Chapter 115: He Treats Even an Enemy [1] Holding his nose, Kanghyeok pointed at Dongpa's backside.
Dongpa's face had turned red as he tried to cover his trousers, but it was no use.
They had already been stained brown for quite some time, and there was no hiding the smell.
"He really did shit himself."
Makbong pointed at him.
"What kind of physician catches an epidemic himself?"
Dolseok mocked him.
"Come on, boys. Let's move this one too."
Kanghyeok started throwing his weight around.
The one caught completely off guard was Dongpa.
With a half-blank look on his face, he muttered, "Th-this is someone else's that got on me—"
"You're still shitting right now."
Kanghyeok pointed at Dongpa's backside, which was making wet, messy sounds.
His eyes were looking at the feces from another patient that he himself had smeared on Dongpa earlier.
As expected, he caught it. I do feel a little bad... no, do I?
The symptoms had appeared far too quickly for it to be from that alone, had they not?
Disease did not show symptoms the moment someone came into contact with bacteria or a virus.
It took quite a while even before the bad things started fighting with the body.
Dongpa had probably never even fought against the germs in the feces Kanghyeok smeared on him.
Though maybe not.
Nothing in medicine was ever one hundred percent.
Ah, whatever. It wasn't me.
Suppressing the uneasy feeling, Kanghyeok shook his head.
One curious thing was that Dongpa was shaking his head violently too.
"I don't need it! If I don't eat, it'll all stop!"
"Hah. Even while shitting yourself, you're still being stubborn."
"Can a physician mock a patient like this?"
"I'm not mocking you. I'm persuading you."
"What kind of persuasion is this supposed to be!"
"Hmm."
With his arms crossed, Kanghyeok watched Dongpa.
Come to think of it, the hollows under his eyes have already sunk in.
The way Dongpa kept leaking mess in real time made it obvious he was still producing diarrhea continuously.
Which meant this was very likely not just cholera, but severe cholera.
In a little while, he'll be spraying it nonstop.
Kanghyeok could see it without even looking closely.
Dongpa wildly shitting himself.
From the look of things, it was obvious he would keep refusing to eat or drink anything.
So his condition would soon crash, and in the worst case, he might even start seizing like the patient from earlier.
No, if he at least seized, that would be the fortunate outcome.
There were also many cases where the whole body simply shut down from dehydration and the person just passed away.
He had never seen it with his own eyes, but he had come across it many times in textbooks and papers.
What can I do? It's his fate.
No one had forced him.
If a man insisted on refusing to eat and dying on his own, there was little Kanghyeok could do.
Still, he could not let another patient suffer at the hands of some quack, so he decided to pull out the man who had just had a seizure.
"Where do you think you're— urgh."
Dongpa naturally tried to stop them, but it was useless.
He had already reached the point where he could barely keep himself upright.
He staggered after them, leaking excrement here and there, but soon gave up when he ran out of strength.
"Fine. You just stay there and keep shitting yourself."
"Wh-... urgh."
Dongpa looked deeply wronged and furious, but for the moment all he could do was keep soiling himself.
Kanghyeok tore his eyes away from Dongpa, who had in an instant become the village shitter, and looked back at the patients on his side.
Until just moments ago, they had looked ready to run straight into Dongpa's arms, but now they were edging backward little by little.
Apparently, no matter how desperate they were, they still did not want to be treated by a physician who was shitting himself.
"Good. You lot stay right here exactly like this. Eat what you're given. Do you think Physicians Heo are here because they have nothing better to do? They're from the Royal Medical Bureau. The Royal Medical Bureau."
"Mm..."
Kanghyeok deliberately put heavy emphasis on the words Royal Medical Bureau.
People were weak before authority, after all.
And it worked. Unlike before, it was hard to find anyone who looked ready to bolt immediately.
"No answers, you little bastards."
"Yes, yes."
"Good. Physicians Heo, keep working a little harder. Yeoni, you've worked hard too."
"It's nothing. I can manage."
Yeoni answered as she wiped the sweat from her forehead, drenched from constantly boiling water.
