Dr. Shin Seonhan: The Doctor Who Sees The Future [EN]: Chapter 100

#100 Serendipity by the Summer Sea (3)

Vroom!

The taxi speeds down the road.

With dance music blasting and chewing gum, the taxi driver looked at Geun-wook in the passenger seat and said,

“Hey, Seoul man, you’re in good shape. You work out?”

“Yes, a little…”

“Wow, your biceps are as big as my head!”

The driver reached out and touched Geun-wook’s arm with one hand while driving.

Then, he turned his head back to look at us.

“But isn’t that lady in the back an actress? You are, right? You’re so pretty, I almost popped my eyes out when I saw you smoking earlier.”

Yeon-seo’s face turned pale, and she pointed forward, shouting,

“Um, driver! The light ahead!”

“Hahaha, don’t worry. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. I can drive around Gokdam with my eyes closed.”

He said, turning the steering wheel like he was wringing a chicken’s neck.

Screech!

Our bodies leaned to one side simultaneously.

The taxi took the last of the left-turn signal with a sharp turn.

“Now that you’re here, you have to try the Mulhoe [spicy raw fish salad]. There’s a place I know that makes it amazing… Oh, damn, you scared me!”

Honk!

Screeeeeech!

Suddenly, the taxi we were in skidded, leaving dark skid marks.

Thud!

At the same time, we in the back seat hit our foreheads.

“Ouch…”

I felt dizzy.

Is this the Gokdam roller coaster I’ve only heard about?

Fortunately, there was no collision.

After regaining my senses and looking around, it seemed we almost collided with a car turning right from the opposite side.

“Hey, you bastard!”

Zzzzzzz―

The taxi driver rolled down the passenger-side window and shouted loudly.

Then, a loud voice came back from the car opposite us.

“What!”

“Drive properly!”

“You should open your eyes and look around!”

“What? How old are you, you little punk!”

“Younger than you, you bastard!”

Wow, that’s original.

So that’s how you can counter an age attack.

Soon, the taxi driver’s face turned red.

“Just wait here for a second, folks. I need to teach this rude bastard a lesson.”

He said, yanking open the driver’s side door and getting out.

Uh?

We’re in the middle of the road right now?

We stared at the taxi driver’s back with dumbfounded expressions.

“Hey, come out.”

“What? You wanna fight?”

Clunk―

Soon, a man with a shaved head and a tank top got out of the car opposite us.

And… that guy has tattoos too.

Even at a glance, the elaborate tattoo across his torso was clearly visible.

Looking closely, it’s a dragon tattoo this time.

I’m going crazy.

“Sir, just go your way.”

“What did you say earlier?”

“Ah, I said if you don’t want to see something nasty, just go your way.”

Tiger tattoo VS Dragon tattoo.

The battle of two proud middle-aged men begins.

Is that what they call a clash of titans?

They glared at each other with blazing eyes in the middle of the road in broad daylight.

We couldn’t even think about intervening and just watched the situation from inside the taxi, holding our breath.

“Hey, isn’t something going to happen if they keep going like that?”

“I’m scared…”

“I told you? Gokdam is a scary place.”

“That’s not the point. Shouldn’t we stop them? It looks like they’re about to start fighting…”

“Oh, he’s hitting!”

Whack!

The taxi driver made the first move.

Suddenly, he opened his palm and slapped the back of the other guy’s head like a thunderbolt.

A fierce strike as if a tiger came down from the mountain and swung its claws!

The tank top man’s upper body bent over with the fatal blow of a martial arts master.

“Learn to respect your elders, you young punk.”

Then, the tank top man’s body moved.

We watched the tank top man’s movement with surprised eyes.

That is….

A flying knee kick?

The tank top man’s knee flew through the air as if a dragon was flying from the sea.

“Ugh!”

Thwack!

His knee struck the taxi driver’s forehead head-on.

The driver’s slicked-back hair scattered momentarily from the powerful blow.

The taxi driver, who was caught off guard, collapsed helplessly like a leaf fluttering in the wind.

“Sir, if you’re old, act like a gentleman.”

Spit.

With that, the tank top man spat and disappeared.

Is this the majesty of Gokdam?

I could tell from the first day that this was not going to be an ordinary place.

“Is it over?”

“Move!”

“If the fight’s over, stop blocking the road and move!”

Honk!

Horns blared from behind.

It was as if this was an everyday occurrence.

It was a moment to understand the general character of the people of Gokdam.

But….

The driver isn’t responding.

The taxi driver was lying on the asphalt floor, unable to get up.

The four of us watching this felt that the atmosphere was unusual.

“Hey, the taxi driver isn’t getting up?”

“Is he dead?”

“Don’t say ominous things, you idiot!”

“It looked like he got hit pretty hard in the head by that knee kick…”

“Wait a minute. I’ll go check.”

Yeon-seo, who was sitting on the outermost side, quickly got out and checked on the driver, then shouted.

“LOC [loss of consciousness]!”

What?

We jumped out of the taxi in shock at the same time.

