Right then, Taesu couldn’t move because the middle-aged man had grabbed his sleeve.
For now, he urged the two of them on.
“If they won’t come, drag them here if you have to. Just get started.”
“Right. Uh, this way.”
Bread Kim approached a nearby patient with a kind face.
But something was strange.
Swish.
The patient averted their eyes slightly.
The other patients were all the same.
Now what was going on?
Taesu’s face was filled with bewilderment.
It seemed somehow related to this middle-aged man.
It was the very moment Taesu was about to ask.
Kim Hyeokgwon’s face had flushed bright red.
He deliberately barked in Korean.
“Fuck. What kind of bastard even exists like this?”
“What’s going on?”
“He says his daughter is sick, so we need to see her quickly.”
“Is that something to get angry about?”
Rather, Taesu looked at Kim Hyeokgwon strangely.
Just then, Kim Hyeokgwon’s words carried a shocking twist.
“He says until his daughter is treated, no one here can receive treatment.”
“What?”
“If we want to treat people here—no, if we want to keep our footing here—we have to treat his daughter first, he says.”
At those words, Taesu’s face instantly twisted into one of absurdity.
He had at least wanted to speak respectfully, if only because the man was his elder, but that willingness vanished completely.
“What, who does he think he is?”
“What do you think? He’s a pig bastard with some sway in this village.”
Kim Hyeokgwon cursed openly, assuming the other man wouldn’t understand.
Of course, even if he had understood, it was true that Kim Hyeokgwon was the type to curse openly anyway.
Taesu understood at once and narrowed his brow.
“A local big shot?”
“Seems like it.”
“So what? Shouldn’t the sick come first?”
Taesu’s expression hardened.
Bread Kim and Jeong Minsu had also stopped working and were looking this way.
Anxiety lingered in their expressions.
Time was passing.
For some patients, if the timing was missed, the window for treatment might be lost.
The same was true for Taesu.
The medical staff’s atmosphere was growing heavy.
The middle-aged man added something.
The moment he heard those words, Kim Hyeokgwon’s hand moved toward his waist.
What was there?
A pistol.
Click.
Sure enough, his hand touched the holster.
The moment he saw that, Taesu quickly grabbed Kim Hyeokgwon.
“Mr. Hyeokgwon.”
“That pig bastard is oinking.”
“Excuse me?”
When Taesu asked, Kim Hyeokgwon glared at the middle-aged man and growled fiercely.
“He says there’s no one in this village who can turn their back on him and survive.”
“…….”
“He’s throwing a fit, saying his daughter absolutely comes first, treat her quickly, we have to go quickly.”
“Damn.”
Taesu’s expression gradually hardened.
The same was true for Kim Hyeokgwon.
“So I’m going to shoot him. You said it’s a problem if he gets hurt, so I’ll finish him in one shot. At this distance, I could probably just shoot roughly and be fine.”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down?”
“Please.”
When Taesu spoke in a low voice, Kim Hyeokgwon glared at him.
“Am I worse than this pig bastard holding the villagers hostage?”
“What about the rumors of an NGO running around shooting people?”
“What do I care?”
“Your income dries up.”
Only after hearing Taesu’s words strike at the core did Kim Hyeokgwon falter.
But perhaps because he didn’t like this situation, he shouted angrily.
“Goddammit. Fucking money. That fucking pig bastard is throwing a fit, a fit, a money fit.”
Kim Hyeokgwon stomped his foot on the ground.
Just then, the middle-aged man shouted something toward the back.
At the same time, someone quickly began running behind the crowd.
Taesu looked at the middle-aged man.
Even at this very moment, he was pulling his sleeve.
The pulling force was growing stronger.
Though he didn’t know Korean, he seemed to intuit that the atmosphere was turning bad.
Taesu was looking into his eyes.
Having lived among people with whom words did not communicate, he had come to realize:
Eyes never lied.
His eyes were truly desperate.
