Dr. Shin Seonhan: The Doctor Who Sees The Future [EN]: Chapter 120

#120 Heart Beats (4)

I approached the patient and asked,

“Hello. What brings you in today…?”

“The usual.”

“Pardon?”

I was taken aback.

What is this, a restaurant?

I’ve heard of for food, but this?

The middle-aged woman didn’t say anything else.

Then, the head nurse at the station gestured for me to come over.

“Hey, intern.”

“Yes?”

“Just prescribe her a Hartman’s solution [a type of intravenous (IV) fluid] with a Multi-vita [multivitamin] mix.”

“But she hasn’t even told me her symptoms yet…”

“She doesn’t really have any. She just comes in periodically for IV fluids.”

“All the way to the ER for that?”

“Yeah. She says it’s healing.”

Healing?

ER healing? I’ve never heard of that before.

The nurse next to me said,

“It’s like going to a massage parlor for a massage. She just relaxes here in the ER for an hour or two while getting fluids.”

I opened the patient’s chart.

There were dozens of ER records for this patient alone.

Just in case, I asked the patient questions to thoroughly check her symptoms.

But, as the head nurse said, there was nothing unusual.

“Okay, then I’ll prescribe the IV fluid with a vitamin mix.”

“Yes, that’s it.”

Swish—

The woman closed the curtain and lay down in the ER.

This was unimaginable at Yonsei University Hospital’s ER.

Yonsei University Hospital always had a shortage of ER beds, so patients with severe pain sometimes had to wait sitting in chairs.

‘The world is truly wide, and patients are diverse.’

I gained more experience.

Various patients.

Working in Gokdam, I gradually became accustomed to dealing with many types of patients.

Of course, some of them were bewildering.

The last patient I encountered at dawn was one of them.

“D, doctor. Help me.”

“What’s wrong? Where does it hurt?”

A man in his early thirties was crouching over.

Is it abdominal pain?

It seemed so, as he was holding his lower abdomen with both hands.

“Does your stomach hurt?”

“No.”

“Then where?”

“It… it won’t go down.”

“Excuse me?”

“I took some medicine, and it went up, but it hasn’t gone down for hours.”

I understood immediately and sighed.

Priapism [a prolonged erection of the penis].

I’d heard that this sometimes happens.

“Ugh… it’s been up for too long, and it feels like the blood isn’t circulating, and it’s about to burst. What should I do, doctor?”

I was at a loss.

What should I do in this case?

I picked up my work phone and immediately contacted the urology department.

“Hello, this is intern Shin Seon-han from the ER. A 32-year-old male patient…”

After notifying urology, I approached the patient and tried to reassure him.

“The urologist will be here soon to see you. Please don’t worry too much and wait a moment.”

Then I returned to the station and had a serious conversation with Geun-wook.

“This is a first for me. He took medicine, and it hasn’t gone down for three hours.”

“Three hours?”

Geun-wook’s eyes widened in surprise, and he gave a thumbs up.

“That medicine is definitely effective.”

Is this the time for jokes?

I smacked him.

“Did you contact urology?”

“The urologist said it might take some time to come down.”

“Let’s do some research in the meantime.”

“Should we?”

Typing, typing—

We started searching on the computer.

Priapism.

It referred to a condition in which an erection lasted for more than 4 hours.

‘Our patient has only had it for 3 hours, so it doesn’t meet the diagnostic criteria yet, but…’

The mechanism of occurrence is as follows.

If too much blood flows into the penis and it swells, the blood vessels that carry blood out become narrow.

This causes the blood that has already entered to get stuck, preventing new blood from entering.

“Hey, Seon-han, look at this. It’s so scary. A 25-year-old male case ended up becoming im… impotent…”

Geun-wook found something with a horrified expression and showed it to me.

My hair stood on end.

Any man would feel fear.

At that moment, fortunately, the urologist arrived at the ER.

The doctor with round glasses approached the patient and asked,

“Is this your first time experiencing this?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had trouble returning to normal after getting an erection…”

“No. If I were that vigorous, why would I have taken medicine, doctor?”

The patient said, his expression filled with frustration.

The urologist nodded and muttered to himself.

“Then it’s probably not sickle cell anemia [a genetic blood disorder].”

“Sick… what?”

Sickle cell anemia.

A disease in which red blood cells are formed in strange shapes, and these strange-shaped red blood cells can block the veins in the penis.

“I’ll need to do a corporal aspiration [drawing fluid from the penis].”

“Wha, what?”

The patient looked bewildered.

But Geun-wook and I understood and sighed.

Aspiration.

In simple terms, it means sticking a needle in and taking something out.

From where?

That’s right, from the place where the blood is gathered.

“We need to draw some blood from your penis.”

“How do you draw blood?”

“With a needle.”

“You’re going to poke it with a needle?”

“Yes. It’s been almost 4 hours now, so we have no choice. If we leave it like this, you could be impotent for the rest of your life.”

“Huh…”

The patient, finally realizing the seriousness of the situation, was terrified.

“Are you saying I could become impotent?”

“Yes.”

“No, not impotent!”

The patient screamed.

But after a moment.

He looked down at his lower body and said,

“Oh… wait a minute, doctor. It’s going down?”

What?

How absurd.

Was he so shocked by the word ‘impotent’?

The human body is truly unknowable.

Geun-wook and I wore blank expressions.

“Oh, come on. What a waste of time.”