Gokdam, the city of passion.

From the first day, things weren’t looking good.

Yeon-seo put her fingers on the neck of the unconscious taxi driver.

She was checking to see if the patient’s heart had stopped, just in case.

I followed and approached the taxi driver.

“Pulse?”

“I think I can feel the pulse. The heart rate seems to be around 70-80, but it’s a head trauma…”

“First, ABC!”

I knelt next to Yeon-seo.

The basics I learned in the emergency room.

A ― airway

B ― breath

C ― circulation

ABC is the basic verification procedure that must be performed first in all traumas.

‘Let’s secure the airway first.’

I grabbed the patient’s chin with both hands and lifted it.

And I put my thumb on his lip to keep his mouth from closing.

Also known as the Jaw―thrust maneuver.

In a loss of consciousness situation, it refers to pulling the jaw to secure the airway so that the patient’s tongue does not roll back and block the airway.

You may have seen players briefly lose consciousness after hitting their heads during a header competition on the soccer field.

Even in this case, the first thing that should be done is to secure the airway in this way.

“Breathing is okay?”

“Yes, it is.”

Fortunately, the taxi driver was breathing well, and we were able to quickly finish the ABC check.

Before long, people were buzzing and surrounding us.

‘Don’t be relieved that he’s breathing normally. He was definitely hit hard in the head with a knee.’

Don’t think it’s just a light neighborhood fight?

This can be dangerous enough for a person.

In a short moment, my mind raced.

‘Traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness.’

Of course, it would be fortunate if it ended with a simple concussion.

But in the worst case, a hematoma could fill his head and cause serious neurological sequelae [long-term complications].

‘I saw a lot of those patients just a few days ago.’

While interning in neurosurgery last month, I saw many patients who had surgery to drill holes in their skulls due to hematomas in their brains.

It was a surgery to create a hole to decompress the hematoma caused by bleeding before it damaged the brain parenchyma [functional tissue in the brain] by pressing on it, and they were all emergency surgeries.

‘Brain injury patients shouldn’t be treated late!’

At that time, Sodam turned on the flashlight on her smartphone and approached.

“Shouldn’t we check the pupil reflex first?”

Pupil reflex.

The pupil size of our human eyes is controlled by the brightness of light.

This is to control the amount of light reaching the retina by adjusting the size of the pupil, and this process is managed by the brain.

If the brain is damaged and there is a problem, the pupil reflexes on both sides will appear differently.

Therefore, the pupil reflex is checked as a simple and quick test to determine whether there is brain damage.

“The pupil reflex is prompt on both sides, and the size seems normal…”

Sodam said, shining a light on the patient’s eyes.

I shook the driver and called out to him.

“Sir, wake up!”

The driver didn’t respond.

“We need to take him to the hospital quickly and get a brain CT scan!”

A brain CT scan is better the sooner, the better.

I couldn’t just wait blankly while the 119 ambulance came.

I thought it would be faster for us to take this driver to the hospital ourselves.

But, the problem is….

“Anyone have a license?”

“Who here doesn’t have a medical license?”

“Idiot, I mean a driver’s license!”

Sodam and Geun-wook bickered.

Coincidentally, neither of them had a driver’s license.

Yeon-seo’s face turned white.

“I do have a driver’s license, but… it’s been a million years since I’ve held the wheel! I haven’t driven since I crashed my dad’s car.”

“I’ll do it!”

I decided to grab the steering wheel.

To be honest, I’m not confident.

But I’m the most recent person to have held the steering wheel among the four of us.

‘I’m so glad I got my license right after the medical exam.’

I checked the navigation.

Gokdam Jeil Hospital, which we were going to, is 15 minutes away.

“Let’s get the driver into the car first!”

Geun-wook put his hands under the driver’s armpits, and I grabbed his feet and moved to put him in the back seat of the car.

At that time, the taxi driver suddenly opened his eyes.

“What is it? Life is fleeting, isn’t it true that magpies cry when the sun rises?”

He began to ramble, seeming a little out of touch with reality.

“Sir, do you know where you are?”

“Big Brother, it looks like I’m about to follow you soon. Those dirty Blue Dragon bastards…”

“Can you move your hands and feet? Can you feel this?”

I pinched both his arms and legs to check if he could feel the sensation symmetrically.

“What? Why are you taking my taxi steering wheel? Let go, you bastards!”

Fortunately, the driver did not appear to have any abnormalities in the sensation and motor nerves of his limbs.

Still, since he was a patient who had lost consciousness even for a moment, I couldn’t just let him drive.

“Sir, you just collapsed and got up. You need to go to the hospital and get some tests done.”

Geun-wook grabbed the driver, who was trying to return to the driver’s seat, and sat him in the back seat.

“Get in quickly!”

Vroom―

With the seats switched, our taxi started running again following the navigation.

Shin-seon, 27 years old.

I never imagined that the day would come when I would grab the steering wheel of a taxi in my life.

“Everyone hold on tight. I’m driving straight to the hospital!”