“Honored Elder Doctor,” the young doctor said and bowed.

“Knock that off,” the older doctor said. “I’m only 30.” He lit a black market cigarette and the stink of kerosine and dogshit filled the lobby of the deserted hospital. Two drags and it was finished, burning down like a fuse.

“My name is…” the young doctor began.

The older one held up his hand. “If you’re still here in a week, I’ll learn it.”

Visibly pained, the young doctor gave a series of rapid bows.

“Come on,” he said to the eager little puppy doctor child and turned. He flicked the butt into the empty nurse’s station as he trudged past it.

“Why was I chosen for this honor?” the young doctor asked. “I am so young and so unworthy.”

“He goes through doctors like facial tissues,” the old doctor said. “They are buried out back if you ever want to pay your respects.”

“He? You speak so casually about Dear Leader, Mountain Foundation of Our Great Nation, the Moon and The Sky, He Who Will Destroy The West and Feast on Its Rubble?” the young doctor asked, trembling. He pronounced all the capital letters in a rising lilt.

The old doctor stopped and turned on him, reaching out to prod his chest with a bony finger. “Cut that hog shit out right now. I know it keeps you alive out there, but in here, it just annoys me.”

He turned and walked a few steps, turned back, and said “Don’t annoy me. And don’t steal anything unless I say you can.” He lit another foul cigarette and motioned the young doctor to follow.

They walked through empty hallways and up dusty stairwells. Finally, the young doctor spoke, “Sir, I am sorry, but please can you tell me where everyone else is? The hospital is empty.”

“There is only one patient here,” he replied. “There should be a couple of nurses somewhere, probably eating, the fat cows, and a small crew of likvidatsyi to handle clean-up and containment. We cleared the rest of them out.”

Likvidatsyi, Honored Sir?” the young doctor asked.

“Sorry, Russian word. Prisoners under execution order, ‘slave robot’ is the closest, I guess.”

And they do cleanup and containment?” the young doctor asked.

“You’ll see,” the older one said.

One more hallway and the older doctor directed him into the scrub area, the cleanest part of the hospital the young one had seen so far.

“Level Four precautions,” the old doctor told him.

“So high?” the young man asked.

“You’ll see,” the old doctor said again.

They entered the isolation room some minutes later in Chinese chemical weapons handling suits, walking gingerly, dragging atmosphere tanks behind them on rusty carts.

“Dear Leader,” the young doctor blurted out.

“Not so loud!” the old doctor said. “I can hear you fine through the receiver.”

Kim Jung Un was a white bulk on the reinforced hospital bed, sheets piled on him until only his fat head stuck out. A crumbled trilby hat sat on the peak of his stomach.

The young doctor shuffled forward. The heart monitor was flat and silenced. He looked back at the old doctor in alarm, “Our Leader is dead?!?”

“Look at the electroencephalogram,” he replied.

The young doctor saw activity, minimal for a long moment, and then jagged, violent spikes.

“How does the brain function without the heart?” he asked quietly, just a modulated crackle across the cheap suit speaker.

“The real question is how he eats, even though there is no blood flow to the stomach. How he defecates so profoundly with a completely necrotic bowel.”

“When…when did this begin?” the young doctor asked.

“Shortly after his genital surgery.”

“Genital surgery?”

“Pull back the covers.”

The young doctor burrowed through layers of sheets and then threw his entire body weight into levering the stomach off the crotch.

“What has happened?!?” the young doctor cried. “His staff of manhood is gone!”

“That was his choice,” the old doctor said. He lifted a cigarette to his mouth on reflex and crushed it against the facemask of his suit.

“His choice?!?”

“Technically, their choice, but I refuse to participate in his delusion. He read some Western propaganda rag on gender dysphoria and decided he was non-binary.”

“Non-binary?”

“Neither a man or a woman.”

“The decadent West did this to him?”

“Not on purpose, I think. He just got a few issues of Teen Vogue like he always does.”

“And so you castrated him?!?”

“It was what he wanted. Do you as you are told or you end up in the back field with the rest of them, the poor dumb fuckers who told him to stop smoking or exercise.”

“But what purpose was this?” the young doctor said, pointing at the raw wound between Kim’s legs, held together with a mass of black stitches, like a swarm of ants on a rotting peach pit.

“He wanted to be neither man nor woman so he could be both father and mother to The People,” the old doctor said.

The young doctor stumbled back, reeling for balance.

“Don’t throw up in the suit,” the old doctor said, laughing bitterly, “We don’t have an extra one.”