Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 450

Fifth Vital- Episode 451

451. Scar

Seol-rae, who had risen from her seat, took pictures of the places where the bullies had left marks.

“This is driving me crazy. Seriously.”

The situation she was in was frustrating and absurd. She felt alone in this vast world.

Frustrated, Seol-rae took out an acrylic box from her bag and picked out a small piece. She was staring intently at the piece in her hand when she heard a voice.

“Hey! Lee Seol-rae?”

Turning her head towards the voice, she saw Gu Hee-yeong running towards her, panting.

Gu Hee-yeong was a classmate who had been bullied by the Lee Ra-mi gang before Seol-rae.

Having been freed from bullying because of Seol-rae, Gu Hee-yeong felt both grateful and sorry at the same time.

She felt as if Seol-rae had become the target of bullying because of her. But strangely, Seol-rae was different from her.

Unlike herself, who writhed in fear and wanted to die, Seol-rae’s fearless attitude towards the Lee Ra-mi gang was admirable and cool.

Gu Hee-yeong had accidentally overheard the Lee Ra-mi gang’s plan to bully Seol-rae at school and, worried, secretly followed her and witnessed the scene.

She had seen everything they had done to Seol-rae so far, but she could only watch, fearing retaliation.

“How could they…….”

Gu Hee-yeong was at a loss, examining Seol-rae’s body.

“Are you okay? I don’t think you can just leave this. Does it hurt a lot? Lee Ra-mi, Kim Chan-sol, Choi Su-ri, Kim Ha-yeong, aren’t they all psychos? They’re really bad people. How could they do this to someone…….”

“Hey!”

Seol-rae shouted, shaking off Gu Hee-yeong’s hand that was brushing off the dirt on the back of her uniform.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Huh?”

“Were you watching me?”

“No, I was just worried about you. Seol-rae, more than that, I think you should go to the hospital first.”

“Gu Hee-yeong? Why are you worried about me?”

“Well, that’s because……. You stood up for me, so I stopped getting bullied. And I feel like you ended up like this because of me. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it. I didn’t stand up for you; I was just trying to get my book. So don’t worry and go your own way.”

“Ah, okay. But Seol-rae, I think this will leave a scar if you leave it like this. Let’s go to the hospital.”

“I’ll go to the hospital on my own, so go your own way.”

Seol-rae didn’t welcome Gu Hee-yeong’s meddling at all. It was just annoying and bothersome.

“I’ll go! I’ll go with you to the hospital and then…….”

“Hey!”

Frustrated, Seol-rae raised her voice.

“Who are you to me? Are you my friend? No, right? Get a clue. I’ll take care of it myself tomorrow. Please, just go.”

“Okay. I’m sorry…….”

Gu Hee-yeong reluctantly got up. But with a lingering feeling, she kept looking back as she left the empty lot.

* * *

Our Hospital-

It was the time when people were leaving work one by one to go home and unwind from the day’s fatigue, but not here.

A hospital is not like a company that closes when it’s time to leave work or a restaurant that closes when the last customer leaves.

Patients always come without warning.

Some days are busy from noon, some days are busy in the evening, and some days are busy until dawn.

Especially hospitals that operate an emergency room like ours are always busy, with only a difference in how busy they are.

Today, patients had been pouring in since early evening, and now that a group of patients had left, there was finally some breathing room.

During the brief respite, the medical staff went to the bathroom, ate the dinner they hadn’t been able to eat, or recharged with a cup of coffee.

“Dr. Lee, bed 20 is a burn case.”

Nurse Lim Jeong-suk told Lee Chan-hee, who was coming out of another bed after finishing a patient’s examination.

“Okay.”

“Dr. Lee?”

As Lee Chan-hee was about to get up from his seat after entering the patient information he had examined on the PC at the station, Tae-gyeong, who had just entered the emergency room, grabbed his junior’s shoulder.

“I’ll take a look, so go eat dinner.”

“Really? I was about to starve to death anyway. Thank you. Doctor, what’s the main dish today?”

“They have your favorite beef. Eat a lot.”

“Yes, Doctor. I’ll go eat a lot and come back.”

Everyone was having a late dinner because there were so many patients today.

Tae-gyeong watched Lee Chan-hee leave the emergency room happily at the thought of eating, and then headed to bed 20.

“Hello.”

“Yes, hello.”

Opening the curtain and greeting her, the woman sitting on the bed responded to the greeting.

She was a kind-looking young woman in her late 30s.

“I heard you got burned.”

“Yes, here.”

The woman was holding a square ice pack that came with refrigerated food deliveries on her arm.

“Let me take a look.”

Tae-gyeong put down the ice pack and examined the burn area. The wound was on the lower arm, between the wrist and elbow.

“Oh my! How did this happen? It looks like you got scalded with water.”

“Yes. I was boiling hot water, and while I was doing something else, my child was playing around and the pot fell over.”

There are common types of patients in the emergency room.

Suicide patients, self-harm patients, accident patients, and children or their parents.

Young children can have dangerous accidents even in the moment you take your eyes off them.

Especially today, like this patient, there are quite a few cases of people coming to the hospital with burns from boiling water in the kitchen.

“You can see that the burn area is red on the surface, right?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“The layer of skin right below what you see is called the epidermis, and the layer below that is called the dermis. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like you’ve burned down to the dermis. It’s a second-degree burn, but it’s not a severe case.”

“Really? That’s a relief.”

“You don’t need to go to a specialized burn hospital, and you don’t need to be hospitalized. However, you need to get regular disinfection and take care to prevent the inflammation from getting worse.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Please wait a moment.”

