Doctor's Orders
An ordinary person would have flinched.
"Yes—hold that steady…."
While the suture needle punched in and out of the wound, I kept the thread taut with the forceps.
The person laid out on the steel table that passed for an operating table did not so much as twitch. With that much blood loss, you could have believed they were already dead.
Still… even a veterinarian was a doctor, I found myself thinking.
He looped the thread twice around the forceps and worked his fingers with a flash of precision, and a knot appeared as if by magic.
"Scissors."
"Here."
Maybe all those dramas I'd watched in the spare hours between games had finally paid off. Instead of just handing them over, I slipped the scissors onto his open fingers, and Mr. Dietrich's eyes widened a fraction.
"Where did you learn that?"
"On TV."
"Ah. Right. The shows did try to look a little more realistic sometimes, I suppose? Back when I was topside, the crime dramas were genuinely entertaining."
"You should focus on the patient."
"Of course."
He snipped the thread clean and the gloved hands moved on to the next wound. I felt the click of the scissor-like forceps closing and watched the needles push through flesh—and, at the same time, watched the person who still would not wake.
"He's lost this much blood. Will he even make it?"
"A person has to lose about one and a half to two liters before they die. He's been bleeding the whole time, but at this rate… if we hurry, we can still save the woman as well. Scissors."
"Scissors."
—Click.
Arms. Belly. Legs. I was only assisting, and already the world was going hazy at the edges. The reek of blood alone was almost enough.
"This one's done. Call Sarah and James."
"Got it."
I tapped the iron door carefully twice with my foot, and Sarah and James, already in masks and gloves, came straight in. Mr. Curtis swung the door wide and stepped back, worry plain in his eyes; I nodded at him, and Sarah was already at my side.
"Are you all right?"
She must have thought I was about to collapse—her gloved hand nearly brushed my body. I locked my spine straight before it could and bit down lightly on my tongue.
"…Yes."
I said it, but the truth was I felt ready to drop any second. My head was thick and stuffy; a ringing kept flickering through my ears. Every time I closed my eyes and opened them again, my eyelids felt a little heavier.
"I've told you more than once—don't push yourself."
"I'm fine. Just get the man moved, please."
The concern was welcome, but there was still far too much left to do. These were workers we had finally managed to bring in—no, survivors. I had to keep them alive by any means necessary.
They loaded the man onto a makeshift stretcher and disappeared; I turned to the woman laid out in front of me.
"Before we start, I should warn you. Her wounds are near the chest… and on the inner thigh, close to a sensitive area."
"Meaning you'd like me to close my eyes?"
"No. I'd rather you looked properly. We're saving a life. There can't be any mistakes."
Scissors large enough to cut fabric in hand, Mr. Dietrich met my eyes.
"Ready?"
There was no reason to feel anything about a body already soaked in blood. Not unless I threw up on the wound, I supposed.
"Ready."
The scissors went shhk, shhk through cloth. The moment the wet fabric was pressed aside, it spat blood the way its owner might have—a thick, sudden gush.
"Needle."
"Needle."
Looking at flesh painted a dark, clotted red, I had only one thought left.
Please, just let this be over soon.
"Hwaaaaaah."
When I finally got up… damn it, I couldn't even tell what time it was. Back in my unemployed days I used to guess the hour by the light leaking through the curtains. White light meant morning. Neon purple and blue meant night. Now I tapped my hand over my eyes and still saw nothing at all.
—Tick, tick.
I fumbled for the switch on the lamp by the head of the bed, flipped it on, and pulled the door open. Following the voices drifting down the corridor, I nearly walked straight into Mr. Dietrich.
"Pff. Sleep well?"
"…Yeah, I guess."
"The two of them are recovering nicely, thank goodness. The woman woke first. Her name is Lisa Newman. The man is Matthew Newman."
A married pair of survivors, then. Good. In cases like this, if you convinced one of them, the other usually fell into line on their own.
"Your face is badly swollen. Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
"James and Curtis are handling the watch. If you're tired, sleep some more."
"…I still need to go look for medical supplies."
"What we have is more than enough for them to recover."
"The resources we used operating on both of them—"
"Is still far better than having one more person collapse right now."
His voice and eyes went suddenly stern, and my body locked up before my mind caught up. A moment later he was smiling again, easy and bright—but a veterinarian was still a doctor.
"Then at least tell me how long I slept…."
"No. I've already told everyone not to show you a clock for the time being."
