Chapter 117: A Disciple Is Best When You Can Work Him Hard [1] Kanghyeok was standing alone outside the room.
The courtyard of Bojewon, which had still been utter chaos just yesterday, had now entered something of a lull.
That was because so many temporary latrine stalls had been prepared that everyone could now take turns relieving themselves.
When he turned his head, he could see the Bojewon workers who had labored through the night scattered here and there on the opposite side.
All of them were wearing the gloves and masks Kanghyeok had handed out.
The oral rehydration side is running properly too.
On the other side, Yeoju and Yeoni were in the middle of preparing more rehydration fluid.
They needed so much of it that the honey they had brought was long gone already.
If the director of Bojewon had not provided more separately, there would have been a major disruption.
I originally brought that to fry chicken and dip it in.
If you ate it that way, it was no different from honey combo chicken.
It was really delicious, but he could hardly let the patients die just so he could eat that one thing.
There was nothing for it, no matter how regrettable it was.
"Hmm."
As he turned his head this way and that, his gaze naturally fell on the place where the most serious patients had been gathered.
It was where the patients who had collapsed from dehydration were being kept separately, and at the same time, where the blood bags were.
Physician Heo is really working hard.
No matter how sturdy Makbong and Dolseok were, it was not as though their blood could be drawn and used for two days in a row.
So now it was time for the two Heos to step in.
Fortunately, their blood types happened to match those of the two collapsed patients exactly.
Dolseok should be drawing it properly, right?
He was not the most deft-handed fellow in the world, but he had enough practice by now that he ought to manage.
The truly surprising one was Dongpa.
His hands are good, I have to admit.
Kanghyeok could still picture him clearly, insisting that he could work with gloves on even though he was still leaking from behind.
But once Kanghyeok had actually tried setting him to it, Dongpa turned out to be good at drawing blood, and he was not particularly awkward with new equipment either.
He was skilled enough that Kanghyeok found himself thinking he might make a proper disciple out of him.
He also seemed to have abandoned all that stubbornness he had shown before.
Now that it's come to this, should I formally take on a disciple?
Thinking about it, he had taught the others things too, but it would be a stretch to call those relationships teacher and disciple.
If anything, it felt much more like master and servant.
Not that the current arrangement was bad.
Still, if he made one of them a disciple, it seemed to Kanghyeok that he could work him even more conveniently.
He had never commanded servants back in Korea, but he certainly had worked his disciples hard.
"Young Master. That patient from earlier is in bad shape."
While Kanghyeok was lost in thought, Makbong came running up in a panic and spoke.
The place he pointed to was not where the blood bags were, but the room right beside it.
"Ah. How bad?"
"His breathing is a bit... uneven, I guess you could say."
"Ah. I see. That one will be going soon."
"He's going?"
"Yes."
"Good grief. Already..."
Makbong shook his head with a sickened expression.
Just as during the smallpox outbreak, Kanghyeok was not a god.
That meant there were naturally patients who did not improve, and therefore patients who died.
To begin with, there were simply too many patients.
On top of that, most of them had already been in poor condition even before they got sick.
According to the director of Bojewon, when an epidemic like this broke out, more than half usually died.
That was why the director had been busily digging away in the nearby hills.
He had naturally assumed this time would be no different.
Sorry, but that's not happening.
Kanghyeok had no intention of letting as many die as the man expected, and absolutely no intention of meekly handing over all the corpses either.
At least half of them should come to me.
It would have been difficult to claim that not a single person had died.
If people only went into that room and no one ever came out, anyone would grow suspicious.
And were not all the workers here the director of Bojewon's people?
They would obviously treat Kanghyeok's words like nothing more than passing wind.
So he planned to be moderate.
Just enough not to make it too obvious.
Creak.
Makbong carefully opened the door.
Unlike the other rooms, which were still full of life, this place was already steeped in the approach of death.
"That one... that's the man."
"Yes. I thought it would be him."
Kanghyeok strode straight in and examined the patient in the far corner.
There was no need to even place a stethoscope on him.
The rise and fall of his chest alone made it more than clear how irregular his breathing was.
"His forehead is burning."
"Yes. And look at the sputum he coughed up over there."
Makbong pointed at the gauze lying beside the patient.
It was full of dark yellow phlegm.
"As expected, his lungs are gone. This is..."
"It seems all the ones who die go out like this."
"In the end, everyone dies of pneumonia."
"Is that how it is?"
"Yes."
Kanghyeok nodded with a bitter expression.
If anyone had to name the most common cause of death in the world, it would surely be pneumonia.
Whether cancer patients died, whether people died of simple old age, even when they died from accidents, most ended in pneumonia.
The ones dying here were no exception, and nearly all the corpses that had been diverted to Dorikkae's house were people who had died of pneumonia.
"Is it really all right to leave that to Dongpa?"
Makbong asked with an uneasy face, pointing behind him.
There was only a wall there, but Kanghyeok understood perfectly what he meant.
"You can't let a sick man handle the living."
"Isn't it a much bigger problem to let him handle the dead? What if that bastard goes out somewhere and tells people..."
"He's the only one handling the corpses right now, so what of it? And if it comes to it, there's Dorikkae too."
"Well, there's no way Dongpa could run."
That would have been hard enough even normally, but right now he was still leaking from behind.
According to Dorikkae, thanks to that, the storeroom smelled not of blood but of shit.
Both were foul, but most people still preferred the smell of shit.
At least that was a familiar smell.
