Scene 1. Glittering Fragments
The tweezers went into the pool.
Doctor Jang's hand moved over the dark-red puddle. The tips of the tweezers parted it. The viscous surface split and the inside showed through. Something was embedded there.
It glittered.
One point caught the yellow lamplight and flashed. The tweezers lifted it free. Transparent. Glass. Smaller than a fingernail's edge. Its sharp corners split the light between the tweezers' tips.
Doctor Jang's eyes narrowed.
The tweezers set the glass shard on a steel tray. A small clink. Then the tweezers returned to the pool. A second piece. This one was not glass. A dark-red clot. Coagulated blood—but the way it had hardened was wrong. Not the way human blood dries. It had clumped together with a greasy viscosity. Yellow streaks ran through its interior like veins in marble.
He set it on the tray. Beside the glass. The tweezers moved once more, retrieving a third piece. Flesh. Very small. A fragment of stomach lining that had sloughed away. Its edges were ragged. Cut by glass.
Doctor Jang's hand stopped.
He dropped the tweezers onto the tray. Clang. The sharp sound of metal striking metal scraped through the room once.
"It's mixed."
The words from Doctor Jang's mouth were spoken to himself. Not directed at Lee Kang. Lee Kang was in no state to hear. Face-down on the floor, convulsing. The sutures in his back pulled taut and slackened in rhythm with the spasms. Blood seeped one drop at a time from each point where thread gripped flesh.
"Glass dust and..."
Doctor Jang's gaze went to the dark-red clot on the tray.
"Foreign blood."
One layer of affect peeled from Doctor Jang's voice. What lay beneath showed through. Not emotion. Calculation. The calculation's conclusion left his mouth.
"The stomach lining is shredded."
Lee Kang's body convulsed once more. Something rose inside his mouth. This time not only blood. Yellow foam was mixed in. Stomach acid, refluxed. Lee Kang's face turned sideways and he spilled it onto the floor. The puddle widened by one hand-span.
Doctor Jang did not lift Lee Kang.
There was a place to lay him. The wooden cot behind the folding screen. But Doctor Jang's hands did not reach for Lee Kang's body. Moving him would accomplish nothing. This was not something that could be opened and extracted. There was no scenario in which the stomach could be turned inside out and the glass dust picked free piece by piece. Use a scalpel and he dies. Don't use a scalpel and he dies.
Doctor Jang stood.
Picked up the tray and stepped back. Looked down once at the floor where Lee Kang convulsed. The puddle of blood and yellow foam and glass fragments. The body twisting beside it. Doctor Jang's mouth moved once, then closed.
He turned away.
To wash his hands.
Scene 2. Empty Arms
Lee Kang's eyes were half-open.
Open was generous. His eyelids trembled in time with the convulsions, and through the gap, all he could see was the ceiling lamp tracing spinning orbits. The lamp was not spinning—Lee Kang's eyes could not find their focus.
His stomach was burning.
Fire. A fire that would not go out. Each time the glass dust scraped the wall, sparks flew, and rancid oil poured over those sparks and blazed higher. His esophagus was burning, his throat was burning, the entire inside of his chest was burning. Breathing fed the fire. Holding his breath made his body seize.
Lee Kang's hand moved.
To his chest. To where the coat's inner pocket had been. His fingertips groped at the cloth. Groped at the pocket. Empty.
The canteen was gone.
Lee Kang's fingers clutched at nothing. Clutched and released. Clutched again. Nothing to grip. The weight that should have been on his chest was not there. The dull tap of iron against his heart was not there. The lilac fragrance was not there. The silver bell was not there.
Lee Kang's eyes opened wide.
His unfocused vision groped through the room. Ceiling. Wall. Floor. The puddle on the floor. Beyond the puddle—
The canteen was there.
Rolled to the corner. Where Doctor Jang had set it down. Tilted against the angle where wall met floor. Lee Kang's body tried to move toward it. His elbow pushed the floor. He tried to crawl on all fours. His body half-rose, then collapsed again. His muscles refused the command.
A sound came from Lee Kang's mouth.
Not words. The sound a beast makes. A whimper. The docked cry of a starving dog before an empty bowl. Grrrr. Whine. Grrrr.
Lee Kang's hand reached toward the canteen. Could not reach. One hand-span short. His fingertips scraped the cement floor. Blood spread from where his nails had been torn away.
Doctor Jang's footsteps returned.
He knelt beside Lee Kang. Seized his shoulder. Pressed him to the floor.
"That's poison."
Doctor Jang said. Bearing down on Lee Kang's shoulder. One hand caught Lee Kang's outstretched arm and bent it back.
"Drink more and your stomach dissolves. There's glass mixed in. And blood—the blood of the things you killed—"
Lee Kang did not hear.
