Chapter 114: Let’s See Who Wins [5]
Chapter 114: Let’s See Who Wins [5]
“Oof.”
Since he had gotten up so suddenly, dizziness came over him.
Kanghyeok had to brace himself against the wall for a moment, and Yeoju grumbled with an I told you so look on her face.
“See? Blood is life...”
“Yeah, yeah. Still, we saved one person here.”
Kanghyeok, with one hand still pressed to his forehead, pointed at the patient.
Only one sijin earlier, the man had been trembling violently and even having seizures, but now he was sleeping peacefully.
If Kanghyeok had been any ordinary physician, he probably would have been overflowing with emotion from the tips of his toes to the top of his head by now.
But Kanghyeok was Kanghyeok, and naturally he felt nothing of the sort.
If anything, he was only entertaining an utterly outrageous thought.
Whatever the case, this man has the same blood type as me. Once he recovers a bit... I can use his blood too.
If God had been watching this scene, He might well have struck him with lightning on the spot.
Fortunately, Kanghyeok was lucky, and nothing of the sort happened.
“Anyway, I’m going over there now... Yeoju, keep an eye on this patient. If anything happens, call me.”
“Yes, Young Master. Don’t overdo it. Your complexion looks bad right now.”
“Of course it does. I drew at least 800 mL, after all.”
The usual amount for a transfusion was around 400 mL.
Surely the Hematology Society had not just picked that number at random.
It was best understood as the result of the people who knew blood best in the world gathering together and debating it thoroughly.
In other words, this much could be drawn in a day without causing major strain.
As expected, double that is a bit much.
Staggering, Kanghyeok stepped out of the room.
What he really wanted was to lie down and sleep, but he could not.
The commotion in the adjoining room was absolute chaos.
“Stay here if you want to live!”
The one shouting threats was Makbong.
“Good grief, you people really...”
The one straining himself while dragging patients back was Dolseok.
“Urgh.”
And the one silently knocking down a patient who had tried to make a dash for Dongpa was, as expected, Yeoni.
The three of them together could probably handle ten healthy grown men bare-handed.
But now the number of patients was simply too great, and for people who were supposedly sick, they were alarmingly full of energy.
“You bastards! I said I want to be treated over there!”
“Exactly! What right do you have to stop us?”
Judging by the force of their shouting alone, they looked like people who had already recovered.
The only evidence that they were still ill was their heavy-looking buttocks.
Compared with Dongpa’s side, which had grown relatively quiet, this side was still suffering tremendous diarrhea.
“Hm.”
Kanghyeok was unsure whether he ought to be angry about the situation or grateful for it.
Oral rehydration therapy really is even more effective than I expected.
After all, all they had done was mix salt and honey into boiled water.
Things like amino acids or fats were completely out of the question.
Compared to that, the vigorous energy these patients were showing now was almost moving.
“It works this well, and they’re still throwing a fit about wanting to go over there. Good grief.”
Clicking his tongue, Kanghyeok looked toward Dongpa’s side.
Just as he had boasted earlier, Dongpa really did seem to be giving them nothing at all.
It looked like he gave them water now and then, but no one knew that would only make the patients worse instead.
They all look like people whose strength is exhausted, ready to die at any moment.
Perhaps because of that, Dongpa’s patients were extremely quiet and, at a glance, even looked peaceful.
“I said let us go!”
“You ungrateful sons of dogs! Ah, Young Master!”
Dolseok had been glaring furiously, but the moment he saw Kanghyeok, he hurriedly bowed his head.
At the same time, the patients who had been advancing menacingly all stopped short.
Dolseok, who stood before them, was just another lowborn fellow hardly worth noticing in terms of status.
But Baek Kanghyeok, no matter who looked at him, was clearly a proper noble gentleman.
Even the Wonju of Bojewon had deferred to him.
And according to the notice posted before their arrival, he also seemed to have ties to a royal prince.
No matter how desperate they were for Dongpa’s treatment, they could not dare cause trouble in front of Kanghyeok.
“Mm.”
All they could do was let out uncomfortable groans.
Kanghyeok looked down at them and spoke.
“You all seem full of energy.”
“...”
The people who had been shouting just moments earlier now fell mute.
Still wearing a harsh expression, Kanghyeok pointed toward Dongpa’s side.
“You want to go over there?”
“Well...”
“Who looks stronger to you right now, you lot or those people?”
“Huh?”
“I said who looks more lively.”
“Uh...”
The patients could not answer easily.
Until now, they had focused only on the fact that the diarrhea kept pouring out. They had paid no attention at all to things like strength.
Even Heo Jun and Heo Im, who had been desperately preparing and giving oral rehydration solution this whole time, were no different.
They too had inwardly doubted themselves as they watched the patients drink only to immediately pass everything out.
But once they heard Kanghyeok’s words, they finally began to see certain things.
As expected, Scholar Baek never does something like this carelessly.
Heo Jun nodded at Kanghyeok with a face that said he finally understood.
There were certainly many reasons to question Kanghyeok when it came to his character.
Even right now, was that not the case?
To show such an attitude in front of suffering patients.
But purely in terms of medical treatment and knowledge, Kanghyeok was never wrong.
“Even to your own eyes, don’t you look much better than they do?”
“But ours keeps coming out.”
“Theirs is still coming out too. Just less than yours.”
“Exactly. Less. Ours keeps coming because you keep making us drink even when we don’t want to...”
“Hey. Don’t you notice something strange even as you say that?”
