A Forest Without Trees
"Yom-yom-i's liver values came back the highest of all of them."
Ah. Of course they had. Lee Jun let out a long, slow breath, and in the pause Cha Da-jeong added,
"The others came back high too, though. Every last one of them."
"Well, after a blaze like that tore through, multiple organ failure was almost a given. High liver values make sense. It wouldn't have been any different from heatstroke, would it? No — it would all have been worse than heatstroke."
Lee Jun's voice had gone very quiet. He recited what he'd heard out in the field.
"I heard there were places — even underground — where it climbed past a hundred and fifty degrees Celsius."
"A hundred and fifty degrees? Aigoo. Comparing that to heatstroke makes me look like an idiot. Those tiny little things endured that kind of heat?"
Choi Woo-jin turned his gaze toward the laboratory door as he went on.
"They're really something, those kids. Surviving a scene that terrifying."
"That's what I'm saying… I was so shocked when I saw the results."
"Why?"
"The degree varied, that's all. Just like Dr. Choi said, every one of them had multiple organ damage. They have no business sitting there with those bright little faces…"
Cha Da-jeong let out a shallow sigh and continued.
"I think we need to run Yom-yom-i's tests again."
"Yom-yom-i?"
"Yes. Going back over what we already ran, I feel like I missed something. I went through it too fast, too. If we'd had to anesthetize them, I wouldn't be suggesting a retest this easily."
"That's true. Ordinarily you'd have to anesthetize them just to examine them. And for the x-rays you'd tape all four legs down to the table to keep them still."
Animals as averse to human hands as squirrels ordinarily needed anesthesia even for an examination. And for radiographs, to keep a human hand from obscuring the area of interest, you taped the patient to the table with medical tape and ran the study that way — a laborious, fraught process from start to finish.
"But these little ones, what can I say… they lay down on their own like the best-behaved puppies and stuck out those tiny fern-frond paws without being asked. Running the tests one more time wouldn't be a problem, would it? So how did Yom-yom-i's numbers come out, that you're talking like this?"
"Here."
Cha Da-jeong held out the printed sheet of Yom-yom-i's results. Of the twenty-two impossibly tiny squirrels, only twelve had received bloodwork.
If it had been up to them, they would have tested all twenty-two. Realistically, it had been impossible. Their size was the obstacle. The vessels were hair-thin, and drawing enough blood for a panel could have tipped them into anemia. On top of that, Choi Woo-jin had waved the whole idea off — a hedgehog or a guinea pig, maybe, but an animal as small as a squirrel, he couldn't even find a vein. So twelve had been chosen. One of them was Yom-yom-i.
"Anyway, Lee Jun, I already knew you were a master at drawing blood, but this is genuinely impressive. Pulling samples from kids that small. Lee Jun. You have to give me this. Yeah?"
The harder the draw, the more precious the results. They would be a significant reference going forward, anytime they treated an animal this small.
"Sure."
The two of them scanned the sheets quickly.
"Like Dr. Cha said, this one's the worst, isn't he? Wait — Lee Jun, isn't this the one you told us about? The one who was looking after the others like a leader. The one you were worried about because his ears were yellow…"
Choi Woo-jin was looking at the last page. It was Yom-yom-i's results.
Anemia present | Further evaluation advised
"How bad is it?"
He was asking Choi — who had far more experience treating exotic animals — what he made of Yom-yom-i's prognosis.
"The liver values are all high."
Choi Woo-jin said it, then read down the rest of Yom-yom-i's results.
"ALT 221 — normal's 17 to 78. AST 161 — normal's 17 to 44. ALP 452 — normal's 47 to 254. Hmm… what's the TB?"
Choi Woo-jin hunted across the sheet for total bilirubin, the jaundice marker.
"4.3."
Lee Jun, reading the same page, answered for him. At the news that total bilirubin — anything up to 1.0 considered normal — was sitting at 4.3, a sigh slipped out of Choi Woo-jin as well.
"CRP's high too. Looks like a lot of inflammation. Anemia as well. Hematocrit's at 15. Electrolyte imbalance is severe, too. Hmm…"
Lee Jun stared at the sheet without a word, the look of a man turning something over. In the silence his face slowly hardened. And then, at last, he opened his mouth.
"It's jaundice, yes, but this is a little… these numbers look like a hepatobiliary problem. Or a bile duct obstruction."