Even if he had heard, he would not have understood. Lee Kang's brain could process exactly one thing.
The canteen is gone.
Yeonhwa is gone.
Lee Kang's body thrashed beneath Doctor Jang's hands. No strength behind it. A body on the edge of death. Stomach torn and bleeding, back sutured shut, ribs cracked. And still it tried to push Doctor Jang's hands away. Toward the canteen. Toward Yeonhwa.
The sound of the canteen rolling across the floor was repeating inside his skull.
Clank. Clank. Rollll.
Lee Kang's brain was translating that sound.
A scream. The sound of the silver bell shattering. The sound of Yeonhwa crying as she drifted away. Lee Kang had to chase it. Had to go after it. Had to catch it. Catch it and hold it to his chest again.
Lee Kang's arm shook free of Doctor Jang's hand.
Half a span.
After breaking free, his outstretched arm was half a span from the canteen when Lee Kang's eyes rolled back. Whites showed. One massive convulsion came. His entire body bent like a bow and struck the floor. And—
Stopped.
Lee Kang's body went limp. Arm still outstretched. Fingertips still aimed at the canteen. That half-span of distance left between them.
His breath was still cycling. Shallow. Short. But his eyes were closed. Consciousness had shut down. Pain had exceeded his brain's capacity.
Doctor Jang took Lee Kang's pulse. Fast. Irregular. Two beats, then a skip. Doctor Jang's mouth opened once, then closed. The same expression as when he had dropped the tweezers on the tray.
Doctor Jang stood.
Went to the basin. Put his blood-stained hands in the water. The water turned red. Doctor Jang's hands trembled once beneath the surface, then stilled.
"There's no way to save him."
Doctor Jang murmured. Watching the water.
"The outside is sealed. The drug is contaminated. Surgery is impossible."
The water settled slowly. The red diffused and stained the entire basin.
Doctor Jang dried his hands on a towel. The towel turned red.
Then, from behind him, the rustle of fabric.
Scene 3. The Hand That Rolls Up Its Sleeve
Doctor Jang turned.
Yeonhwa was standing.
Beside the folding screen. Barefoot. The same figure Lee Kang's eyes had seen. Skin white as paper. Hands where bone showed through. Violet shadows pooled beneath her eyes. But Yeonhwa's eyes themselves were different. Not the eyes Lee Kang had last seen—the still depth beyond his drug-hazed, blurring vision. What filled Yeonhwa's eyes now, turned toward Doctor Jang, was not stillness.
It was resolve.
Yeonhwa took one step closer.
Doctor Jang lowered the towel. Looked at Yeonhwa. Yeonhwa seized the collar of his coat. With her right hand. Skeletal fingers gripped the white lapel. Not hard. A hand with no strength. But a hand that showed no sign of letting go.
Doctor Jang's eyes went to Yeonhwa's hand.
"...No."
Doctor Jang said.
He shook his head. Once. Slowly.
"No more. You'll die too."
Yeonhwa did not answer. Could not. She had no voice. But her hand left Doctor Jang's collar. The released hand went to her own left arm.
She gripped the sleeve.
Rolled it up.
Slowly. From the wrist. To the forearm. The thin fabric folded back and the skin beneath showed through. White. So wasted that the outline of bone stood sharp. Across the inside of her forearm, veins were drawn like a map. Slender branches running along the border between blue and violet. Between those branches, small dots. Needle marks. Not one. Many.
Doctor Jang's gaze rested on the needle marks.
The color drained from Doctor Jang's face.
"If I take any more—"
Doctor Jang's voice shook. For the first time. It had not shaken looking at Lee Kang's back. It had not shaken looking at the glass shards in the puddle. It had not shaken when he declared surgery impossible. It was shaking now.
"Your heart won't hold."
Yeonhwa looked at Doctor Jang.
Her eyes did not blink. Her breath did not waver. Her bloodless lips held a straight, closed line. In place of an answer, her gaze dropped to Doctor Jang's waist.
The coat pocket.
Something was visible, tucked into Doctor Jang's pocket. A red rubber strip. The kind tied around a forearm during blood draws. A tourniquet.
Yeonhwa's hand reached out.
She drew the tourniquet from Doctor Jang's pocket. Doctor Jang's hand reached to stop her. Yeonhwa's was faster. She took the rubber strip in her left hand. Then, with her right, she began to wind it around her own rolled-up forearm—the forearm stippled with needle marks.
One loop.
Two.
The rubber pressed into flesh. Across the thin skin, veins swelled upward. Blue branches strained taut. Yeonhwa's flesh was so wasted that with each loop, the skin over bone folded like creased paper.
Yeonhwa raised her head.
Looked at Doctor Jang.
Her eyes were speaking.
Draw it.
