Chapter 180 To Joseon [2]
Chapter 180 To Joseon [2]
“No, no! You can’t!”
Even with his face burning red from fever, Dolseok kept shaking his head wildly.
He looked half out of his mind already.
Yet the moment he heard that particular sensitive word, he reacted as if struck by lightning.
But this time, unlike yesterday, Kanghyeok had no intention of letting it slide so easily.
He was not facing Dolseok as his young master now, but as a cold, clear-headed physician.
“Yeon.”
So Kanghyeok called to Yeoni with an utterly cold face.
Just from his tone, Yeoni more or less understood what he meant to order.
She rolled up her sleeves first and answered.
“Yes, Young Master.”
“Make him stay still. The fool’s about to die, so why is he still putting up this much resistance?”
“Yes.”
The moment she answered, Yeoni moved like a hawk and struck with the edge of her hand.
Dolseok tried to defend himself too late, but it was useless.
He would not have been any match for her even in normal condition, let alone now, when he was delirious with high fever.
Thwack.
A crisp impact rang out, and Dolseok went limp like a puppet with its strings cut.
Makbong caught him quickly, so he did not end up collapsing onto the floor.
“Well done. First… lay him down here.”
Kanghyeok pointed to a section jutting out from the hull.
On closer look, there were what looked like old bloodstains left there.
Could this possibly be… the same place where I operated on Kim Seongil’s nephew?
Was his name Gu-o?
He had made the difficult journey following Kim Seongil all the way there.
Yet because of an unforeseen accident, he had only managed to see Tsushima before having to turn back.
“Mm. I think this is the place.”
Even Yeoju, whose eye for detail was especially sharp, wore a look of recognition.
“Oh, you think so too?”
“Yes. Well… the ship was rocking so much that day that I couldn’t come close, but I watched carefully when he was taken off.”
“Then it probably is.”
Kanghyeok nodded as he looked around.
The interior of the panokseon was fairly spacious.
If crammed in by force, it could hold nearly two hundred men.
It was a sight befitting the mightiest warship in East Asia, the pride of the Joseon navy.
Even so, however, there was really only this one suitable place to lay an injured patient down.
There are more places further inside…
But it was too dark in there.
It might have been manageable with hanging lamps or handheld light.
But using fire aboard a wooden ship was practically suicidal.
Especially on rolling seas like this.
So at least from a physician’s point of view, even this great warship, the mighty panokseon, still had room for improvement.
I’ll bring that up later when I meet Admiral Yi. For now, let’s deal with Dolseok.
By then, Makbong and Yeoni had already laid Dolseok down quietly.
Because the blow to the nape had landed so cleanly, Dolseok lay unconscious without the slightest movement.
Even so, both his hands were tightly clasped over his groin.
That sight made Makbong tear up.
“Young Master… this idiot, really…”
He looked at Kanghyeok with a face full of emotion.
“There won’t really be any chance that it becomes unusable… right? He may be clumsy, but he really cares about it.”
“Ha…”
“He probably can’t live a single moment without it. Can’t medicine do something?”
Watching Makbong on the verge of tears reminded Kanghyeok of a movie he had seen long ago.
Was it My Sassy Girl?
Something like that, probably.
There had been a scene where the male lead basically asked another man to take good care of the girl he had broken up with.
Why in the world would anyone fuss that much over a woman he had already lost?
It had been such a bizarre scene, completely incomprehensible to him, that he still remembered it.
Makbong’s face right now looked exactly like that actor’s.
Which was to say, it was irritating as hell.
“Are you insane, you bastard? Want me to slice yours too?”
“Huh?”
Before anyone noticed, Kanghyeok had already taken out a scalpel.
He had prepared it ever since Dolseok collapsed.
With the scalpel, he pointed back and forth between Makbong’s thing and Dolseok’s.
Naturally, Makbong shrank back.
“Just look at him. He’s going to die if I don’t cut this open.”
“Uh…”
“Quit talking and get up by his head. If it looks like he’s waking up, hit him again, or force the brew down his throat.”
“Yes, yes.”
“If he moves and something else gets cut instead, that’ll be on you. Understood? Think of it like this: if your friend’s thing gets cut off, you won’t come out of it unharmed either.”
“Uh… yes. Yes, Young Master. I’ll remember that.”
Only after shutting Makbong up like that did Kanghyeok turn to Yeoni.
Because the sea wind was blowing so hard, a few strands of hair had come loose from her topknot.
By Joseon standards, who knew how she might look, but to Kanghyeok’s eyes she was quite pretty.
And still so young it bordered on innocence.
If possible, I really wouldn’t want to make her see something like this…
But someone had to assist.
It would have been best if Makbong could do it, but he was still the best one they had for anesthesia duty.
So it could not be helped.
After a brief moment of thought, Kanghyeok gave the order.
“Pull down his trousers.”
“His trousers?”
Yeoni looked a little surprised, but not so much that she seemed unable to do it.
To her, Kanghyeok’s command was almost the same as the king’s own word.
“Yes. Everything, including the underclothes.”
“It’s too heavy. It’s not coming off well…”
“Really? Then just cut it. That fool’s trousers are basically a sack of germs anyway. They have to be thrown out.”
“Ah, yes.”
Taking the scissors from the house-call bag, Yeoni began cutting through the trousers.
Just as Kanghyeok had said, the inside of Dolseok’s trousers was a complete mess, soaked with pus and urine leaking from the tip of the urethra.
It was only thanks to the strong sea wind that the stench was not overwhelming.
“Whew. I’ll cut the underclothes too…”
“Right. Ah, but those might be stuck to him. Don’t pull too hard. You’ll strip the skin off the urethra.”
