Chapter 174 General Seaweed [3]
Chapter 174 General Seaweed [3]
Kanghyeok’s eyes lit up as he examined the stab wound in Yasuharu’s left groin.
The wound itself had clearly healed long ago.
But it did not look like it had ever been properly treated.
If it had, it never would have ended up like this.
Kanghyeok looked at Yasuharu’s scrotum, which, with only slight exaggeration, hung nearly to his knees.
If the skin of that scrotum had been just a little more elastic, it probably would have reached his ankles.
That was simply the kind of disease this was.
“Hey, Dolseok.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
“Did you put your gloves on?”
“Ah, yes…”
“Then get over here.”
“Yes…”
Dolseok stepped up in front of Yasuharu with the expression of a man being dragged into hell.
Then he carefully checked to make sure there were no tears in the gloves.
No matter that it was Kanghyeok’s order, he truly did not want his bare hands touching it.
“Touch this once.”
Kanghyeok pointed at Yasuharu’s lesion without caring one way or the other about Dolseok’s reluctance.
It was already grossly swollen, and this was the part of it that bulged out the most.
It looked as though it might burst if handled carelessly.
So Dolseok reached his hand over very cautiously.
“Well?”
“Well?”
“Yes. What does it feel like?”
“Ah… soft…?”
“Did you actually examine it properly? Percuss it too.”
“Mm… sloshy?”
Dolseok performed the percussion exactly as taught, then gave his impression.
For a medical finding, it was a rather unprofessional and inventive word choice.
But in a way, it was also the most accurate possible description.
“Oh. Right. Then how would you want to treat it?”
“Mm.”
The one who had groaned was Yasuharu.
Who exactly was Wakizaka Yasuharu?
Was he not, together with Katō Kiyomasa, one of the famous Seven Spears?
Of course, it did feel as though he had been squeezed in by force.
There were even people who said that among the Seven Spears, the only truly outstanding generals were Kiyomasa and Fukushima Masanori.
In any case, despite what people said, Yasuharu was a man with enormous pride.
“Hm?”
Kanghyeok looked up as if to ask what the problem was, all the while still fiddling with the lesion with one hand.
As a result, the humiliation Yasuharu felt was enormous.
So great that he could not even get angry.
“Um… could you please just hurry up and treat it?”
So he muttered timidly.
But who was Kanghyeok?
If nothing else, he was the greatest in the world when it came to a doctor’s pride.
Naturally, the plea had no effect whatsoever.
“This is part of the treatment.”
“If you keep touching it like that, will it get better?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you dragging this out?”
“Oh.”
It felt like Yasuharu had hit the nail on the head.
Because Kanghyeok really was dragging it out.
Where else would he ever find teaching material like this?
In twenty-first-century South Korea, it had become something seen from time to time as a complication of kidney transplants.
Even so, he had never once seen a lesion left this neglected.
Dolseok needs to learn a bit too.
Once Yasuharu was anesthetized, Kanghyeok planned to have Yeoju record the details in drawings anyway.
But there was no teaching method more effective than using a real model.
So he began throwing his weight around.
“Listen. Do you think treating this is easy? I can’t do it alone.”
“I-is that so?”
“This brat helping me here also has to understand the disease.”
“I-I see.”
As expected, inside the treatment room, the doctor was the strong one.
And in an era like this, when proper doctors were so scarce that there was practically no one but Kanghyeok, that was even more true.
Yasuharu was flustered despite having done nothing wrong, while Kanghyeok was shamelessly confident despite not having done anything right.
He even threatened him without hesitation.
“Stay still. Or I might just decide not to treat you.”
“After all the touching you’ve already done?”
“Ah… I’m starting to feel less and less inclined to treat you…”
“N-no, that won’t do. Because of this, I haven’t even been able to hold a woman for over a year. Please…”
In the end, Yasuharu had no choice but to beg two strange men to handle his precious parts even more freely.
For a proud daimyō, it was humiliation beyond words, but it could not be helped.
Because this damn illness absolutely had to be cured.
They said he cured Lord Tsurumatsu like a miracle…
Was Tsurumatsu not truly a tiny infant on the verge of death?
A child no one had believed had any hope at all.
Since this doctor had saved such a child, there was no choice but to trust him.
“Now then, where were we?”
After easily suppressing Yasuharu’s resistance, Kanghyeok turned back to Dolseok.
Dolseok had been thinking about Kanghyeok’s question the whole time, so he answered without hesitation.
“I think there are two possible methods.”
“Oh. Two methods, huh? All right, let’s hear them.”
“Well, first…”
Dolseok looked at Yasuharu’s massively swollen lesion.
