The nosebleed started at 3 a.m., on the Cheonan stretch of the Gyeongbu Expressway. Hands on the wheel, Taekho felt something trickle from his left nostril. He wiped it with the back of his hand. Dark red blood came away. He pulled out a tissue, pressed it to his nose, and kept driving. A 25-ton freight truck. 18 tons of frozen seafood in the bed. He was due at Jagalchi Market in Busan by 6 a.m. A nosebleed wasn't going to stop him.
Five minutes passed and the blood didn't stop. The third tissue was soaked through. Taekho tipped his head back and pinched his nose. He felt heat inside it. Something hot ran down the inner wall of his nostril. A clot slid down his throat. He swallowed. A metallic taste went down his esophagus. He straightened his head again and looked ahead. In the darkness the reflectors on the highway median ran on like a dotted line.
Ten minutes now. The blood didn't stop. Taekho pulled the truck onto the shoulder. He switched on the hazards. The orange light blinked. He sat in the driver's seat, a wad of tissues pressed to his nose. Blood soaked the tissues and ran between his fingers. The back of his hand was red. He had seen his own nosebleeds before. As a kid. In the summer, from the heat. Back then they stopped in 5 minutes. Now it was past 10. It didn't stop.
Taekho took out his phone and found his doctor's number. He hesitated to call at 3 a.m., but the blood wouldn't stop. It rang. The doctor picked up on the fourth ring, his voice thick with sleep.
"Doctor, it's me, Park Taekho. The one who got the NanoCure. My nose won't stop bleeding. It's been over 15 minutes."
On the other end there was a pause, the sound of a breath being steadied. Every trace of sleep left the doctor's voice.
"Where are you right now? Tell me your location first."
"The Gyeongbu Expressway. Just past Cheonan."
"When was your last NanoCure dose?"
"Four months ago. The third dose."
The silence that followed was heavier than the last. On the other end Taekho heard the doctor typing something fast.
"Mr. Park, listen carefully. You need to get to the nearest ER right now. This… it's very likely a NanoCure malfunction. There are rare reported cases where, after 3 months, the particles reclassify healthy cells as targets to attack."
Taekho clenched the tissue at his nose. Damp, lukewarm. This wasn't just a nosebleed.
"Attacking… healthy cells? So this blood…"
"NanoCure uses quantum entanglement to detect and destroy the abnormal division pattern of cancer cells. But if it stays in the body more than 3 months, it starts learning even the natural division of healthy cells as abnormal. The nosebleed you're having now — it could be the particles destroying the healthy cells of your nasal lining."
Taekho looked at the tissue he'd been holding to his nose. It wasn't red. Dark red. Almost black. Not the color of normal bleeding.
"What do I do?"
"You need a full-body magnetic-field clearing procedure. A strong magnetic field resets the quantum state of the nanoparticles. The problem is, there are only 3 hospitals in the whole country with the equipment. Seoul, Daejeon, Busan."
The doctor's voice grew urgent.
"Once the particles start misclassifying, you have to get the procedure within 48 hours. After 48 hours the particles begin attacking the cells of your major organs too. And then—"
The doctor stopped. Taekho held his breath. On the other end he thought he could hear the doctor swallow dryly.
"…and then there's no way to bring the damaged organs back."
Taekho looked at the clock. 3:17 a.m. 48 hours. Until 3:17 a.m. the day after tomorrow. He turned the truck key. The engine didn't catch. He turned it again. The engine sputtered and died. He turned the key a third time. The engine spun uselessly. It wouldn't start. The warning lights on the dashboard all came on at once. Red glows lit Taekho's face in the dark.
Taekho climbed out of the truck. The asphalt of the shoulder was cold with the pre-dawn chill. The orange of the hazards blinked across his face. He opened the front of the truck. The engine smelled of coolant. A radiator hose had burst. Green coolant had run down under the engine and pooled on the asphalt. Without repairs it wasn't going anywhere.
Taekho looked at the highway. The Gyeongbu Expressway at 3 a.m. Almost no cars. Just the occasional freight truck passing. He picked up his phone again and called emergency towing. Wait time: 2 hours. He hung up, stood on the shoulder, and wiped his nose. The blood was still flowing. He ran out of tissues. He took a towel from the truck cabin and pressed it to his nose.
60 kilometers to Daejeon. Taekho looked at the road sign. Too far to walk. He stood on the highway and watched the cars go by. He raised his hand. A freight truck passed. It didn't stop. A car passed. It didn't stop. Taekho kept his hand up. 3:30 a.m. A man standing on the highway shoulder, a bloody towel pressed to his nose. Nobody stopped.
