"Ow! Take it easy, would you."

"Easy nothing." The nurse scrubbed the alcohol swab hard against the patient's wound. "You're not some gangster—how do you end up at the hospital practically every other day?"

"Aigo, gangster? Come on. I only come to see you, Nurse Kim."

"Don't talk nonsense."

"Ow! Aw, gently, gently."

His joking only earned him a harder scrub. When she was done, the nurse tossed the swab and the pincers she'd been holding into the bin as if flinging them. "There. And from now on, if you want this sort of thing done, ask the wife at home to do it. Don't come to the ER. This is where people with real emergencies come. It's not a stop for a good-for-nothing like you, President."

"Aigo, all right. Sorry. But I'm an emergency too. What if I treat it at home and catch tetanus?"

The nurse picked up the bin with the swabs and pincers and stood. "You're not hurt badly enough to catch tetanus. It's barely a scratch."

"Still, you never know."

The patient gave a sheepish laugh, then glanced around the ER and asked in a low voice, "So—something going on at the hospital?"

"What kind of out-of-nowhere question is that?"

She'd been about to leave with the bin, but she stopped and looked down at him.

The patient took another look around the ER and lowered his voice again. "No, it's just—the mood's different today…"

"Different how? The beds are all full and the doctors are running around like that."

Still, the patient tilted his head, as if the hospital's atmosphere struck him as oddly unfamiliar. "That's true, but there's something really… tense about it. Is that the word?"

"Aigo. Enough of the nonsense—hurry up and clear the bed. Come on, quickly!"

At her prodding the patient rose halfway, still craning to look around.

The nurse pushed at his back. "Go on, quickly. And don't come back with something like this again. Understood?"

Having chased the man who'd shown up over a nail-scratch clear out of the ER, the nurse watched him drift off, still…