No matter how he looked at it, it was obvious that something was inside.
In other words, this was not a disease caused by the testicle itself enlarging or anything like that.
Young Master told me not to overcomplicate things.
If there was something bad, remove it. If something that should be there was damaged, fix it.
That, he had said, was the most basic foundation of medicine.
“If something’s collected in there, shouldn’t we drain it?”
“That’s right. And how would you drain it?”
“Wouldn’t you either puncture it with a needle or cut it open?”
At the same time as he spoke, Dolseok poked at the lesion with a finger and then mimed slicing it open.
It was only imitation, but he had done such things often enough.
From the patient’s perspective, it felt all too real.
“Ugh.”
The groan escaped on its own.
But there was no way Kanghyeok would care about that.
He was focused solely on Dolseok’s education.
“That’s a good thought, but…”
“It’s wrong?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Well, it can’t be helped, since you don’t know what’s collected in there.”
“Then what should we do?”
“Well… I’ll show you myself. Bring the brew. And call Yeoju, Yeoni, and Makbong too.”
Explaining it all in words was starting to feel annoying.
He had already talked quite a lot as it was.
Well, I did make him think about it.
Even if it had been the wrong answer.
That was how they learned quickly and remembered it better.
Dolseok hurriedly bowed as he watched Kanghyeok already rummaging through the house-call bag.
“Yes. Then are we done with the steroid brew for today?”
“Yes. We’re done. Let’s operate.”
“Yes, sir.”
While Dolseok was briefly away, Kanghyeok laid Yasuharu down.
Of course, his trousers remained off.
“Can’t I put them back on now?”
“Then I can’t treat you.”
“Do I have to stay like this the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Good grief… anyway, just please treat me properly.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll cure you like a miracle.”
“All right…”
Yasuharu let out a quiet sigh and turned his head away.
Kanghyeok ignored him and grabbed the other arm, tapping at the vein.
“What are you—”
“This will hurt.”
“Hm? Ugh!”
With a short cry, the IV line was in place.
“What are you doing now…?”
“It’s part of the treatment, so just lie there. The medicine’s going in now.”
“What ki— mm.”
Kanghyeok ran a narcotic painkiller through the line.
Not long after, Yasuharu’s eyes went completely slack.
A broad smile even spread across his lips.
As expected, drugs are called drugs for a reason.
Was this not what happened with even a dose small enough to be used merely as a painkiller?
Now, no matter what anyone said, Yasuharu would simply nod along.
That was how the drug worked.
Looking at Yasuharu’s thoroughly stoned face, Kanghyeok asked, “You’re not uncomfortable anymore now, right? You’ve gone to Hong Kong, haven’t you?”
“Mm, yes. That’s right. Heh-heh.”
“Good. In a little while, I’m going to give you one more medicine, and you need to drink it properly.”
“Of course. Give me whatever you want.”
Soon Yeoju, Yeoni, and Makbong came hurrying in.
Each of them was carrying the tools they usually handled.
Yeoju had a book and brush, Yeoni had simple assisting instruments, and Makbong had the iron balls.
Dolseok came in last, carrying the anesthetic brew.
“Oh, you’re here already. Hand that over. I’ll give it to him.”
“Yes, Young Master.”
Dolseok had already seen enough of Yasuharu’s thing to last a lifetime.
So by now, he could not feel much of anything about it.
It would have been strange if he did.
But the others were not in the same position.
Makbong especially had a hard time standing still.
After all, he happened to be holding the bag made from iron balls.
“What the hell is that? Is that a man or a bull?”
“Hey. He’s not asleep yet.”
“Ah. Is that so. Sorry—”
Kanghyeok quickly stopped Makbong from running his mouth.
But Yasuharu did not seem to care at all.
As said earlier, the drug was working perfectly.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. My balls are big, aren’t they?”
“Hey, don’t sit up.”
“Ah, sorry, sorry. Because of this… wow… Lord Kanpaku really is too much.”
“What? Why?”
Kanghyeok had been about to make him drink the brew and put him to sleep immediately.
But once Hideyoshi came up, there was no way he could just do that.
So he waited.
“You know about it too, right? The plan to build a base at Nagoya.”
Of course, Kanghyeok knew nothing about it, but he nodded anyway.
“I do. Of course I do.”
“Right… to invade Joseon, they have to build it after the envoys return, you see. The basics of warfare. You know? If the enemy finds out our strategy, then what?”
Anyone who had played StarCraft knew that much.
Kanghyeok nodded repeatedly.
