Swish—.
Unlike Park Seok-hun, who hesitated to dissect, Choi Moo-gyeol opened the frog’s belly with the scalpel without a second of hesitation and quietly asked.
“Why are you standing there blankly?”
“It’s alive. Even if it’s just a frog, I can’t bring myself to put a knife to it…….”
“It’s anesthetized.”
“It’s not dead, though.”
Choi Moo-gyeol originally had no intention of interfering in others’ lives, but somehow he wanted to say a word to Park Seok-hun.
Was it because of the curiosity that arose from a human so full of emotion, the exact opposite of himself?
Choi Moo-gyeol said.
“Say you don’t do it. Then what happens to this frog?”
“Someone else will do it…….”
“Right. It’s destined to be dissected by someone anyway.”
“Mm.”
“If it has to be, wouldn’t it be better for someone like you, who feels compassion for the frog, to do the dissection?”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll be more careful.”
“…….”
“Just because you put down the scalpel doesn’t mean this frog can go back to where it originally was.”
Choi Moo-gyeol’s cold and objective words. To Park Seok-hun’s ears, those words strangely did not sound cruel.
“……That’s true.”
“I don’t know if it will help your feelings, but it’s also a bullfrog known to be harmful to the ecosystem.”
“…….”
Park Seok-hun first thought about whether humans have the right to dissect even a lifeform that destroys the environment.
“What you can do right now is one of two things. Either waste time in guilt and then reluctantly put the scalpel to it, or finish it quickly and accurately in one go as you learned.”
“…….”
“If time drags on, the anesthesia may wear off, and the pain the frog feels may increase.”
Choi Moo-gyeol said, pointing at the frog.
“If you truly care for the frog, isn’t minimizing its pain the right thing to do?”
Park Seok-hun found it hard to answer.
Choi Moo-gyeol’s words were conveying reality as it was.
The fear of dissecting a living being, guilt, hesitation.
If you peel those away, what remains in the end is what you must do as a medical student.
“I don’t know what department you’ll go into later, but if you choose surgery, then you’ll have to put a knife to a living person.”
“…….”
In fact, Park Seok-hun had thoughts about surgery as well.
“This is the first experience of handling living tissue with a scalpel and forceps—. It’s a precious process of figuring out how muscles contract when nerves are stimulated, and confirming the basic appearance of the structures, digestive system, and circulatory system of a vertebrate, wasn’t that what we learned in class?”
“Ugh…….”
Park Seok-hun squeezed his eyes shut and tried to move the scalpel.
“Hey hey, you’re going to cut your hand like that.”
“Ugh.”
“You have to do it with your eyes open.”
Even while exchanging words, Choi Moo-gyeol quickly finished the dissection.
The frog’s interior was similar in structure to a human’s, and the tiny heart was beating thump-thump.
‘The heart is moving autonomously even under anesthesia, without instructions from the brain.’
While Choi Moo-gyeol was feeling the mystery of life looking at that sight.
Park Seok-hun, who still could not even put the scalpel to it, asked.
“How can you be so calm? Don’t you feel pity or disgust?”
“Not at all. To me, these internal organs right now feel like a system. The devices that make a single system called a frog move—I’m exploring their structure.”
“You’re kind of scary right now.”
“Human sympathy doesn’t help the frog at all. If you can’t dissect properly and put down the knife, then that frog’s death truly becomes a meaningless sacrifice.”
“Is that so…….”
“If you really think it’s pitiful, then dissect it perfectly without error. Engrave the beating of each small organ perfectly into your brain. Then, later, perfectly save the patient who lies on your operating table. Because that is the only way to make that frog’s sacrifice meaningful.”
It was not wrong.
Twitch.
The frog’s hind leg twitched, perhaps because the anesthesia was wearing off.
“Uh oh? Oh dear.”
“See. If you keep doing that, the anesthesia wears off.”
Park Seok-hun soaked a cotton ball with ether and brought it to the frog’s mouth.
Then the frog’s movements subsided again.
“I have no choice but to do it.”
Perhaps the conversation with Choi Moo-gyeol had an effect, as Park Seok-hun’s feelings calmed somewhat.
And just as he had done for the cadaver, he observed a brief moment of silence.
Then, with trembling hands, he somehow managed to finish the frog dissection.
After class, during break time.
Park Seok-hun said with a grin.
“Thanks. That helped.”
“If you’re grateful, buy me a meal.”
“You know how to say ‘buy me a meal’ too?”
“Why do you think I can’t? Because I’m a bit of a strange person?”
“No, your usual expression is so cold. It feels like you’d draw the line at going Dutch only.”
“I do like drawing lines. But I’m making an exception for you.”
“What an honor. Let’s go to the cafeteria. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
“How about a somewhat expensive restaurant instead of the cafeteria?”
Park Seok-hun let out a small laugh.
Choi Moo-gyeol thought that if he spent time with the emotional Park Seok-hun, he might somehow be able to feel his lost emotions again.
Meanwhile, Park Seok-hun, who was as full of emotion as he was full of understanding, also thought that although Choi Moo-gyeol was a strange guy, there must be his own circumstances behind why he ended up with such a strange personality.
Choi Moo-gyeol, lacking emotion, and Park Seok-hun, overflowing with emotion.
In MBTI terms, the meeting of an extreme T and an extreme F.