Tae-gyeong left the bed for a moment and came back with the medical supplies prepared by the nurse.

“I’ll disinfect it and apply medicine. This is medicine for people with burns, and it contains antibiotics. It may sting when you apply it, but tell me if it’s too hard to bear.”

“Yes.”

Tae-gyeong applied the cream-like medicine to the burn area with a tongue depressor, a thin wooden stick.

“Are you okay?”

“It’s bearable, probably because you’re applying it gently, Doctor.”

“You must have been very surprised when the hot water spilled. Is your child okay?”

“Yes, my child is fine. I was so worried that the hot water would spill on my child that I didn’t even realize it hurt at the time.”

“That’s how all parents feel. They say raising a child is the hardest thing in the world.”

“Ha!”

The woman who was listening to Tae-gyeong’s words sighed briefly.

“I can really relate to what you’re saying, Doctor. My son has a severe developmental disability. He’s in elementary school, but it’s still a bit difficult to communicate with him. Today, I was trying to stop my son from playing around when the pot spilled and this happened.”

Tae-gyeong could feel a complex emotion on her face when she said that her son had a severe developmental disability.

He had always been able to handle any patient without difficulty, but he hesitated for a moment, wondering what to say to a patient who was raising a child who was a little more special than others.

But the patient spoke first.

“My friend’s daughter is the same age as my son, and she babbles so prettily. My wish is to have a conversation with my son without it being cut off.”

Raising a child with a severe developmental disability. It was more difficult than he thought.

Ordinary children learn and understand things one by one, but for my child to acquire them, repeated and arduous efforts were required.

The gazes of people who followed them when they went out were familiar but never quite became so.

It was a child she loved so much, but apart from that, the exhaustion she felt every day was something no one else could understand unless they were in the same situation.

“Excuse me?”

Tae-gyeong, who was applying the medicine slowly and carefully, called out to the patient, and she raised her head.

“Are you having a hard time?”

“……!”

The patient, who had been silent for a moment at the words thrown to comfort her, quietly wiped away her tears.

“I’ve met many patients during my time as a doctor, and there was a particularly memorable patient, a hale and hearty grandmother in her early 70s with graying hair.”

She was a patient who had broken her arm after tripping on the stairs of her apartment and needing a cast.

When the family heard about the accident, they arrived at the hospital one by one, and a particularly cheerful man came in and stayed by the patient’s side.

‘Doctor, is my mom okay?’

‘Doctor, will my mom be in a lot of pain?’

‘Doctor, when does my mom take her medicine? What kind of medicine is this?’

The man, who had a louder voice and more exaggerated actions than others, was the patient’s son.

Tae-gyeong knew at a glance that he was a person with a developmental disability.

Watching the son, who was holding his husband’s hand and going to the guardian waiting room, the patient said to Tae-gyeong with an awkward smile.

‘My son is a bit noisy, isn’t he? He’s a bit more special than others. Please understand.’

‘Not at all. He’s cheerful and good to see.’

The patient smiled at Tae-gyeong’s words.

“When I said, ‘You’re amazing,’ that patient told me that she had often resented and cried, wondering what sin she had committed that her son was born in that condition. She said that she had lived just enduring, thinking about dying together or wanting to run away while watching her son forget two things while learning one. Then, as time passed and her son became a young man, she suddenly had this thought while cleaning one day.”

The patient said that her son was different from other people, but she knew that and still tried not to admit it.

She said that she had made herself and her child suffer, thinking, ‘If I try, it will be okay? If I teach him, it will be okay?’

She recalled the days when she tried to do simple things with her son, who couldn’t even do simple things.

From then on, the patient let go of that feeling and decided to just let her son eat well every day and live happily while he lived with her.

“Life is still hard, and there will be days when the determined mind breaks down, but when that happens, that patient remembered the overwhelming moment when she gave birth to her child and held him in her arms.”

“……!”

“She said that those moments gave her the strength to overcome the desperate moments she faced in life.”

“Being in that situation, I know very well what that grandmother meant when she said that.”

“I can’t presume to know all of your feelings, but I think you’ve done well so far with the love you have for your son. I hope you don’t have too hard a time. When it’s hard, take a break too.”

“Thank you for your kind words.”

The patient, who had come to treat a burn on her arm, received unexpected comfort from Tae-gyeong.

Her arm was throbbing and stinging, but her heart was warm and touched.

“Okay! That’s it.”

The treatment was finished after covering the arm with gauze and finishing with an EB [elastic bandage].

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Have a good day.”

Chareuk-

Behind the patient who was leaving the bed after saying goodbye, the curtain on the next bed suddenly opened quickly.

“Oh my, our director is so good at speaking…….”

The neighborhood grandmother, who often came to the hospital, was getting an IV in the next bed.

“I was listening next to you and almost cried. You made an old woman cry. You speak so well.”

“Do I speak well?”

“Yes, you do. That child’s mother must have been very comforted.”

“I hope so. Is your arm okay after the shot?”

“What’s uncomfortable about putting something good in my body? Don’t worry about me and go do your work.”

“Okay, let me know when the medicine is all in.”

After finishing the conversation, Tae-gyeong turned to a few beds to check on the patients and headed to the station when Choi Mona approached.

“Doctor?”

“Oh. Why?”

“I’ll go up to the ward.”

“Okay, while you’re there, check on patient Kim Woon in room 204.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Choi Mona, who came out of the emergency room, stopped by the doctor’s office for a moment to get her personal tumbler and put the jelly that Lee Chan-hee had given her in her gown pocket.

After coming outside and passing the reception desk, Choi Mona, who was naturally going up the central stairs, suddenly put down one leg that she had put on the stairs.

“……!”