Taekho stood on the shoulder and waited 15 minutes. 7 cars went by. Nobody stopped. The darkness of the highway closed in around him. Beyond the shoulder, rice paddies stretched out. There was nothing in them. Empty paddies in March. The wind blew. He zipped his work coveralls up. All the way to his throat. Blood ran from his nose to his chin and stained the collar. Taekho climbed back into the truck cabin. The heater was off, so it was cold inside. He pulled the towel away from his nose. It was soaked with dark red blood. He looked in the mirror. Beneath his nostrils was smeared with blood. It had run down over his upper lip. Taekho wiped his face with the towel and looked himself over. On the inside of his left forearm was a small bruise. It hadn't been there yesterday. One on the back of his hand too. Under his skin, capillaries were bursting. The doctor's words came back to him. Reclassifying healthy cells as targets. Blood vessel walls were healthy cells too. Right now, inside my body, the things that had saved me were bursting my capillaries.
Taekho thought back to 7 months ago. Stage 3 lung cancer. A 4.7-centimeter tumor in the upper lobe of his left lung. Metastasis to 2 lymph nodes. The doctor recommended NanoCure. A quantum-entanglement-based nanoparticle therapy. The particles ride the bloodstream, hunt down cancer cells, and destroy them. Unlike chemotherapy, they said, it doesn't touch healthy cells. Almost no side effects, they said. Taekho received NanoCure in 3 rounds. The tumor shrank. 3.1 centimeters after the second round. 0.8 centimeters after the third. The doctor said the progress was good. Close to a cure. The day the third round ended, Taekho started his truck in the hospital parking lot. There were needle marks left on his arm. They didn't hurt. He had once seen a fellow driver on chemo. His hair fell out, and the nausea left him unable to hold the wheel. That man took 6 months off. When he came back, his route had been handed to someone else. Taekho didn't take time off. He drove starting the day after his NanoCure treatment. Nothing about his body had changed. His appetite was normal. His stamina too. While NanoCure quietly erased the cancer inside him, Taekho drove the highway. Seoul to Busan, Busan to Seoul. 3 times a week. Taekho climbed back into the truck and got back to driving. Thanks to NanoCure, he didn't have to stop working. If he'd been on chemo, the vomiting and hair loss would have made driving impossible.
Taekho's phone rang. It was his attending physician.
"Mr. Park Taekho, I've contacted Chungnam National University Hospital in Daejeon. They're ready to perform the magnetic-field clearance procedure. How fast can you get here?"
"My truck broke down. 2-hour wait for a tow."
Over the phone came the sound of typing.
"If you're in Cheonan now, that's about 60 kilometers to Daejeon. When the tow truck comes, go straight to Daejeon. Deal with the truck later."
"I've got cargo. 18 tons of frozen seafood. In Busan by 6 a.m."
Irritation crept into the doctor's voice.
"Mr. Park Taekho! You're talking about cargo right now? This is a matter of life and death. If those particles keep attacking your vessel walls, you'll hemorrhage all over your body. Internal bleeding, a brain hemorrhage, anything could happen!"
Taekho looked toward the cargo bed. 18 tons of frozen seafood. A contracted haul. If the delivery failed, the penalty was 3.4 million won. Taekho's monthly income was 3.8 million won. Nearly a whole month. He was still paying off the loan on the truck. 24 million won remaining. He was also paying his 18-million-won out-of-pocket share of the NanoCure treatment in 12 monthly installments. 1.5 million won a month.
Taekho pressed the towel to his nose again. The blood didn't let up. If anything, his right nostril started bleeding too. Both sides. Taekho pressed the towel over his whole nose. He breathed through his mouth. His mouth was dry. A fishy taste lingered on his tongue.
4 a.m. Taekho sat in the truck cabin. With no heater, his breath came out white when he exhaled. The bruise on his forearm was growing. What had been 2 centimeters was now 3. A new bruise had formed on the inside of his wrist. The skin was turning purple. The nanoparticles were misclassifying the endothelial cells of his capillaries as cancer and destroying them. Taekho lifted his shirt and looked at his belly. A wide bruise was spreading over his left side. The size of a palm. When he pressed it, there was a dull pain. It was near his spleen. Taekho pulled his shirt down. His body felt like it had become a battlefield. There was no enemy. His own side was firing by mistake. The same side that had saved him 7 months ago.