“Ah, I see. Then… what should I do?”
Yeoni asked while holding the cut piece of undercloth.
The dried pus from the urethra had hardened and glued it firmly in place.
Exactly as Kanghyeok had said.
“First, wet it with some saline.”
“Yes. Oh… it’s coming off.”
“Well done. Damn… this idiot must’ve been yanking at it himself. He’s already scraped the skin raw.”
Last night, because it had been so dark, Kanghyeok had not been able to see clearly.
But now that he could, the state of it was truly a wreck.
In other words, the abscess below was not the only problem.
At this rate, just as Makbong feared, it really did look possible that it would become unusable forever.
“For now, we’ll deal with this part later. No, Makbong. What in the world did you two do to this?”
No matter how he looked at it, this did not seem like the normal progression of gonorrhea.
The two of them had apparently tried something or other in the name of treatment, and that had only made it worse.
To begin with, the abscess below was far larger than it should ever have been.
“Well… we put ointment on it, let it dry in the sun, and whenever scabs formed, we peeled them off…”
“Ointment? What ointment?”
“Well… that thing made by double-boiling the steroid brew until it hardened… you did say there was nothing better for easing inflammation.”
“Good god, you lunatics. That only applies when there’s no infection, or when antibiotics are used together. I knew something felt off. What healthy young man without diabetes gets this bad from gonorrhea?”
Steroids really were a sweet medicine.
They brought swelling down and controlled pain remarkably well by suppressing the inflammatory response.
In fact, for things like facial paralysis or sudden hearing loss, steroids were often the only real treatment.
But if used incorrectly in infectious disease, they could cause a disaster.
Because steroids suppressed the inflammation itself, not the bacteria causing it.
In other words, they could actually rob the body of its chance to fight the germs.
And the result of that lay right in front of Kanghyeok now.
“First, first let’s cut this open. What kind of abscess grows over five centimeters? Yeon, hand me the disinfectant.”
“Yes. Ugh…”
Yeoni handed him the Betadine with a deeply disgusted expression.
“What, you hate it that much?”
“Yes. Do all men’s things look like this? Yasuharu’s was like that too…”
“Huh? No, no, of course not.”
Granted, objectively speaking, one could not say the thing called a pecker was especially beautiful.
But it was not as if they all looked like Yasuharu’s lopsided scrotum or Dolseok’s flaming goblin club.
It was unfair to slander all peckers like that.
“Once I cut this and it improves a bit, you’ll see a much better version. I’ll make sure of it. Poor Ttolseok… I mean, Dolseok.”
“I hope so. Because this is really…”
“I have to make it better quickly, so give me the scalpel.”
“Mm… yes.”
Still wearing the expression of someone who had bitten into dung, Yeoni handed over the scalpel.
The moment Kanghyeok took it, he slashed at the grotesquely swollen abscess.
Or rather, he was about to.
If Dolseok had not exploded into motion.
“Ugh!”
“Wh-what! Hey, hey, Makbong, you bastard! I told you to keep him under by any means necessary!”
“What was I supposed to do when the idiot suddenly pulled this with no warning?”
Makbong belatedly smacked the back of Dolseok’s neck again, and Dolseok fell quiet once more.
“Ha…”
Kanghyeok shook his head as he looked at the scalpel, already halfway in.
Things had nearly gone truly, catastrophically wrong.
Feeling a chill run through his chest, he spoke.
“Hey, I almost cut it for real just now. Or did I? Maybe a little got cut?”
“Did it get cut?”
Makbong asked, eyes filled with every possible worry.
“Wait a second. I’ve still got the blade in there too… I’ll have to pull it out to know.”
“Please…”
Makbong clasped both hands and prayed as if it were his own that had been cut.
Whether that prayer reached the heavens or the bottom of the sea, who knew, but fortunately the blade had only gone into the abscess cavity.
“Whew. Never thought a huge abscess would save the day.”
“Is… is it really all right?”
“For now, yes. Anyway, do your job properly, idiot. For a second there I really thought I’d cut it.”
“Yes, yes.”
Just in case, Kanghyeok checked Dolseok’s pulse.
Fortunately, it was completely stable, which meant they could at least feel safe for twenty minutes.
I absolutely have to finish this within that time.
Reinforcing that resolve, Kanghyeok picked up the scalpel again.
If he wanted to finish quickly, he needed some help.
“Yeon. Grab hold of it now.”
“Here… right?”
“Yes. I know you really hate this, but you need to hold it so I can cut properly.”
“Yes…”
With the expression of someone handling a cursed sea cucumber hauled up from hell, Yeoni gripped the base.
It was a rotten thing to make her do, but Kanghyeok had to harden his heart.
After all, he had almost done something to Dolseok a moment ago that should never have been done.
“Good. Hold it tight.”
“Yes…”
Kanghyeok drew the scalpel down in a single stroke.
Even though the ship was rocking constantly from the waves, it did not disturb him in the slightest.
Apparently his body had adapted after doing this once before.
Gush, gush, gush.
The moment the abscess cavity split wide open, the thick pus that had pooled inside began to pour out.
Usually, he would have stopped after draining the pus.
But here, that alone would not be enough.
It was a protruding part of the body, which also meant it was an area where the blood vessels ran to their ends.
In other words, if things went badly, it could rot from infection.
“All right, the pus is drained. Hand me the scalpel again.”
“The knife again?”
“Yes. I have to scrape everything out from inside.”
“Ah… yes.”
“The blade’s going in, so hold him properly this time. Especially you, Makbong.”
“Yes, yes.”