Tissue Regeneration Complete
The training room door slammed shut.
“Close the door gently!”
The trainer shouted, but Kim Taehwan paid him no mind. Han Doyoon’s right arm hung limp in his grasp.
“Clear the table! Get the ice ready!”
“Yes, sir!”
Cheon Sojin rushed in a moment later. Her face had gone deathly pale, a look that made her title as Operations Team Leader feel almost irrelevant.
“Doyoon… are you all right?”
“Is he conscious?”
The trainer immediately wrapped a blood pressure cuff around Doyoon’s arm and checked his oxygen saturation.
“Blood pressure one-eighteen over seventy-four, pulse normal. He’s breathing on his own. But he’s not responding.”
Before examining the elbow itself, the trainer first checked for any deformity.
“No dislocation or fracture that I can see. No deformity.”
Only then did he carefully probe the inner side of the elbow.
“There’s heat on the medial side, and it’s a little firm. Swelling’s starting. Looks like he blacked out temporarily from pain shock.”
“……The Tommy John site.”
Kim Taehwan clenched his teeth.
“He was fine until just a minute ago. We’d finished training and he was stretching. Then he suddenly grabbed his arm and went down.”
His voice was rough, edged with panic.
“Vitals are stable. I’ll check with the ultrasound.”
The trainer pulled out a portable ultrasound unit, spread gel along the inner elbow, and pressed the probe against the skin. A grainy black-and-white image appeared on the small screen. As he studied it, the trainer’s expression hardened.
“……The medial ligament border is a little blurred. There’s swelling too. Possible ligament damage.”
He shut the device and added,
“We’ll need an MRI to be sure. Right now, getting him to the hospital is the priority.”
Cheon Sojin’s gaze dropped to Doyoon’s elbow. Even at a glance, it was visibly swollen.
“We need to move him to the hospital now, right?”
“Yes. We’ll prep for transport immediately.”
While two trainers prepared a stretcher, Cheon Sojin pulled out her phone and called the hospital contact.
“Yes, this is the Wonju Flyers. We have a player with suspected elbow ligament damage. Yes. Yes. We’re heading over right now.”
Her voice trembled, yet she never forgot her duty as Operations Team Leader; every word came out with surprising clarity and composure.
A short while later, Doyoon’s stretcher rolled into the hallway. Kim Taehwan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
“……He was fine during training……”
“……”
Cheon Sojin said nothing, simply staring at Doyoon’s elbow.
When the trainer opened the outer door, brilliant sunlight poured in.
“Team Leader, I’ll ride with him.”
At Kim Taehwan’s words, Cheon Sojin nodded.
“Yes. I’m coming too.”
Without another word the two of them followed the stretcher into the ambulance. The moment the doors closed, the air inside seemed to drop several degrees. Only the thin hiss of the oxygen mask and the steady beep of the heart monitor filled the silence.
Outside the window the team facility fell rapidly away. Kim Taehwan sat with his arms folded, head bowed. Cheon Sojin bit her lip and kept her eyes on Han Doyoon. The ambulance was locked in a wordless, heavy quiet.
— Beep. Beep. Beep.
A regular mechanical tone drifted faintly into his ears. Consciousness rose slowly, like surfacing from deep water. When he opened his eyes, the harsh white light made him squint without thinking.
……Where am I?
— Thud.
The vehicle jolted hard. His body swayed, and only then did he realize he was inside a car. A trainer sat beside him; across from him sat Cheon Sojin and Kim Taehwan. Both wore rigid expressions.
“……Ugh……”
A soft groan escaped his lips, and all three pairs of eyes snapped toward him at once.
“Doyoon!”
“Are you with us?!”
“Doyoon, can you hear me?!”
The trainer busied himself checking the monitors. Kim Taehwan half-rose and peered into his face. Cheon Sojin leaned in, startled.
“Are you all right? Do you remember anything before you blacked out?”
“……I’m fine. I think I finished the weighted-ball work…… then while I was loosening up my elbow hurt so bad I just…… passed out.”
His voice came out clearer than he expected. Only then did Kim Taehwan let out a long, heavy breath.
“Haa……”
At that moment—
— Ding!
Tissue regeneration has been completed.
A notification floated up in the Status Window announcing that tissue regeneration was finished.
Come to think of it……
The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was Kim Taehwan running toward him, and before that……
Abnormal tissue structure detected in the user’s right elbow.
Initiating tissue regeneration program.