“And that… wow… he completely ignored me. He says he’s putting that bastard Ieyasu in charge.”
“Ieyasu? Tokugawa?”
“That’s right. Who else? Ha… mm…”
It would have been nice if he had kept talking a little longer.
The drug had worked too well.
His eyes, which had merely looked unfocused moments earlier, were now slowly beginning to close.
“Hey, hey. Don’t fall asleep yet. Give him the brew.”
“Mm.”
“That’s it. Drink it nicely. Good. Now go to sleep. And forget everything you just said.”
After dropping what was essentially a bombshell, Yasuharu finally passed out.
Even illiterate Dolseok could not simply ignore the story about a forward base at Nagoya.
“Young Master, what does it mean, invading Joseon?”
“It means exactly what it sounds like. They’re coming to attack.”
“Wow, those sons of bitches. They call in the diplomatic mission and then stab us in the back?”
Dolseok and Makbong were so full of betrayal that they went on cursing nonstop.
Yeoni and Yeoju joined in too, and for a while the room became a boiling cauldron of profanity.
Kanghyeok laughed heartily at how everyone had become of one mind and one will, then spoke.
“Now do you understand why I prescribed the steroid brew?”
“Huh… how in the world did you know that too, Young Master?”
“You didn’t know I was a genius?”
“I think you really are. Seriously.”
“Anyway, let’s deal with this now.”
“But he’s one of those Japanese bastards too. Do we really have to treat him?”
Dolseok asked with dissatisfaction written all over his face.
In truth, Kanghyeok had wrestled with that question too.
In his current condition, the man looked as though he could barely even ride a horse, let alone fight.
If left like this, he would probably be unable to take part in the Imjin War.
No… if that happens, it’ll be a problem if someone more capable takes his place.
Of course, there was also the possibility that someone even more foolish would replace him.
But if he shook history too much and ended up causing trouble for their brother Sun-sin, that would not do.
“This one, I’m curing.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an idiot.”
“An idiot…? Well… I kind of suspected as much from the way he dropped his pants right off.”
Dolseok recalled his first, somewhat shocking impression of Yasuharu.
No matter how he thought about it, the man did not seem like a proper samurai.
Even the roughest brute would not drop his trousers like that.
Kanghyeok handed disinfectant to Dolseok.
“All right, then. Let’s begin.”
“Are we cutting his balls open?”
“I said no.”
“Then what?”
“Watch closely. I’m going to show you something interesting.”
“First of all… Makbong, doesn’t his respiratory rate seem to be dropping now?”
“Ah, yes, yes. It’s under six breaths per minute now. I think you’ll need to insert the tube.”
Makbong muttered as he looked at the lips that were beginning to turn blue.
In truth, if the lip color had already changed, that meant the oxygen saturation had dropped quite a bit.
If this had been an operating room, the alarms would probably have been screaming by now.
“His color’s changed too. Why are you so calm, you idiot?”
“Didn’t you say adults would be fine?”
“Not fine. I said he could endure it.”
“That’s the same th—ugh.”
Kanghyeok smacked the back of Makbong’s head, then immediately moved up to the head of the bed.
“Hand me the tube.”
“Yes, yes. Ow… that hurts…”
“I told you to keep a close eye on the breathing, and you’re still spacing out, you bastard.”
“It’s because it’s progressing so much faster than usual. He’s supposed to be a warrior, so I thought maybe he had some chronic illness or something.”
Makbong shook his head with a deeply wronged expression.
Kanghyeok let out a low sigh as he looked at him.
By then, the tube had already been inserted into Yasuharu’s throat.
Still, the fact that narcotic painkillers can suppress respiration… no matter how many times I say it, he probably keeps forgetting.
Because this one was Makbong, not Dolseok.
Even if he could not remember it perfectly, it would have been manageable if they at least had an anesthesia machine.
Machines never space out or forget what they were supposed to do.
But now, with human Makbong being used in place of a monitor, there was no room for that kind of slack.
“Hurry up and squeeze.”
“Yes, yes.”
After connecting the iron-ball-sack breathing bag, Makbong began squeezing air into it.
Before long, color began returning to Yasuharu’s lips.
At any rate, Makbong’s confident claim that he would be fine had not been entirely wrong.
“And what are you two doing? Aren’t you disinfecting?”
Looking relieved for the moment, Kanghyeok turned back down toward the lower half.
Dolseok and Yeoni were just sitting there blankly with disinfectant in hand.
Neither of them could quite figure out where exactly they were supposed to clean.
“Uh…”
“Ah, you idiots. I’ve had you with me for years already, and you still…”
Frowning, Kanghyeok came back down.
