Chapter 1. The Smell of Blood and Muddy Water
Chapter 1. The Smell of Blood and Muddy Water
The smell of blood entered the medical tent before the rain.
The rain had just stopped. Water was still dripping from the tent canvas. Every time a stretcher was pushed in, the muddy water on the floor sloshed, and a thin layer of blood spread over it. The smell of wet leather and iron mingled, choking the breath.
Ruan Hesse wiped his hands once on his apron. Fresh blood stained over the already dried blood. His fingertips were wet, and the back of his hands were cold. Yet his movements did not slow.
"Next."
As he spoke curtly, the first stretcher came in.
It was an infantryman with an arrow stuck in his thigh. Ruan looked at his complexion before the wound. His lips were not yet blue. His pupils were shaking but not unfocused. He could be saved.
"Don't pull out the arrow here. Secure it and tie tighter above."
As the assistant medic hastily tightened the strap, the soldier gritted his teeth. Ruan turned his head to the next stretcher before the groan could lengthen.
The second was a spearman with a deep gash in his abdomen. The spear tip had glanced off, leaving a long open wound on his belly. A lot was already leaking from inside. His pulse was shallow; his eyes were open but focus was slow.
From those who can be saved first.
It was the first principle a military medic learns on the battlefield. With only one pair of hands, you first hold on to the one who can endure longer. If you cling to a hopeless case, you lose three more. Ruan knew that. Better than anyone.
But the spearman's hand grabbed his wet sleeve.
"Please... save me."
It was a breaking voice.
"Bern Medical Officer-nim."
From across, the old military medic Bern Dalt lifted his head. He was a veteran with one empty sleeve. He glanced at the wound and spoke immediately.
"Let go. Move on to the next."
"Just give me a little time."
"That little time kills two."
He knew. But his hand wouldn't let go. The spearman's fingers still had strength. If he let go now, it would truly be the end.
"Sera. Hot water. Long thread. Not a thin needle."
Sera Pin clicked her tongue.
"This guy first?"
"Now."
Sera grumbled but moved. Her hands were fast.
At the tent entrance, two more stretchers came in as if falling.
"Medical Officer-nim. Please look at this side first."
"His breath is weak."
Ruan's shoulders stiffened for a moment. But his hands were already opening the spearman's belly. The smell of rain and blood rushed up huk. It was a stomach-churning smell.
He took a short breath and pressed on the torn area. He found where it was bleeding, tied it, pressed it, cut it, and sewed it again.
Beside him, Bern felt another patient's neck.
"One gone."
Ruan's fingertips trembled for the briefest moment.
Soon another voice overlapped.
"This side too."
Two.
Ruan pretended not to hear. It was something he shouldn't do. The more he pretended not to hear, the clearer the voices became. A dying person's breath was strangely small. So it lingered in the ears more.
When he tied the last knot closing the spearman's abdomen, Ruan finally raised his head.
"Prepare for evacuation."
Sera pushed the stretcher out. Ruan immediately turned around.
One was already soaked in blood up to the cloth. His neck was tilted back, not moving.
The other one's chest was still heaving.
He was a boy.
The armor didn't fit his body, so his shoulders kept slipping down. There was still soft fuzz on his cheeks. His chest was deeply caved in. It looked like he had been trampled by a horse's hoof or struck by a blunt weapon, with bones collapsed inward.
"Name?"
"I don't know. Looks like a supply soldier."
Ruan slid to his knees beside the stretcher. He opened the boy's mouth to secure the airway. His breath was weak. Too weak. Blood foam gathered at the corner of his mouth.
When he put his ear to the chest, there was a sound like water boiling. It was highly likely that a rib fragment had pierced the lung.
Sera crouched beside him.
"This looks difficult."
Difficult.
No.
Too late.
Ruan felt the boy's neck. The pulse disappeared, then returned. Returned, then disappeared again.
Bern approached, looked once, and concluded.
"Let go."
"There's still a pulse."
"The ones who need your hands right now are lined up behind."
"I know."
"If you know, let go."
Ruan couldn't answer. He knew. He truly knew. From those who can be saved first. If you hold on to one who cannot live, others die. On the battlefield, that was mercy.
So he had to let go now.
But the boy's hand groped the air. It was a hand trying to grab something. Ruan caught that hand. It was small and wet. And cold.
The boy's eyelids lifted barely.
A blurry gaze turned toward Ruan.
"I'm scared..."
He couldn't finish the sentence.
In that instant, a winter night long ago flashed through his mind. A feverish child had held his mother's hand and said the same words. That he was too scared to fall asleep.
That child never saw the morning. After that day, his mother washed her hands for days on end. Hands that were already clean.
