Soldier Doctors (2)

"I looked into it — the ICU's isolation space is already full, but the recovery room should work. Give me the word and I'll have the operating room set up."

What was Ong So-yul's nickname again? "The hero of this area," wasn't it? When everyone around her said no, said it couldn't be done, she was always the first to step forward and run herself ragged until she came back with answers. That was So-yul's strength.

"Proceed, Dr. Ong So-yul."

"Yes, sir!"

Chick-like So-yul sprinted toward the recovery room at her longest stride and finished the surgical prep alongside the nurses. Kang Dae-han wheeled the bed in right behind her in a single push, and So-yul reached out to help move the patient.

"You'll drop him, lifting with that tiny little body?"

"I'm strong. I didn't get into Ortho for nothing, you know."

So-yul fired back without an ounce of retreat and, as if to prove the point, laid the patient down on the disinfected mobile operating table.

"But Doctor — what about the anesthesia?"

"On the battlefield, no one divides you up by department. A man is dying — what need is there for a specialty? Whoever can do it, does it."

It was a disaster situation, and he was right. Waiting around for an anesthesiologist or a neurosurgeon who wouldn't answer no matter how many times they paged them, the patient could have ended up permanently paralyzed — or worse, dead.

"Let's begin."

Surgical gown, mask, sterile gloves — Kang Dae-han took up the scalpel. The moment the blade parted skin, scarlet blood spattered all the way up to his mask. Cauterizing vessels with the electrocautery as he went, he spread the muscle open and laid the vertebrae bare, then, high-speed drill in hand, began shaving away part of the lamina.

Soldier doctors are so freaking sexy.

From somewhere, Ahn Hae-young's voice rang in her ears like tinnitus.

The surgery was a success. Without a single issue from the anesthesia or the neurosurgery, the patient was on the road to recovery.

Back in the residents' room, So-yul stared into empty air for a while, thinking about the tsunami that had just swept through.

Dr. Ong. Micro scissors.

Here you are, Doctor.

Hands like pot lids — hands that looked fit for operating heavy machinery — incising skin and then delicately lifting out ligament. The handiwork had been anything but ordinary.

Next patient. Acute compartment syndrome. We're going in for a fasciotomy, so get ready.

Next patient has a fractured spine, so we'll go in for fixation.

The moment he closed out one surgery, Kang Dae-han was back in the emergency room, surveying the patients still waiting.

"'Hands of God,' or something like that."

As So-yul murmured to herself, Ahn Hae-young — who was in the middle of filling out an operative report — dragged her wheeled chair scooting over alongside.

"'Hands of God' is one thing, but it was like watching MacGyver."

"Oh, exactly. Apt comparison, Ahn Hae-young."

"Dr. So Joo-won really nailed that pin placement, seriously. I was blown away."

"Not Dr. Kang Dae-han?"

Their gazes, each of them picturing a different man, collided in midair.

"Oh, yeah. Not overlapping at all, huh?" Ahn Hae-young pulled her pink hair into a tight tie and flashed a smile.

"Wait, so who's Dr. So Joo-won?"

"Hello? You. Didn't you see the three strapping newcomers at the morning briefing? The one built like a tank is Dr. Kang Dae-han!"

"...Right."

"The prettiest one is Dr. Lee Hyeok! And the one who looks the shadiest but is twice as considerate is Dr. So Joo-won! Can't even memorize names properly, Private Ong So-yul?" Ahn Hae-young, doing her best army impression, razzed So-yul's memory.

Not that she'd been in any state to memorize them. One sight of Kang Dae-han and So-yul had spiraled into a panic, with no idea who had even walked in.

"Still, thanks to the soldier trio we turned the emergency patients around fast. Now I get why the professor praised them to the skies."

"Same. They were practically multitasking in there? Well, on deployment they must have crossed department lines and done a bit of everything."

"Working under fellows like these — doesn't that feel reassuring?"