In the end, the patient muttered with an embarrassed expression and headed from the ER to the cashier.

A 32-year-old priapism patient.

He was the last patient I encountered in Gokdam.

* * *

Morning dawned, and it was almost time for the shift change.

Yeon-seo and So-dam also came to work for their last shift.

I was handing over duties and talking to Yeon-seo.

“What are you going to do on your last day?”

“I’m going to take a nap and then go to the fish market with Geun-wook.”

“The market? What are you going to buy?”

“Gwamegi [half-dried herring].”

“Gwamegi?”

“Yeah. My little sister told me to buy it. I’m going to send a box to her house.”

“Pfft, why gwamegi of all things?”

“I don’t know either.”

I felt much closer to Yeon-seo after that day.

Then, Dr. Pung appeared from the side.

“Shin Seon-han, no dating in the ER…”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“What? You guys weren’t dating?”

“No, we’re not.”

“Aww, how boring.”

Dr. Pung clicked his tongue as if disappointed and held out his hand to me.

“The assignment.”

“Yes.”

I handed over the tangerine peels I had been sewing during my free time overnight.

“Oh, you’ve now mastered sewing tangerine peels with thin thread!”

Dr. Pung looked pleased.

On the other hand, I was not yet satisfied.

For almost 3 weeks.

All Dr. Pung had me do was sew tangerine peels.

Thanks to that, I got rid of all the tangerines that were piled up in the ER.

“Doctor. You’ve had me sewing tangerines all month… is this the end of the training? Is there nothing more?”

I asked, half giving up and half expecting.

It was nice that I had become so close to Dr. Pung in a month that I, an intern, could talk to him so casually.

Sewing tangerines also helped me get used to sutures [stitches].

But I’m still hungry.

I want to learn more!

More!

Seeing my burning gaze, Dr. Pung chuckled and said,

“Hey, you rascal, who said I wouldn’t teach you? This is the last lesson.”

“The last lesson?”

“Hey, you idol over there. Throw me a tangerine.”

Thwack.

Dr. Pung caught the tangerine that Yeon-seo threw.

Then, he took out the suture tools from the drawer and said,

“The last lesson. I’ll show you my skills.”

“……!”

“You’re going to compare the sutures you did with the sutures I did with your own eyes. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes!”

Gulp.

I swallowed and looked at Dr. Pung’s hands.

What would the master’s skill be like?

“Hoo-cha!”

Whack!

Dr. Pung gathered energy in both hands.

Then, he grabbed the suture tools and started sewing the tangerine peel.

My eyes lit up.

‘This is my chance. I have to capture every single movement of Dr. Pung’s hands and take it with me!’

I focused.

And after a while.

Dr. Pung threw away the tangerine peel, which was torn to pieces.

“Ah, I can’t do it. Why is it so flimsy?”

“…….”

“Hey, you’re better at it.”

What was that!

I drooped my shoulders in disappointment.

Dr. Pung chuckled, stood up, and patted me on the shoulder.

“Hey~ I guess this was harder than I thought? You’ve worked hard all this time. Be a great doctor in the future!”

Damn it.

I got scammed.

And royally so.

Give me back my time, you windbag!

* * *

On our last day off.

We woke up around 5 PM and headed to the fish market.

As a coastal city, the fish market was large.

A dome-shaped roof stretched out in a straight line, and stalls of uniform size were densely packed.

Some of the owners tried to attract us.

“Come here, I’ll give you a good price!”

“What are you looking for?”

“Here, here!”

It was bustling all around.

Yeah, this is the taste of the market.

I walked through the fish market with Geun-wook at a leisurely pace.

“It feels like I’ve come home.”

“Home?”

“I’m the son of a 횟집 (hoe-jip, raw fish restaurant) [raw fish restaurant].”

“Ah, right.”

Why, isn’t there such a thing?

A smell that evokes the feeling of coming home.

For me, it’s the smell of fish.

I grew up in the market since I was a child, so this atmosphere feels familiar.

“Now that I think about it, if I’m with you, I won’t get ripped off. It’s our last day, so let’s have a bowl of 회 (hoe, raw fish) [raw fish] and a shot of soju [Korean distilled beverage] here!”

“Soju?”

“Yeah. We haven’t had any major incidents so far. We should celebrate finishing a month safely and without incident!”

“That’s true.”

Geun-wook is right.

Gokdam ER life.

Thinking about it, there weren’t any very difficult things.

It was busy, but there weren’t many patients serious enough to be life-threatening.

There was supposed to be a patient with incomplete paraplegia, but I blocked that possibility.

“Actually, I was worried because it was so dynamic from the first day.”

“The taxi driver?”

“Yeah. Wow, I really thought he was a gangster. That guy’s eyes were no joke. Hahaha.”

As Geun-wook said that, I paused and stopped walking.

The taxi driver….

The taxi driver, huh.

I repeated the words that came to my mind.

“What’s wrong?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

I shook my head.

But in my mind, I kept thinking the same thing.

The taxi driver, huh.

Why does it bother me?

It suddenly feels unsettling.

A sense of unease, as if I left the gas stove on, is creeping up.

‘I’ve felt this feeling a few times… wait a minute.’

Uh?

That’s strange.

Time seems to be flowing slowly.

The surrounding noise stretches out like taffy.

‘Could it be that I’m suddenly seeing the future?’

On the last day of all days?

My shift is over too!

Before I could think any further, my vision flickered.