“We have to move that man first.”
Ruan’s words shot out from the third row of the waiting area.
The soldier lying on the third stretcher by the door was soaked beneath the left side of his chest. With every breath in, one side of his ribs rose a beat late, and the edges of his lips were already cooling blue.
And yet, inside the partition, a knight with a slashed arm had been taken in first. There was a lot of blood, but his pulse was still firm. He did not have the face of a man about to go out this very moment.
From a distance, the main camp’s medical bureau looked like a large hospital. Tents stretched on like roads, and the smell of boiled cloth and medicinal herbs covered the smell of blood.
But the moment Ruan took one step inside, he knew.
This place was only spacious.
The flow of movement was blocked from the start. Evacuation soldiers carrying stretchers, assistants hauling bandages, clerks writing name tags, attendants raising their voices and demanding their own patients be seen first. All those feet were tangled in one place, while the most urgent breathing kept being pushed back.
“This is the waiting area.”
The clerk leading the way spoke indifferently.
“Once classification is finished, they are sent inside.”
“He hasn’t been marked yet.”
“There’s no time to mark him.”
The clerk did not even look troubled.
He simply flipped through his board with an annoyed expression.
“We clear the officer patients first, then bring him in.”
Only then did Ruan look farther inside.
Recovering patients and fever patients were lined up together, and bloodied cloth and boiled bandages were mixed in the same box.
The surgical waiting list had only names written on it.
It did not say who would die first.
Beside him, Bern swallowed a curse under his breath.
“It’s just big. Everything’s clogged.”
Ruan was already kneeling beside the stretcher.
When he pulled away the wet cloth, the sound of breathing became clearer.
At the end of every inhale, tiny bubbles rose from inside.
“There’s blood pooled inside the wound.”
The clerk belatedly raised his voice.
“You can’t touch him without permission!”
“Then he’ll die.”
Only after saying it curtly did Ruan draw his hand back.
What he could do ended at diagnosis.
This was not his tent.
The blades, the water, the hands—all of them were bound to someone else’s order.
Frustration caught in his throat first.
Karen stepped aside from the doorway.
Sera opened two nearby boxes and her face hardened.
Orte was already scanning the record board propped against the wall.
“There are only names. No times.”
“There’s no section for fever patients either.”
Sera’s words overlapped with his.
“They haven’t separated boiled water from washing water.”
The moment Ruan heard that, he could no longer stand there.
He slipped a hand beneath the soldier’s neck on the stretcher and shifted his position ever so slightly.
Then the breath that had been choking off extended just a little longer.
“Senior Bern, we only need to clear the spot with the knife.
Sera, separate the bandage boxes.
Mr. Orte, add the time and wound location beside the names first.”
The clerk laughed as if he found it absurd.
“A low-ranking military physician intends to reorganize the main camp’s medical bureau?”
“I’m not trying to reorganize it.”
Ruan spoke without even raising his eyes.
“I’m saying we should see them in the order they are dying.”
As soon as he finished speaking, a senior military physician in a gray uniform emerged from the tent inside.
He looked younger than Bern, but his eyes held the sharpness of position before the weight of long-accumulated fatigue.
It was the face of someone who had already heard the rumors.
Even so, his expression did not change.
“This is not a front-line tent.
Patients move according to procedure.”
Only then did Ruan lift his head.
“Then that man will die before the procedure is over.”
“Your basis?”
“The color of his lips.
The difference in movement between the left and right sides of the chest.
Bubbling respiration.
Even now, it’s getting shorter.”
As he spoke one line at a time, the soldier on the stretcher coughed shallowly again.
Red foam stained the corner of his mouth.
Only then did the air around them change, if only slightly.
Just as the senior military physician was about to raise his hand toward the inside, a heavier voice fell from behind.
“You asked. You heard his answer. That’s enough.”
It was Eisen Locke.
With only two guards in tow, he stood at the end of the passage as if he had entered without anyone noticing.
All movement inside the tent went quiet at once.
The senior military physician immediately bent at the waist.
“Commander. According to regulations, if we skip the classification procedure, the confusion will grow worse.”
“It is already confusion.”
Eisen cut him off curtly.
His gaze swept, in order, over one stretcher, one row of recovering patients, and the mixed water buckets and bandage boxes.
“It is spacious, but slow.
And slow, yet without standards.”
The senior military physician’s jaw briefly stiffened.
“We have held out until now.”
“And you intend to hold out in that state again today?”
Eisen did not say any more.
Instead, he moved the tip of his chin very slightly toward Ruan.
“Do what you were doing.”
His tone was closer to calculation than permission.
