Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 298

Five Vital Signs – Episode 298

298. Irresistible Force

“Hah!”

A heavy sigh escaped from Tae-kyung’s lips.

It was already disheartening that the patient had used Gramoxone [a highly toxic herbicide], but what was even more despairing was that this substance was now banned, yet the patient had come in contact with it.

Gramoxone is a type of herbicide, and its effectiveness led to its widespread use by farmers and others who needed it. However, due to its extreme toxicity and the numerous incidents and accidents associated with it, its sale was completely banned in 2012.

Before the ban, there were quite a few cases of poisoning due to Gramoxone.

The Korea National Statistical Office even reported that the suicide rate decreased after the sale and distribution were prohibited, indicating its direct impact on suicide-related incidents.

Its terrifying danger led to its ban in many countries, not just in Korea.

“Um… Doctor!”

Lee Chan-hee, feeling heavy-hearted, quietly called out to Tae-kyung, who was lost in thought while looking at the patient.

“Isn’t Gramoxone banned from sale? Could it possibly be a different substance?”

“Good point. It’s a good habit to question things to find the cause. But Chan-hee, I’m 99% sure it’s Gramoxone. Ask the motel owner to take pictures of all the bottles in the room and send them to us.”

“Dr. Lee, you stay here. I’ll go get them.”

Nurse Lim Jung-sook, who was listening to Tae-kyung, headed to the waiting area to relay the message.

“Then how on earth did they get their hands on such a deadly poison that’s banned from sale?”

Lee Chan-hee felt a sense of hollowness and was filled with unspeakable sorrow.

It was heartbreaking that someone, especially such a young person with so much life ahead of them, had to end their own life.

He had been feeling fortunate that there hadn’t been any suicide patients for a while.

Working as a doctor on the front lines of life, you witness countless deaths that ordinary people might never see in their entire lives.

Initially, the death of a patient leaves you feeling heavy-hearted and pained, but most medical professionals become accustomed to it and indifferent as they gain experience.

However, what Lee Chan-hee still couldn’t get used to was seeing patients who had committed suicide.

Even he found it strange how he could never get used to patients who had willingly abandoned their own lives.

Hospitals are places where various medical staff struggle to revive the fading embers of life for people who are fighting to live.

Therefore, it was not easy to understand those who chose death of their own volition in this place.

Whenever this happened, Lee Chan-hee felt deeply saddened.

Especially when seeing young suicide patients like today, his heart ached as if salt had been rubbed into a raw wound.

He had seen quite a few suicide patients, but this was the first time he had seen a patient who had ingested Gramoxone since his internship, which made it even worse.

“They knew.”

Tae-kyung, who was sensing the increasingly severe fifth vital sign, quietly opened his mouth.

“Yes!? Knew… what?”

“These days, you can’t die from just any pesticide. They knew that and sought out old pesticides containing Gramoxone.”

“But how did they find it when it’s banned from sale?”

Lee Chan-hee, who wasn’t old enough to know much about pesticides, couldn’t understand.

“There are cases where people who are trying to commit suicide desperately search for it. I heard they get it from online flea markets and such.”

Before coming to our hospital, Tae-kyung had seen quite a few suicide patients back in his Shinwha University days.

Back then, the police came to investigate the patients who had attempted suicide, and he heard it from them.

There were all sorts of methods, and Gramoxone accounted for a significant portion of them.

Although the sale was banned, they couldn’t recover all the previously sold substances, so the remaining quantities ended up in the hands of people trying to end their lives.

“If they’re deliberately buying Gramoxone from such places, it means they’ve already attempted suicide several times, and there’s a high probability that they bought and possessed the drug with the intention of dying.”

“Ah…”

As Lee Chan-hee listened to those words, his gaze involuntarily turned to the patient’s wrist. And as if to prove Tae-kyung’s words, several parallel lines that never met remained as scars like tattoos on the inside of her wrist.

Seeing those slightly visible scars, he could roughly guess what kind of life this patient had lived.

“Okay, I understand. I’ll go right away. Chan-hee, I’ll be in the ICU [Intensive Care Unit]. There’s a patient whose vitals are fluctuating right now.”

Tae-kyung, who had received a call from the ICU in the meantime, gave Lee Chan-hee orders.

“Yes.”

“Let the guardian see them, ask about their medical history, and then send them up to the ICU. I’ll take a look.”

“Yes, I understand. Um… Doctor? Just a moment.”

After answering, Lee Chan-hee hesitated for a moment and then hurriedly called out to Tae-kyung, following after him.

“Why?”

“What if, just what if, the guardian doesn’t want treatment… what do we do then?”

“It’s possible. It’s definitely possible.”

It wasn’t just any accident patient, but a suicide patient. Based on his experience so far, Tae-kyung knew that the guardian might make such a choice.

“Do as they wish. It might be better to let them be together during the patient’s final moments.”

It was an unusual statement for Tae-kyung, who knew the value of life better than anyone else and would try anything if there was even a small glimmer of hope.

But it was by no means a deliberate statement.

Even if the patient went to the ICU, they would not be able to survive medically.

There wasn’t even a trace of a slight chance of survival left for this patient. He would do anything if he could, but he couldn’t.

Tae-kyung, who knew this better than anyone else, felt that it would be more meaningful for the family to spend time with her than for the patient to be alone in the ICU.

As a doctor, he knew that the family also needed time to say goodbye.

It was by no means an easy decision for him, who had a deep concern for his patients.

Unless it was a very small amount, it was not easy to survive after ingesting Gramoxone.