Doctor Jang's mouth opened. He tried to say something. As a physician. As a medical judgment. Further blood draws would be life-threatening—
Yeonhwa's eyes did not blink.
What lived inside those eyes swallowed every word Doctor Jang had. Medicine was swallowed. Reason was swallowed. Ethics was swallowed. What lived inside Yeonhwa's eyes was older than all of those things and heavier. It had no name. It was directed at a monster. The kind of thing that only someone willing to burn herself to save one monster could possess.
Doctor Jang's shoulders dropped.
His fists unclenched.
He stepped back and took a glass syringe from the shelf. His hand was shaking. The syringe rattled inside his grip. He turned toward the pot of boiling water.
Yeonhwa stood with her tourniquet-bound arm extended.
Beside Lee Kang, collapsed and unconscious on the floor.
In his unconsciousness, Lee Kang's lips moved once. The way a mouth savors something in sleep.
Scene 4. The Red Rises
Bubbles rose from the boiling water.
Blub. Blub. Small bubbles surged to the surface and burst. The glass syringe lay submerged. The metal needle glinted beneath the water. Doctor Jang lifted the syringe with tweezers. Droplets fell, trailing wisps of hot steam.
Outside, a searchlight swept once.
White light grazed the gap in the curtain and cut across the room. The blade of light scraped the wall, brushed the ceiling, traced the floor. For one instant it lit the face of Lee Kang where he lay collapsed, then passed. Lee Kang's closed eyes flinched. After the light moved on, darkness settled back.
A military dog barked.
Not far away. Once. Short and sharp. Then the sound of boots. A patrol. Footsteps circling inside the barbed wire. Steady cadence. Drawing closer, then receding.
Doctor Jang dried the syringe. With a clean cloth. His hand still shook. The finger joints gripping the syringe had gone white.
Yeonhwa sat beside Lee Kang.
Sleeve rolled. Tourniquet wound. Veins raised. She rested her forearm on her knee and waited for Doctor Jang. Her seated posture did not waver. Her back was straight. Her head did not bow.
Doctor Jang approached.
Knelt. Across from Yeonhwa. Lee Kang's limp body between them. Doctor Jang's left hand took Yeonhwa's forearm. His thumb confirmed the position of the swollen vein.
The needle went in.
Yeonhwa's flesh was so thin that the needle met the vein with almost no resistance. The sensation of piercing skin ended, and it was already inside the vessel. Doctor Jang drew back the plunger.
Red rose.
Into the glass cylinder. Clear. Unlike what Lee Kang had vomited. No yellow matter, no dark-red clots mixed in. A red approaching transparency. Deep and vivid and clean. Inside the glass tube, that red climbed slowly. One millimeter at a time. Two.
The searchlight swept once more.
Light entered through the curtain gap and grazed the glass syringe. One instant. The red inside the syringe caught the light and shone translucent. Like a ruby. No—redder than a ruby and more transparent. A living color. The color of what a heart had just pushed out.
Yeonhwa's face did not change.
She did not look down at the arm where the needle was planted. She did not look at Doctor Jang's trembling hand. Yeonhwa's gaze was fixed on Lee Kang's face where he lay on the floor. Lee Kang's closed eyes. Lee Kang's blood-crusted mouth. Lee Kang's lips, twitching in unconsciousness.
Outside, the boots drew closer again.
Receded.
Drew closer.
Receded.
The syringe filled to halfway. Doctor Jang's thumb pulled the plunger a fraction more. The red climbed a fraction higher.
Yeonhwa's hand moved.
The right hand—the one without a needle. It came down and brushed Lee Kang's hair. Swept the strands matted with blood and sweat back from his forehead. Her fingers lingered on Lee Kang's brow. Cold fingertips resting against Lee Kang's burning forehead.
The syringe filled completely.
Doctor Jang withdrew the needle. From the puncture, a single drop of blood welled up. Doctor Jang pressed cotton down. On Yeonhwa's forearm. The cotton turned red instantly.
Doctor Jang lifted the syringe.
The red filling the glass tube. Clear and deep and vivid. What Yeonhwa's heart had pushed out. Doctor Jang's hand was shaking. The syringe rattled in his grip.
On the floor, Lee Kang's mouth moved.
Unconscious. The reflex of a sleeping beast catching the scent of food. His lips parted once, then closed. His tongue swept his dry lips. His nostrils flared once.
Yeonhwa's hand did not move from Lee Kang's forehead.
The searchlight swept a third time. Light entered through the curtain gap, crossed the room, and left. In the single instant of its passing, everything in the room was visible.
A monster collapsed on the floor.
A saint stroking the monster's brow.
A doctor holding blood drawn from the saint's arm.
The light passed.
Darkness returned.
Outside, the barbed wire sang once in the wind.