Extreme pain may occur during the regeneration process. Please exercise caution.
Right. It said it was regenerating the elbow tissue. That’s what made me black out from the pain.
The memory before he lost consciousness returned with perfect clarity. He lifted his arm and turned it this way and that. The elbow felt no discomfort at all. Even the faint stiffness that had lingered ever since Tommy John surgery was completely gone.
……What is this feeling?
The agony right before he collapsed was still vivid, yet now everything felt as if nothing had ever happened. He carefully flexed and extended the joint; it moved with silky smoothness—smoother even than it had in high school.
Seeing that, the trainer hurriedly pressed a hand down on his arm.
“Doyoon, don’t move that arm! Stay still until we get an MRI at the hospital!”
“……Ah, yes.”
The arm felt unbelievably fine, but the trainer’s urgency made him lower it again. A deep comfort radiated through the joint, as though twenty years of accumulated baseball fatigue had been wiped clean.
“Doyoon, the team ultrasound suggested possible medial ligament damage. That’s why we’re heading to the hospital right now.”
Cheon Sojin calmly expanded on the trainer’s earlier findings.
“How does the elbow feel?”
“The elbow…… is fine. It hurt like hell earlier, but it doesn’t hurt at all now.”
At those words Cheon Sojin bit her lip for a moment. Worry still outweighed relief in her eyes.
“……Are you really okay? No pain at all?”
“Yes. I’m really fine.”
Of course she didn’t look convinced. A man who had collapsed clutching his arm was now claiming he was perfectly all right the moment he woke up. He probably would have reacted the same way in her place.
“That can’t be…… On the ultrasound the ligament border was clearly blurred. You hurt enough to faint, and now you’re suddenly fine?”
Her voice was low and careful.
“Let’s just get the MRI at the hospital. Even if it feels okay right now, better safe than sorry.”
“……Yes, I understand.”
He nodded. The kind of disaster Cheon Sojin and the others feared almost certainly wouldn’t happen—the Status Window didn’t lie.
Still, seeing how anxious the two of them were, getting the MRI done seemed like the right call. Besides, he was curious himself about what a Status-Window-repaired elbow would look like.
It really is gone…… like the discomfort was never there.
Glancing at the trainer, he secretly flexed and extended the elbow one more time. Smooth. Truly smooth. A sensation he had never felt once since the Tommy John surgery.
The emergency room was quieter than expected. While he lay there they checked his vitals again, and a short while later a doctor arrived and gently pressed along the arm.
“Any pain?”
“None at all right now.”
The doctor tilted his head, puzzled.
“……You said it hurt enough to make you collapse?”
“It was pretty bad then, but once I came to it was fine.”
He answered calmly. Because it really was fine. Flexing, extending—no pain, not even stiffness.
Before the doctor could reply, Cheon Sojin cut in from the side.
“Still, please do an MRI.”
The doctor looked at her.
“There are no symptoms at the moment. Ice and observation might be enough for now.”
“No. This is a previous Tommy John site.”
At that the doctor’s expression grew serious.
“Ah…… That changes things.”
Cheon Sojin pressed the point firmly.
“The club needs confirmation. Can we get the MRI done right away?”
“We can. I’ll connect with radiology now.”
After the brief exchange, transfer to the MRI suite was arranged at once. He gave Cheon Sojin a small smile.
“I’m fine, though. My arm really doesn’t hurt.”
“Even if it’s fine, we’re scanning it. A player’s body is club property.”
Her tone was firm, yet unmistakable worry ran beneath it.
And so he was moved onto the MRI table. The cold plastic against his back brought back the day his first Tommy John had been diagnosed, and a strange tension settled over him.
“Raise your arm this way, please. Try not to move.”
The nurse secured his arm and wrapped the coil around it.
— Whirrr…… drrrrrrrrr……
The machine began to spin. Even with earplugs the vibration thrummed deep into his skull.
……What will my elbow look like on the MRI now?
There was no pain, no heat, no stiffness left in the arm. So how would it appear on the scan? If the Status Window had regenerated the tissue, maybe even the traces of Tommy John surgery had vanished.
— Beep— beep— beep—
The mechanical noise gradually faded. When the scan finished, the table slid him back out of the cylinder. The nurse spoke in a gentle voice.
“We’re all done. Please wait a moment for the results.”
He turned his head toward the hallway. Beyond the glass door Cheon Sojin stood with her arms folded. Worry still outweighed relief on her face.