“When the water boils, put the cloth in first. Don’t take it out before it starts bubbling.”
Ruan’s order cut through the crackle of burning firewood.
Sera shoved a bundle of blood-soaked cloth into the bucket boiling over the wood fire.
Hot steam filled the tent in a white haze.
It had been ten days since the mobile medical tent had held its ground in one place.
The terrible stench of rotting flesh that dozens of wounded men had been giving off had noticeably thinned.
In its place, the space was filled with the acrid smoke of firewood and the smell of cloth being boiled hot.
“Next stretcher. To the left section.”
Ruan’s voice turned toward the entrance.
The newly arrived medics reflexively changed direction.
The patient who had just come in was a man with a broken leg.
“Is he running a fever?”
Ruan held out a hand and asked curtly.
“N-no, sir! He’s a cavalryman who just fell from his horse and broke a bone!”
The medic answered in a disciplined voice.
Ruan only nodded once.
“Then the second section on the right. Lay him down under the yellow flag.”
“Yes, sir!”
The stretcher quickly moved off to the right.
The inside of the tent was divided broadly into three sections.
The innermost left side was the section for suspected infections with fever.
The middle was the section for acute trauma patients who needed immediate surgery.
And the right side was for simple fractures without fever or recovering patients.
The atmosphere in each section was completely different.
On the left, the breathing of feverish patients was damp and heavy.
In the middle, the smell of freshly spilled blood and wet cloth was strongest.
On the right, instead of groans, there were more sounds of men gritting their teeth as they endured pain.
“I’ll wipe down the operating table.”
Sera approached, carrying a bucket that was steaming hot.
Her hands were red and blistered.
It was because she had wrung out, with bare hands, the clean cloth that had been thoroughly boiled over the fire.
With the steaming cloth, she wiped away the bloodstains on the operating table again and again.
Ruan watched her in silence.
Boil the water.
Boil the cloth.
Separate fever patients from those without fever.
After ten days or so, those measures were producing differences that could no longer be dismissed as coincidence.
Sera stopped as she was turning through the records.
The number of men dying from fever after suturing had decreased markedly.
Men who, until three days ago, could not last a single day were opening their eyes today and asking for water.
“Third bed. Check his breathing again.”
Ruan’s order cut through the sound of burning firewood.
Startled, Sera shoved the records into the pocket of her apron.
“Breathing is normal. The pus has stopped as well.”
“If he holds out until tomorrow, move him to the right.”
“Second bed. Abdominal fragment wound. Checking the man who came in yesterday.”
Ruan’s cold order fell.
A soldier was laid on the operating table.
Black scabs of blood had hardened around the fragments of an iron spear embedded in his abdomen.
“Sera. Press hard with the gauze. The blood is pooling, so I can’t see the base of the fragment.”
“Yes. I’ll wipe it away.”
The tip of Ruan’s forceps pushed deep into the split between torn muscles.
The patient’s abdominal breathing suddenly collapsed.
Blood poured out with a choking gush, but Ruan did not stop even once.
He gripped the iron fragment and pulled hard.
The shard struck the tray with a short, sharp sound.
For one brief moment, the inside of the tent became quiet as if it were a lie.
“Put on more hemostatic gauze and press down hard from above.”
Hiding her trembling hands, Sera pressed down firmly with the white cloth.
“If the bleeding doesn’t stop, we’ll have to tie off the vessel again.”
Ruan’s hands were covered in blood.
“Hold it. Forceps again.”
From the end of the blood vessel, red blood spurted upward in pulses.
Without hesitation, Ruan thrust his fingers into the gap in the muscle and mechanically seized the throbbing vessel.
“Thread.”
Sera hurriedly passed him the needle.
Ruan’s thin hands crossed several times in the air as he tied off the vessel.
The bleeding finally stopped.
He trimmed away the blackened ends of dead muscle with scissors, continuously demanding boiled cloth.
Steaming cloth washed the inflammation from the wound.
“Pour on the antiseptic water and suture again.”
Ruan’s needle swiftly pierced through the skin.
The patient, half unconscious, let out a moan.
“The wound is not deep. The internal organs are unharmed.”
“Ah... thank goodness. Truly, thank goodness.”
The lips of the soldier who had been pouring out blood trembled, pale.
Even as he groaned in pain, he lifted his head and looked up at Ruan.
A blind light had settled in the soldier’s eyes.
It was the look of men who had seen with their own eyes, day after day, the comrades in the beds beside them breathing and stubbornly enduring.
“We all saw it.”
The soldier dragged in a wet breath.
“After the medical officer’s hands passed over them, they didn’t rot. Baren’s fever went down this morning too.”
The soldier muttered as he stared at Ruan with bloodshot eyes.
“So everyone knows. The places the medical officer’s hands touch are definitely different.”
Ruan’s hand, which had been reaching for the suture needle, stopped for the briefest instant.
His brow furrowed slightly.
“That is not what it is.”
Ruan checked the tip of the broken needle and discarded it.
“Baren was contained because we separated him into the fever patients’ section.”
“No.”
The soldier groped with his bandaged hand and continued speaking.
