient dragged his leg and turned over with difficulty.
Thud.
“Kuuuugh.”
In the meantime, Taesu took out a morphine syringe and gripped it threateningly.
As if giving notice, he stabbed it down near the buttocks.
“Let’s start by jacking some morphine.”
Plunge.
“Kugh……. Ughhhh……. Huh?”
As the stinging pain quickly subsided and the leg pain dulled, the middle-aged patient was bewildered.
Taesu didn’t look like he had any intention of explaining.
Rip.
He ruthlessly tore the blood-soaked pants of the middle-aged patient.
Instead of dusky skin, it was filled with crimson blood and dust.
In this case, it was unconditionally cleanse and disinfect.
Splash, swish.
“Ungh, ugh. Ugh…….”
“What’s this for……. The timing will come soon. Get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to cry. Now, get rea—dy…….”
Taesu stretched the end of his word long and longer.
His gaze was focused on the wound located at the back of the roughly cleaned thigh.
*There’s an entry wound, but no exit wound?*
Then it could only mean the bullet was lodged inside.
Assessment complete.
Now it was time to begin.
Clack.
Pulling out two new surgical tools, he finished stretching his word.
“Cry.”
“Huh?”
Plunge.
“Cry.”
“Aaaaack.”
From the middle-aged patient’s mouth burst not sobs but a scream.