Still, that one sentence was enough.
Bern immediately pushed aside and cleared the inner surgical partition.
Sera separated the clean cloth from the bloodstained cloth.
Orte drew additional lines beneath the names on the plank leaning against the wall.
Time of arrival.
Wound location.
Presence of fever.
In the meantime, Ruan personally pushed the stretcher inside.
“We open from the left intercostal space first.
We have to drain it before his breathing stops.”
The senior military physician asked with a stiff face.
“And if you fail?”
“That would have been the same anyway.”
Ruan answered, then immediately bent over the patient.
Who was listening did not matter.
The only thing that mattered now was the breath breaking apart beneath his fingertips.
The blade went in, and the blood that had been trapped poured out.
Bern caught it, and Sera immediately pressed in cloth.
The soldier’s shoulders jerked up once, hard, and then the airway that had barely been blocked opened again.
“One holds.”
That was all Ruan said.
There was no room for relief.
Outside, the sound of another stretcher continued, and names rapidly increased on the newly marked plank.
Then, from inside the partition, the attendant of the knight with the cut arm shouted harshly.
“We came in first!”
His raised voice burst out before even the smell of blood.
When two attendants tried to approach the stretcher, Karen stepped sideways and blocked their path.
She had not drawn her sword, but the air immediately hardened.
“He is a knight.”
“I know.”
Ruan replied without even having time to wash his hands.
“But he is not dying yet.
This one is dying now.”
The attendant’s face reddened.
“How can you make that judgment—”
“You just saw it, didn’t you?”
Sera snapped back in his place.
“We just opened up a man who was suffocating.
If you have the strength to shout, go to the back.”
The senior military physician narrowed his brow, but this time, the attendant was the first to retreat.
Because even without looking, he could feel where the commander was standing.
Ruan immediately scanned the next row.
Two feverish patients were mixed in beside soldiers who had just been sutured, and on the floor, cloth stained with freshly squeezed pus had been left uncleared.
The moment the smells mingled all at once, the back of his neck went cold.
“Move those two to the far right.
If you put them with the recovering patients, they’ll all have fevers by tomorrow.”
“There’s no space.”
One assistant answered with a bloodless face.
“Make it.”
Ruan pushed two empty water buckets with the tip of his foot, creating a boundary for the section.
“Set up another partition, and bring boiled water only inside this area.
Keep washing water outside.
Do not bring blood-wiping cloth back in.”
His words were brief, but his hands were faster.
When he moved one thing, Sera separated two, and Orte added short markings at the ends of each line.
Red dots meant immediate treatment.
Black lines meant fever isolation.
Circles meant recovery waiting.
It was only one plank, but even the steps of the two clerks changed.
They no longer had to ask whom to push where.
Fever patients to the right.
Suture waiting to the left.
Immediate laparotomy and thoracotomy starting from inside the door.
The standards attached line by line in words began to change the direction of footsteps inside the tent first.
At first, there were only displeased faces.
Even so, when one person’s breath continued and the next stretcher was less blocked, the hands gradually began to listen.
One clerk who had been looking only for regulations until moments ago was now shouting first.
“Two fever patients to the right!
One thoracotomy waiting, inside first!”
It was a rough voice, but at least the direction was right.
Listening to it, Ruan briefly closed and opened his eyes, then steadied his breathing again.
His temples throbbed dully, and the tips of his fingers were a little numb.
Not enough to collapse yet.
The numbness in his fingertips did not fade quickly.
Even so, here, the direction of the next stretcher came before his own breathing.
Ruan shook out his hand once and turned his gaze back to the plank.
The senior military physician looked at the plank with a face that had not fully relented, then said in a low voice,
“I will observe for one day.”
Eisen answered at once.
“No.
If efficiency remains, it continues.”
Ruan did not look back even after hearing that.
He felt he now understood what kind of method the commander used to push him forward.
It was not unlike protection, but it was never comfortable.
Another stretcher came in from outside.
This time, a patient with a severed thigh and a messenger shaking with fever were pushed in at once.
The organized lines were already insufficient again.
Ruan wiped cold sweat away once with the back of his hand.
There had been a very brief moment when he thought that perhaps things might be a little better if he moved to the main camp.
He had been wrong.
This was not a single tent.
The lifeline of the entire corps was rushing here and tangling together.
This was a place where accepting one stretcher too late could make the entire line behind it collapse.
Now, even the standard for who returned alive and who ended here had been pushed close to his fingertips.
Without even a breath to steady himself, the entire main camp surged toward him again in the face of the next patient.
And that, right now.
“Next patient.”
Ruan reached out his hand again.