“They say it stopped rotting after we started using boiled water. That is why everyone comes here. To the side where the medical officer’s hands reach.”
Ruan shut his mouth again.
There was no use explaining at length why the wounds did not rot.
“Move your arm. The suture line will go crooked.”
Ruan pushed the soldier’s hand away.
“Yes... yes! I’ll stay still. I’ll stay still.”
The soldier nodded violently, as though even that gesture were salvation.
Whenever Ruan spoke briefly, everyone moved at once.
Fewer people asked why.
To the soldiers outside, even boiling cloth looked less like treatment than an omen.
Ruan shallowly straightened his knees as fatigue washed over him.
Muscle pain climbed heavily up his shoulders to the back of his neck.
It was the price of forcibly dragging down the mortality rate by using, countless times a day, small doses of healing that gnawed away at his strength.
Ruan hid all signs of it perfectly and changed his bloodstained gloves for new ones.
It was already more than his tenth surgery of the day.
Watching the sight, Sera glanced down once at the records.
The numbers were improving, but the atmosphere was flowing in the opposite direction.
Sera bit her lip.
They had clearly set things right in the direction of saving lives, yet outside, people were attaching another name to it.
“Left side, seventh section. Checking fever patient.”
Ruan’s feet did not stop.
With gloved hands, he mercilessly pulled away the hot blanket from the new patient.
The face of a cavalryman whose whole body had broken out in red rashes was revealed.
He was trembling like an aspen, his rolled-back eyes groping through empty air.
“Check his pulse, Sera.”
While the medics held down the cavalryman’s arms and legs, Sera felt the pulse at his neck.
“His pulse is... too weak. It cuts off every now and then.”
“Bring cold wet towels first! We have to keep cooling his head and chest.”
With both gaunt hands, Ruan pressed hard against the patient’s solar plexus.
The feverish body bent back like a bow as his breath caught.
“Press the restraints down harder! If we lose him here, the fever will drive deeper!”
Ruan rubbed the patient’s chest roughly with a cold, steaming towel.
The soldier choked and gagged, foaming deep in his throat.
Ruan let the horrific scream pass by his ears and did not take his hands away until the end.
Meanwhile, another stretcher was waiting at the entrance.
A small commotion was breaking out near the entrance of the tent.
Even when word spread that other treatment stations had openings, the soldiers deliberately dragged their stretchers all the way to this cramped tent.
The claim that one would live if one only got inside here was hardening among the soldiers like a rule.
The mouths of those who returned alive made the words even more tenacious.
“Is this Medical Officer Ruan’s tent? Please, let us lay our squad leader down first!”
“Step back! I told you, we have to classify whether he’s a fever patient or a trauma patient first!”
Outside the door, three or four stretchers were already laid in a row on the muddy ground.
“We’ve been waiting here for three hours too! Don’t cut in!”
Harsh curses passed between the wounded men lined up to enter the tent.
“The other tents have plenty of room, so go there!”
“They say the eastern treatment station has space.”
“Even so, we’re not going.”
“Why?”
A noncommissioned officer, furious at being blocked, gritted his teeth.
“Because I heard men endure there and die, but here, even if they fester, they knit back together.”
At the back of the waiting line, a feverish soldier tried to secretly undo his bandage, only to have his wrist seized by a medic.
“I told you not to touch it!”
“They say if they look at it here, it won’t rot. Then I have to show them the wound, don’t I?”
Instead of answering, the medic first touched the soldier’s forehead.
It was hot.
He swallowed a curse and tied a wooden tag with a red mark to the soldier’s wrist.
“Left side, fever patients’ section. Don’t push the man in front of you and wait.”
Even that brief procedure looked weighty in the eyes of the soldiers standing behind him.
Someone looked at the yellow tag on his wrist and tried to quietly switch it for a red one.
The medic immediately snatched his wrist.
“Are you joking? If a patient without fever goes into the left section, an actual fever patient will die.”
The soldier lowered his head, but the line behind him wavered even more.
The desire to reach the place where Ruan’s hands would touch was pushing aside the classification chart.
The soldier who had received a red tag let out a relieved breath despite his frightened face.
As though he had already come back to life once.
There were threats mixed in among the words being exchanged.
“Our platoon leader’s life is hanging by a thread! Move!”
It was the moment a group of rough noncommissioned officers tried to force their way in at the entrance.
The instant Karen stepped forward, the noncommissioned officers flinched and stopped.
Her sword had not even been drawn, but they were the ones who retreated.
The noncommissioned officers took heavy steps back onto the muddy ground.
“Next. Open the wound on the patient in the third corner.”
With his back to the disturbance, Ruan threw the bloodstained forceps into the boiling water.
Without looking back at the waiting board, Ruan said,
“Return the person who changed his red tag to his original place in line. If a patient without fever goes into the left section, an actual fever patient will die.”
One medic hurriedly restored the tag.
In the meantime, another fever patient toward the back coughed violently, and Sera immediately picked up a wet towel.
Inside, as always, they stitched wounds, checked fevers, and boiled water.
Outside, the classification chart continued to sway.