Honk-Honk-Honk, Grrrk
Honk. Honk-honk-honk. Grrrk.
A brown Cocker Spaniel came into the exam room fighting for every breath. Lee Jun's gaze met the Cocker's, and he found tears clinging to the gaunt dog's eyes, trembling there, unshed. How much pain must he be in, to look like that...
The Cocker whose eyes said I hurt so much was named Dalkongi.
Lee Jun checked the chart on the monitor once more. His guardian had probably named him Dalkongi — a wish, tucked into a name, that the two of them would live a sweet and happy life together. But watching him suffer like this — how deeply must it be cutting his guardian's heart?
Lee Jun's guess was right. The man's face had gone rigid.
"Dalkongi, I'm going to make the pain stop. Just hang on a little longer."
Whether he understood the words or not, the Cocker's head trembled in a faint nod.
Lee Jun turned to the guardian.
"We'll start by giving Dalkongi some oxygen."
He reached up and pulled the yellow cord hanging from the ceiling. An oxygen mask dropped down with a soft thunk, and as he fitted it over the Cocker's muzzle he spoke to the dog again.
"Dalkongi, this will make breathing a little easier. Don't be scared..."
He settled the mask into place.
"That's it. Good boy."
Once the mask was on, Dalkongi's breathing eased a little. Perhaps that was why he made no move to shake it off, sitting quietly with it in place. The tightness in the guardian's face seemed to loosen, just a fraction, as he watched.
The man bowed his head to Lee Jun.
"Thank you. You're the first doctor who's put an oxygen mask on him right here in the exam room."
His expression was raw with feeling as he went on.
"Our Dalkongi..."
He clamped both hands over the Cocker's ears, covering them tight against the mask.
"They said it might be cancer."
His voice shook. He was almost certainly thinking of an oral tumor.
"Both of the clinics near our house said the same thing. At first they thought it was bronchitis, something like that, so we gave him medication — but it didn't get better, so..."
"I see."
"Yes."
Dalkongi's case had not been a referral. He had come in on his own, which was why Lee Jun had known none of this. The chart had said only that a honking sound had been present for about a month, and that the dog could not sleep.
"I feel a little more at ease, seeing you, Director. You really do put the animals first, just like I'd heard..."
The guardian was grateful that Lee Jun had comforted Dalkongi the moment he saw him, and that he had reached for the oxygen mask without a second's delay. Perhaps that was why words he had never spoken at any other animal hospital came spilling out.
"Please, just let our Dalkongi be comfortable. He can't eat, he can't breathe... it's too pitiful. However long he has left, I just want him to be at ease until then. If surgery is possible, please operate, Director. Please."
His voice broke on the last words. He seemed to have already steeled himself, after being told it might be cancer.
Lee Jun wanted to give the man hope. But comfort offered too soon could be a kind of poison.
"Let me run the tests first, then I'll tell you what I find."
"Yes. Please, Director."
Lee Jun and Yoo Mu-hwan took Dalkongi straight to the lab and began. They knocked out the blood work and the rest of the basic tests in short order, then headed for radiology.
Cha Da-jeong was already waiting. The moment she saw Dalkongi, she spoke.
"That's a pretty severe honking sound."
A goose's cry — the noise a dog makes when the airways are badly constricted.
"Yeah. This isn't an ordinary sound. The other hospitals are thinking a mass in the pharynx and larynx. Or laryngeal paralysis. I just took a look with the endoscope, and there was a mass — but it wasn't big enough to make breathing this hard."
"So we have to keep paralysis in mind as well?"
"We might."
There was a tumor. It simply was not large enough to explain the symptoms Dalkongi was showing. That was why Lee Jun's expression had darkened when he mentioned laryngeal paralysis — and why Cha Da-jeong's had darkened with it. Yoo Mu-hwan, his face as set as theirs, added his thoughts.
"They had him on medication for two weeks with no improvement, so I believe they've already ruled out infection. They would have wanted to anesthetize him for a closer look, but they probably held off for fear they wouldn't be able to manage him."
"That tracks. The poor thing can barely breathe as it is — of course they didn't want to take the risk. When I looked with the endoscope just now, there was a lot of inflammation. They wouldn't have been able to see properly anyway."
"Two weeks of antibiotics, and there's still inflammation?"
"Which means the tumor could be causing it. Or there's another reason."
"Like Doobu that time."
She was thinking of the foreign body that had lodged in Doobu's nasal passage and tormented her for so long.
"Right. Let's make sure we find it. I'd much rather it be a foreign body."
"I'll find it. I promise."
A tumor already confirmed, and laryngeal paralysis on top of it, would be the worst possible outcome. Cha Da-jeong answered with the hope that it was a foreign-body infection instead.
"I'll still check the heart, lungs, and bronchi, though."
"With a sound this bad, there could be aspiration pneumonia too. Anyway, let's get started."