"Sleeping too much is bad for your health, too—"
"Is leaving a computer running for dozens of hours without shutting it off a healthy habit?"
Mr. Dietrich managed to scold me while smiling the whole time. I finally put both hands up.
"If you go to the dining hall, there'll be soup on the boil and some biscuits. Eat all of it, and drink all the warm water in the pot. Then rest for about thirty minutes, turn out the light, and get some real sleep."
"…."
"Doctor's orders. Don't even think about arguing."
"…The survivors—"
"If you keep working, I'll put cuffs on both wrists and make you rest that way."
He'd gone all the way to threats. Had I really been in that bad a shape?
Still—the word soup made my stomach suddenly feel hollowed out and empty.
"Fine."
I watched his back recede toward the recovery room at the far end of the hall, then started walking myself. I was about to pass the dining hall when—
"And where do you think you're going?"
A hand grabbed my shoulder without ceremony and hauled me in. Sarah.
"Ahaha…."
"Honestly. You never listen to a word anyone else says. Do you distrust us that much?"
"I just don't feel settled until I've seen things with my own eyes."
"Settled, my foot."
She dumped a whole packet of biscuits into a bowl heaped with soup, soaked them through, and held it out. I took it. When she jerked her chin at the table, I sat down, awkward and stiff.
"How long was I out?"
"Listen to the doctor."
…Tch.
"If we were friends, you'd tell me—"
"I'm not telling you because we're friends."
The atmosphere suggested I'd slept more than a day. I stirred the soup with the spoon without lifting any of it, and a sigh followed soon enough.
"Roughly two days and twelve hours."
"…Huh?"
"A little under sixty hours exactly, but anyway. That's how long you slept."
My head went blank past numb—white. It was the same cold, sinking feeling as waking up bright and rested on a day you were supposed to be at work. My skull should have been splitting under the pressure; instead everything felt light and stupidly morning-clear.
"Nobody here is going to give you a hard time about it, Hyunwoo. Just eat your food quietly."
"…."
"Your body must have been wrecked if you snored right through someone walking into the room."
"I lost two days—no, three days?"
"Nothing happened while you were under. One of the patients woke up and swallowed a little porridge. That's it."
"Nothing happening is exactly the problem…."
Everything I could have been doing in that time. Scouting. Salvaging. Interior work. Crafting—this was no time to be sitting around so peaceful.
"Sit. Before I glue your ass to that chair."
"Sarah—"
"Drop the 'Miss' already."
"…Sarah."
"Much better."
Arms folded, looking down at me, she waited until I finally lifted the spoon.
"You're on leave for a while. Eat, sleep, use the bathroom. Repeat those three things and get your body back first."
"…I can't do that."
In the real world, that cycle would have been the happiest life an unemployed man could ask for. Here, it wasn't. Here, even a little laziness at the start could get you killed. I couldn't afford to watch the things that came through the passages opened by collapsed outer bunkers start hammering on the barricades.
"Want me to make you a patient myself, then?"
She cracked her knuckles with a little series of pops. I shook my head. If she'd been some thin, girlish type it might have been different—but coming from her, or from Mr. Dietrich, that kind of threat meant something professional. Or was a soldier-in-training promising to beat me senseless somehow worse?
"So eat the soup I made and lie down like a good boy."
Even so, I hated the idea of throwing time away like this. Better to… ah. Right.
"Can you get me something to read?"
"Something to read?"
"A magazine with survival knowledge in it, maybe. Or a book on field crafting."
"Hmm."
She hummed under her breath, stepped out for a moment, and came back with a stack of thin volumes in her hands. She grinned, then let them drop. The covers read—
NUDES.
HOT.
TOP BEAUTIES.
"We've got plenty of these."
"Who the hell brought—!"
"Dad said to bring them over. Good reading for a young man in his prime, and for a grandpa who can still lift a spoon."
"…Excuse me?"
"What, you don't want them?"
I looked at the covers, then back at Sarah. What kind of woman was this?
"…Am I a eunuch?"
"What?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
"I heard what you said."
"It was to myself. Look, if you don't want to—then fine. Sleep."
In the end she handed over one last magazine. A survival magazine.
…Even reading something like this would raise a stat or two. And I had been meaning to test how knowledge acquisition worked anyway.
"You really aren't normal, you know that…."
Had my hearing gone? I could see her mouth moving, but the words themselves weren't landing properly.
"What are you staring at?"
For now I'd sleep hard—and tomorrow, one way or another, I needed to meet the Newman family.