Though it had not rained, the floor of the tent was still damp.
The wet straw did not dry quickly even after a day, and from the places soaked with blood, a faint metallic smell kept rising.
Ruan Hesse had been unusually short of breath since morning.
Daren’s fever had barely been suppressed through the night, but it had not fully broken, and ever since he had admonished Ramon yesterday, he felt the gazes of the soldiers pacing in front of the tent even more often.
As Sera changed out the water bucket, she glanced at Ruan.
“What’s wrong with your face? You look even worse today.”
“I always look like this.”
“I don’t believe that line anymore.”
Ruan did not answer and began with the innermost stretcher.
Daren was still alive.
His fever-damp forehead was hot, but his pulse was less murky than it had been last night.
What he needed now was not reckless optimism, but to buy time.
Only after changing the wet cloth on his forehead did Ruan withdraw his hand.
The heat left on the back of his hand lingered strangely long.
As noon drew near, the sound of stretchers rushed in from outside the tent all at once.
Not one, but three.
The sound of wheels catching in the mud overlapped with the rough breathing of the evacuation soldiers as the entrance was pushed open harshly.
“Clear the way. Three critically wounded.”
Sera immediately turned, and Orte opened the record board.
Ruan also went toward the entrance.
But the moment he swept his eyes over the stretchers, something inside him stiffened first.
The first was a noncommissioned officer who had been stabbed deep in the abdomen.
Blood had already seeped beneath the stretcher, and the left side of his flank was unnaturally sunken.
The second was an infantryman with a long cut below the neck.
The bleeding was severe, but he was still breathing.
The third was a messenger whose leg was almost crushed to pieces.
Below the knee, blood, mud, and broken bone were tangled together, the shape of it collapsed.
One of the evacuation soldiers gasped out,
“We lost two more on the road.
We brought these three first, starting with the ones still alive.”
Bern Dalt came to the first stretcher first and scanned the wound.
His eyes moved quickly, as if there was no need to look long.
He said very quietly,
“We have to let one go.”
Ruan could not say anything.
Because he had known at first glance that those words were not wrong.
The second infantryman still had a chance if they seized the bleeding immediately.
The third messenger could also be saved if they cut off the leg.
The problem was the first.
The inside of his abdomen was too badly ruined.
The moment they tried to hold on to him, the time for the other two would drain away with him.
But the noncommissioned officer on the first stretcher opened his eyes.
His face was utterly bloodless, yet his gaze was strangely clear.
As though he recognized Ruan, his lips moved.
“Youngest medical officer.”
His voice cracked and flowed out almost like a breath.
Even so, Ruan heard him.
“I’m... not too late, am I?”
Sera’s hand stopped for a moment.
Orte also lifted his gaze, pen resting on the record board.
Those words were similar to what Daren had said yesterday.
But they were more terrible.
Because a body that was far too late was asking whether he was not too late.
Bern cut in coldly.
“Ruan.”
“I know.”
“If you know, move.
Start with the second.”
That was right.
Ruan knew it too.
But the first noncommissioned officer’s hand caught the end of his wet sleeve.
There was almost no strength left in it.
Even so, it did not let go.
“Please... just take a look.”
As Sera moved to the second stretcher, she shouted urgently,
“If we start with this man, he can make it.
If you don’t come now, he’s really gone.”
Bern added shortly, meaning the same thing.
“I’ll tie off the messenger.
Let the first go.”
On the battlefield, the right answer always came wearing a cruel face.
Ruan knew that better than anyone.
That was why it was even more cowardly.
Because he could not even pretend not to know.
And yet, he knelt before the first stretcher.
The moment he looked at the wound, it became even clearer.
The spearpoint had gone in at an angle and torn up the inside badly.
More blood was leaking inside than what was visible outside.
This was not a body that would live just because he held on to it.
And yet his hand would not come away.
The noncommissioned officer gritted his teeth and barely continued speaking.
“To my men...
Just tell them I didn’t die running away...”
Orte immediately came to his side and knelt.
The record board opened, and the tip of the pen quietly pressed against the paper.
That brief sound of preparation instead made Ruan more desperate.
Just one more time.
If he tried to hold on a little longer.
If, by any chance, he could get him through just one crisis of breath.
That thought ruined his fingertips.
He tried to stop the bleeding first.
He pressed down on the torn place and groped inside to find where the blood was coming from.
Though he knew he was burning time on a body that was already finished, he could not stop.
Though he knew the other two would live if he gave this one up, he could not bring himself to make that one surrender.
Meanwhile, Sera’s voice rose from the second stretcher.
“Medical Officer Bern.
The blood’s bursting out again over here.”
Bern was tightly tying off the third messenger’s leg.
Gritting his teeth and swallowing a curse, he added his own hands alone.
He did not have enough arms to hold two places at once.
Ruan heard it all.