At once, cold sweat ran down Dolseok’s and Yeoni’s backs.
Did he not always become a completely different person once surgery began?
It would not do for him to be like this before it had even started.
So Dolseok desperately began talking.
“Well… that’s how medicine is, isn’t it? The more you learn, the more endless it seems…”
“What kind of nonsense are you spouting, you bastard?”
“You’re a genius, Young Master, so you might not know, but for ordinary people like us, this is really difficult.”
“Mm.”
Come to think of it, that was true.
Even during his grueling medical-school years, Kanghyeok had never really found things particularly difficult.
Despite the fact that all his classmates had walked around looking half-dead.
And those were supposed to be the smart ones.
It was the medical school of the best university in South Korea. Just imagine how brilliant those students had been.
And yet even there, Kanghyeok had stood out.
That was something else back then.
There had been one time when pathology had suddenly thrown everyone off.
A brand-new kind of exam had replaced the usual predictable format, and naturally the lecture hall had fallen into chaos.
The test range for pathology alone had been three hundred pages of the English textbook and five hundred pages of lecture notes.
On top of that, the previous exam had been only two weeks earlier.
What kind of lunatic could study all that in two weeks?
And it was not even the only exam.
Most people had studied from so-called exam compilations, collections of roughly ten years’ worth of past questions.
So there was no way proper scores could come out.
Even the professor came running in, shocked.
Because every single person had received a failing grade.
Except for one.
And that one person had gotten a perfect score.
That had been Baek Kanghyeok.
“Hmm… yes, I am a genius.”
As he said that, Kanghyeok stroked under his chin.
He looked deeply satisfied, nothing like the man who had been irritated just moments earlier.
Got him.
Seeing Kanghyeok nodding to himself over and over, Dolseok rejoiced inwardly.
His master was definitely smart and quick-witted, but he was also just that simple in certain ways.
Sure enough, when Kanghyeok turned back to him, his voice had become as gentle as could be.
“I was being shortsighted. Hand it over. I’ll show you.”
“Yes, yes, Young Master. Your teaching…”
“Yes. I’ll have to teach you myself, what else can I do?”
Kanghyeok even laughed heartily as he took the disinfectant.
Swipe, swipe.
Then he carefully began wiping down Yasuharu’s lower abdomen with the brown Betadine disinfectant.
To be more precise, it was the abdominal area below the navel.
“You are disinfecting the balls too, though?”
“Ah, of course. The disinfected field must always be wider than the actual surgical site. If germs get in for no reason, it becomes a real headache.”
“But didn’t seawater get into the abdomen too?”
“That… that was just luck. The antibiotics worked absurdly well. You can’t rely on luck every time.”
Kanghyeok was in such a good mood that he was talking more than usual.
Whatever the case, it was far better than being yelled at, so Dolseok and Yeoni looked visibly brighter.
“All right, now that that’s done…”
After finishing the disinfection, Kanghyeok rummaged through the house-call bag.
As expected, the first thing out was the scalpel.
“Do you see this scar?”
“Ah… yes. But it’s really small.”
It had already been a small scar to begin with, and after the Betadine was applied, it stood out even less.
It did not look like the kind of wound that would cause such a major problem.
“I’m going to cut in here. This is definitely the culprit.”
“Really? It’s so small…”
Yeoni looked at Dolseok uneasily as he kept questioning things.
Normally, by now he would have been snapped at, or if unlucky, smacked.
But today’s Kanghyeok was a little different.
It seemed praise did not just make whales dance. It could make even a fiend like Kanghyeok dance as well.
“Even something small can cause more than enough trouble. Watch carefully.”
Kanghyeok immediately drew the scalpel across.
Just as he had said, it was above the left groin, directly over the scar.
Slice.
Unlike usual, the amount of blood that flowed out was somewhat greater.
Because of that, Yeoni had to hurry and wipe it away with gauze.
She had been curious why, and soon Kanghyeok explained it aloud.
Today, Kanghyeok was in full-on kind mode.
“Look at the cut surface. It’s very different from normal flesh, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Because it’s scar tissue?”
Dolseok, with his unusually good memory, recalled the surgery on General Kim Simin.
It had looked similar then too.
Though that had been on the face, so they had not cut directly through the scar.
“Oh. Right. Exactly. You’re actually rather quick.”
“Th-thank you.”
“Once our body is wounded, it never truly goes back to the way it was before. It heals by sticking together like this, through fibrosis. Of course, if it’s only a very shallow wound, that’s another matter.”
As Kanghyeok continued explaining, he kept cutting.
Since Yeoni never stopped wiping away the blood, the dissection was not especially difficult.
