The two stretchers that arrived at the same time could not make it inside at the same speed.
On the one in front, a noble crest was stamped onto the edge of a soaked cloak, while on the one behind lay a spearman drenched in blood. Two guards pushed open a path for the front stretcher, while two evacuation soldiers shouldered their way through the crowd with the one behind.
Ruan moved between the two stretchers only once.
The noble knight had been slashed long from his left shoulder to his side. There was a great deal of blood, but it was not spurting in broken streams, and the color in his fingertips was still alive. His attendants checked his face first, and the two assistants, seeing the crest, instinctively turned their feet that way as well.
The spearman was different.
The smell rose first from beneath the cloth wrapped around his abdomen.
The smell of intestines.
His lips were already cooling blue.
“This one first.”
When Ruan seized the spearman’s stretcher first, the two attendants’ faces hardened at once.
“The knight comes first.”
“That one waits.”
Ruan’s voice was short and firm.
“Waits?”
“Yes.”
“How dare you.”
Until just moments ago, he had been holding on to two fever patients, and since morning he had not been able to step down from the operating table three times.
Even so, it was clear which one before his eyes was fading first.
“That knight has lost a lot of blood, but his lung hasn’t been pierced. The color in his arm is still there.”
He immediately jerked his chin toward the spearman.
“This one has ruptured inside his abdomen. His breathing is going out with it.”
“You, a mere low-ranking military physician.”
“Right now, that low-ranking military physician is the one examining them.”
The answer was so straight that the inside of the tent stopped for a moment.
Helmad came in belatedly, saw the situation, and halted.
“What is this commotion?”
An attendant immediately went to him.
“Adjutant. This man says he will set the knight aside and see an ordinary soldier first.”
Helmad’s gaze went back and forth between the two stretchers.
His judgment was one beat late.
Ruan hated even that one beat.
“Adjutant. I need to open that soldier’s abdomen first.”
“And the knight?”
“He won’t die. Not yet.”
Helmad narrowed his brow.
“Not yet?”
“Yes.”
Ruan’s voice sank lower.
“If you want both of them to live, he comes first.”
As soon as those words fell, a shallow groan escaped from the noble knight’s side.
It was a young face.
Eyes filled with fear opened once, then closed again.
Even seeing that face, Ruan could not switch stretchers.
Because he knew that the moment he switched, he might lose them both.
There had been a night in the past when he had clung to two people, thinking he could save them, and lost them together.
That memory still remained at his fingertips.
This time was the opposite.
Not emotion, but order came first.
“Can you take responsibility?”
The attendant asked through gritted teeth.
“If you fail to save him, with your head—”
“Enough.”
A low, dry voice fell from the entrance.
It was Aizen Locke.
He did not come any farther inside and only looked at the two stretchers.
“Who dies first?”
Helmad closed his mouth.
Ruan answered immediately.
“The spearman.”
“Reason.”
“His abdomen has ruptured internally, and fever has already begun to rise. That knight may look like he has bled a lot, but his airway is still open.”
Aizen nodded once.
“You heard him.”
The single sentence was so short it was hard to tell whom it was aimed at.
But the attendant’s hand fell away first.
Aizen added nothing more.
“Inside the Medical Bureau, the order of dying comes first.”
It was not justification, nor justice.
He simply said it like a rule.
Ruan was already preparing to open the spearman’s abdomen.
“Sera. Boiled water.”
“It’s here.”
“Where’s Bern?”
“In the next section.”
“Call him. The intestines are badly damaged.”
Karen turned in person.
Helmad stood with a rigid face for a moment, then reached toward the knight’s stretcher.
“I’ll see that side.”
Ruan had no room to answer.
The spearman’s lips turned ashen once more.
When the cloth was loosened, the smell thickened.
The two assistants nearby stiffened at the same time.
“Don’t vomit. Hold him.”
The point of the knife split the cloth.
Ruan felt his hands trembling, but he did not stop.
The inside of the abdomen was even more of a mess than he had thought.
It was a wound from a spearhead that had twisted as it went in.
He let out a short breath.
“We’re late.”
Sera handed over the water with a stiff expression.
“Can you hold him?”
“We have to.”
Those words were neither a pledge nor a resolution.
It was simply something that had to be done.
Ruan blocked the ruptured area and pressed with his fingertips along the place where more blood was leaking.
A cold pain spread behind his ear.
His hands trembled, but they did not stop.
Outside, the attendant kept arguing about something in a low voice.
Helmad’s voice snapped back once more.
Aizen’s voice could barely be heard.
The quieter side moved faster instead.
The spearman nearly lost a breath once.
Ruan clenched his teeth.
“Tie it here. Lower.”
“Here?”
“No. There, he dies. Right beside it.”
Only then did Bern come in, look into the spear wound, and swallow a curse.
“You took this one first.”
“Yes.”
“You chose right.”
It was a brief statement.
Without even a moment to be relieved by those words, Ruan moved his hands again.
