Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 398

However, his steps toward the entrance halted abruptly, like a car slamming on its brakes.

“What is it?”

Simultaneously, his brow furrowed, and his expression turned grave.

In that instant, the fifth vital sign had caught his ankle.

It was faint and subtle, but he detected the scent of formaldehyde, a Stage 4.

“This is…? That smell from back then?”

Taekyung realized that the fifth vital sign he was sensing now was identical to the pattern he had felt at the reception desk a few days prior.

The woman who had checked in, claiming to need treatment for leg pain, and then disappeared. She had also intermittently emitted the same lingering scent of formaldehyde.

The smell had such a unique pattern that he remembered it clearly.

Taekyung, who had been as still as if glue had been applied to his feet, took a step backward.

Then, he took another step back.

“Director, what are you doing?”

Jang Deuk-chil, who was watching him, asked with a puzzled expression, but Taekyung, deep in concentration, didn’t hear him at all.

He paused his backward steps and moved forward again to his original position.

‘The smell is almost nonexistent behind me.’

As the smell faded the further back he went, Taekyung was certain.

The woman emitting this smell was inside the hospital. And it was just as Taekyung was about to enter the hospital through the entrance.

“Please! Just let me see the director.”

A man was pleading loudly. Taekyung, watching him intently, tilted his head.

“Sir, the director’s appointments require a bit of a wait. And there are others who have been waiting, so unless it’s an emergency, we need to see patients in order.”

“I’m very urgent, miss.”

“If it’s urgent, we have other doctors available, so please register first, and we’ll assist you.”

“No. I’ve come to see Director Kim Taekyung. I don’t have much time, so is there anything you can do?”

No matter how thoroughly Nurse Im Jeong-sook explained, the man, Lee Jae-san, who had been arguing intensely about going to the hospital with his wife, kept repeating the same thing.

“Nurse, just for a moment, even a very short moment, please let me see the director.”

“Then please register first…”

“What’s going on?”

Before Nurse Im Jeong-sook could finish speaking, Taekyung approached the man and asked.

It was partly due to the small commotion, but the real reason he approached the man was different.

The faint formaldehyde smell he had detected near the entrance was coming from this man.

Ironically, the receptionist had clearly stated it was a woman, but now it was a man.

And there was another strange thing.

Although the man clearly smelled of formaldehyde, it wasn’t his fifth vital sign.

If the formaldehyde smell was coming from the man, it couldn’t be consistently faint like this.

The closer one got to a sick person, the stronger the fifth vital sign should become.

This had never been wrong. At this point, Taekyung formed a hypothesis.

The faint smell suggested that someone else related to this man might be sick.

“Director. You’re already here?”

“I was talking in the yard and came in to get a drink.”

“Director… Are you perhaps Director Kim Taekyung?”

“Yes, that’s me. I’m Kim Taekyung.”

“Director! Please help me. Please help me.”

“This person keeps asking to see you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry for coming unannounced. But I’m very urgent, so I came to find you without any manners. Could I talk to you for a moment? Even a short time is fine. It doesn’t need to be long.”

Taekyung couldn’t refuse the man’s request for help, especially since he was emitting a faint Stage 4 formaldehyde scent.

Especially since he had come all the way to the hospital to ask for help to this extent, it was clearly related to a patient.

Taekyung, looking at the clock on the reception desk, approached Nurse Im Jeong-sook.

“We have some time before the outpatient clinic starts, right?”

“Yes, Director. About 20 minutes.”

“Then I’ll go talk to that man for a bit.”

“Excuse me, Director?”

Nurse Im Jeong-sook asked urgently as Taekyung turned around.

“What about your mother?”

“……!”

For a moment, he had forgotten about his mother because of the man.

“Oh, no. I forgot my mother was outside.”

“I’ll go check on her.”

Just as he was wondering if he should send his mother in right away, Doctor Jung came over.

“Doctor Jung?”

“Yes, I’ll go check on your mother, so please talk comfortably.”

“Thank you, Doctor Jung.”

“You’re welcome.”

Doctor Jung, who had been watching the situation, headed to the bench with the tea he had brought.

“Excuse me, ma’am…?”

“Oh, my goodness!”

Mrs. Lee, who had been waiting for Taekyung on the bench, jumped up from her seat as Doctor Jung approached.

“My senior had to leave because of an urgent patient, so I came instead. This is jujube tea [a traditional Korean tea made from jujube fruit], please have some.”

“I can be alone… Thank you for your thoughtfulness. I’ll enjoy it.”

“Please speak comfortably.”

“I can’t just speak informally like that. I hope I’m not taking up a busy doctor’s time because of me.”

“No, I had time, so it’s okay.”

“Is our Taekyung treating you well? Is he not being indifferent? He’s a guy who only knows the hospital and patients, so I don’t know if he’ll treat his girlfriend well.”

“No. My senior is very warm, has a lot to learn from, and is a kind person.”

“It’s foolish to brag about one’s own child, but Taekyung has had those qualities since he was young. He’s never talked about women before, but Taekyung has talked about Doctor Jung a lot.”

“He has?”

“He said he had someone he liked and that she was a really good person, and he wanted to introduce her to me when he had the chance. When Taekyung was telling me that story, his eyes were sparkling. So, I thought he must really like her. I wondered what kind of person she would be, but you’re even better than Taekyung described.”

“Thank you for seeing me so kindly.”

“Thank you for liking our Taekyung.”

“No, ma’am. I’m grateful that my senior likes me too.”

“You speak so beautifully.”