Taekho searched on his phone. 'NanoCure misclassification cases.' Results came up. No news articles. There was one journal abstract. It was in English, so he couldn't read it. There was a community post. 'It's been 4 months since my NanoCure treatment, and I keep bleeding for no known reason.' 12 comments. 'I have the same symptoms.' 'I contacted the manufacturer, but they say nothing like this has been reported in the trials.' Taekho looked at the post's date. 2 weeks ago. In the time since, no news had come out. Bionex, NanoCure's manufacturer, had a market capitalization of 87 trillion won. There had been an article last month that NanoCure's quarterly revenue had topped 4 trillion won. Taekho set his phone down.
Taekho looked up at the ceiling of the cab. His daughter's photo was taped there. Eunji. 14 this year. After the divorce, his ex-wife was raising her. Eunji was one of the reasons Taekho had decided to take NanoCure. To keep sending child support, he had to keep working. The chemo would have meant 6 months off. And if he couldn't send child support for 6 months. Taekho looked at Eunji's face in the photo. She was smiling in her middle school uniform. He pulled his eyes from the picture and pressed the towel back to his nose.
4:20 a.m. Taekho's nosebleed had gone on for over an hour without stopping. The towel had grown heavy with blood. He pulled out a second one. There were 3 towels in the cab. Taekho felt his own body heat. A chill came over him. His teeth chattered. The bleeding was dropping his temperature.
Taekho made a call. The freight company office. It was an answering machine. Taekho left a message.
"Frozen seafood delivery to Busan can't be made. Truck breakdown, and the driver has a medical emergency. Please send a replacement vehicle."
He hung up after leaving the message. Penalty fee: 3.4 million won. Penalty fee: 3.4 million won. Taekho shut his eyes hard. He tried to erase the number, but it only burned brighter against the inside of his eyelids. Eunji's child support for the month: 800,000 won. The truck installment: 1.2 million won. The NanoCure installment: 1.5 million won. The numbers lined up and marched through his head. He couldn't erase them, but the blood running from his nose was heavier than the numbers.
4:40 a.m. Lights approached along the shoulder. Not a tow truck. A highway patrol car. It stopped behind Taekho's truck. The patrol officer got out and knocked on the window of Taekho's cab. Taekho rolled it down. The officer looked at Taekho's face and took a step back.
"Sir, are you all right? Your face… that's a lot of blood."
"I'm not all right."
His voice came out hoarse.
"Daejeon… Chungnam National University Hospital. I have to get there. My truck's dead. Please, could you take me?"
The officer looked at Taekho's face again. The bloody towel. Blood had run all the way down to his wrist. The purple bruise on his forearm. The officer raised his radio.
"Requesting emergency patient transport support. Shoulder of the Gyeongbu Expressway, Cheonan section, 1 bleeding patient. Needs transport to Chungnam National University Hospital in Daejeon."
The radio crackled, and a reply came.
"Copy. Proceed with transport."
The officer looked at Taekho.
"Get in."
15 minutes later, Taekho sat in the back seat of the patrol car. It ran in the passing lane. The siren wasn't on. Only the light bar spun. Taekho sat in the back holding the towel to his nose. It was the third towel. The officer in the front seat watched him in the rearview mirror.
"What illness do you have?"
"Lung cancer. I took NanoCure. Now they're saying it's causing problems."
The officer nodded.
"NanoCure. My mother took it too."
A brief silence fell.
"She said it worked well."
Taekho didn't answer. The officer asked nothing more. He picked up speed. The number on the dashboard passed 140.
Taekho looked out the window. The highway's streetlights streamed past. He imagined the inside of his own body. The nanoparticles. Billions of them. Riding his bloodstream, circling his whole body, scanning his cells. 7 months ago they had hunted down cancer cells and destroyed them. They had shrunk the tumor from 4.7 centimeters to 0.8 centimeters. They were the things that had saved his life. Now those same things were destroying the cells of his nasal lining. Destroying the cells of his blood vessel walls. Soon they would begin destroying the cells of his organs. The drug that had saved me was now killing me. He couldn't even laugh.
The patrol car took the Daejeon interchange. It ran through the city streets. 5 a.m. The roads were empty. A traffic light turned red. The officer crossed the stop line with the light bar still on. Taekho felt his body tilt in the back seat. He was dizzy. The bleeding hadn't stopped. Taekho took the towel from his nose. It was heavy with blood. The nosebleed was easing. But the dizziness was growing. Taekho pressed his left side. There was a dull pain. Internal bleeding might have started.
Taekho coughed in the back seat. Blood came away on his palm. It wasn't from his nose. It was blood the cough had brought up. Taekho looked at his palm. Bright crimson. Blood from the lungs. This wasn't a nosebleed. It was blood that had boiled up from deep in his lungs. The doctor's warning circled in his ears. 'It starts attacking the cells of major organs too.' The lungs. So it had started with the lungs now. Taekho wiped his palm on his pants and looked out the window. The hospital came into view. The sign for the Chungnam National University Hospital emergency room. The patrol car stopped at the ER entrance. Taekho opened the door and got out. There was no strength in his legs. The officer took hold of his arm. Leaning on the officer, Taekho walked into the ER.