"…Could be."
"That's why. That's why I wanted to check once more."
At Cha Da-jeong's words, Lee Jun nodded.
"Then we check. If Dr. Cha has a bad feeling about it, there's a reason."
"I'm sure there is. But Lee Jun — even if that's what it is, can you operate on something that small? What if the bleeding's bad once you're in there? We can't even transfuse him."
Silence settled over the laboratory. They knew too well how hard, and how dangerous, it was to operate on an animal that barely weighed a hundred grams.
"Fixing a broken leg is hard enough. Opening an abdomen is another problem entirely. And Lee Jun — have you ever done surgery on a squirrel?"
"No. When I was at UC Davis I only watched. And that one weighed 800 grams."
"If Yom-yom-i were even that big, I'd be a lot less worried."
Lee Jun let out a breath and answered him.
"Yeah. I know. Anyway — let's retest first and think after that. Fluids and medication might be enough to turn it around, for all we know."
"I hope so."
"Let's look at the others' results too. The kids are resting right now…"
They'd been through a hard round of testing. They needed time to recover — which was another way of saying, let's give this time before we decide.
The two of them started through the stack of result sheets Cha Da-jeong held out.
While the mood in the laboratory grew steadily graver, the squirrels' inpatient room on the second floor was a festival.
"I-I'm not hurt!"
"It doesn't hurt, hehehe. M-my neck doesn't hurt. My tummy doesn't hurt either."
"Heehee, this part doesn't hurt. Once I have a nap and wake up, I'll just… I think I'll be able to hop-hop around."
The squirrels poured it out in a torrent of chittering, and Yom-yom-i's face grew brighter and brighter. He beamed and spoke to the three of them, thrusting both tiny front paws straight into the air.
"Hyungnims! They say they don't hurt! They say they're not in pain!"
"Of course they aren't, ong. Hyungnim poked them with a needle, ong."
"How about that? Our Mongmong Animal Hospital."
"It's our Mongmong Animal Hospital, it is! He's our Hyungnim, he is!"
They'd come to Mongmong Animal Hospital, so of course they didn't hurt. Their Hyungnim had given them a shot, so of course they didn't hurt. Pride sat full on all three faces as they said it, and all three of them believed it — that it would be exactly as they had said.
"I-I'm going to hop-hop around when I get up."
A squirrel who couldn't stand because of an injured hind leg cupped his front paws together and spoke the wish softly. From a little farther off, another squirrel lying down picked it up.
"Me too! I'll hop-hop over to the Hyungnim of Hyungnims. And then I'll dive right into him."
Meaning they would burrow into the pocket of the scrubs Lee Jun wore. That was how safe they felt with him.
"I-I want to do that too. Hehe. The Hyungnim of Hyungnims, I like him so much."
"I-I like the Hyungnim of Hyungnims' friend, too. I want to go to that Hyungnim."
"Me too! Hehehe. He's so nice."
Choi Woo-jin was, unexpectedly, a hit with the squirrels. At their reaction, the cats were briefly nonplussed. Hoesaegi spoke low to Gkamnyangi.
"Gkamnyangi, ong. Those little friends are strange, ong. They like the scaredy-cat Hyungnim, ong."
Thanks to the two of them, Choi Woo-jin had gotten over his fear of cats — but to the pair of them he was still the scaredy-cat Hyungnim. To Hoesaegi especially, that image was vivid. He could still see, perfectly clearly, the look on Choi Woo-jin's face when he'd spotted Hoesaegi at the barbecue place near the park and nearly jumped out of his skin.
And yet they liked that scaredy-cat Hyungnim. Hoesaegi let out a long breath and looked at the squirrels, the expression of someone who simply could not understand. Gkamnyangi tossed the answer at him.
"It's because they're scaredy themselves."
So they felt close to the scaredy-cat Hyungnim. At that, Hoesaegi's eyes went round as saucers. He stared at Gkamnyangi with those round eyes.
"Gkamnyangi, ong. Is that how it is, ong?"
"Yeah, something like that."
Gkamnyangi looked back at him as if to ask what was so surprising, and added nothing more. In that instant Hoesaegi understood what Gkamnyangi had said — and what he hadn't said, too.
Gkamnyangi used to bristle at the sight of me, ong. But when he saw Norangi, he didn't react at all, ong.
