As Long as He Doesn't Give Up
Ju Mi-seon cried herself to exhaustion and fell asleep with Teun-teun-i clutched tight against her chest.
When she woke the next morning, dread sat on her like a stone. What if Teun-teun-i is sick? The night before, her feelings had boiled over; she had shown him a side of herself she never wanted him to see. What if the heartbreak had dragged his health down with it? Too frightened even to open her eyes, she lay there with her heart hammering against her ribs.
Then it came.
A warm, wet lick brushed her cheek. Teun-teun-i had just washed her face with his tongue.
"T-Teun-teun-i?"
She sat up, overwhelmed, and he barked.
"Woof!"
Then he melted against her, sliding his face along hers in a slow, familiar nuzzle.
"Teun-teun-i! Did our Teun-teun-i sleep well?"
"Woof!"
He answered with bright energy, then hopped down and trotted off toward the living room.
"T-Teun-teun-i! What if you fall?"
She hurried after him — and there he was, standing in front of her pill bottle the way he did every morning, spinning in tight, eager circles. The sight of it filled her eyes with tears all over again.
How was she supposed to let go of this? This precious, angel-sweet boy of hers? The thought alone split her chest open. She shook her head at once, careful to keep it where he couldn't see. No. If I'm sad, Teun-teun-i will be sad too. So I have to be strong.
The night before, she had promised herself she would give him everything she had for however many days he had left. She blinked up at the ceiling, holding the tears back.
Whether her effort reached him, or whether he was putting on a healthy show for her sake, Teun-teun-i ate his breakfast with real appetite.
"Teun-teun-i, I'll be right back."
That day, Ju Mi-seon asked the woman who owned the snack shop where she worked for some time off. From then on, she stayed home with him.
Maybe that was why. Teun-teun-i brightened again, living with the same lively strength as before. Sometimes he even bounced and hopped, showing her the healthy dog he used to be. He ate well. He took his fluids well. He swallowed every last one of his medications on schedule.
A full ten days passed, and he still looked well. He still ate. She caught herself thinking how wonderful it would be if days like these could just go on.
But that was only a wish. Time was not on Teun-teun-i's side.
Teun-teun-i stopped eating.
"Teun-teun-i, just one bite. Okay?"
Even her pleading couldn't move him. He only gazed up at her, those sorrowful eyes rolling slowly, and would not open his mouth.
And then the moment she had prayed would never come arrived.
A wrenching heave. Teun-teun-i vomited again. Once it started, it would not stop. Once. Twice. On the third heave he thrust his tongue out and brought up a froth of vomit, blood mixed into the foam. He put so much of himself into every retch that when it was over he simply crumpled where he stood.
Hah. Hah. Hah.
Even breathing looked like work. Lying on his side, his ribs ballooned and collapsed, ballooned and collapsed.
In a mere twenty-four hours, Teun-teun-i had become a different dog. Ju Mi-seon wrapped him in the blanket he loved most and carried him to Mongmong Animal Hospital.
"Dr. Yoo. Teun-teun-i is on his way in."
Lee Jun said it as he stepped out of the exam room. The director just finished a consultation. How does he already know Teun-teun-i is coming? If there had been a phone call, Yoo Mu-hwan would have known about it himself — and there hadn't been one.
He didn't ask how. He went to meet them instead.
"Understood."
Teun-teun-i coming in meant Teun-teun-i was worse. Yoo Mu-hwan ran.
He had only been running a moment when he spotted them in the distance. Unlike last time, the guardian didn't look frantic. She was walking so slowly it almost seemed as if she didn't want to come at all — as if she were forcing herself here.
"Why is she walking so slowly?"
The strangeness of it tugged at him as he ran, and then it hit him all at once.
"Ah."
This was the end. The feeling landed hard and certain. But that was that, and an emergency was still an emergency. Yoo Mu-hwan sprinted the rest of the way.
"Ma'am, please let me take Teun-teun-i."
"N-no, Doctor, I can hold him—"
He lifted Teun-teun-i out of Ju Mi-seon's arms and ran.