"Okay. You'll stay for the exam, though, right, Director?"
She meant: would he stand beside her while she imaged Dalkongi.
"Of course I will."
Cha Da-jeong's face brightened. When Lee Jun stayed for an exam, the time it took shrank dramatically. Work that might or might not get done properly in ten minutes was over in under two if he was standing there. He can barely breathe as it is — we can't afford to drag this out. And the animals listen so well when the Director is here.
The thought had barely formed before Lee Jun spoke to Dalkongi.
"Dalkongi, I know it's hard, but can you take a breath and hold still for me?"
Dalkongi inhaled and held, exactly as instructed, and Cha Da-jeong captured the X-rays with ease. Even as she worked the machine, she marveled. Do people have any idea how well the animals listen to our Director?
Not long ago, her advising professor at the university had told her that her X-ray technique had improved by leaps and bounds, and that he wanted to use her images as teaching material in class. He had added something else, too. He even said we should send them to Professor Slater. Mine and the Director's. Suggesting that the photographs go to Slater — the foremost veterinary surgeon in the field — meant the quality was high enough to show veterinary students around the world. It isn't that my technique got better. It's that the Director positions the animals so well. Look. Even Dalkongi, who can barely breathe, is listening like this.
Cha Da-jeong did not waste the chance Lee Jun had given her. Her hands moved fast, and in a matter of moments she had the full set.
"Wow, it went so fast with you here, Director."
"Good. Now I just hope we can read something from these."
"I'll comb through every last speck."
She pulled the images up on the monitor at once and began to read. Cha Da-jeong, who almost never misdiagnosed, went through Dalkongi's films with her eyes gleaming.
"Hm. I'm seeing infiltration in the right cranial lung lobe. And that's an air bronchogram."
An air bronchogram — meaning pneumonia.
"And the opacity around the vocal cords looks a little off. I'll compare it against the endoscopy footage in a bit."
"Okay."
"Aspiration pneumonia, and... hmm. This really looks like vocal cord paralysis. The right side. And... is the cardia not closing?"
As Cha Da-jeong delivered her findings from the films, Lee Jun's eyes went wider and wider.
"Dr. Cha, you can tell all that just from the X-rays? You're right. I passed the endoscope down for a look, and the right vocal cord wasn't moving — swollen, I thought. And the cardia, which should have been closed, was open and wouldn't shut. That's remarkable. Truly remarkable."
"It's nothing. It just looked a little different from a normal film, so..."
She answered with an awkward look, but Lee Jun only piled the praise higher.
"That is skill. Finding what isn't normal — do you know how hard that is? That's our Dr. Cha."
They say praise can make even a whale dance, and it was true. Under Lee Jun's compliments, Cha Da-jeong looked as if someone had fitted a microscope to her eyes. She stared hard at the films, hunting for anything else that was not as it should be, then played the endoscopy recording Lee Jun had saved. I knew it.
She confirmed, without fuss, that her reading had been correct, and went on through the footage. After replaying the same stretch several times, she paused the video and turned to him.
"Director. Here. Doesn't this look strange?"
"There, where the mass is?"
"No. Not that. Here."
She was pointing at the paralyzed right vocal cord.
"What about it? It looks swollen from the inflammation, doesn't it?"
"Yes. And if you look here... I don't know why it would be there, but that's a thorn."
"A thorn?"
Lee Jun blinked and followed her finger.
"Is it?"
To his eye it looked like swelling and nothing more. He could not see a foreign body.
"A grass awn wouldn't be in there. And it can't be a fishbone lodged in the cord, can it?"
"I don't know. It's not normal, anyway. Please check it when you operate."
"It's not without reason. If that's why the inflammation never settled — and then a mass happened to grow on top of it — no wonder he could barely breathe."
"I hope the mass is benign."
"We'll have to hope so. Thank you, Dr. Cha."
Lee Jun thanked her and went out. He booked Dalkongi for surgery that very day — the product of his own wish that the dog recover his breathing as soon as possible, the guardian's desperate hope, and Dalkongi's own silent prayer, all braided into one.
And the surgery was a success.
As he drew out the spine lodged deep in the vocal cord, Lee Jun's voice rose almost to a cheer.
"Look at this. Dr. Cha was right. Thanks to Dr. Cha, Dalkongi's alive. He's alive!"
He turned a look of genuine gratitude on Cha Da-jeong, who had come into the operating room with him. She smiled back.
"Not at all, Director. It's thanks to you — for excising a tumor that was only a millimeter across so cleanly."
"Hahaha. Anyone could do that."
Cha Da-jeong's smile widened. No. Not many people could cut out something that small so perfectly. And that's not all. The reason I could read the images so well is because you handle the animals so well.
Being able to work at Mongmong Animal Hospital, she thought, was the greatest stroke of luck in her life. Well. A teeny tiny bit of it is thanks to being trained by my grouchy older brother. That's how I learned to tell normal from abnormal.