Perhaps the two were able to become close because they were at opposite extremes from each other.
* * *
Two years passed.
Hankook University Hospital operating room.
It was the site of a surgery performed by Professor Yoo Seong-ho, the head of the neurosurgery department.
A patient with a cerebral aneurysm was lying anesthetized on the operating table.
Unlike usual, the spacious operating room felt quite cramped.
Because, unlike usual, medical students were crowded around the doctors and nurses in charge of the surgery.
They were the third-year main course students of Hankook University Medical School who had come to observe the surgery because of PK practice.
Among them, Choi Moo-gyeol’s eyes were shining.
PK practice refers to the process in which medical students rotate through various clinical departments at a university hospital and observe patient care and surgeries.
“Prepare the drill. From the perforator.”
“Yes, Professor.”
At Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s words, the surgical nurse connected the perforator driver to the handpiece shining in matte silver.
Click—.
The sound of it being connected without any gap.
“Set the RPM to seventy-five thousand.”
At Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s words, the nurse input the number into the body console connected to the handpiece by a black line.
“Input complete.”
“Okay.”
Professor Yoo Seong-ho gripped the handle of the instrument firmly and pressed the switch.
Whirr—.
Then the high-frequency sound made by the machine operating filled the operating room.
A blade rotating at a high speed of 75,000 RPM.
Now the preparation for shaving the patient’s bone was complete.
Whirrr—.
The tip of the rapidly rotating silver-white metal drill gradually approaches the patient’s shortly shaved head area, guided by the surgeon’s hand.
The patient’s snow-white skull, exposed with the scalp incised, and just before the drill tip touches its surface.
Gulp.
A medical student, observing a neurosurgery site for the first time, swallowed nervously.
Meanwhile, Choi Moo-gyeol’s eyes were filled not with tension but with curiosity.
‘Finally. The organ called the brain, which I could only see in the anatomy practice cadaver. I can actually see a living brain!’
As the drill tip touched the skull surface, an intense sound burst out.
Sizzle— Crack!
Smoke soon rose from the skull.
It was bone powder scattering as a small part of the skull was pulverized.
“Suction.”
The assistant doctor beside him suctioned with a machine so the bone powder would not scatter further.
After a moment, the drill stopped only after precisely drilling all the target points.
Professor Yoo Seong-ho displayed a fluent hand technique befitting a neurosurgeon at the top university.
Yoo Seong-ho, cutting the patient’s skull while changing the hand drill attachments.
As he moved his hands, he spoke to the medical students standing around him.
“By any chance, is there anyone among you who aspires to become a surgeon?”
* * *
There is one worry that always fills Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s mind.
It was none other than the worry that the number of new neurosurgery applicants was decreasing every year, as the years went by.
Such concern always occupied a corner of his mind.
PK practice time was, in fact, also a rare opportunity for him to properly show the charm of neurosurgery to his medical student disciples.
In other words, it was a kind of specialty promotion time.
Whirrr—.
“An excellent surgeon is not made by knowledge alone. You need calm and cool hand movements. In other words, you can become a good surgeon only by properly fusing knowledge and skill.”
Even amid the sound of the skull being cut and bone powder flying, Yoo Seong-ho’s appearance of tirelessly promoting to the medical students.
He looked a bit like a con man.
“Especially neurosurgery is for those who are capable in both areas.”
If even one person could come to neurosurgery through observing his brain surgery!
Yoo Seong-ho, hoping for that today as well, rattles off his nagging as always.
Though it is unknown how effective that method actually is.
* * *
“Now, look at this mysterious organ.”
It was after all the drilling of the skull was finished, and the dura mater, arachnoid mater, and pia mater that firmly wrap the brain had been incised.
Between the gaping open space where part of the patient’s skull had been lifted out.
The living brain was revealing its mysterious form.
Throb— throb—.
A soft, pale crimson body, as if gray, apricot, and pink were mixed.
The brain, made of wrinkles and curves, was squirming there.
Professor Yoo Seong-ho said.
“Medical students often have a misconception. What is it? They think that among the body’s organs, only the heart is a dynamically moving organ. No! That is absolutely not the case.”
The professor pointed to the brain.
“Now, look at this appearance! To me, this brain is the most dynamic organ in the human body. An organ that weighs only this percent of body weight but uses twenty percent of total energy consumption! Just looking at that fact clearly proves how active an organ it is, doesn’t it?”
As the blood pumped by the heartbeat is supplied to the brain, all the wrinkles of the brain squirm.
According to the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide produced by the patient’s lung respiration.
The brain mass repeats the process of slowly swelling and then sinking again.
The appearance of a living brain.
That appearance, mixed with the smell of blood in the operating room. This came as a different kind of shock from seeing a cadaver.
“Ugh—.”
“Ugh.”
People who don’t know well think medical students will vomit during cadaver dissection practice, but that’s wrong.
That’s only the role of the formalin smell; you don’t actually feel like vomiting.
But when you actually cut open a living person’s body and see the internal organs leaping and throbbing.
This is when it’s dangerous.
“Ugh.”
But vomiting in the operating room would truly be a disaster.
While many medical students were enduring the discomfort, feeling an inexplicable revulsion at the grotesque sight before their eyes.
‘To think that human memories, thinking ability, and emotions are inside there…….’
Only Choi Moo-gyeol was shining his eyes with curiosity.
