It's Banana Oppa! It's Banana Oppa!
Haennim-i beamed, chanting the words like a spell. Lee Jun couldn't bear to look at her. He hung his head and wept.
Then a sound reached his ears that did not belong.
A clang. A scrape. A long, protesting creak. Clang, clang.
Lee Jun's head snapped up, and the sight that swam into his tear-blurred vision made him jolt.
Haennim-i had heaved herself half-upright and was dragging her hindquarters across the floor, coming toward him.
The place where Lee Jun stood was the farthest point in the cage from where she had been lying — the best angle from which to examine the wound on her hip as she rested on her side, pawing at the bars. That was no longer the case. The cage was barely six square meters, and yet Haennim-i had moved. She was trying to get closer to him.
"Hae— Haennim-i, don't—"
The words died in his mouth.
This was a child who had lived every day of her life the hard way. What he wanted to tell her, a thousand times, ten thousand times, was That's it, you're doing so well, and You do whatever you want. He did not want to tell her Don't move. Don't come any closer.
And she was already in unspeakable pain even lying still.
Lee Jun spoke in a rush.
"I— I'll come to you. This Banana Oppa will come."
He ran to the other side, to where she was.
Seeing him nearer, Haennim-i smiled even more brightly and pushed a foreleg out between the bars. At the same time she pressed her face flush against the rusted iron. Tufts of brown fur poked through the gaps in a soft, dense thicket.
Lee Jun remembered the day they first met.
A small, impossibly dear Haennim-i had thrust both front paws through the bars as if asking to be held, her face mashed against the cage. He had closed his hands around those fluffy little paws. Then he had slipped his fingers through the bars and stroked her face, her shoulders, with all the care he had. She had given her whole body over to him, squealing with delight, pressing herself even harder against the iron to get closer still.
Haennim-i taking her first bite of banana, her eyes flying so wide at the sweetness they looked ready to fall out of her head. Haennim-i clutching that banana as if it were the most precious thing in the world.
Holding that past child in his mind, Lee Jun cradled the foreleg poking through the cage as if it might break. He lingered especially over the blunted stump of her left front leg, stroking it with everything he had.
How much did that hurt?
How had this child endured the unimaginable pain of a piece of her own body being torn away?
And the child who had already walked through that dying pain was in pain again. Right in front of him.
Lee Jun came back to himself with a jolt.
While I'm standing here blaming myself, Haennim-i is hurting so badly she could die of it.
Sorry could wait. Guilt could wait. He could do all of that after he treated her, and it would not be too late.
He spoke to her.
"Haennim-i. It hurts a lot, doesn't it?"
…Hnnn. It hurts so much, Oppa.
"Just a little longer. Oppa's going to make it so our Haennim-i doesn't hurt anymore."
It won't hurt?
"That's right. If you help me just a little, I can make the hurting stop."
Huuh?
Haennim-i tilted her head. She had no idea what help was supposed to mean.
"To make Haennim-i stop hurting, there's going to be a little sting, okay? Something sharp goes in right here. But you just mustn't touch it."
He pressed a finger to her foreleg, showing her where the needle would go.
"And then you'll start getting all sleepy. When that happens, you just sleep. Close your eyes, go night-night, and when you wake up, it won't hurt anymore."
After night-night, it won't hurt?
She looked up at him, hope shining in her eyes.
"That's right. After night-night, it won't hurt. So. My brave Haennim-i — can you be strong for me?"
Yeah!
Haennim-i smiled, bright with the promise that the pain would go away.
If I had my way, I'd time the anesthesia to the start of surgery.
If he could, the time under would be shorter, and that would be so much better for her. But if he did that, Kang Han-ul and everyone else would drop where they stood.
Treat her first. Think later.
Lee Jun went back inside the building and spoke to Go Gi-jin.
"Gi-jin. Let's get ready."
"Got it. Should I grab the dart gun?"
"No. We're doing it by injection. And bring an IV set. Sunbae — where are the antibiotics?"
"Antibiotics are here. You're not using the dart gun?"
"I told you a moment ago. I'll put her under with a needle."
"The second she senses something off, she'll try to run. If that puts strain on the wound… Let's just go with the dart gun. It's safer."
"If it looks like it won't work, I'll fire the dart gun."
There was no give in Lee Jun's voice. Kang Han-ul nodded.
"Alright, then."
"Hyungnim. Let's go."
Go Gi-jin was already at the door, a stretcher in his hands.
"Yeah. Let's."