Ruan never forgot that hand.
Since coming to the battlefield, he had become that same hand countless times. Because he had to let go, because he had to save others—it was the right thing. But just because it was right didn't mean he could bear it.
"Ruan."
Bern's voice lowered. It was a warning. A final warning.
The tent was full of groans. Muddy water, blood, wet cloths, waiting stretchers. No one was watching the youngest medic. Everyone was busy. Busy separating the dying from the living.
So it was easier.
If no one sees, it's fine.
Ruan took off his wet gloves. He placed his bare hand on the boy's chest. Over the failing heart beneath the broken bones. It was cold. Too cold.
He took a long breath in.
A sensation like forcibly scraping something from deep inside his body rose up. It was familiar. A feeling he didn't want to be familiar with. The sensation of pushing the time inside himself through his fingertips.
It wasn't blood or breath. Putting it into words seemed like it would all be wrong. But that was the only way he could express it.
Something tore beneath his fingertips.
From Ruan's side.
At the same time, the boy's body jerked violently.
"Keok."
A bubble of blood burst. Sera gasped. Bern's eyes narrowed.
Ruan couldn't take his hand off. It wasn't enough yet. He had to hold the spot that was about to break just a little longer. One more time. Just a bit more.
His mind went white. It hurt like a needle was moving inside his temple. A sound like being underwater rang in his ears. The sensation in his fingertips blurred.
Yet the boy's pulse returned.
Very faintly.
But unmistakably.
Ruan clenched his teeth and pulled his hand away. His body tilted sideways. Sera hastily grabbed his arm.
"What did you just do?"
"Needle... first, hemostatic cloth."
His voice was cracking.
The boy was breathing raggedly. It was incomplete but it was living breath. Bern immediately stepped forward, felt his chest, and checked the condition of his ribs.
"From now on, I'll handle this."
Ruan nodded. He tried to stand, but his legs had no strength. Sera handed him a water pouch.
"Why is your complexion like this?"
"It's always like this."
"At least lie with some effort."
Ruan wiped the corner of his mouth with a wet cloth. A red stain came off. He crumpled it in his hand, pretending not to notice.
The tent began to move again. Next stretcher, next blood, next groan. Ruan also moved again. He couldn't stop.
After that, too, he couldn't stop. He split a broken arrowhead from a back and pulled out the metal fragment. A crushed arm couldn't be saved, so he tied below the elbow and cut it off.
For an archer with a burned face, he sparingly applied honey and herbal ointment. The poppy extract for anesthesia had long run out. Only half a bottle of distilled spirits remained.
Clean cloths were stacked separately from wet ones, but as the night deepened, that pile also shrank.
Sera, while counting the remaining needles, bit her lip.
"Thirteen. Among them, nine are usable."
Instead of answering, Ruan held out his hand. It meant he wanted even the blunt needles. If he had to, he would grind and use them.
Outside the tent, the wind blew as if it would rain again. Inside, the smell of cooling human bodies drifted.
To Ruan, the faces of the two he had just let go were clearer than those of the survivors. The soldier with his neck twisted back. The man whose hands had gone cold before he even heard his name.
Those he saved were pushed to the next tent immediately, but the faces he let go lingered on his fingertips. It was always like that.
So he tried to become faster.
He tried to become more precise.
Believing that if he did just a little better, he wouldn't miss the next one.
Only after the night passed did the screams inside the tent lessen a little. The survivors' breaths were rough, and the dead were covered with cloth.
Ruan leaned in a corner and closed his eyes for a moment, then got up again before the darkness had even lifted. He soaked needles in distilled spirits and gathered and folded the wet cloths. His fingertips were numb. But his hands remembered the work first.
Every time he closed and opened his eyes, his head throbbed, and a high-pitched sound lingered in his ears.
He knew it wasn't simple fatigue. But it was easier to pretend not to know.
Sera, carrying a supply box, stopped mid-step.
"Ruan."
"What?"
"On your head."
Ruan raised his hand. A thin strand was caught among his bangs. A vivid white mixed among the black hair.
He looked at it for a moment, then flicked it off with a tok.
"Must be from lack of sleep. It's been falling out a bit lately."
Sera stared at him incredulously.
"You're calling that a joke now?"
Ruan didn't answer.
Outside the tent, the sound of stretchers came again.
"Just arrived. Three of them. One abdominal. One head wound. The last one has difficulty breathing."
Ruan turned away from the single white strand of hair and immediately spun around.
"Bring them in."
The smell of blood pushed back into the tent.
A single white strand swayed lightly in the morning breeze.
No one yet knew what it was the price for.
Not yet, no one.