In the meantime, Taesu picked up the automatic blood pressure monitor.
Checking his vitals was urgent.
As for the pain, Kim Hyeokgwon would let him know as he spoke with the patient.
They understood each other well enough for that, so Taesu first looked for the patient’s wrist.
The patient was lying face down, both hands stretched out in front of him.
It wasn’t difficult to find his wrist.
But the moment he grasped it, he saw red traces of bleeding around it.
Bleeding here?
It was far too unexpected a place.
But the blood was indeed the patient’s.
All the tips of his fingers were crushed.
His fingernails were shattered as well.
At a glance, Taesu could read the desperate struggle of a man who had tried to escape the agony and pain.
At that moment, the patient’s words came back to him.
“Please kill me.”
Only now could he read the desperation contained in that absurd request.
Whoooosh.
A cold wind blew through his chest.
He could vaguely understand why he and Kim Hyeokgwon, both men with a fierce attachment to life, had been shaken.
But Taesu was not shaken twice.
A doctor was someone who saved lives.
He should not speak of death first.
That, too, was an unchanging reality.
“They say even rolling in a field of dung is better than the afterlife.”
Taesu murmured in Korean, low enough that only he could hear.
Then he moved his hands and attached the automatic blood pressure monitor.
Beep.
When he pressed the button, numbers soon appeared.
The instant he saw them—
“Gasp!”
Taesu sucked in a sharp, violent breath.
It was a moment that made his resolve not to be shaken seem meaningless.
That reaction lasted only briefly, and he quickly pressed the automatic blood pressure monitor again.
Beep.
“Again.”
Beep!
“That can’t be right.”
Beep.
He pressed it, then pressed it again.
Taesu kept repeatedly pressing the button on the automatic blood pressure monitor. But the numbers he did not want to believe kept appearing.
In the end, Taesu’s hand stopped first.
‘Damn it.’
His mind grew complicated.
But that lasted only a moment.
This was not the time to be confused.
His heart grew urgent.
“We have to hurry!”
He quickly dragged over the emergency bag and immediately searched for injectables.
Clack!
He was bustling in a way unlike himself.
In that rush, Taesu filled a syringe with medication.
He immediately handed the syringe to Kim Hyeokgwon and gave an order.
“Mr. Hyeokgwon, cardiotonic, administer it!”
“From the start?”
“Injection site is the subclavian vein. Don’t pull out the needle after the injection. Stand by!”
Thud.
Taesu practically placed the syringe into Kim Hyeokgwon’s hand.
Even Kim Hyeokgwon found it unfamiliar to see Taesu in such a hurry.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Hurry. Now!”
Taesu’s voice was urgent as expected.
Above all, it was the first time he had specified even the injection site.
Kim Hyeokgwon did not ask Taesu twice or demand an explanation.
He sensed something too.
With instincts that rivaled Taesu’s, he immediately moved his hands.
“The subclavian vein, then... approach like this. Got it. Administering!”
“Antiarrhythmic agent!”
“Received, administering!”
“Next, arteriopressor!”
Taesu announced and handed them over as soon as they were ready.
Usually, he asked Kim Hyeokgwon to prepare them and administered them himself.
But this time, Taesu personally prepared each one with meticulous care and handed them over.
This was not common.
In an instant, a large number of drugs essential for sustaining life were administered.
There were enough empty ampoules to fill a fist.
Taesu was checking the automatic blood pressure monitor again.
Beep, beep.
His expression was terribly grave.
After pressing the automatic blood pressure monitor a few more times,
Taesu’s face had turned fierce enough to be frightening to meet.
“Hiss.”
At that dissatisfied intake of breath, Kim Hyeokgwon immediately asked,
“How bad is it?”
“Before that, what about his pain?”
“He keeps repeating that it hurts.”
“Give him another morphine injection.”
At Taesu’s words, Kim Hyeokgwon flinched and asked,
“The morphine injection we gave him earlier wasn’t defective?”
“Administer it first. And if he says it still hurts after one minute, give him an additional dose.”
“Doctor Choi, even if the patient said he wanted to die, you can’t react that emotionally.”
“This isn’t the time to worry about acute morphinism.”
Taesu answered with firm eyes, emphasizing his point.
Until now, he had been extremely restrictive with morphine injections.
It worked well, but he had been wary of the aftereffects.
After helicopter dispatches began, the amount used had increased sharply.
That meant the patients’ conditions had been that bad.
But this time, he was even ordering a drug overdose.
It could not be an ordinary serious condition.
At Taesu’s heavy pressure, as if he could crush even a mountain, Kim Hyeokgwon’s expression also turned cold.
“Understood.”
“What have you found out?”
“The patient’s name is Apsallaman. He says his shop collapsed in a bombing, and he was crushed while trying to escape.”
“How far can he feel sensation?”
When Taesu continued asking, Kim Hyeokgwon answered at once.
“The pain is still so intense that he doesn’t seem to have the presence of mind to check sensation.”
“I’ll start cleaning him first, so after administering the morphine, tell Chakam to look for his family.”
At Taesu’s words, Kim Hyeokgwon doubted his ears.
“You’re not telling him to find a rescue method, but to find his family?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean...”
Just as the flustered Kim Hyeokgwon was about to ask,
Rustle.
Chakam approached beside them and pointed to himself as he asked,
“Me?”