His feet hammered the floor. As he ran, he took stock. A thin, wet wheeze leaked from Teun-teun-i's open mouth, and with it came the thick, sharp odor of uremia. He was lighter than when he'd been discharged last time; he clearly hadn't been eating. At this rate, the anemia they had barely gotten under control would have worsened too.
Tests mattered. Right now, though, he needed fluids in him immediately. Yoo Mu-hwan burst into the hospital shouting.
"It's Teun-teun-i! Get saline ready!"
He tore toward the treatment room, already lining up the steps in his head — and then he didn't need to. Director Lee had everything prepared and waiting.
"Dr. Yoo. Over here."
When a man that fast with his hands was that thorough in his preparations, there was hardly a breath to catch. By the time Yoo Mu-hwan had it, a catheter was already seated in Teun-teun-i's front leg and fluids were running. Blood had been drawn, of course.
Teun-teun-i was badly dehydrated, and he was in end-stage chronic kidney disease. Catching a vein in a patient like that was no small thing. Apparently, for Director Lee, it was no problem at all.
A moment later, the results came back.
BUN: 130.5
Creatinine: 11
Anemia: Severe
Yoo Mu-hwan let out a breath. Beside him, Lee Jun did the same. And that was not the end of it.
"He'll need a transfusion, won't he?"
"Yes. I think he will."
Yoo Mu-hwan agreed. Teun-teun-i's anemia had to be brought under control too.
"I'll stay with him. Dr. Yoo, go get the guardian's signature."
A transfusion could send a patient into shock. They needed her consent.
"Understood."
Yoo Mu-hwan found Ju Mi-seon and brought her into the exam room, then walked her through Teun-teun-i's results.
"So he needs a transfusion. Please read this and sign here."
He held out the papers. Ju Mi-seon only lowered her head and looked at them.
"Ma'am?"
"I— I know this is shameless of me. But I have a request."
The words landed like a blow to the chest. Yoo Mu-hwan's breath caught. In truth, he had known the moment he saw her walking toward the hospital with Teun-teun-i in her arms. The woman sitting across from him was about to say the words he never wanted to hear from a guardian — the words he hated most in the world.
He didn't answer. He wouldn't.
Whether she understood what that silence cost him or not, Ju Mi-seon went on.
"Teun-teun-i — our Teun-teun-i has never once made trouble. This was the first time he's ever been sick. He's been so good, so dear, so— yes. So what I mean is… I… I don't want our Teun-teun-i to be in pain."
She had been speaking with her head bowed. Now she lifted it and met Yoo Mu-hwan's eyes.
"Doctor. How much longer can our Teun-teun-i live?"
"…How is anyone supposed to know a thing like living and dying?"
"That's true. But looking at him objectively, as he is right now — if we don't treat him, how long can he hold on?"
"If we don't treat him…"
A week? Two weeks? He might not even make it through today.
"A month, at the outside."
"I see."
Her face had gone still. She went on in that same even voice.
"If I hadn't brought our Teun-teun-i to Mongmong Animal Hospital back then, he would already have crossed the Rainbow Bridge."
She rose from her chair and bowed, slowly, from the waist.
"Thank you. Truly. What you and the director have done for our Teun-teun-i — I'll never forget it, not even when I die."
"No, please. You don't need to—"
"I do. I'm grateful you didn't turn us away at the door. You've already saved our Teun-teun-i twice."
"…He was meant to live, that's all."
It was the only thing Yoo Mu-hwan could find to say.
"I think so too. Our Teun-teun-i's last years have been so happy. That's how he got to meet doctors like you."
She bent her head and stroked Teun-teun-i, quietly, over and over — until a single tear slipped free and fell.
"Doctor. Our Teun-teun-i… please don't let him hurt anymore."
There it was. The words he had been dreading. Yoo Mu-hwan shook his head hard.
"I can't do that."
He had become a veterinarian to save lives, not to take them. His work was to treat animals who were in pain. That was why he had become a veterinarian at all.
