Fifth Vital [EN]: Chapter 454

455. An Impossible Situation

“Seol-rae? All done.”

“Is it over?”

“Yeah. Thanks for your hard work. And could you follow me for a moment?”

“Where are we going?”

“We need to go prescribe your medication.”

Seol-rae followed Choi Mona without much suspicion, thinking that was the reason.

The two headed towards the medical office. Choi Mona was moving the location to talk to Seol-rae quietly.

To be honest, she didn’t think Seol-rae would follow willingly if she told the truth, so she made up an excuse about prescribing medication.

‘What should I say?’

Even as she walked to the medical office, Choi Mona was unprepared, not knowing what to say or how to start the conversation.

She agreed with Tae-kyung’s words that she should take responsibility for her patient, but she couldn’t figure out what to do.

She felt a newfound respect for Tae-kyung, who not only healed physical wounds and illnesses but also comforted emotional scars.

‘What should I do?’

The thought of passing it on to Lee Chan-hee crossed her mind, but she was already opening the door to the medical office.

“Sit here. Do you drink coffee?”

“I do, but only decaf.”

“Oh, really? The doctors here run on caffeine, so we don’t have decaf. We have apple tea and chamomile, which would you like?”

“By the way, can I ask what you’re doing right now?”

She followed because she was told they needed to move to prescribe medication, but somehow, she didn’t think a prescription would come out here.

Moreover, she felt something was off, watching Choi Mona’s words and actions, wondering why she was suddenly offering tea.

“It takes time for the prescription to come out, and I have something to tell you, so I brought you to the medical office. This is, um… in simple terms, like a doctor’s office. You’ve seen it a lot in dramas, right?” [Korean dramas are a popular form of entertainment.]

“I don’t watch dramas, I’m studying.”

“Really? That’s impressive. Don’t you want tea? Or should I get you a soda?”

“I’ll just have the apple tea.”

Choi Mona handed Seol-rae a cup of apple tea that wasn’t too hot.

“Drink it. Sit comfortably there.”

Seol-rae held the mug in her hands, took a sip of the tea, and then placed it on the desk.

“Is it good?”

“Yes, it’s delicious.”

“Really? That’s a relief. Seol-rae, would you like to see this?”

Choi Mona clicked on an X-ray image on the laptop on the desk and showed it to her, zoomed in as much as possible.

“What do you see here? Do you know what it is?”

“This! It looks like a button? Isn’t it a button?”

“It’s a button. Now, I’ll show you this.”

Choi Mona, who had zoomed in on the screen, returned it to the normal range.

“Do you know what kind of screen this is?”

“An X-ray photo?”

“That’s right. This is an X-ray photo of your abdomen. It shows undigested stool and a button inside your stomach.”

“……!”

Seol-rae tried to make excuses, but she couldn’t because of Choi Mona’s words that followed.

“I saw the transparent box you were holding every time you came to the hospital. It had buttons and pearl beads in it. Seol-rae, you didn’t accidentally swallow them, did you? You swallowed them on purpose, right?”

“…….”

Seol-rae was silent for a moment.

“My name is Choi Mona, and my job is a doctor. The reason I’m suddenly saying this is not to scold you, but because I want to help you as a doctor, and I have to. There are other patients in the emergency room, so I came to the medical office to talk in a quiet place.”

Choi Mona explained, hoping that her sincerity would be conveyed as much as possible.

“Swallowing things that are not usually food is medically called pica, right? The teachers in related fields say that this symptom comes from anxiety and stress. I think you might be in that situation right now. You didn’t accidentally swallow the button, did you?”

“……Yes.”

Seol-rae, who didn’t seem like she would speak easily, didn’t avoid answering, contrary to expectations.

“I swallowed it on purpose.”

“And I also know that you are being bullied. I also know that the other scars on your arm, besides the stitched-up one today, are self-inflicted wounds.”

“How did you know that……!”

Seol-rae looked quite surprised at Choi Mona’s words, who knew everything.

She thought she could understand the button from the X-ray photo, and the bullying scars as well. But she was surprised that she recognized the self-inflicted wounds.

“Seol-rae, I don’t understand why you hurt yourself when bad friends are bullying you.”

“…….”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to receive my help. But if you tell me, wouldn’t your stuffy heart be relieved a little? You can’t solve your worries by keeping them to yourself.”

“At first…….”

Seol-rae, who had been looking only at the button photo in her X-ray on the laptop screen, slowly opened her mouth.

She didn’t quite understand why she was trying to talk to a doctor who had nothing to do with her and wasn’t even an acquaintance.

However, she thought that if she spoke, as the doctor had just said, her frustrated heart might be relieved a little.

Right now, she felt like her heart was so full of dust that there wasn’t even a hole to breathe.

“At first, it was just curiosity without any thought. The moment I swallowed it, instead of thinking, ‘What’s wrong?’ I was overwhelmed with worries like, ‘What should I do? I swallowed a button, is it okay?'”

It was an impulsive act due to the feeling of frustration, stuffiness, and annoyance.