Go Gi-jin went out first, Lee Jun after him. Kang Han-ul came last, the dart gun in his grip.
He never had cause to use it.
A short while later, gasps broke out across the Donghae enclosure where the Somang-is were kept.
"Th-that's impossible."
"Wait. What did I just see?"
"What do you think you saw? You saw something incredible."
"Is putting them under that easy? She's so calm."
"If it were that easy, would Haennim-i's wound have gotten this bad?"
"That's true. If she took to people like that, they could have gotten medicine into her no problem."
"Yeah. Probably."
The volunteers found their voices one by one, each of them still reeling from the sight of Lee Jun placing an IV and delivering an injection to Haennim-i entirely on his own. The veterinarians, in particular, wore the faces of people who had just seen a ghost.
Fire a dart gun to anesthetize one of them, and the bears watching from the neighboring cages went to pieces. They scrambled for somewhere to hide, careening around their tiny stalls, sometimes even climbing the bars. Once the bears started moving, darting them became that much harder. You had to hit the hip, a foreleg, a hind leg — and a bad shot could take a face, an eye.
It was a problem when you darted them as a group. It was the same problem when you darted only one. The others erupted just as wildly, certain they might be next.
Lee Jun had done the whole thing in an instant. And the bears inside the cages had stayed quiet.
"What's with them, though?"
Someone pointed at the bars.
Every bear in every cage was watching Haennim-i as she was carried away on the stretcher.
A low, rolling groan. A huff, huff, huff. They watched her go, murmuring among themselves.
"I think they're cheering her on."
"It sounds crazy, but that's exactly what it sounds like."
They were right.
Borne up by her companions' voices, Haennim-i was moved to the operating room. Kang Han-ul looked down at her on the table and let out a long breath — a sigh of relief.
"…She's sleeping so peacefully. For nearly two weeks, all I've seen is her frowning and crying in pain."
He gazed at her for a moment, then turned to Lee Jun.
"Jun. Thank you."
"There's nothing to thank me for. This is what I should be doing. I just hope it hasn't reached the bone."
Kang Han-ul agreed at once.
"We have to hope so."
Lee Jun, Kang Han-ul, and Go Gi-jin moved through the surgical prep without wasted motion.
The clippers whirred to life, and coarse, heavy black fur drifted to the floor in dark clumps — the coat coming off the surgical field.
Go Gi-jin had been shaving from the far edge of the wound inward. The clippers stuttered and stopped in his hand.
"This is a whole lot worse than I figured."
With the fur covering it gone, the wound was far more serious than it had looked.
"Let's irrigate it."
The three of them flushed the site quickly with sterile saline. The skin was black with necrosis, and, just as Lee Jun had suspected, the muscle beneath was blackened in patches as well. In places the muscle was tattered, melting away at a touch. And the damage ran wider and deeper than any of them had expected.
"This is worse than I thought. Reconstructing this is going to be hard."
Kang Han-ul let out a breath and went on.
"Jun. Should we take skin from her back?"
There was so much missing skin over the wound that he was proposing a graft from the dorsum.
"That wouldn't be easy either. We can't guarantee sterility, and the surgery would take far too long."
"I was just thinking out loud because I'm frustrated. Even with twenty-four-hour intensive care in a clean environment, we'd still be worrying about infection. Here, it's impossible. And given Haennim-i's condition…"
"If we could close it right now, maybe. But we'd have to wait for the inflammation to clear first, and that's not realistic."
"No. It isn't."
Kang Han-ul's face was bitter as he said it. Lee Jun and Go Gi-jin answered together.
After that, the three of them barely spoke. In the hush that settled over the room, the wound that had been matted with fur and filth was cleaned in moments. Fastest of all was Go Gi-jin. He disinfected the site and had the surgical drapes down over it almost before the others had drawn breath. These were the hands of a man who had spent his life treating cattle in the field — unhesitating, and very, very quick.
"We're all set."
Lee Jun nodded.
"From here to here. The necrosis is severe, so we're taking all of it."
"Got it."
Lee Jun laid the scalpel to the skin.
Pus burst up as if it had been waiting. It ran in a thick stream, and Kang Han-ul called out.
"Suction!"
The word was not even finished before the pus was being drawn up the hose. Go Gi-jin had had the suction in his hand before Lee Jun ever made the cut.
The same rhythm held from there. Lee Jun excised the necrotic muscle. Wherever tissue came away and pus welled in the gap, Go Gi-jin cleared it in the same breath. Four hands moving in lockstep, and the skin that had gone black with rot, or gray, simply disappeared.