"I've heard that patients with chronic kidney disease are in terrible pain. Nauseous all day, wanting to vomit, itching, their legs hurting — and if they can't even make it to the bathroom, it's agony. I don't want our Teun-teun-i to hurt like that."
"There are a lot of treatments now. Pain medication too — more kinds than there used to be."
"I'm sure there are. But I can't bear it. And I can't bear watching him hurt, either."
Yoo Mu-hwan opened his mouth to tell her he would cover the cost, that she didn't need to worry about that. She didn't give him the chance. She kept going.
"I know. I know you and the director won't take any money. But that isn't right either."
The tears she had been holding finally broke.
"I'm so sorry— I couldn't even take good care of him, and now I can't even… I can't even let him go properly. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to our Teun-teun-i."
"…Ma'am."
"D-Doctor. Please. Please?"
Yoo Mu-hwan had trained in a university animal hospital. By the time a patient reached a place like that, the case was almost always severe, and the bills were enormous. Some guardians came prepared for that. Many others, crushed by the cost, gave up halfway through. He had seen plenty of them cry in front of him.
He was supposed to make a decision. The old version of himself would have nodded. He would have said, I respect your decision.
But something had changed. Maybe Mongmong Animal Hospital had steeped it into him. Or maybe some sleeping instinct in his own blood had finally woken up.
"Ma'am. Teun-teun-i's guardian. I'll take Teun-teun-i—"
The exam room door flew open. Director Lee Jun came in with Teun-teun-i in his arms, the IV line still running.
"At our Mongmong Animal Hospital, the thing you're asking for is only performed when certain conditions are met. Those conditions are these. A traffic accident, where we judge that no treatment could reasonably bring them back. A case where breathing itself is such agony that remaining alive is the greater suffering. And a case of pain so extreme that it takes the mind with it."
It was a small voice — cold, grim, and so precise it seemed to drive itself into the ear. Yoo Mu-hwan had never seen Director Lee wear a look that frightening.
Lee Jun went on in the same tone.
"Ma'am. Which of those applies to Teun-teun-i?"
He held Teun-teun-i out to her. Teun-teun-i's eyes were open. He was looking at his person — not the limp, spent dog who had arrived in her arms a little while ago.
She reached for him.
"T-Teun-teun-i…"
"All right. If keeping him is too much, I'll take responsibility. Teun-teun-i knows, too. He knows there isn't much time left before he goes to the Dog Star. I know that."
Lee Jun stopped, drew a slow breath, and started again.
He looked at her and laid down every word, one after another, without hurry.
"I will be right here to help him. And Dr. Yoo will too."
"I— I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Ju Mi-seon sank into the chair and could not stop apologizing.
"I know. You're not a veterinarian. Caring for Teun-teun-i can't have been easy. You've done well, all this time. So from now on, leave it to us. We'll stay with him."
"I'll take full responsibility for Teun-teun-i."
There was not one percent of blame in either man's eyes as they said it. Not resentment, not reproach. Lee Jun knew how hard it was to care for a companion animal with chronic kidney disease. Yoo Mu-hwan knew it just as well. How many guardians like her had the two of them already seen?
They knew, and that was why they called guardians like her heroes. People who wade through something this hard, this painful — that is what a guardian is. That is what a hero is. So neither of them resented Ju Mi-seon, and neither of them condemned her. They only wanted to stand behind Teun-teun-i, who still wanted to live.
When Director Lee finished speaking, the exam room held nothing but Ju Mi-seon's broken crying. She stroked Teun-teun-i in Lee Jun's arms and got the words out in pieces.
"Teun-teun-i, I'm sorry. Mom is so sorry. Next time — if this sinful mom ever gets to meet you again — I'll do so much better. I will. Teun-teun-i, I really—"
Lee Jun settled Teun-teun-i back into her arms. She gathered him up and wept, a raw, collapsing sound, and Teun-teun-i, held against her, let his own tears fall.
Sometime without anyone noticing, Go Gi-jin had started crying outside the exam room. So had Jang Sora. So had Cha Da-jeong.
And Hoesaegi, and Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree — their mouths trembling, tears sliding down their faces too.