And besides, was the operating surgeon not the exceptionally brilliant Baek Kanghyeok?
Before long, the group was able to see a massive artery and vein through the opened tissue layers.
“Is that the femoral artery?”
Yeoni, now pulling back the incision edges instead of holding gauze, asked.
Dolseok, pulling from the opposite side, wore a similar look.
“That’s right. Wow, Yeoni, you’ve improved a lot too.”
“Then the one beside it is the vein, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Then what is that sac next to it?”
Yeoni pointed to the structure beside the vein.
It had been quite a while, but she had still studied anatomy once.
She knew perfectly well that there should not have been anything strange like that in this area.
“What do you think it is?”
Kanghyeok looked back at Yeoni with amusement.
If I knew that, why would I be asking… wait.
Yeoni made a sulky face, then suddenly tilted her head.
At the same time he asked the question, Kanghyeok had subtly lifted the incision further.
Because of that, Yeoni was able to see deeper inside.
Hm…?
Without realizing it, Yeoni slipped a finger in and began feeling inward.
Not long after, she was able to tell where this bizarre structure led.
“This… this goes there?”
“That’s right. This is the true identity of the fluid-filled sac in his scrotum.”
“What in the world is it?”
“A lymphatic-fluid sac.”
“Lymph…?”
“Yes. It’s part of the structure responsible for the body’s immunity.”
Nodding, Kanghyeok launched into a brief explanation of lymphatic fluid.
“Some people call it the lymph glands, but anyway…”
Lymph nodes were usually only the size of beans, but when inflammation occurred, they could swell to the size of coins or even larger.
It was not that they enlarged all by themselves. Each node was connected by lymphatic vessels, which sent reinforcements to the inflamed node.
Of course, the lymphatic vessels were so thin that they could not be easily seen with the naked eye like blood vessels or nerves.
That was why injuries to them often went unnoticed.
Just like now.
“So this was one of those thin lymphatic vessels?”
Yeoni asked with a look of disbelief.
Kanghyeok nodded as if it were obvious.
“That’s right. The lymphatic vessels connect throughout the whole body. Inflammation can occur anywhere.”
“But why has it swollen like this?”
“The substances that make up lymphatic fluid enter through the blood. But they return through the lymphatic vessels. So if the blood vessels are fine, but the lymphatic vessel gets blocked, what do you think happens?”
“It goes in but can’t get back out… so it swells up like this.”
Dolseok, who had been silently listening until then, finally spoke.
He seemed to have grasped the rough outline of what had happened.
“Exactly. Then what should we do?”
“If we open up the blocked lymphatic vessel…”
“That’s the easy thing to think, but no. That won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“How are you supposed to reconnect something so thin you can barely even see it?”
“Is there really something even you can’t do, Young Master?”
This time, Dolseok had asked sincerely, without any thought of secondary advantage.
That was how immense his trust in Kanghyeok’s medical skill was.
Naturally, Kanghyeok felt even better, but something impossible was still impossible.
His usual belief was that a true master physician was not someone who could list everything he could do, but someone who knew exactly what he could not do.
“It’s not that I can’t do it. It’s just impossible.”
“What kind of strange thing is that supposed to mean?”
“Anyway, that won’t work.”
“Then what do we do? Just say, ‘Ah, so this is why it happened,’ and leave it at that?”
“No, you idiot. There’s always another way. First, hand me a syringe. And something to collect the fluid in.”
“Ah… yes, Young Master.”
Dolseok hurriedly rummaged through the house-call bag and handed over a large syringe.
At the same time, Yeoni passed Kanghyeok the iron basket he had specially commissioned.
“Good. Dolseok, hold the basket. Yeoni, take another basket and stand by. There’s going to be a huge amount.”
“Uh… what exactly are you planning to do?”
“Just watch, you idiot.”
Silencing the chattering Dolseok, Kanghyeok picked up the syringe.
The needle was tremendously thick, probably because it was one used for transfusion as well.
It was almost like a small blade.
He drove it straight into the lymphatic-fluid sac.
Thunk.
There was not the slightest hesitation in his hand.
After confirming that white fluid had appeared at the tip of the syringe, he yanked out the plunger.
At once, a nearly milk-white liquid began pouring out in streams.
“Oh… is that lymphatic fluid?”
“Yes. It’s made up mostly of fat.”
“Then are you draining it all?”
“Yes. First we drain it all. Do you see that thing shrinking over there?”
Laughing, Kanghyeok pointed at the scrotum.
One side of Yasuharu’s greatly distended scrotum was rapidly shrinking.