‘Please…….’
He said his daughter was sick.
Thinking of it as a father’s heart, how much it must ache.
But this kind of unreasonableness was problematic.
Then Taesu remembered something he had overlooked.
“Where is his daughter?”
“Can’t you tell he didn’t bring her? She’s probably at home.”
“Ask if it’s a situation where she can’t be moved, and how exactly she’s sick.”
When Taesu gave off an air of assent, Kim Hyeokgwon scrunched up his face fiercely.
“Why me?”
“Don’t you see those eyes, that expression?”
“Damn it. Fine. But I’m only going to relay it exactly as it is.”
Kim Hyeokgwon’s momentum softened a notch.
Still, his gaze and tone toward the middle-aged man were prickly and sharp.
Kim Hyeokgwon conversed with the middle-aged man, his face deeply furrowed.
And he relayed the answer curtly.
“He says she’ll be here soon.”
“Wasn’t he saying we should go?”
“He says he sent people because time keeps passing.”
At Kim Hyeokgwon’s answer, Taesu quietly surmised.
“That means she can be moved.”
“How would I know that?”
“You said you’d interpret properly.”
“Hoo. No, the situation is moveable… Goodness, am I a tiger? You appeared right on cue as if you knew what I was saying.”
Kim Hyeokgwon grumbled openly.
Just as he said, the people in the back stepped aside left and right.
Through that gap, other men approached carrying a makeshift stretcher.
On the stretcher, a girl of about ten lay at an angle. She was frozen in the posture she lay in, unable to move, clutching her stomach.
What was certain was that she had not been harmed by a bomb.
That was a stroke of immense fortune.
But that relief was short-lived.
The child’s complexion was unusual from the start.
She was so pale she was nearly bluish, and she was drenched in cold sweat, her long hair soaked.
“Hnnnn. Hahhhh.”
Exhausted groans born of suffering could be heard as well.
A sharp, unusual gleam flashed in Taesu’s eyes as he quickly assessed her.
Her stomach hurts?
It was too vague a serious condition.
But what was certain was that this wasn’t a situation they could simply watch.
Taesu immediately called for Bread Kim.
“Bread, we need to take a look together.”
“On my way.”
Tap-tap-tap.
He approached, stepping roughly on the mat.
In the meantime, Taesu spoke to Kim Hyeokgwon.
“Lower the patient carefully, and ask him. When it started hurting, how it hurts, and so on.”
“Why, aren’t you going to tell me to go have a cup of tea first?”
“Does this look like malingering to you?”
Taesu’s voice sank low.
The atmosphere that had been accommodating Kim Hyeokgwon’s mood suddenly turned cold.
Of course, Kim Hyeokgwon didn’t seem to have any intention of acting out forever either. Still, his gaze toward the middle-aged man wasn’t kind.
“^#$%#.”
Kim Hyeokgwon began saying something to the middle-aged man with a hardened expression.
At that opportune moment, Bread Kim arrived.
“Why, what the… Holy shit.”
“As you can see, it’s griping pain (severe abdominal pain). I think we need to start with a stethoscope exam.”
“Okay, got it. Just a sec.”
Fwoosh.
Bread Kim opened the small bag he had brought and took out a stethoscope.
In the meantime, Taesu also had something to do.
That was, of course, to ease the pain.
He was pressed for time.
“The painkiller is… Where, where was it?”
Clatter.
Taesu opened his bag wide and rummaged through it as if turning it inside out. And soon, he took out the painkiller and loaded it into a syringe.
Then, he carefully pulled at the arm of the child clutching her stomach.
But she didn’t budge.
She showed no sign of movement, so tightly was she clutching her stomach.
He could pull it out with more force.
It wasn’t that Taesu couldn’t match the child’s strength. But he didn’t use force to pull the arm out against her will.
Just then, Bread Kim, who was listening with the stethoscope, spoke to Taesu.
“Don’t make her tense up too much. The sounds change.”