Only when the spearman’s breathing barely returned to an even rhythm did he glance once toward the stretcher on the other side.
Helmad’s expression was not good even as he stitched the knight’s shoulder.
The two attendants still could not keep their mouths shut, and the young knight was staring only at the tent roof with a fever-flushed face.
Ruan went over to him for a moment and checked his wrist.
“His pulse is holding.”
Helmad asked quietly.
“The spearman?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I understand now why you took him first.”
Those words were neither an apology nor praise.
Still, his voice was less rigid than before.
The young knight half lifted his eyelids.
“Water.”
Ruan shook his head.
“Not yet.”
The knight grimaced, but soon lost strength again.
Then, very slowly, he asked.
“That one?”
His voice was so small that even his attendant pretended not to hear.
Only Ruan heard it.
“We’re holding on to him.”
The knight closed his eyes for a moment.
Whether that was relief or a fevered, empty breath, Ruan could not tell.
But even after hearing that brief exchange, one of the attendants could no longer interfere.
By the time the sun slanted, both stretchers were still holding on to breath.
The noble knight’s fever had risen, but he had passed the critical point.
The spearman remained unconscious, but his pulse had returned.
“They both live. For now.”
When those words fell, one attendant let out a breath of relief, then immediately closed his mouth.
The fact that his lord had survived was certainly fortunate,
but he wore an expression that found it strangely displeasing that the common soldier who had gone under the knife first had survived as well.
Seeing faces like that made Ruan even more exhausted.
Eyes that grew angry over order even after a life had been saved.
On the battlefield, there were more eyes like that than one might think.
A short while later, the noble knight half opened his eyes.
His fevered gaze groped across the tent ceiling before barely reaching this way.
He parted his dry lips and asked very softly.
“Who came in first?”
The attendant hurriedly bent over.
“My lord. Please do not trouble yourself with such things.”
But Ruan, wiping his hands, answered as he was.
“A spearman.”
The knight closed his eyes, then opened them again.
His face was not angry.
“Did he live?”
“For now.”
Ruan’s answer was the same as before.
The knight asked no more.
Instead, he lifted his gloved fingers very slightly, then lowered them.
It was a movement difficult to tell apart—whether it was thanks, or because of face.
Ruan could not close his eyes for a long while beside the operating table.
More than the relief that both had lived, the sensation of the moment he had chosen between the two remained longer.
Whose eyes had he looked away from first?
Whose blood had he smelled first?
Outside the Medical Bureau, the rumors were already spreading.
“They say he took an ordinary soldier before a noble.”
“And the commander didn’t stop him, either.”
“They say that low-ranking military physician doesn’t divide people by the color of their blood.”
“They say even the commander didn’t put a noble name first in front of him.”
Ruan did not lift his head as he listened to those words.
Blood had always been different in color.
There was thick blood, thin blood, and blood that was already growing cold.
If the eyes that saw those differences moved according to rank, people died later.
That much was certain.
A little later, Aizen’s voice sounded again from the entrance.
He had not left and was exchanging brief words with Helmad.
“Record today’s matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“The time the stretchers arrived. The types of wounds. Who was taken first.”
Helmad hesitated for a moment.
“Including the fact that an ordinary soldier went onto the operating table before a noble knight?”
“Especially that.”
Aizen did not waver in the slightest.
“Because the entire Medical Bureau needs to know that even if a crest enters first, the speed at which a man dies does not change.”
After those words, lower orders continued.
“Do not let attendants at the door inside. Aside from patients and medics, make them wait outside.”
“There will be resistance.”
“There will.”
“And yet?”
“Bind them even if there is.”
Ruan heard that conversation, but did not look back.
The sense that the rules outside were changing along with the effort to keep one person alive did not sit well with him.
But if it meant he would not have to go through a quarrel like the one earlier again, it was also a necessary change.
Karen asked from behind him.
“Do you regret it?”
Ruan thought for a moment, then answered.
“I regret both.”
“What does that mean?”
“That knight was visible first too, and that spearman looked like he would die first too.”
Karen could ask no more.
Ruan wiped the blood from the back of his hand and frowned very slightly.
The area around his temple was growing cold like ice again.
Even so, he did not sit.
Because someone on a cot a little way off had groaned again.
When he turned, the spearman from earlier moved his finger ever so faintly.
Ruan immediately went to his side.
It meant he was alive.
It also meant he might soon die.
That one faint movement ended the day.
The one who had gone beneath the knife first was still alive, too.
Karen watched the sight for a long while, then asked very softly.
“Even so, you saw both of them first?”
Ruan answered with his fingers on the spearman’s pulse.
“Yes.”
“And still, you were able to choose.”
“I didn’t choose.”
Ruan continued with a tired face.
“I only knew which one was going out first.”
Those words stayed with Karen for a long time as well.
On the battlefield, she had always thought someone had to be chosen, but Ruan saw it differently to the end.
From that day on, the main camp began to call Ruan’s name a little differently.
Not the hand that worked miracles.
But the hand that did not hesitate between noble blood and common blood.