Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 162

162. The Beginner’s Mind as a Doctor

“Tch! He’s getting on my nerves.”

The department head was in a foul mood because Go Gye-deuk was visiting too often, adding to his already hectic workload.

“Is there a VVIP [Very Very Important Person] coming that I don’t know about?”

A nurse, having finished checking on a patient, whispered quietly to the department head, who was sitting at the station muttering to himself.

“It’s strange enough that he’s been coming to the TICU [Trauma Intensive Care Unit] every day lately.”

“No, that’s not it. I just saw him standing in the middle, smiling to himself.”

“Come on! Surely not. You must have seen wrong. Among seriously ill patients…….”

“No, department head, look over there?”

As the department head turned his gaze to where the nurse was pointing, he saw Go Gye-deuk smiling. No, the expression ‘smirking’ was more accurate.

He was smirking in a very sinister and unpleasant way.

‘Huh! Did he eat something wrong? Why is he smirking here?’

Realizing he couldn’t let it go, the department head couldn’t contain his curiosity and got up to approach Go Gye-deuk.

“Excuse me, Director?”

As the department head approached, Go Gye-deuk, who had been smirking sinisterly, turned his head with a benevolent expression, almost like a saint.

“Yes, department head.”

“Is there anything you wanted to tell me privately?”

“Me? Of course not. Who am I to say anything when we have someone like our department head who takes such good care of the patients.”

“Or is there a VVIP coming, or a patient you’re particularly concerned about?”

There was definitely a patient he was particularly concerned about.

‘Tch! He’s unnecessarily perceptive.’

The patient Go Gye-deuk was looking at with a smile was Cha Dae-han, who had been a hit-and-run victim.

He was the patient who had caught Go Gye-deuk’s attention during his sudden visit to the trauma intensive care unit a few days ago, when he had asked the department head about difficult patients.

“If you let me know, I’ll pay more attention to the patient, so please tell me.”

“I didn’t come for any particular reason, but it seems I’ve made our department head worry unnecessarily.”

“Not at all. Then why have you been coming to the TICU so often lately…….”

“Well. Shall we say it’s because of my laziness?”

“Yes? Laziness?”

“How should I put it? It has always been my dream and goal to become a hospital director who thinks about Shinhwa University Hospital and its patients, but now that I’m in this position and continuing to maintain it, I feel like I’ve become complacent as a doctor.”

“Ah, yes…….”

“I’ve been working while only thinking about the hospital’s development for a while, and I suddenly wondered if I had lost my initial commitment as a doctor, which was to think about and care for patients. So, I’ve been visiting the trauma intensive care unit for the past few days to get my mind right. When I come here, I’m reminded of my old beginner’s mind as a doctor, that I need to work harder for the patients.”

The department head, unable to understand what kind of nonsense he was spouting so earnestly, was at a loss as to how to respond to Go Gye-deuk’s mood.

“No, Director, what are you saying? You’re already working hard enough for the hospital and the patients.”

“Haha! Is that so? I feel good to hear praise from our department head, who works harder than anyone else. Then I’ll be on my way. Keep up the good work.”

“Yes, Director, you too.”

Go Gye-deuk left the TICU with a satisfied expression and headed to his office.

Click-

“Good morning.”

“You’re here early.”

As Go Gye-deuk was about to enter his office, his secretary rose from her seat and greeted him.

“I had a breakfast meeting this morning, so I came straight to work after it ended. Anyway, there are no special appointments today, right?”

“No, there aren’t. And I’ve put the Cha Dae-han patient data you requested on your desk.”

“Really?”

At the secretary’s words, Go Gye-deuk entered his office with a bright expression, like someone who had found enlightenment.

Thud-

Rushing in, he picked up the data prepared by his secretary and began to read it intently.

-Name: Cha Dae-han. Age: 43 years old, occupation: Delivery driver.

Family: A typical family of five, with a wife, Lee Soo-jung, of the same age, and two sons and one daughter.

Cha Dae-han and Lee Soo-jung are high school classmates who married early at the age of 25, and the couple, as well as the entire family, are said to have a good relationship. However, Cha Dae-han was involved in a hit-and-run accident, and the family atmosphere is currently strained, and their financial situation has become very difficult.

They moved from a villa to an apartment on a lease basis the year before last, and it seems they took out more loans than expected. In addition, they have to pay monthly loan interest, and the children are in elementary school, middle school, and high school, so tuition fees and other expenses are expected to be considerable.

It has been reported that they inquired about installment payments because they were short of money during the interim settlement due to long-term hospitalization.

Of particular note is that they have a history of inquiring with the social welfare team about whether they can receive support.

Address: xx-gu, xx-dong, Seoul. Lee Soo-jung’s phone number 010-xxx-xxxx

And at the end of the data, Cha Dae-han’s home address and his wife Lee Soo-jung’s phone number were written in detail.

“Hehehe!”

Go Gye-deuk began to laugh to himself, as if he was enjoying Cha Dae-han’s data like a fun book.

“As expected! My hunch was right. He’s exactly the person I was looking for. The husband is lying sick, and money is flowing out like pouring water into a bottomless pit. The woman must be in agony just breathing, right? Lee Soo-jung, I’ll give you some breathing room. But you’ll have to help me.”

Muttering to himself, Go Gye-deuk immediately called his secretary.

“Did you call me?”

“About this Cha Dae-han patient’s guardian applying to the social welfare team.”

“Yes, Director.”