“You understood that, of all things. @$@#.”
“#%#$%.”
The two exchanged a few brief words.
Then Kim Hyeokgwon asked Taesu again.
“Are you really telling him to find his family?”
“Yes.”
“Publicly? Or quietly?”
“As quickly as possible.”
Taesu gave a completely different answer.
But at that, Kim Hyeokgwon’s expression hardened even more.
“Chakam. %#3@%#@.”
“@%#@$?”
“#%#.”
“Huh. #%#$%.”
Chakam let out a heavy breath and turned away.
In the meantime, Taesu administered the second dose of morphine.
He had asked Kim Hyeokgwon to do it, but because of the brief gap, Taesu stepped in instead.
He proceeded with an intravenous injection, not an intramuscular one.
Squeeeze!
He pushed it in straight.
Doing it this way had the advantage of spreading the drug much faster.
But Apsallaman’s reaction was still faint.
“Huuuuh. Uuugh...”
Fortunately, his groans clearly diminished.
Taesu watched his reaction and took out saline, beginning to rinse him.
Drip, drip.
The saline ran over Apsallaman’s hair, then down his face.
“Ugh, huh?”
There was a reaction from the dazed Apsallaman.
As if realizing it was water, he stuck out his tongue and tried to drink the water running over his face.
When that did not work, he even tried to turn his head.
“W-water...”
It was such a different sight from the man who had wished for death that Taesu almost wanted to rub his eyes.
Before he could strain himself, Taesu quickly brought the saline to his mouth.
“Water here!”
He shouted in English, but he could not be sure the man understood.
The moment the water touched Apsallaman’s mouth, he began sucking it in greedily.
The saline flowed endlessly down his throat.
“Mm, hff! Cough, hff!”
Gulp, gulp.
Apsallaman was desperate to quench his thirst, even suppressing his coughing.
Taesu silently nodded.
“Slowly. There’s plenty, so drink slowly.”
He even soothed him quietly in Korean.
This was instinct.
A struggle to live.
Taesu had not the slightest intention of reproaching or condemning him for saying something different before.
At the same time,
people began rushing about over there.
“%#$@%.”
“@%#$!”
They even shouted loudly.
Kim Hyeokgwon told him what the words meant.
“They’re telling people to ask around for his family. They’re saying his relatives live nearby too, so look for them.”
“Someone will come soon.”
“But Doctor Choi, is it true?”
Kim Hyeokgwon could not easily believe it.
He had not said a word until now.
But both of them had sensed it too strongly.
It was death.
Apsallaman must have wanted death because he could not endure the pain.
But that was becoming reality.
More than anything, what puzzled Kim Hyeokgwon was Taesu’s attitude.
He was not the kind of man to so easily give up on a patient nearing death.
Taesu knew this was not something he could hide, so he told him everything.
“The truth is, his vitals are...”
He began calling out the exact numbers.
He had put it off because preparing the injections had been more urgent.
Hearing those numbers, Kim Hyeokgwon was greatly shaken.
“Doctor Choi, wait. Wait a second. Let me sort this out in my head.”
“All right.”
Taesu readily agreed.
And even now, he continued helping Apsallaman quench his thirst.
He must have been terribly thirsty, because he drank without end.
Taesu watched him with sorrowful eyes.
A little while later,
Apsallaman finished quenching his thirst.
Taesu resumed rinsing him with saline.
“Huuu. Huuu.”
Now there was moisture in Apsallaman’s breathing.
Taesu carefully wiped his face first with gauze. As the pale dust cleared away, Apsallaman’s skin color was revealed.
Most of the people here had deep flesh-toned or light brown skin.
But Apsallaman’s complexion was far lighter than that.
He had gone that deathly pale.
Even though he had quenched his thirst sufficiently, his lips were dry again.
Above all, compared to the clothes he was wearing, his body looked gaunt.
“...”
Taesu took all of that in with his eyes and silently continued rinsing him.
His sharp eye stirred.
It was a sign that he had found something unnatural in Apsallaman.
But he did not bother mentioning it.
Only his gaze deepened, while his hands continued calmly cleaning him.
Then Kim Hyeokgwon’s hand moved.
Beep.
The instant he checked the automatic blood pressure monitor’s numbers himself,
Kim Hyeokgwon swiftly looked at Taesu, his eyes stiffening completely.
“Can the numbers be this low?”
“Yes.”
“How on earth?”
When Kim Hyeokgwon failed to understand, Taesu glanced around and asked in return,
“Doesn’t anything here seem strange to you?”
“Strange? There’s just a ton of dust.”
“That’s right. There’s only dust.”
Taesu answered the same way.
Kim Hyeokgwon chewed over those words crookedly, then realized what was odd.
“Right. There’s only dust... and there shouldn’t be.”
“No. There shouldn’t.”
“Damn it.”
Kim Hyeokgwon’s expression hardened at once.
Aside from dust, something that should have been there was absent.
It was blood.
Hemoptysis or hematemesis, anything would have done.
If not that, then at least traces of bleeding should have been found around the rubble.
But it was too clean.
In such a case, if there was no bleeding, two possibilities could be inferred.
First, by some stroke of heavenly luck, he had only been pinned beneath the rubble without being wounded.
That was even less likely.
And there was a second possibility.
That was that the unseen bleeding was so severe there was no blood left to vomit.