Mrs. Lee couldn’t take her eyes off Doctor Jung as they continued their friendly conversation.

* * *

At the same time that Doctor Jung and Mrs. Lee were talking, Taekyung came into the examination room with Lee Jae-san.

“Now, would you like to tell me what’s going on?”

“To get straight to the point, I have a daughter. And she’s very sick right now.”

As soon as he heard Lee Jae-san’s story, he knew that the faint formaldehyde smell was coming from his daughter.

“What are her symptoms?”

“Her stomach is getting bigger and bigger, and she’s complaining of pain.”

“Then you shouldn’t be doing this; you should bring her to the hospital quickly.”

“That’s right. But the opposition is severe.”

“Opposition?”

“Yes, I live with my mother, and she’s vehemently opposed to going to the hospital.”

“Ah…! Does your mother believe in a particular religion?”

The moment he heard the word ‘opposition,’ Taekyung thought she might be involved in a cult.

He had already had a patient who had gone through something like that, so he wondered if this was another case.

“No. She’s not that kind of strange person. There’s a reason why my mother is like that, and that reason is purely because of the hospital.”

“The hospital? I don’t understand. Even if your mother opposes going to the hospital, can’t you and your wife take your daughter to the hospital?”

When a child is sick, parents want to give their own lives. But he couldn’t understand the couple’s actions of just leaving their daughter, who was complaining of pain to the point where her abdomen was swelling, just because her mother opposed it.

“To be honest, not only my mother but also my wife and I never wanted to come to the hospital.”

“May I ask why?”

“Director. Do you happen to know Shinhwa University Hospital?”

“Yes, of course. It’s one of the best hospitals in the country.”

Regardless of the former director of Shinhwa University Hospital, Ko Gye-deuk, the hospital itself, in terms of medical equipment and personnel, was indeed the best hospital.

“There… At that Shinhwa University Hospital, they killed my child.”

“Yes…? !”

Surprised by the unexpected answer, Taekyung looked at Lee Jae-san and asked,

“What do you mean by that?”

“I had a son, my first child, besides my daughter now.”

Lee Jae-san, for whom the events of that time were still as vivid as yesterday, seemed to find it difficult to bring up painful memories.

Then, he composed himself again and explained the bitter memories.

“At that time, our son wasn’t even sick; he just had the flu. At first, I thought it was just a cold, but it didn’t seem like it, so we went to the hospital. My wife said that since we were going, we should go to a good hospital, and we admitted him to Shinhwa University Hospital, trusting only that it was the best hospital. But absurdly, the child suddenly died due to a medical accident.”

“Ah… !”

Lee Jae-san, Kim Yeon-joo, and even his mother-in-law. The reason why the whole family hated the hospital so much was because of the death of their son.

“Really, the reason was so absurd it was unbelievable. They put something that was supposed to be taken orally into the child’s vein. My son’s face turned blue in an instant, and he died in less than an hour. A simple flu. It was just a flu.”

Even now, Lee Jae-san’s lips were trembling at the thought of the anger and the feeling of blood rushing backward.

“……”

Taekyung was silent for a moment.

While listening to Lee Jae-san’s story, he remembered the medical accident at Shinhwa University Hospital that he had forgotten.

It was something that everyone who had worked at Shinhwa University Hospital knew.

At that time, the cries of the couple who had lost their child echoed through the hospital hallway, and the family was so shocked that they even fainted.

Taekyung, who was on duty, had also heard the weeping of the couple as he was going up to the on-call room after seeing another patient.

That day, the crying was so desperate and heartbreaking that he came up to the on-call room and prayed for the soul of the child he didn’t even know.

But he never knew that Lee Jae-san was the family that had suffered the medical accident.

It was a major incident in which the hospital was turned upside down due to the absurd medical accident of a new employee.

We must always be nervous and focused on the work of dealing with life, but medical care is also done by people, so there may be mistakes.

However, the consequences of mistakes are so scary because they are directly linked to life.

Such mistakes should never happen.

“After that incident, your family lost faith in hospitals, and your mother became especially worse?”

“The expression ‘distrust’ is not enough. To be honest, my wife and I still had a scary and fearful feeling about hospitals, but we made up our minds with difficulty because there was nothing else we could do. But my mother is even worse. She has a lot of affection for her children, especially for her first grandchild. After that, she became a completely different person.”

“A different person?”

“Yes. She tries to treat her daughter by citing treatment cases that have no confirmation or basis. One day, she even brought in someone who claimed to heal diseases with miracles and help treat sick people, saying that she had to give that energy to the child. At first, I thought this method might work, but as time passed, I realized it wasn’t.”

“Ah……”

“In fact, my mother knows that Jin-i’s condition is not good. But she’s scared. The moment the child goes to the hospital, she’s suddenly seized with the certainty that the child will die because of the memory of losing her grandchild without even being able to prepare her mind.”

“Because of that painful memory, she’s thinking of the hospital as an enemy.”

“That’s right. To my mother, the hospital is the most terrible enemy in the world. She wasn’t originally like this. She runs a company with me and is smart, but she’s changed because of the past. As it gets worse, my wife eventually took a leave of absence and is only taking care of the child.”

“I see.”

“Other people may not understand this aspect of our family, but that experience still feels like it happened just yesterday, even though several years have passed. We couldn’t help it either. No one knows the heart of a parent who has lost a child unless they’ve experienced it… No one knows. Heuk!”

Lee Jae-san, who was explaining, covered his eyes with his hands for a moment and began to sob quietly as he thought of his departed son.

“I miss my son so much even now. Heuek!”