Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 297

Fifth Vital- Episode 297

297. Liver, Kidney, Lung

“Stop it.”

“……Excuse me!? Stop?”

Lee Chan-hee asked back, his face etched with genuine surprise.

Since Tae-kyung had arrived at the hospital, he’d treated countless patients.

They suffered from a wide array of ailments, but the staff had never heard him utter one particular word before.

That word was “Stop,” which had just come from Tae-kyung’s mouth. Hence, Lee Chan-hee’s astonishment.

“Um, Doctor. Are you really saying to stop?”

Just to be sure he hadn’t misheard, Lee Chan-hee asked again, but the response was the same.

“Yes. Stop it.”

Meanwhile, the nurses were working feverishly, trying to secure a blood vessel, connect the monitoring equipment, and deliver the freshly printed EKG results.

‘Why is the doctor acting like this?’

For a moment, Lee Chan-hee wondered if he’d made a mistake, unable to fathom why Tae-kyung was standing there blankly, behaving so strangely.

It wasn’t that he thought Tae-kyung lacked the confidence to perform the procedure or that he’d made an error.

Usually, when a superior officer acted that way, even if the juniors had performed the procedure correctly, the thought that something might have gone wrong would naturally creep into their minds.

‘What is it?’

And it wasn’t just Lee Chan-hee who found the situation odd.

All the other medical staff around, including Lim Jeong-sook, the most senior nurse, felt the same way.

Before, during the wire accident on the movie set involving Gu Min-woo, the medical staff had been puzzled by Tae-kyung’s actions, but the atmosphere was completely different now.

Above all, the word “Stop” had never passed Tae-kyung’s lips.

Rather, he had snapped at everyone to focus and had even broken Gu Min-woo’s ribs in the emergency room to save him.

And more than anything, Tae-kyung was so serious that the very air in the emergency room around him felt heavy.

“Nurse Lim?”

“Yes, Director.”

Just as everyone’s curiosity was reaching a peak, Tae-kyung called out to Nurse Lim Jeong-sook.

“There’s no need for any further tests. Have intubation equipment ready next to the patient in case it’s needed, and administer 6 liters of oxygen via nasal cannula.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“And prepare a narcotic painkiller, and look for things like a wallet or belongings and contact their family. If there’s no contact information, ask the police for help to find their family, no matter what.”

Tae-kyung’s determination to find the family was palpable.

“Lastly, for treatment… Pain management is the most important thing, and just reserve a spot in the intensive care unit for now.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Orders poured out in a calm, unwavering tone, but everyone remained puzzled. And some of the orders they’d just heard didn’t quite add up.

“Doct…”

“Um, there’s something I didn’t tell you.”

Just as Lee Chan-hee was about to question Tae-kyung, the motel owner, who had been in the waiting room, cautiously interjected.

“There was blue vomit in the room where the young lady was. And there were liquor bottles too. The smell of that vomit permeated the whole room. I’ve smelled a lot of vomit in my line of work, but it was the worst smell I’ve ever encountered in my life.”

“……!”

Having heard the motel owner’s words, Lee Chan-hee seemed to realize something and asked urgently.

“Were there any other bottles besides liquor bottles?”

“I don’t remember well because I was in a hurry to get her out of there. There was soju [Korean distilled spirit], and maybe makgeolli [Korean rice wine]? There was something anyway, but I don’t know for sure because I was out of my mind.”

“Thank you for your help.”

“Chan-hee…”

The motel owner headed back to the waiting room, and Tae-kyung called out to Lee Chan-hee, who was staring intently at the patient, lost in thought.

“Yes, Doctor.”

Tae-kyung paused for a moment, then shifted his gaze from the woman to Lee Chan-hee and said clearly.

“We probably won’t see each other much in the future, but keep a close eye on this patient. It’s Paraquat dichloride.”

“Paraquat dichloro…”

“Oh, you might not know it by that name. You’d know it if I said Gramoxone, right?”

“That… !”

As soon as the word Gramoxone left Tae-kyung’s mouth, Lee Chan-hee, genuinely surprised, widened his eyes and even stuttered.

“Gr… Gramoxone? Then this patient is…”

“Yes. It’s quite unfortunate, but there’s no hope.”

A word that one might hear once in a blue moon came out clearly and definitively from Tae-kyung, who had seen countless patients.

“It’s almost nonexistent now that sales are banned, but there used to be so many.”

A little while ago-

That is, when the motel owner had just carried the young woman into the hospital.

‘Are you feeling uncomfortable anywhere?’

‘Not at all. It was a little tough yesterday after the surgery when I woke up from the anesthesia, but I’m fine now.’

A patient who had surgery yesterday and their guardian were having an interview with Tae-kyung in the examination room.

‘I feel like I’m already cured because the doctor removed the cancer in my body. You’re my benefactor, Doctor. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. You flatter me. But the person who should be receiving the thanks isn’t me, but your wife who’s sitting next to you.’

The middle-aged man in his 50s, who was showing an exaggerated reaction that surpassed even a TV studio audience, was a patient who had undergone surgery for colon cancer.

Although not all colon cancer patients were like that, many colon cancer patients of a similar age to this patient were often found to have the disease in a somewhat advanced state when they came to the hospital.

But this patient was found and operated on at a stage that could be called the early stages of cancer progression.