Kang Han-ul watched their hands and clicked his tongue in disbelief.
"You two work so well together I have nothing to do."
The suction gurgled. There had been so much pus that the canister was already full of bloody fluid.
The necrotic tissue was gone in what felt like no time at all. Lee Jun spoke.
"The bone looks fine, fortunately."
"That's a relief."
"Then I'll start suturing."
Lee Jun drew the muscle together and began to close it, matching the cut surfaces and restoring them almost as fast as the eye could follow. Where his hands passed, the gaping muscle came together clean. Kang Han-ul looked at the neatly aligned muscle bellies and shook his head in wonder.
"You were already insanely fast and precise. How much more are you going to grow?"
"That's a compliment, right?"
"Of course it is. This is why everyone keeps saying Jun, Jun."
Go Gi-jin piled on, his voice thick with pride.
"Where's our Hyungnim's skill gonna go, huh?"
"I'm saying someone who was already outstanding got even better."
"Aigoo. If you saw our Hyungnim do an endoscopy, you'd faint clean away."
"He's always been famous for being fast."
"That's what I'm sayin'. And he's gotten even faster, I tell you."
While Kang Han-ul and Go Gi-jin talked, Lee Jun set the needle holder and forceps down on the instrument tray beside him. Go Gi-jin, mid-conversation, put a fresh needle holder in his hand without a pause — suture already loaded, the needle locked in tight, a long tail of thread trailing from it.
Kang Han-ul glanced at him.
"You're way too fast for someone your size, too."
"You gotta be at least this quick if you want to operate alongside our Hyungnim."
Go Gi-jin said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Kang Han-ul huffed a laugh.
Now came the real closing. Lee Jun indicated the site and spoke to Go Gi-jin.
"I think we can suture up to here."
Then he raised his voice so everyone in the operating room could hear.
"This is as far as we can close. If we try to pull the rest together on tension, it's going to tear. We'll monitor what's left. From there, we either suture again or we do a skin graft…"
The portion Lee Jun had closed was exactly half the wound. The other half lay open, raw and red. The necrotic skin was gone, so there was nothing left to bring together — and they could not have closed a site that was still draining pus in any case.
"Well. Even this is doing incredibly well."
"It is. I don't think I could have managed half of this. But if we leave it like this, this part…"
No one disagreed. The regret on their faces was another matter. Kang Han-ul put the question for all of them.
"Leaving it open is the right call. That's not even a question. But Jun — if we leave her like this, won't it get infected immediately?"
A wound like the one in front of them needed to stay open until the pus had drained completely. Or you placed a drain and let the exudate run off that way. Either way, the pus sitting in the tissue had to come out.
The problem was Haennim-i's situation. There was no way to disinfect the site cleanly every day. There was no guarantee she would leave the wound alone. And she lived in a filthy iron cage.
Under those conditions, a drain would have been the better choice — if she didn't pull it out, and if there was enough skin to cover the wound. They had known from the start that a graft would be difficult. Even so, they had thought Lee Jun might have a method. If nothing else, they had expected him to mesh the surrounding skin, spreading it like a net so the edges could grow together.
A wound with raw flesh exposed like this would reinfect. There was no way around it.
Every eye in the room was on Lee Jun when he and Go Gi-jin spoke at the same time.
"I'm thinking we try Sugar Therapy."
"Unless we use Sugar Therapy, this here…"
Lee Jun and Go Gi-jin looked at each other. Kang Han-ul looked at both of them.
"S-Sugar Therapy. If we could actually pull that off, it would be wonderful."
"That's right."
Go Gi-jin and Kang Han-ul were not the only ones staring. The other veterinarians who had come in to assist were watching Lee Jun as well.
Sugar Therapy was a wound-care method in which the site was thoroughly disinfected and then packed with granulated sugar. The sugar laid over the wound absorbed exudate and pus, and it encouraged new tissue to grow. By osmosis it drew out the inflammation and suppressed bacterial growth. It also pulled nutrient-rich lymph into the skin, helping the tissue regenerate.
The question was whether you could use a method like that on a bear. It was not an easy protocol even in dogs and cats who had been handled by people since they were small. But if it could be done, it was a good treatment for Haennim-i's situation.
Kang Han-ul, still watching Lee Jun, answered slowly.
"If that method is actually possible… I can see some hope."
It would be hard for anyone else. For Lee Jun, it would be simple.
"We'll make it work. Whatever it takes."
Lee Jun answered with complete conviction.