“Is there a possibility?”

“It’s not certain, but it’s a system that helps patients who don’t have money, but in the case of Cha Dae-han, it seems it won’t be easy to receive benefits.”

“Right? The hospital isn’t a charity, and we can’t just help anyone. It shouldn’t be that easy.”

“Judging from the fact that his wife, Lee Soo-jung, just asked about it vaguely, she probably assumes it won’t work either.”

“Is it not yet visiting hours for our TICU (Trauma Intensive Care Unit)?”

“Yes, it will be a while longer.”

“Let me know when it’s time, and get out. Good work.”

“Yes.”

After the secretary left, Go Gye-deuk once again scanned the data of the Cha Dae-han patient and then clicked on YouTube.

On the monitor screen, an interview video of Tae-kyung, which had been famous for a while, was playing.

Tuk tuk-

Go Gye-deuk used his fingernails to poke at Tae-kyung’s face on the monitor and muttered to himself.

“I’ll return the humiliation I received exactly as it was. Kim Tae-kyung, let’s go to hell soon.”

* * *

“Excuse me.”

After sending the children to school, Lee Soo-jung came out to the place where her husband had the accident again today and handed out flyers.

It was a flyer looking for witnesses to her husband’s hit-and-run.

“Please read this once.”

She had been handing out flyers to people passing by for almost three months.

At first, even saying a single word to ask people to look at the flyer was too difficult. But as the desperation to find a witness deepened, she didn’t care about rejecting hands or people’s indifferent gazes.

“Please take a look at this. Thank you.”

The flyer received by a passing citizen was thrown on the ground a meter in front. Lee Soo-jung picked up the fallen flyer again and handed it to the next person.

After handing out flyers to people passing by in succession, she turned her head to the roadside.

There was a banner hanging where Lee Soo-jung’s gaze reached.

-Looking for witnesses to a hit-and-run accident. x month xx day x o’clock xx minutes.

Three months ago, Lee Soo-jung’s husband had an accident in the early morning. It was a hit-and-run accident.

The husband used to work at a company and then started doing deliveries. He started doing deliveries, seeing only that it was better than the small company salary, without knowing anything about the challenges.

Memorizing house addresses, carrying heavy luggage, and climbing stairs were all unfamiliar and difficult tasks. It was hard for someone who hadn’t done physical work to suddenly do physical work.

He thought about quitting several times, but Cha Dae-han gritted his teeth and persevered, thinking of his wife and children.

After a year and a half, the director, who recognized his unique diligence, introduced him to a client, and he also secured a large client directly for the first time. But on the day he secured the biggest shopping mall client, Cha Dae-han had an accident.

He had a lot of work that day, so it ended in the early morning, but he felt good about closing the deal. His body was tired, but his heart was light, and he felt like he could fly.

On his way home, he saw *tteokbokki* [spicy rice cakes] being sold from a truck and got out of the car.

It was his wife’s favorite food, and she was waiting up for him even today.

Cha Dae-han, who was about to buy it quickly and go home, searched on his phone for ATMs nearby because he was told that only cash was accepted.

He was in an accident while returning after withdrawing money from a small booth located a little further away.

Unfortunately, there were hardly any people or parked cars around the new development. The few cars that were there were difficult to identify the license plate because they were far away, and there were no security CCTVs [closed-circuit television cameras] installed around the area yet.

The next day, she went around to the stores in the area and asked, but there were no CCTVs that filmed the outside.

Lee Soo-jung felt like the sky was falling when she heard the sudden news of her husband’s accident.

A happy family with a sincere and warm couple and lovely children, even though they didn’t have much, fell into a swamp of unhappiness overnight.

Lee Soo-jung was working as a clerk in a small company near her house. However, she kept having to take time off to care for her husband, so the company could no longer accommodate her situation.

In the end, she had no choice but to quit and was surviving on various part-time jobs and daily work.

After her husband’s accident, Lee Soo-jung ran around like crazy looking for witnesses, but there were no clear results.

Most of all, the hardest thing was the money problem, including the hospital bills that were piling up and her unconscious husband.

The money going to the children, who were at an age when they needed a lot of money, and the interest she had to pay were all weighing down on her shoulders.

She had no in-laws or relatives to turn to for even a small amount of help. Lee Soo-jung’s parents had passed away early, and her husband was from an orphanage.

“Hoo!”

A frustrated sigh came out involuntarily.

The reality in front of her was so difficult that Lee Soo-jung even had the absurd thought these days that money would fall from the sky.

“It’s already this time…….”

Lee Soo-jung, who had been staring blankly at the banner, checked the time on her phone and finished her flyer work. She opened the bag she had put under the roadside tree to put the flyers she had handed out.

“…….”

But something was visible on the back of the bag. Looking closely, it was a small hand cream and a note.

-Mom, if you keep touching paper, your hands can crack and get dry. So don’t forget to apply hand cream.

-Hyun-mi and I will do it on the weekends. Mom, take care of your body and don’t overdo it.

-Mom, I’ll listen to my older brother and sister better and do my homework diligently. I love you.

The note that came with the small hand cream was a short letter written by the children.

‘When did they prepare this?’

A smile briefly crossed her face, which had nothing to smile about. Lee Soo-jung was barely holding on because of her children.

“Excuse me?”

Lee Soo-jung put the note she received from the children in her bag and was about to get up when she heard someone calling from behind her.

At the sound, Lee Soo-jung quickly turned around.