Heo Jun and Heo Im did not look much better.
They had been rushing all over the place, making people drink water, so there was no helping it.
It was only because both of them were naturally healthy that they were still holding on. Otherwise, by now they might have been sprawled on the ground alongside the patients.
It'd be nice if I had more people under me.
Even now, it was not as though he had too few hands to command.
He had Dolseok, Makbong, Yeoni, Yeoju, and even Dorikkae's group.
The trouble was that every last one of them was such a glutton that feeding them alone was no small burden.
Still, it'd be nice to have about ten more. Useful ones...
To do that, he needed more wealth and more power.
Should I open another clinic in the Hanyang market?
If he did that, money would no longer be something to worry about.
Power was the issue, but there was a way around that too.
For men, it's the cock. For women, it's beauty.
What difference would the upper class really have?
If he drove forward with those two as his twin horses, nothing would be difficult.
Only after finishing that train of thought did Kanghyeok finally enter the room.
The patient who had just been brought in after seizing was lying quietly on the bedding.
For some reason, there was also enough space beside him for another person to lie down.
Yeoju was looking at Kanghyeok with a pitiful expression.
"What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?"
"You're not planning to draw blood again and put it into him like before, are you?"
"No... I mean, yes, that's right. But why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because your blood is good blood, Young Master."
"Huh."
Good blood?
What kind of absurd nonsense was that?
The problem was that Dolseok and Makbong were both looking at him as though they agreed.
How am I supposed to explain this?
A tidal wave of knowledge about antigen-antibody reactions rose in his mind, and he barely managed to stop it.
That sort of thing I'll just teach later, all at once, when I gather the others for a lecture...
Makbong was illiterate anyway.
The effort it would take to make that idiot understand would be enough to make everyone else understand too.
After shaking his head once, Kanghyeok gave them a plausible explanation instead.
"No, no. The last patient and I just happened to match well... This patient might be different."
"Eh... then are we drawing blood again?"
Dolseok scratched the back of his head with eyes full of complaint.
Kanghyeok smacked the back of that head so hard it would not be itching anymore.
"You bastard. There's a man here who had several bowlfuls drawn out, and you're whining over that little bit from earlier?"
"Come on... it wasn't several bowlfuls. Someone might actually think that's true... urgh."
"You're asking for a beating."
"But are you really all right after having blood drawn? Your hitting feels kind of..."
Dolseok looked at Kanghyeok with the sort of expression a son might wear after finally realizing his father had grown old only after being beaten by him.
This brat is making me even angrier.
For some reason, after hearing Dolseok say that, even his breathing felt shorter.
It felt like directly smacking the boy had reached its limit.
There are always other methods.
Kanghyeok glanced at the quietly standing Makbong and signaled with his chin.
It was a very small signal, but highly effective.
"Good grief. Why are you hitting me again? I was worried about you, Young Master."
"That look in your eyes isn't the look of someone worried."
"What are you, Gungye? How can you know what someone's thinking just by looking at their eyes?"
"I know what you're thinking. Anyway, put out your arm."
"So you hit me and draw my blood too. What kind of fate is this..."
"There isn't a servant with a better life than yours."
In truth, Dolseok knew very well that Kanghyeok was right, so without further complaint, he held out his arm.
Normally, Kanghyeok would have drawn blood with ghostlike skill.
Needles were one of the few things he was as confident with as knives.
But now was an exception.
My hands are shaking.
As expected, blood had to be drawn only in proper amounts.
He was paying the price for boldly drawing as much as 800 mL.
"Yeoju. You were good at drawing earlier. Dolseok's veins are good too."
"Huh? Makbong's here too. Why me first?"
"Yes. You first."
"Wh— urgh."
If you looked closely, Yeoju had a rough side to her too.
She did not even give Dolseok a chance to keep grumbling before she drove the syringe straight in.
In an instant, bright red blood was drawn into it.
"Ah, you already drew some from this man?"
"Yes. Because earlier, Young Master, you did it like this."
"Good. Let's mix it."
"Yes, Young Master."