At the ER reception desk, Taekho said,
"I'm a NanoCure misclassification patient. I need the magnetic clearance procedure. My physician should have called ahead."
The reception nurse checked the computer. She nodded.
"Yes, we got the call. The procedure room is being prepared."
The nurse looked at Taekho's forearm. The bruise had spread across the whole of it. Her eyes narrowed.
"Let's get you in right now."
A wheelchair arrived. Taekho sat down. A nurse pushed him along the corridor. The fluorescent lights overhead slid past. One, two, three. Taekho counted as he went. He passed the fourteenth light and arrived outside the procedure room.
Inside the procedure room stood the magnetic-field neutralizer. A large tunnel shape. Taekho lay down on the table. The table was cold. A chill ran through him where his back touched it. A doctor came in. He connected an IV line to Taekho's arm. Taekho's heart rate appeared on the monitor. 96 beats per minute. Fast.
"We're going to begin the magnetic neutralization now."
The doctor rested a hand lightly on Taekho's shoulder.
"It'll take about 40 minutes. Think of it as the machine rebooting every one of the nanoparticles in your body. Once they've all shut down, they'll pass out of your system. Don't worry."
Taekho nodded. The table slid into the tunnel. A whirring sound wrapped around him. The machine's vibration came through his breastbone. Taekho closed his eyes. In the dark he could hear his own heart. 96 beats per minute. Beating fast. Taekho thought of the nanoparticles inside his body. Billions of them were scanning his cells even in this very moment. Classifying healthy cells as cancer and destroying them. The magnetic field would stop it.
Taekho lay in the tunnel for 20 minutes. The machine's low tone rang all the way into his bones. Taekho tried to listen to the sounds inside his body. The sound of his heart. His lungs expanding and contracting. Blood running through his vessels. Somewhere in between, nanoparticles were shutting down. There was no sound. Billions of them switching off, and no sound.
The machine's sound changed. From low to high. Taekho's skin prickled. The magnetic field was passing between his cells. Taekho imagined the feeling of something stopping inside him. Billions of particles going dark one by one. The eyes that had hunted for cancer closing. The things that had saved Taekho were shutting down. The things that had tried to kill Taekho were shutting down. They were the same things.
40 minutes passed. The table slid out of the tunnel. Taekho opened his eyes. He saw the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. The doctor checked the monitor.
"Nanoparticle activity has dropped to 0.3 percent. Deactivation successful."
Taekho touched his nose. The blood had stopped. It didn't run even without a cloth pressed to it. Taekho looked at his forearm. The bruise was still there. But no new bruises were forming.
Taekho lay on the table and caught his breath. He could feel that the bleeding inside his nose had stopped. The dull ache in his side was still there, but at least it wasn't spreading any further. With fingertips that had felt numb, deadened, he could now feel the cold metal of the table. Taekho clenched his fingers and opened them. They moved. Taekho lay on the table and looked at the ceiling. 5:47 in the morning. It had been 2 hours and 47 minutes since the nosebleed began. Taekho took his phone from his pocket. 3 missed calls from the transport company. 1 message. 'No replacement vehicle available. Penalty fee to be charged.' Taekho read the message and set the phone down on his stomach.
3.4 million won. Taekho stared at the ceiling and thought about the numbers. 24 million won still owed on the truck loan. 10.5 million won left on the NanoCure installments. How much would the magnetic neutralization cost? Taekho didn't ask. The bill would come later.
Taekho lay on the table and felt his own breathing. He drew a breath in. His lungs expanded. In the upper lobe of his left lung, a 0.8-centimeter tumor still remained. Now that the nanoparticles were deactivated, that tumor might begin to grow again. Taekho knew this. The doctor hadn't said so either, but he would know it too.
Taekho breathed out. There was no visible cloud of breath. It was warm inside the procedure room. Taekho closed his eyes. Sleep felt close. He thought he ought to call Eunji. Once morning came. He didn't know what he'd say once he heard her voice. He figured he'd tell her Dad was okay. Taekho breathed with his eyes closed. In the upper lobe of his left lung, a 0.8-centimeter tumor sat quietly. Now that the nanoparticles were switched off, only that enemy from 7 months ago remained, wholly, inside his body. The whirring of the machine in the procedure room stopped, and from somewhere came the sound of a bird calling. It was morning outside the window.
