Thunder in the Morning Calm (28 page)

A solitary guard, dressed in an Army uniform, stood watch at the entrance. Pak decided the guard did not look like Dear Leader’s finest.

“Wait here,” the colonel’s assistant said. She stepped out of the jeep, slammed the door behind her, and strutted past the guard, who did not even acknowledge her. She opened the door of the hospital and marched straight in.

Silence.

Pak could see Kang’s eyes in the rearview mirror, leering at her with hatred, ablaze with fury. But still, no words came from him.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled his pistol out and held it up in the air.

Chi-chink.

He chambered a bullet into firing position. Then he turned around and glared at her. He pointed his pistol at her head. “You think you can get away with embarrassing me like this?”

She did not respond. Instead, the words she had memorized came back to her:
A soft answer turneth away wrath.

“Do you think I am going to let you live, you everlastingly worthless female sheep?” He stuck the barrel against her forehead and pressed hard. “You think you can fool anyone with all that religious garbage about Christianity, do you?” He shoved the barrel so hard against the middle of her forehead that it knocked her back in the seat.

“Do you not know what Marx said? ‘Religion is the opiate of the people.’ Christianity is for losers! Of all religions, this Christianity of yours is the most despicable! It is more despicable than Islam! More despicable than Buddhism! Than Shintoism! You believe your claims that someone would rise from the dead? Why do you not just deny such despicable lies, and perhaps I shall let you live, you traitorous hog!”

The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent …

“Your Christianity garbage. You do not fool me. It’s all a calculated ruse. All you Christians use God talk as a diversionary tactic to manipulate others to get your way! I
hate
you! I hate you all! Now deny your God!” He was screaming in a shrill voice she had not heard before. “Deny him or I will shoot you on the spot! Right now! I said deny!” He again rammed the gun barrel against her skull.

Her head throbbed. Tears welled up in her eyes. In a soft voice she said, “I am sorry, but I cannot and I will not deny him.”

Whack!

The butt of his pistol smacked against her lips and teeth. Blood gushed from her mouth and ran down on her clothes.

Just then the front door opened. “Kang, what are you doing?” the colonel’s assistant snapped.

“This woman, while you were gone,” Kang said, “began a slanderous tirade against Dear Leader himself. She became recalcitrant, calling the Dear Leader a homosexual. I told her to shut up. I reminded her that insults against Dear Leader would not be tolerated. But instead of obeying me, she became more defiant. And she went on, not only to repeat the slanderous charge against Dear Leader, but said that he had received and given sexually transmitted diseases to both men and women alike!”

A pause.

“Yes, Kang,” the colonel’s assistant said, “I am sure that this wretched refuse of a beaten-up woman said all of these things about Dear Leader in the three or four minutes that I was gone.” She closed the door and walked around the back of the jeep. She opened the rear passenger door. “Get out, Pak.”

Pak swung her feet down onto the rocky driveway and stood up.

Mang closed the back door and opened the driver’s door. She leaned down to look directly at Kang. “You stay here. I will deal with you later.”

“You? Deal with me?” Kang screamed. “Will you deal with me by sleeping your way into greater influence with the colonel? I will remind you that I am the one who —”

The colonel’s assistant slammed the door, cutting off Kang’s tirade and morphing his voice into a garbled mumble inside the jeep.

“Come with me,” she said to Pak.

They walked past the old guard and in the front door of the hospital.

The entryway was empty. It sounded hollow. No one manned the nurse’s station up front. In fact, the whole front part of the hospital seemed abandoned. Still, Pak sensed someone’s eyes upon her.

“This way,” the assistant said. They walked down a long abandoned-looking hallway, past two older life-sized photos of Dear Leader that adorned the walls, one on each side.

Some of the hall lights were burned out. All of the doors they passed were closed. About halfway down the main hallway, another hallway went off to the right. “This way,” the assistant said, and they made a
quick right. Over the second door on the right hung a sign that said
examination room
.

Sergeant Mang delivered three sharp knocks on the door. From within the room, a female voice said, “Enter.”