It did not provoke fear the way the smell of blood did.
"Still, isn't it admirable? He's doing pretty well. He draws blood well too, and he's handling the afterwork properly."
"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen it."
Makbong shook his head with a look of utter disgust.
He looked like a butcher, but this time it turned out his sensibilities were those of an adolescent girl.
He could not even go near the storeroom and just kept vomiting instead.
He had done it so violently that for a moment Kanghyeok had even wondered if cholera had spread to him too.
Compared to that, Dongpa is... actually rather useful.
Perhaps it was because he had spent so long as a physician in rough places, but his stomach for such things was excellent.
He scarcely even made a face at anything disgusting.
Maybe it's because he handles needles.
His hands were fairly delicate as well.
Even though he still was not fully recovered and his hands were trembling, he wielded the knife surprisingly well.
Not only could he puncture the femoral artery and draw blood, he was also cutting away the small and large intestines, which would otherwise rot quickly, with practiced ease.
Even Kanghyeok, the one teaching him, found himself impressed.
"He's quite good. I think he's enjoying it."
"What shall we do with this man?"
"This one... hmm."
Kanghyeok frowned slightly as he looked at the patient.
The pitiful rise and fall of his chest, the ragged sound of his breathing, the high fever hovering around forty degrees.
There was not a single thing about him that suggested he could survive.
Even if he were taken to a proper university hospital in this state, there probably would not be much they could do.
At best, they would hook him up to a ventilator and keep him alive for a while.
In other words, even if he lived, it would most likely not be any kind of life.
"How old was he supposed to be?"
"He was already delirious from the start... but I'd say over sixty at least. He's lived a long life."
"Sixty. Hmm."
These days, if someone died at sixty and you said, "Well, at least it was a full life," you would get slapped.
But this was Joseon, an age that celebrated a man's sixtieth year with feasts and ceremony.
For a moment Kanghyeok felt the gap between eras, then nodded slowly.
"No family?"
"No. The ones with family are on the other side."
Makbong pointed at the rope hanging across the middle of the room.
That rope was the line dividing the patients the director of Bojewon would bury from the ones Kanghyeok would dissect.
"Let's at least ease his suffering. Sir?"
"Ugh."
"It's very hard, isn't it?"
"Ugh, ugh."
The patient was already unconscious.
That was only natural. High fever and dehydration were already bad enough, and now even oxygen was no longer getting in properly.
"Take it out."
"Yes. This really is..."
Makbong took a small ampoule out of the house-call bag Kanghyeok had brought.
This was already the second one today, so they could not afford to use much.
But not injecting anything at all would leave the patient in far too much pain.
That was how Makbong was justifying his own actions.
Looking at yesterday's patient... this is the right thing to do.
For patients who had family, it was difficult to simply send them off like this.
To begin with, the other patients beside them were watching everything with wide-open eyes.
So all one could do was watch them die without being able to help.
That did at least give the family and the others plenty of time to grieve.
But for the patient, it meant nothing more than a long and needless stretch of agony.
One example of that was yesterday's patient. Those who had been given an injection and passed peacefully showed very little change in their appearance, but that one had burst blood vessels all through the eyes.
The jugular veins had bulged too.
There were broken capillaries on the lips and gums as well.
"Makbong. What are you doing?"
"Ah, yes, yes. Here."
"That's right. He's already in too much pain. We should ease it."
"Yes."
"Once he goes, send him out through the back courtyard and over to Dongpa."
"Ah, yes."
This was generally how the work was done.
When a patient died, Makbong, who was strong and not good for much else, carried the body away.
Then Dorikkae's men, waiting in the back courtyard, moved the body to the storeroom.
Dongpa arranged and preserved the corpse properly so it would be ideal for study.
It was only after that process had repeated more than ten times that the cholera began at last to slowly retreat.
"What did the director of Bojewon say?"
"Oh, he's just absurdly grateful. He gave us all that as thanks."
Dolseok pointed with a pleased expression at the ox cart piled high with goods.
There was nothing especially valuable there, mostly food and clothing.
Still, where else would they get even that?
The moment one stepped outside Bojewon, there were people everywhere in this age starving and half naked for lack of exactly those two things.
"From the look of it, he seems poorer than I am. He overdid it."
"You're... well, what was it again? Like you said, Young Master, you're a gold spoon."
"A gold spoon, that's right. Hahaha."
"And I'm dirt."
"You didn't even have a spoon, and I made one for you. Speak properly."
"Ah, yes, yes."
Kanghyeok had talked so much about the spoon theory that by now everyone in the group had fully absorbed the concept.
He casually patted Dolseok on the head while the man kept bowing over and over, then opened the storeroom door.
"Ah... you've come."
Inside stood Dongpa, who by now looked almost like a corpse himself.
Or rather, it was hard to tell whether he was standing or hanging there.
At a glance, there was hardly any difference between him and the other bodies.
"How did you end up looking like this?"
"Well... in order to keep the corpses from rotting, just as you instructed, Master..."
"Hah. Did you do all this yourself?"
"Yes, yes."
"That's impressive."
"I put in some effort."
Kanghyeok laughed loudly like some mad scientist, and Dongpa bowed and scraped as if he were his loyal servant.
In the meantime, Makbong and Yeoju had rushed out to empty their stomachs.
And it was not as though Dolseok, Yeoni, Heo Jun, or Heo Im looked any better.
The phrase barely enduring it fit them exactly.
It was that shocking a sight.
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