The only one Gkamnyangi had ever been tense around in all of Eunpyeong-gu was Hoesaegi himself — Silver Rain. With every other cat he had been warm, even kind.
So that was it, ong.
Hoesaegi understood Gkamnyangi's words and looked at the squirrels. He wasn't sure what his own relationship with Gkamnyangi had to do with the squirrels liking Choi Woo-jin, but still.
That was when a baby squirrel spoke up in a bright little voice.
"Hehe, once I can hop-hop around, I'm going to climb a tree. Hihi, I love trees…"
The room went silent all at once. In their home ground, there were no trees left to climb.
Even Yom-yom-i, who had been so happy hearing his friends say they didn't hurt and weren't hungry, wilted. The bright smiling face went still. He lay down quietly and even wrapped his tail around his head.
It wasn't that there were no trees at all. Half-burned trunks still stood. But what the squirrels wanted was a dense forest packed with lush green leaves. They had meant they wanted to climb the trees of a forest like that.
Watching the squirrels wilt all over again, the cats' faces fell too. They had seen that devastated ground with their own eyes.
Then—
"Hehe, little friends, I will. That's right, I will. I'll take you there, I will. You little friends can all ride on my back, you can."
Friends that small — he could load them all on his back at once and go. Sapsaree said it with total confidence.
Gkamnyangi saw it and shook his head at him. Just a fraction. Saying something like that in front of those poor little things… Of course his brow furrowed.
Sapsaree asked Gkamnyangi,
"Gkamnyangi Hyungnim, why are you doing that, I will? Do your ears hurt, do they? Or do your eyes hurt, do they?"
"If Gkamnyangi's eyes hurt, that's serious, ong. Gkamnyangi, ong, do your eyes hurt, ong?"
At the two of them's clueless reactions, Gkamnyangi let out a hah of a sigh, and then he said,
"Use your heads for a second. Are there even any trees left there?"
"Gkamnyangi's right, ong. There weren't any trees, ong."
Hoesaegi accepted it at once, then looked at the squirrels with something like pity. Sapsaree, however, was undeterred.
"Why wouldn't there be, I will? They're right over there, they are. Jjaek and One-eye are sleeping there, they are. There's some where Norangi is, too. And where Milo lives, there are so, so many trees!"
There were trees at the playground with the walking path on the second floor, too. Not especially big, but trees nonetheless. And at Neulpureun Park and Bluebird Park, there were trees in abundance. That was what Sapsaree had been thinking of when he said it.
Hoesaegi and Gkamnyangi bumped their front paws together with a little smack, delighted.
"That's right, ong. We can take them there, ong. Little friends, ong — there are trees at our Mongmong Animal Hospital, ong."
"That's right. We can just take them there!"
The two of them so pleased, the inpatient room grew noisy all over again. It was a commotion full of hope.
Yom-yom-i rejoiced with his friends. And yet, somehow, he seemed to have a little less strength in him than a moment before. Hoesaegi watched him and thought,
He's thinking of home, ong.
To Hoesaegi, Yom-yom-i was the squirrels' leader. And no one understood better than a leader what a leader felt about his own ground. Seeing that your people lived well and safely on that ground — that was a leader's duty. But the ground was gone. How heavy, how sad must that heart be?
Thinking that, Hoesaegi understood why Yom-yom-i was still lying down.
Kid's finally catching his breath, huh.
The leader who'd been fighting with everything he had seemed a little more at ease now. That was how Gkamnyangi thought of it, looking at Yom-yom-i where he lay.
Yom-yom-i wants to sleep, he does. I want to sleep too, I do.
The night was deep; of course they were sleepy. Sapsaree thought that, picked a rough spot nearby, and lay down.
A moment later, Hoesaegi lay down too, and Gkamnyangi. The squirrels went quiet.
Squirrels were a species that usually moved around at night, but the place was so truly comfortable that they all slept deeply. The long hours of travel had played their part, too.
Lee Jun, stepping into the inpatient room to take Yom-yom-i for the retest, saw the squirrels sleeping so soundly that he turned around.
They look exhausted. And as for these three — better to leave them be, right?
He looked for a moment at Hoesaegi, Gkamnyangi, and Sapsaree, who had settled in around the squirrels and fallen asleep, then carefully closed the door.
He was going to spend the night at the animal hospital anyway.