Mang opened the door and walked past an empty examination table with white sheets and restraining straps dangling down to the floor. To the right, seated at a Spartan-looking desk and wearing a long white nurse’s uniform, a nurse was bent over a clipboard writing something with a pen.

The nurse turned and looked up with piercing eyes behind plastic, black-rimmed glasses. “This is the patient, I presume?”

“This is the patient,” the colonel’s assistant snapped.

“Well, well.” The nurse stood and turned toward Pak. “Looks like we’ve had a little burn on the neck.” She adjusted her glasses and came in for a closer look. “Hmm, that blister is nearly the size of a Ping Pong ball. This is one of the biggest I’ve seen in a while.” The nurse picked up her clipboard and wrote a note on it. “And what about these cuts on the mouth? They look fresh. They’re still bleeding.” She took some paper towels and dabbed the right side of Pak’s mouth, where most of the blood had collected. “I hate wasting the state’s valuable resources on such a thing as this wretch’s blood.” The nurse held the paper towel up against Pak’s lip for a few seconds. “Our records will need to reflect what happened here also, Sergeant. Regulations, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” the colonel’s assistant said. “This was the result of disciplinary measures taken by the driver a few moments ago when I first came in to announce our arrival. I was not in the jeep at the moment, but the official report that he seeks to file indicates that she made certain derogatory comments about Dear Leader.”

The nurse shifted her eyes back and forth between Pak and Staff Sergeant Mang. “Derogatory comments about Dear Leader?” She took the blood-soaked paper towel away and tossed it into a white trash can. “If she insulted Dear Leader, she is fortunate to still have her teeth.”

The nurse dabbed another paper towel against Pak’s mouth. This one did not seem to absorb as much blood. “That should stop the bleeding.” The nurse removed the second paper towel and tossed it in the trash can with the first. She picked up her clipboard and started writing again. “My compliments to the disciplinary practices at Kim Yongnam.”
She scribbled a few more notes. “I take it that the blister also is a result of a well-deserved disciplinary matter?”

“Yes,” the colonel’s assistant said. “She is an employee at the prison. However, she was disciplined because she was caught stealing.”

“Caught stealing?” The nurse looked up from her pad. “Stealing what?”

“Medicine.”

“Medicine?”

“Yes. She stole medicine and attempted to administer it to one of the prisoners.”

The nurse slammed her clipboard down on her desk. “Does she not realize that medicine is an expensive and rare commodity?”

“I do believe after our little disciplinary session, she now realizes this.”

“Do not fear, Sergeant Mang,” the nurse said, “by the time we have finished our readjustment procedures here at the hospital, I do not believe you will have any other problems from this patient.”

“Excellent, nurse. I will report this to the colonel,” Mang said. “Would you like for me to remove her handcuffs now?”

“Hmm …” The nurse looked at Pak. “Let us get her on the examination table and put the restraining straps on her. Once we do that, then you can remove the handcuffs.”

“Certainly. Lie down, Pak.”

Pak positioned herself on the table, face up.

The nurse tightened the straps, first across her feet, then across her shoulders.

“All right, Sergeant, I don’t think she is going anywhere. You can take the cuffs off.”

The nurse grabbed Pak’s arms and held them. When she did, the sergeant reached over, inserted a key into each handcuff, and the tight cuffs, which had been cutting into her wrists, fell off.

“Be still and I will tie one more strap,” the nurse said.

Pak didn’t move, and the nurse tightened a third strap around her waist area. The restraining straps now held her down at her shoulders, her waist, and her feet. The straps weren’t too tight, and she was able to breathe.

“There,” the nurse said. “I do not think she is going anywhere.
Now we can begin our testing.” She walked back over to the desk and picked up her clipboard and began scribbling again. “Sergeant, I understand there is an issue as to whether she is competent to understand the charges against her, and whether she is competent to face a firing squad?”

“Yes,” the colonel’s assistant said. “That is one of the issues that Colonel Song is instructing us to look into.”