For the first time in a very long while, Cha Da-jeong felt a flicker of gratitude toward Cha Wuk. She had absolutely no intention of ever saying so out loud.
Whether they could read her mind or not, that evening her classmates — gathered together for the first time in a long while — ended up bringing up her brother. The conversation, of course, opened with Mongmong Animal Hospital.
"Da-jeong, I am so jealous of you. You've got everything. Cute animals every day, an incredible director — I'm jealous. I'm actually jealous."
"Heh heh heh. Be as jealous as you want."
"No, I'm seriously jealous. Is Mongmong hiring?"
"If they are, I'm applying."
"No you're not. I'm applying. Don't you dare drive up the competition."
"What kind of nonsense is that? We compete fairly. I'm applying too."
The table was in the middle of piling praise on Mongmong when one of them spoke up.
"But Da-jeong. Don't you regret it?"
"Regret what?"
"Leaving Daehan for Mongmong."
"No. I like it there."
"Did your brother just not take you?"
It was the kind of remark she could have let slide. For some reason, she didn't want to. The speaker was Jo Min-ah — a fellow veterinary radiology graduate who had spent more than ten years coming in second to Cha Da-jeong, and who never missed a chance to say, Must be nice, having a brother like that so you can study in comfort. She carried an inferiority complex the size of a building, and she went on the attack whenever she found an opening.
Cha Da-jeong curled the corner of her mouth.
"Not a chance. He still nags me to come over all the time."
"Oh, come on. Really? If that's true, I'd go tomorrow. Mongmong's gotten a little famous lately, sure, but it's still Daehan. That place is nationwide."
"Nationwide? It's global. I agree with Min-ah. However impressive Senior Lee Jun is, he's in a different league from the doctors at Daehan."
"Ugh, when do I get to sit in with the Dream Team just once?"
"Same. If I ever get the chance, I want to work at Daehan."
"Me too."
A chorus of Daehan was rising around the table when someone spoke up with a laugh.
"Give it a year or two and Mongmong's bar is going to be ridiculously high."
Every gaze at the table turned toward the gravelly voice. Cha Da-jeong grinned at its owner.
"Kim Ji-seok. Look at you, knowing things."
"You hear stuff, hanging around campus. Anyway, Cha Da-jeong — you've really got something. What was it, seventy people? I heard that many applied."
"That's a bit of an exaggeration. Seventy people, for a hospital that small?"
Jo Min-ah gave a short, dismissive laugh. Kim Ji-seok picked up the line without missing a beat.
"Jo Min-ah, I don't think you get it. These days, Mongmong is all anyone talks about at Dongbyung Cafe. People are saying you need to get in and secure a spot before it gets any bigger."
At the mention of Dongbyung Cafe — the one behind the back gate of Jeil University Animal Hospital — and the claim that Mongmong Animal Hospital was the only topic there, Jo Min-ah's eyes went wide.
"What?"
"Do you have any idea how many seniors, classmates, and juniors have already been showing their faces there, just so they'll be remembered when a position opens up? Hmm. Jo Min-ah, you'd get cut in the first round."
In other words: she wouldn't even make the interview. Jo Min-ah's face crumpled.
"W-why would I?"
"Because she's there. Why would they hire you when they've got Cha Da-jeong?"
"I'll give you that. If Da-jeong's on staff, there's no reason to take Min-ah."
The others nodded along with Kim Ji-seok, and Jo Min-ah's face flushed a deep red. Her voice turned snide.
"Hmph. I wouldn't go to a hospital that small anyway. Daehan, maybe. I'm going to Daehan, and I'm joining the Dream Team!"
Joining Daehan Animal Hospital's Dream Team required an American veterinary license. The moment Jo Min-ah announced, out of nowhere, that she would be joining it, Cha Da-jeong's face lit up.
"Wow, Min-ah! You finally got your boards? Congratulations!"
The classmate sitting next to Jo Min-ah jumped in.
"Got them? She failed again."
"B-but I'll definitely pass next time!"
Jo Min-ah's face had gone beet-red, and she all but shouted it. Nobody paid her any mind. One of the others turned to Cha Da-jeong.
"Da-jeong, next time Mongmong is hiring, you have to tell me, okay?"
"I want to work at Mongmong too. How great would that be? Cute animals, and more and more skilled doctors coming in. Next time, I'm going to Mongmong for sure. Assuming I get in, obviously."
The moment Kim Ji-seok said it, the others piled on.
"Me too. You have to tell me."
"Me too, Da-jeong. You have to. You have to."
"Don't just tell us — post it in the group chat, okay?"
"Got it."
Cha Da-jeong answered, then looked around the table. You guys... once you work with our Director, you'll be stunned at how incredible he is.
She thought, not for the first time, that she was the luckiest person in the room, getting to work alongside a man like that. Director. Thank you for hiring me.