The reason the man was able to have surgery in the early stages of colon cancer was thanks to his wife.

One day, after hearing her husband’s story about having darker stools than usual, the wife immediately booked a colonoscopy.

The husband, who avoided hospitals, refused to go to the hospital several times, but he reluctantly came because he couldn’t stand his wife’s nagging, who was usually concerned about her health, and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

‘If you hadn’t listened to your wife, you would have had a hard time later.’

‘Yes, the doctor is right. I’m alive thanks to my wife.’

‘If you know that, listen to me.’

‘Of course. My wife is the best.’

‘Director, you must be happy, right?’

‘I know, now I know why you told me to come here instead of a big hospital.’

‘It’s not easy to book an appointment with this doctor.’

The patient, who was in a very good mood, praised Tae-kyung in a small voice with his wife and left the examination room.

In fact, Tae-kyung also felt good when he operated on and treated patients like this.

He didn’t think that everyone who got cancer would die like he used to, but it was still a big disease.

In addition, the pain and process of patients undergoing chemotherapy towards the goal of complete recovery after surgery was like a long marathon.

That’s why he felt more concerned about cancer patients and their guardians.

But in the case of patients like the one just now, who were found in the early stages of cancer and had the tumor neatly removed by surgery, he felt really good.

It was just nice to think that the patient didn’t have to go through that difficult process.

After seeing Yoo Ji-cheon, a terminal cancer patient in Busan Hospice Hospital, Tae-kyung had been thinking more deeply about the deaths of patients these days.

After the patient left, he was writing a surgical review note with a satisfied expression.

He had recently started writing review notes again because he was thinking of passing them on to Lee Chan-hee and Choi Mona, and later to the juniors who would work at the hospital.

Tae-kyung’s right hand, which had been enthusiastically working on the review note, even drawing pictures for a while, suddenly slipped, and a red crayon slashed across the note.

‘……!’

Thud-

Then, Tae-kyung suddenly jumped up from his seat, frowned deeply, and burst out of the examination room.

Clang-

‘Director, what you were saying during the day…’

Ignoring Chief Choi, who had something to say, he ran madly to the emergency room.

‘It’s stage 5.’

It was because he smelled the scent of death, which he had hoped and hoped would never be felt in the hospital, where various smells were mixed.

The fifth vital was exactly stage 5, and it boasted an extreme smell that he had never smelled before.

To be more precise, it was a mixture of the smell of rotting corpses and sulfur.

Tae-kyung remembered it exactly because he had smelled the smell of rotting corpses before. Moreover, it was a stronger smell than the one he smelled at the hospice hospital.

‘Who is it? I haven’t received any calls from 119 [Korean emergency services number]?’

The pungency made his eyes ache and his nose tingle.

‘Is it an accident patient? Ah! Maybe…’

Inferring various situations, Tae-kyung arrived at the emergency room and knew the condition of the young woman lying on the bed the moment he saw her.

He smelled the smell of Gramoxone, not the fifth vital, coming from her.

It was the moment when his uneasy feeling became a reality.

He was always a doctor based on medical knowledge and experience, but when faced with a critical patient, Tae-kyung was also human, so there was a word he desperately shouted inside.

‘Give me a glimmer of hope. Help this patient have a miracle happen.’

However, when he saw a patient who had cut off the glimmer of hope and the thread of miracle himself, he was at a loss for words for a moment due to his regret.

That’s why Lee Chan-hee and the medical staff were wondering about Tae-kyung’s appearance earlier.

He was never hesitant to save people, but this was a different case.

In fact, if you work in the emergency room, you see a lot of patients who have attempted suicide.

Among them, there were patients who were fortunate enough to save their lives, but on the other hand, there were also patients who were not.

But all the staff agreed that the hospital didn’t have many suicide patients.

He was most grateful for that point while running a hospital with an emergency room.

As he was watching the patients today with a relieved heart, he encountered an unexpected suicide patient.

Moreover, it was a patient who had chosen the most brutal method for himself.

“How could she get Gramoxone…”

Lee Chan-hee couldn’t continue speaking, with a blank expression as if he still couldn’t believe this situation.

Anyone who knew about Gramoxone would have made that expression.

Gramoxone, which causes blue or green vomiting, causes a unique and terrible smell.

Unlike other poisons, such as potassium cyanide, Gramoxone does not directly become a reactant in a chemical reaction.

It is simply a catalyst for the reaction.

The problem is that this catalyst lasts incredibly long.

Since it is not a reactant itself, it takes a long time to be consumed, and during that time, it greatly catalyzes our body’s reactions to create reactive oxygen species.

To put it more bluntly, these reactive oxygen species are almost similar to radiation.

If radiation is like tiny bullets penetrating our body, reactive oxygen species are different only in that they burn all over our body with a hot iron.

The microscopic irons heated by Gramoxone travel all over the body and destroy organs.

The liver, kidneys, and lungs are damaged sequentially or simultaneously. Of course, the gastrointestinal tract is destroyed first.

The pain after taking this is at a level that humans cannot normally experience.

Even if I explain it like this, it would be an extreme pain that you can never feel unless you experience it yourself.

Therefore, most patients would beg to be killed because of the pain.

It was such a dangerous and terrible poison that it was not enough to emphasize it over and over again.

“Ha!”

A heavy sigh flowed from Tae-kyung’s mouth.