And yet he could not look back.
The noncommissioned officer’s gaze was growing dimmer and dimmer.
Still, his hand remained clutching Ruan’s sleeve.
Those eyes were so vivid that Ruan finally crossed the last line.
He took off his wet glove.
The moment he placed his bare hand over the wound, Sera sucked in a breath.
Bern whipped his head around.
Ruan felt it again, that sensation of something being torn from inside him.
The inside of his temples went numb and white, and in his ears echoed a sound like being underwater.
The sensation of his own time draining away beneath his fingertips was far too familiar.
It was a sensation he had never wanted to grow used to, and yet one he had already used many times.
But this time was different.
The places that should have joined would not join.
He was trying to grasp severed strings, but they scattered in his hand like sand.
This was a body that had already gone too far.
The noncommissioned officer’s chest heaved once, 크게, then sank.
That was the end.
Ruan froze where he was.
Orte asked in a very low voice,
“Name.”
The noncommissioned officer’s lips moved one last time.
“Harben...
Second Spear Infantry...”
Orte’s pen scratched across the paper.
At that very moment, Sera’s voice burst from the second stretcher.
“It’s too late.”
Ruan turned around.
The infantryman cut below the neck already had his head thrown back.
It was a wound that could have been saved just moments ago.
A body that would have lived if a hand had reached him in time.
The moment Bern took his hands away, that fact became even clearer.
The third messenger was still holding on.
Bern alone was tightening the tie above the amputation line, and Sera was just withdrawing her hands from the second stretcher and turning back.
Only then did Ruan rise.
His legs wavered.
Sera’s face had gone deathly pale.
Anger, fear, and a resignation she did not want to understand were all tangled together there.
“You should have let one go and saved two.”
Those words split the air inside the tent.
“Why are you pretending you don’t know that?
It’s not like you don’t.”
Ruan could not answer.
It was true that he had not been ignorant.
He had known, and still could not let go.
That made him even more cowardly.
Bern said coldly,
“We don’t have time for you to fall apart right now.
Hold this one first.”
Only then did Ruan go to the third messenger.
The leg was already beyond saving.
If he hesitated, he would be too late again.
He gritted his teeth and prepared for amputation.
It was strangely nauseating that his hand could never bring itself to raise a blade meant to cut a person, and yet it had to raise one to cut away ruined flesh.
The messenger screamed.
Sera put something in his mouth to bite on and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
Orte was already writing the time beneath the names of the two dead.
The tent began moving again.
As it always did.
Even if someone died, the next patient came in, blood spilled again, and water boiled once more.
That made it all the more terrible.
After the amputation was over, Ruan belatedly returned to the first stretcher.
On Harben’s face remained a trace of the relief he had worn moments before.
It was the face of a man who had believed that because he had made it this far, he would live.
Ruan could not cover that face for a long while.
Orte asked quietly,
“Shall I leave his last words?”
Only after a long time did Ruan answer.
“To his men...
Please write that he died holding his ground.”
“I’ll write it exactly that way.”
Orte asked no more.
That sentence, impossible to know whether it was comfort or punishment, remained quietly on the record board.
All that afternoon, Ruan could not say “You’ll live” even once in front of a patient.
He said only what was necessary.
Press.
Water.
Thread.
Next.
That was all.
As the sun began to tilt, he sat alone before the register table.
Harben.
Second Spear Infantry.
Abdominal perforation.
Deceased.
Beneath that, there remained one more infantryman whose name they had never managed to confirm.
Laceration below the neck.
Deceased.
The tip of his pen kept trembling.
Outside the tent, someone was still speaking in a low voice.
That if the youngest medical officer was there, they could hold on.
That a few more had survived today too.
It was not wrong.
That made it all the more cruel.
The price of being unable to give up did not always return to him alone.
Today, it had returned as the breaths of two other people.
That fact broke Ruan more quietly than any scream could have.
Behind him, Sera stopped changing the water and said in a low voice,
“Next time... let go of the ones you have to let go.”
The words sounded like blame, but in truth, they were closer to a plea.
It was the voice of someone who never wanted to see the same thing happen again.
Ruan could not answer and only looked down at the register.
At sunset, another stretcher came in.
Fortunately, this time it was not a deep spear wound.
When the evacuation soldier saw the two covered stretchers inside the tent, he stopped for a moment.
That brief silence felt strangely long.
Someone muttered very quietly,
“So there are days even the youngest medical officer can’t save them.”
The voice was close to surprise.
That made it all the clearer.
Ruan pretended not to hear and opened the new patient’s wound.
Sera also said nothing and only changed the cloth.
Orte closed his eyes for a moment, then opened the record board again.
The medical tent ran the same way that day as well.
But not for Ruan.
After today, he felt he would no longer be able to tolerate, even in his own heart, the words that anyone who made it this far would live.