Moreover, this patient had deliberately ingested a lethal dose, so they were virtually unsalvageable.

There was nothing he could do. Even Tae-kyung was not a god.

The condition of the patient who had ingested Gramoxone was an irresistible force.

Although he seemed fine on the outside, Tae-kyung’s heart was heavy and numb, to say the least.

That’s why he judged that if the guardian refused treatment, it would be better for them to be with their family than to close their eyes alone in the ICU.

“Around when will it be?”

“Probably tonight or tomorrow morning. It could be sooner. Tell the guardian honestly. If they want to see me, call me right away. I’ll go check on the ICU.”

“Yes… I understand.”

Tae-kyung’s back, as he left the emergency room filled with the stench of decaying flesh as if shrouded in thick fog, looked more powerless than ever.

“Dr. Lee, the pictures are here.”

After that, a photo arrived from the owner who had returned to the motel from the guardian’s waiting room.

“Here you go. Take a look.”

“Ah… that’s right.”

After looking at the picture, Lee Chan-hee could see that the pesticide the patient had ingested was Gramoxone, just as Tae-kyung had predicted.

“Dr. Lee, the police called?”

The station nurse called out to Lee Chan-hee, who had already confirmed but was looking at the picture with magnification, just in case.

“I’ll take it.”

He put down his phone and called back the police he had spoken to earlier to find out the patient’s identity.

“Hello. Yes, this is our hospital calling. Yes! Ah… yes. Thank you.”

With the help of the police, Lee Chan-hee barely managed to identify the patient and attempted to contact the guardian directly.

* * *

At a multi-family house-

The grandmother who lived on the first floor flushed the toilet in the bathroom and stood in front of the grandfather lying in the room.

“Now that I’ve emptied the urine bottle, go to sleep quickly.”

“……”

“Ha!”

When the grandfather didn’t answer, the grandmother let out a short sigh and laughed in disbelief.

“There’s no one in this world as carefree as you. I must be crazy. What kind of wealth and glory would I enjoy… I shouldn’t have refused that divorce.”

“……”

“Don’t look at me like that. Even if you grabbed everyone on the street and asked them, no one would curse me. They’d all curse you. I don’t feel sorry for you at all. I feel sorry for myself. Both you and I have difficult lives, so let’s just go to sleep.”

The grandmother turned off the light in the room, closed the door, and came out to the living room.

The house, which had been neglected while she was working early in the morning and taking care of her grandfather, finally caught her eye.

The small living room definitely needed tidying up.

She silently tidied up the living room, hung up the clothes she had taken off in the morning, and started cleaning.

As she started cleaning, she was organizing the books and items haphazardly placed in the small bookshelf that had always bothered her, when suddenly something fell onto the floor.

“Aigo, aigo, my back [A phrase of complaint, like “Oh, my back!”]”

The grandmother groaned and picked up the object that had fallen on the floor.

Held in her hand, which was covered in deep wrinkles, was a faded family photo.

“It wasn’t visible when I was looking for it so hard, but here it was.”

The grandmother, who had been concentrating on cleaning for a while, stopped what she was doing and stared at the photo blankly.

The grandmother’s gaze stopped at a young girl as she looked at each of the family members in the photo.

“It seems like it would be easier for both of us to live without contacting each other, just like you said. Don’t you think?”

The grandmother, who was talking to herself while looking at the photo, looked at the calendar hanging on the wall.

On the long calendar showing all 12 months of the year at once, there were occasional red circles marked. And below it, the word ‘Let’s live’ was visible in small letters.

“Yes, no news is good news. You probably don’t want to contact me either, but I’m sorry, I don’t welcome you contacting me either. Let’s live like this, just like you said. Let’s each take care of ourselves. Hah!”

The grandmother, muttering to herself with a complicated expression, hurriedly finished cleaning and headed to the refrigerator.

She took out only one kimchi container and roughly mixed rice into the bean sprout soup she had boiled in the morning.

She wasn’t hungry, but she forced herself to eat because she wouldn’t have any energy if she didn’t.

“Where did the remote go…”

Just as the grandmother, who hated the silence echoing in the quiet house, turned on the TV and was about to sit back down on the dining table chair,

Rrrrrrrrrrr

The phone placed on one side of the dining table vibrated violently.

“……!”

The grandmother’s hand, which was reaching for the phone, paused for a moment at the phone call that came at such a late hour from a number she had never seen before.

Then she picked up the spoon again and shoved a spoonful of rice mixed with bean sprout soup into her mouth.

Rrrrrrrrrrr

The phone vibrated and rang again, but the grandmother’s attitude was the same.

There’s such a thing as a feeling.

It was a phone number she had never seen before, but she felt like she shouldn’t answer the phone that was ringing now. Or rather, she didn’t want to answer it.

It was as if she knew what the content of the call would be.

“I’m not going to answer it. I don’t want to answer it, and I don’t want to know. Ring all you want. I’m not answering.”

As if she had made up her mind, the grandmother stubbornly refused to answer the phone. And after eating a half-hearted meal, the phone that had been ringing urgently finally fell silent.

“It’s quiet now. It’s better not to know. It’s more comfortable that way.”

After brushing her teeth and coming out of the bathroom, the grandmother picked up her phone again to set the alarm, when,

Rrrrrrrrrrr

The phone vibrated again.

“It’s a mess. It’s ringing as messily as my life.”

The grandmother, with an expression as if she had braced herself for something, touched the screen of the phone that seemed like it would ring until she answered.

“Hello.”