“Understood.”
Taesu answered shortly.
When the best option isn’t available, there’s a second best.
He immediately shifted his gaze to the child’s instep.
There were no shoes.
Obviously, she had been carried straight out from home.
Pushing that guess to one side of his mind, he fixed his eyes on the blue vein faintly visible on the instep.
Swish-swish.
He applied antiseptic and pushed the syringe in along the vein.
“This is going to sting.”
Honestly, this hurts.
The instep is a vulnerable spot for pain; compared to the back of the hand, it hurts roughly ten times as much.
But the child didn’t move a muscle.
She couldn’t feel pain to the extent that even screaming and crying wouldn’t bring relief.
He got a bit more of a sense of how severe the abdominal pain was.
Taesu nodded.
“No wonder he’s making a fuss.”
“No reaction?”
“No.”
“Damn. The kid’s in this much pain.”
Bread Kim frowned deeply even as he listened with the stethoscope.
On the other hand, Taesu thought in another direction.
That didn’t mean the middle-aged man’s behavior was right at all.
It was clearly wrong behavior.
It was merely the extent of trying to understand while guessing the heartache that must have worn the man thin all this time.
Administering a painkiller doesn’t reduce the pain immediately.
A little time was needed.
In the meantime, Bread Kim took the stethoscope from his ear and spoke.
“What is this?”
“You don’t know?”
“There are so many types of abdominal pain. There aren’t any specific sounds or symptoms.”
Bread Kim’s words were correct.
Pelvic inflammation, mesenteric lymphadenitis, intussusception, diverticulitis, gastric ulcer, intestinal ulcer, and so on.
Just thinking of illnesses related to abdominal pain, there were dozens.
Taesu immediately looked up at Kim Hyeokgwon and asked.
“What does he say?”
“Hmm. It seems the abdominal pain started three days ago. They thought she ate something bad, but realized that wasn’t it two days ago.”
“…….”
“He says they gave her the traditionally used herb for pain.”
“A folk remedy?”
When Taesu asked immediately, Kim Hyeokgwon nodded.
“I suppose so.”
“If a child is sick, you take her to the hospital.”
“My point exactly, just a moment. Damn. It seems he couldn’t budge an inch because of some damned matter.”
Kim Hyeokgwon exchanged a few words with the middle-aged man and answered.
But that wasn’t the answer Taesu wanted.
“Anyway, does he not know how exactly her stomach hurts?”
“He does point it out. He says it hurt there first.”
“The right lower abdomen?”
Taesu narrowed his brow as he watched the spot the middle-aged man pointed to on his own stomach.
Bread Kim, who was beside him, shook his head.
“It’s still too broad. It isn’t definitely bromatotoxism (food poisoning), and it wasn’t intussusception either.”
“It doesn’t look like we have time to rule them out one by one like that.”
“Then what do we do? What do we look at to get a feel for it?”
“We just have to see. Sam.”
Taesu suddenly called out loudly for Sergeant Sam.
Sergeant Sam, who had been watching the situation in front of the building, immediately answered loudly.
“Sure thing, Doctor. We’re ready.”
“Thank you. Bread, let’s move her.”
“You want to just operate? Even if it’s abdominal pain, you can’t just rush in like that. Huh? Fine, lift. I said let’s lift.”
Bread Kim, who had been about to object, quickly moved to help when Taesu lifted the stretcher.
What about Jeong Minsu?
Before anyone knew it, he was already in the back clearing people away and making a path.
Quiet to the point of being unnoticeable, yet at the necessary moment, he handled things on his own initiative, competently.
Without forgetting, Taesu spoke briefly to Sergeant Sam.
“Sam, I’m counting on you.”
“We’ll push through with military spirit.”
“Exactly that.”
“Sure thing. Let’s move.”
At Sergeant Sam’s words, the PKO soldiers began to move.
They were the most reliable assistants for when the medical staff needed to temporarily leave their posts.