With a careful expression, Kanghyeok mixed the drops of Dolseok's blood and the patient's.
While deliberately ignoring the snide remarks coming from behind him.
"It doesn't matter anyway. My blood's inferior. It has to be noble blood to— huh?"
Even after a long while, the mixed drops showed no change at all.
Kanghyeok nodded with a highly satisfied expression.
"It's not clotting."
"It's not clotting."
"Good. This time it's Dolseok."
"It's Dolseok."
"Uh..."
Dolseok tried to bolt, but the attempt went nowhere.
Makbong, who had appeared at some point, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and flung him to the floor.
"Hey! You idiot, they're just drawing blood, and you throw a person around?"
"Young Master had his drawn without a word. Why are you trying to run?"
"That's because Young Master... ah, shit..."
"You're a servant. Just lie down."
Perhaps Makbong's words truly struck home, because Dolseok lowered his head and lay down on the floor.
"I suppose... Young Master did do it too..."
"That's right."
"But you seem awfully excited."
"For some reason, I really am."
Makbong said that while shamelessly shaking his hips back and forth.
In Bojewon, the origin of the dance that would come to be called the American dance in the twenty-first century was unfolding.
The dance made even Kanghyeok, who had nothing to do with it, feel a surge of irritation, so Dolseok was nearly about to explode.
"You little— urgh. Damn it, at least say something before you stick it in..."
But because of Yeoju's coldly inserted syringe, he could not continue his anger.
Not only could he not continue it, he could not even move.
That was only natural, since the needle was inside his vein.
"All right, now I'm drawing blood. Stay still."
"Uh... a little slower."
"This is slow."
"It feels way faster than when you did Young Master's."
"No, no."
"It is faster..."
While Dolseok and Yeoju bickered over how fast his blood was being drawn, another commotion rose outside.
When they looked, it was Dongpa this time.
"Oh. He collapsed."
"Did he faint after shitting himself while not eating anything?"
"Who knows. Pick him up and bring him in."
"That guy?"
Makbong said it with a face that clearly showed how unwilling he was.
His attitude was that if it was someone he disliked, it would not matter if the bastard just died.
Kanghyeok was thinking along similar lines, but he still could not actually leave him to die.
That was simply the nature of his profession.
"Bring him. I'll make him come to his senses now."
"Uh... yes, all right."
Makbong shook out his hands and walked toward Dongpa.
By now, there was no one left at all who wanted to go over to Dongpa's side.
A physician shitting himself while treating people might still have been something they could overlook.
Ridiculous, maybe, but still.
But for him to actually faint and collapse?
That was too much.
"Ugh... the smell."
Holding Dongpa in one hand, Makbong muttered.
Dongpa's symptoms had come on rather abruptly.
And since he had stubbornly kept standing around out of pride, he had really soiled himself a great deal.
"Ugh..."
Grumbling several more times, Makbong dragged Dongpa into the room.
The moment he pulled him inside, a faint foul stench began filling the whole room.
Scowling deeply, Kanghyeok shook Dongpa by the shoulder.
"Hey, quack!"
"Ugh..."
"You should have just come over here in the first place. Well, what's done is done. Put out your arm."
"Uh..."
At the thought of drawing Dongpa's blood, Kanghyeok felt energy rise in him from nowhere.
The arm that had been trembling like an aspen leaf until just moments ago suddenly steadied, and he drew Dongpa's blood out in quick succession.
"All right, Makbong."
"Huh? Me?"
"Yes. You too. Put your arm here."
"Ah... you're giving my blood to this bastard?"
Makbong reluctantly held out his arm.
Once Kanghyeok's blood-drawing skill had regained its rhythm, there was no stopping it.
In mere seconds, they were able to begin the crossmatch test.
As time passed, a thin smile spread across Dolseok's face, which until now had been twisted into every imaginable grimace.
"Yours isn't clotting either."
"Ah, shit..."
"Good. Makbong, lie down."
"Ah..."
"I did it, so now you do it too. Didn't you say that yourself earlier?"
"I did say that..."
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