So-yul couldn't argue with that. The first button had been fastened rather embarrassingly crooked, but this was a genuine chance to learn from them properly.

"Where are you going?"

"Coffee run."

"Get me a cafe mocha. Whipped cream, piled on."

"Okay."

With the storm behind her, So-yul headed for the café to clear the fog from her head. Two cups should do it — Hae-young's included.

But the man who kept surfacing in her mind made So-yul decide to order one more. Would he take his espresso straight, or would an iced Americano be the safer bet?

Picturing the sort of man who would favor the bitter things, So-yul skimmed the menu board.

Kang Young-hoon, reading the article that had just gone up, lifted his gaze. Kang Dae-han — built as imposing as a great tree — stood in the room like a man ready to walk out at any moment.

"First day on the job, and Dr. Kang has already slammed a big fat 'Well done' stamp on the hospital's image."

"And now you have your eye on the hospital director's chair as well?"

The place Dae-han had been summoned to was the hospital director's office. He had come wondering what this was about, only to find Kang Young-hoon — chairman of Taemun Group and his own father — sitting in the executive chair, chin propped on his hand, for all the world like he owned the place.

Then again, if not the man who had thrown money at it and secured the Regional Emergency Medical Center designation, who else could call himself master here?

Dae-han called his father's history to mind. Chairman Kang Young-hoon had been born the third son of Taemun Group, whose holding company was Taemun Construction. Neither the eldest son nor the second, he had inherited the ambiguous affiliate Taemun BioLogics — but when the eldest died of a chronic illness, he promptly shouldered the second son aside and took the group's chairmanship.

True to a temperament that had spent a lifetime aching to make its presence known, Kang Young-hoon had searched out the surest way to put himself on display. A businessman respected by the nation. Perhaps that was the skin he had wanted to wear.

Dr. Kang, I've made you a place at the hospital. Time to quit digging around overseas and come home.

Having built the foundation and the hospital, and lately wrested even the Regional Emergency Medical Center title, the very first thing the man had done was send for his second son. A tycoon with a son who devoted himself to his country as a career military physician — for courting respect, no title could serve better.

"Wasn't the hospital directorship the thing you wanted, Dr. Kang? I'll stand up a figurehead and keep it well polished. You just plan on serving the hospital with a professor's badge pinned to your chest."

Kang Young-hoon seemed to believe his son had come home to inherit power. But Kang Dae-han had returned from his drifting, deployment-hopping life for a different reason entirely. It was something his father could never have imagined — and he couldn't stomach so much as talking about it, so he intended to let the misunderstanding stand.

"If you've said your piece, may I leave now?"

"Your brother was promoted to an executive post this time. We ought to have a family dinner."

My brother, he says. Did I ever have such a thing? And a family dinner, of all things. Why try to bring the cub he'd been so desperate to hide — the one he'd cast out — inside the fence only now? What if he bit down hard and hurt Kang Seo-joon, that hothouse flower raised under glass?

Dae-han moved toward the desk. On the tablet PC screen glowed the Taemun Hospital article his father had been reading. Dae-han raised a hand rough as sandpaper and covered the screen.

"Now that you're back, behave yourself."

…

"Keep raising me quiet as a dead mouse, the way you always have, and use me. Isn't that the full extent of my usefulness?"

The words wouldn't come out pleasant. Recalling the long, bitter years behind him, they never could.

"Hahaha. The pup's got some bite. How on earth did he turn out so exactly like me?"

Deny it though he wanted to, Dae-han was a carbon copy of that mountain of a man, Kang Young-hoon. So was the habit of charging headlong, consequences be damned, at whatever he believed was right. But living like his father? That, he refused.

"Dae-han."

He had called him by his name. It was the first time in years — not the title "Dr. Kang," but the name itself.

"You been well?"

The question had no subject, but he knew exactly whom his father was asking about.

"I'll take my leave, then."

With the feeling of nerves prickling up all over his skin, Dae-han turned and walked out of the director's office.