Kanghyeok lightly shoved the forehead of the man who had been acting as the patients’ spokesman since earlier.
Unable to withstand Kanghyeok’s strength in the slightest, the man slid backward.
Even if he had not been ill, he probably would not have been able to endure it.
The difference in their natural builds was too great, and in normal times, the man had hardly been someone who ate well and lived comfortably.
Now, after drinking nothing but oral rehydration solution and passing it all out in torrents, there was no way he could stand firm.
“Whoa, whoa...”
“Which is better? Someone who is passing stool without eating anything at all, or someone who is at least eating something and then passing it? Hm?”
“Well... the one passing less...?”
“What?”
To Kanghyeok, neither the man nor the patients standing behind him looked truly convinced.
How many patients had he seen over the years?
He could tell what someone was feeling just from the slightest flicker across their face.
The problem was that he neither bothered to act as if he understood nor promptly adjusted his approach.
This is starting to piss me off.
It was a problem that instead of working to persuade people, his first instinct was simply to get angry.
No, I’m treating them after drawing out my own blood, for God’s sake.
Of course, the fact that he had been forced into donating blood also played a part in his anger.
No, to be precise, that was almost all of it.
He was at the point of thinking maybe he should just let them all die.
Should I just open a large-scale anatomy practice hall while I’m at it?
Would they not all have died anyway if he had never come here?
They would only have followed that quack’s treatment.
Some of them already looked like they had boarded the express train to the underworld.
Even from a distance, he could see people whose faces were trembling.
That meant the electrolyte imbalance from dehydration had progressed to the brink, and if they were left like this, they would certainly die.
It was then that he noticed Dongpa looking at this side with a strange expression.
Dongpa was not saying anything, but Kanghyeok could tell perfectly well.
Look at that bastard. He’s sneering at me, isn’t he?
If he let the patients go over there like this, it was obvious what sort of expression Dongpa would make.
I can’t let that happen.
However displeased he was with the patients, Kanghyeok was, in the end, someone to whom pride mattered most.
It was no exaggeration to say that pride was what had made him the great physician he was now.
With a face even more vicious than before, Kanghyeok walked toward the man.
“If any of you take even one more step here...”
Just as this unprecedented moment was about to occur, with a physician threatening his patients, an unexpected commotion broke out on Dongpa’s side.
“Ah!”
“Oh no, what’s wrong with this man?”
When Kanghyeok turned his head, one of the patients whose face had been twitching especially hard appeared to have started seizing.
The people gathered quietly around him immediately panicked and rolled away in a scramble.
All while shouting at the top of their lungs for Dongpa.
“Physician! Please look over here!”
“This man’s dying!”
Even from a distance, the urgency of the situation was unmistakable.
Kanghyeok stopped threatening the patients and crossed his arms, watching what Dongpa would do.
Bastard. Let’s see how you handle this.
It was obvious he was going to make a mess of it, but Kanghyeok was curious exactly how.
“D-don’t panic!”
Dongpa shouted at everyone even though he himself was the one panicking most.
He did somehow manage to approach the patient having the seizure, but that was all.
He only stood within arm’s reach, unable to do anything.
The way he tilted his head and scratched the back of it made it seem as though he were trying to remember something.
All of it was useless.
You need to know something for it to come to mind in the first place.
One of the most pointless things in the world, in Kanghyeok’s view, was sitting stubbornly through the end of an exam.
If you knew it, you would have remembered it already.
The very fact that someone had started thinking so hard meant it was already hopeless.
But the next thing Dongpa did was a little surprising.
“F-first... turn his head to the side...”
“Oh.”
A sound of admiration escaped Kanghyeok.
So far, it was exactly what Kanghyeok himself had done.
Dongpa, since he did make a living as a physician, evidently had better memory than most people.
“And hold him down tightly so he can’t thrash around any more!”
But the next instruction was completely wrong.
To begin with, the people around the patient were patients themselves.
And had Dongpa not kept them from eating anything?
There was no way they had the strength to forcibly restrain someone in the middle of a seizure.
Trying to hold down a person having a seizure is completely counterproductive... someone’s going to get hurt.
Kanghyeok began walking slowly toward Dongpa’s side.
He shook his head from side to side and clicked his tongue.
When a quack caused trouble, it only felt right for a great physician to step in.
Just as Kanghyeok expected, the man thrashing in seizure suddenly let out a scream.
His limbs had been forced into unnatural angles because people were holding him from every direction even though he was not moving by choice.
“Aaaah!”
“Hey, hey. Move aside. You’re going to kill him.”
Using his foot, Kanghyeok nudged away the other patients who were pinning the man down.
The first to protest, naturally, was Dongpa.
“What do you think you’re doing! If we leave him like this and the patient gets hurt, what then?”
“What you’re doing right now is what’s hurting him. Just leave him alone.”
This was not a convulsion or seizure from abnormal brain waves, so it would not last long.
“See? It stopped.”
Kanghyeok pointed at the patient, who had already gone still.
At least Dongpa had turned the patient’s head to the side, so there had been no disaster of foreign matter going into the airway.
“Makbong, Dolseok. Carry this patient to the room where I was earlier.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
The two men, who had already followed right behind Kanghyeok, immediately lifted the patient.
At that, Dongpa scowled fiercely and grabbed the waistband of the patient’s trousers.
“No! How can you take away a patient who is receiving proper treatment here?”
“Treatment? You little... hm?”
“Hm?”
“Dongpa, did you shit yourself? You bastard, you caught it. Looks like you just soiled yourself, didn’t you?”