“Very well, Sergeant,” the nurse said. “Please tell the good colonel that we will make competency determinations on her ability to face a firing squad, and that he will have his determination soon.”

Pak’s heart beat with a renewed fervor.
Whatever your will, Lord.

The nurse wrote some more. “Sergeant, you are welcome to stay if you care to observe our testing. But this could take a while.”

“That won’t be necessary. There is business to attend to back at the camp,” she said and checked her watch to see if there still was time for her meeting with the colonel. “I will leave the patient in your hands.”

“As you wish, Sergeant.” The nurse stood and extended a stiff arm to the sergeant, who took her hand and shook it and then walked out the door. The door closed behind her with a click.

Lord
,
not my will but thy will be done. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Pak opened her eyes. The nurse was standing next to her. The black plastic glasses were gone. So was the black angry look in her eyes.

“So what was your
real
crime, my sister?” The woman’s voice and tone had softened. “You tried to give some medicine to one of the poor old Americans?”

Even a fool is deemed wise when he is silent.

“Oh, you do not think anyone knows about the old Americans up there? Do you not know it is the worst-kept secret in this region?”

She is trying to trick me. If I acknowledge that Americans are there
,
she will report that I revealed a state secret
,
and they will behead me.

“For what it is worth, I think you did the right thing trying to help the old man. It is a shame that they will all be gone soon, and no one will ever know that they have been there all these years. Let me take a closer look at that blister.”

The nurse bent down and looked carefully at the blister on Pak’s neck.

“Dear Leader brags about capturing the
Pueblo
and how we supposedly beat the Americans in the Great War sixty-some years ago. But then he hides this dirty little state secret. Of course we in the hospital know because they have brought them up here for treatment for years. They swear us to secrecy and make it a capital offense if anyone talks. So only hush-hush rumors percolate. They have shot a few people who talked too much about the old Americans and even shot some people who innocently heard too much information.

“Of course, if you ask me, it is typical Pyongyang hypocrisy. It is as if they are afraid that the Americans would nuke us if they knew. Brag about the
Pueblo
. But keep this under the covers. It sounds like the great Dear Leader is not as brave as he would have his subjects believe. Hmm …” She eyed Pak’s neck. “A second-degree burn. A cigarette?”

Surely this was all part of the psychological testing, Pak thought. How could a woman go from so harsh to so soft in such a short period of time?

“Don’t want to talk? Okay. Hold still while I apply some antiseptic on that blister. I won’t touch it, just drip a little of this on it.”

She held a bottle over Pak’s neck. Three drops fell on the blister. The soothing was instantaneous. “I am sorry, but that is all the antiseptic we have at the moment. They do not give us much. Medicine is scarce. But do not worry. I will send the doctor into town to the pharmacy for more tomorrow. He is a good man. He is one of us.”

One of us? What does she mean? Pak wondered.

“I will loosen these straps in a moment.” She turned and walked back across the room. “As soon as our friend has had time to get back on the road. I must put on a show to convince her and her superiors that I will treat you in the same brutal fashion that they treat you. But do not worry. It is all a show.” The nurse reached up into a cabinet. “We have a small amount of ointment called aloe vera. Smuggled in by Christian missionaries from Seoul. A local pharmacist gets it for us. He is a good man. He is one of us.”

She removed the tube from the cabinet and walked back over to Pak. “I will apply a small amount around the base of the blister. But I warn you, it can be cold at first.”

Pak watched the woman squirt green ointment onto her finger. “I’ll try not to touch the blister. So be still.”

At first, the ointment felt cold, and Pak cringed when it touched her skin. But then the woman rubbed the ointment onto her neck in slow, circular motions, carefully avoiding the blister. “That feels good,” she said, forgetting her self-imposed vow of silence. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome. Let me do this a bit longer. Then I will loosen these straps.” She continued to rub gently around the blister.

“There,” she said. “No more aloe. We shall pray that the doctor gets more from the pharmacist tomorrow.”

The nurse removed the restraints from Pak’s feet. Next she removed the waist strap, and finally she took off the collarbone strap.