But unlike those worries, the swallowed button came out with the stool two days later. From then on, she collected buttons and small pieces in a transparent box.

And whenever she felt upset or annoyed, she swallowed the pieces.

“When I swallow those things, my attention is focused on that, so I could stop feeling anxious and scared. That’s why I swallowed them. Self-harm was for the same reason.”

Seol-rae felt pain when she made wounds on her body, but she felt liberated from other things because of that pain.

Even though she knew it was wrong, she hurt herself when the stress reached its peak and she couldn’t handle it alone.

“Can I ask what part made your heart complicated and difficult?”

As a result of studying people with non-suicidal self-injury and pica, one of the reasons they do these behaviors was anxiety and stress.

Choi Mona thought that the cause of making Seol-rae like this might also be those things.

“My dad divorced my mom and remarried, so I live with my stepmother.”

“Does your stepmother make things difficult for you? Does she use abusive language or violence, or does she make you feel pressured?”

“No. Not at all. There are no such problems. I wanted to live with my mom again, but my dad remarried, so I was a little upset about those things. And then strange kids stuck to me, so I think I was stressed and annoyed and self-harmed.”

From Seol-rae’s point of view as a student, it would not have been easy to understand and accept her parents’ divorce and remarriage as a matter of course.

In fact, it is not easy for adults to accept such a situation, let alone a high school student.

Unfortunately, there was nothing Choi Mona could do to help with family problems.

What she thought was fortunate was that her stepmother didn’t seem like a bad person.

If she were such a person, Seol-rae would not have answered no without hesitation to the stepmother question earlier.

“Seol-rae, I hope you don’t self-harm anymore.”

Choi Mona, who had been hesitating for a moment, reached out and grabbed Seol-rae’s hand and continued.

“No, you shouldn’t. Your body is precious, very valuable, and an important part and all of you.”

“…….”

“And I hope you don’t swallow buttons or hurt yourself at all. If you solve the situations you are in one by one, the anxiety and stress that made you suffer will disappear. Let’s solve the problem of those bad kids who are bullying you without staying still. If it’s hard for you alone, I’ll help you. Of course, I know it’s not easy, but you haven’t done anything wrong, so being bullied should never happen, it’s an impossible situation.”

Even though the problem of school violence has been getting worse year by year, she wondered how hard it must have been for Seol-rae. But the reaction was a little strange.

“I once stopped them from bullying another kid, and since then, I’ve been the target. But I’m being bullied, but I don’t care much about it.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I just find those kids who bully me in groups pathetic and annoying, but I’m not scared. I can just ignore them.”

“No. You’re wrong about that.”

Choi Mona said firmly to Seol-rae, who was thinking naively and saying it wasn’t a big deal.

“You got hurt on your arm and even had it stitched up, and they burned you with cigarettes, and you’re saying it’s not a big deal? You think they’ll stop if you ignore them? No. You’re wrong. Do you know what the psychology of school bullies is? If you stay still like this, they won’t stop bullying you until you give in, and they might bully you even more severely. Look at this!”

Choi Mona pointed to the cigarette burns and scars on her arm.

“Don’t let those strange kids put scars on your body. Because of the scars they made, you made scars on your own body. You’re stressed and having a hard time because of them, right? You have to stop abusing yourself.”

Seol-rae’s heart ached at the words that she was abusing herself.

In fact, she didn’t even know if that expression was correct.

Swallowing buttons, neglecting the bullying of Ira-mi’s group, and hurting her body may all be abusing herself.

“One day, I even had this thought. If my real mom saw this side of me, wouldn’t she come back? So I think I just had a ‘whatever happens, happens’ mentality.”

“I can’t tell you what your mom’s heart is like, but if she saw this side of you, she would probably be very upset and heartbroken.”

Rrrrrrr

While Choi Mona was persuading Seol-rae, Choi Mona’s cell phone suddenly vibrated.

-Yes. Ah! Really? Yes. I understand. I’ll go out now.

Choi Mona, who hung up the phone, shifted her gaze to the opposite side.

“Seol-rae, your mother is outside right now.”

“Mom? My mom?”

For a moment, Seol-rae, thinking that her real mom had come, called her real mom on her cell phone, but she didn’t answer. Well, there was no way her real mom could come here.

“The person outside is my stepmother.”

“How do you know that? It could be your real mom.”

“I just called, and she’s not answering. My mom is busy, so she doesn’t contact me often.”

“First, I’ll go out and talk to your mother.”

“Teacher. Just a moment! Are you going to tell her what happened?”

After talking to Choi Mona to her heart’s content, Seol-rae felt strange when her stepmother was about to find out about this fact.

Somehow, she didn’t want to show her stepmother this side of herself.

“She came as a guardian, so I have to tell her. Wait here for a moment.”

Seol-rae, who was left alone after Choi Mona left the medical office, suddenly had this thought.

‘How did she know?’

Her homeroom teacher at school didn’t know, and there was no one else to contact separately, but she wondered how her stepmother, not her dad, knew.

No matter how she thought about it, there was no way her stepmother could have known, but it was a strange thing.