It was the first time Choi Moo-gyeol saw Park Seok-hun angry.
He was the kind of guy who, even when facing a difficult patient while treating them, never got angry and responded calmly.
The head of the legal team said coldly.
“Dr. Park Seok-hun’s statement will be excluded from the minutes.”
“Why are you excluding it?”
“Because it is a statement outside the scope of a witness.”
“What on earth is the scope of a witness!”
Staff members approached and tried to hold Park Seok-hun to calm him down, but he shook off their arms and showed no sign of calming down.
Choi Moo-gyeol said.
“Seok-hun. The conclusion has already been decided. Don’t waste your energy.”
“But―.”
Park Seok-hun’s expression, usually only gentle, became distorted.
The head of the legal team said finally.
“More than two-thirds of the quorum agreed that Dr. Choi Moo-gyeol is responsible for this lawsuit. Therefore, the hospital has decided to immediately terminate Dr. Choi Moo-gyeol’s clinical instructor contract and restrict his participation in medical practice at Hankook University Hospital and affiliated institutions in the future.”
It was a dismissal message delivered in the worst possible way.
And it did not simply mean leaving Hankook University Hospital.
It meant making it so that Choi Moo-gyeol could not easily be accepted at any affiliated hospital, university hospital, or training hospital where Hankook University graduates and alumni held positions.
When Choi Moo-gyeol showed an attitude of accepting the situation, Yoo Seong-ho spoke in a soothing tone with a relieved expression.
“Please understand, you’re young. For someone like me, the face of Hankook University Neurosurgery, to be caught up in a lawsuit like this is too damaging for the hospital and for the patients. You are still a young fellow with a bright future, aren’t you? You can start anew anywhere. Of course, not on the Hankook University Hospital side.”
“…….”
“And the compensation for the lawsuit costs will be paid by Hankook University Hospital as your affiliated institution anyway. If the hospital files a claim for indemnity against the doctor, your head will ache, but I will take responsibility and block such a thing from happening.”
Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s contradictory appearance—both servile and arrogant at the same time.
Was this the true face of the renowned doctor who once showed him the brain and urged him to come to neurosurgery?
The area of his forehead where surgery had been performed felt itchy.
The itch that occurs whenever some emotion that no longer exists and cannot be felt vaguely surfaces.
He felt theProfessor Yoo Seong-ho decided to discard the part called me for his own survival. The hospital chose me as a scapegoat to minimize losses. Perhaps, from their standpoint, it is the most rational choice.’
Choi Moo-gyeol interpreted the situation that way.
‘An ordinary person would have felt betrayal or intense anger. But I…… the lost emotions still have not returned.’
Because he was Choi Moo-gyeol without emotions, he could not properly get angry even when he should have.
Facing this incident, Choi Moo-gyeol thought for the first time that he found himself frustrating in that way.
He also felt he somewhat understood why emotions are absolutely necessary for humans.
Anyway, what became certain was the fact that he could no longer be with Hankook University Hospital.
Choi Moo-gyeol checked one last time.
“Is the original surgical microscope footage preserved?”
“Some files have errors and are being recovered.”
‘They’ve already handled it.’
Even if recovered, no content that could change the result would come out.
Whether it was the nurse, the machine technician, the video technician, or the anesthesiologist, they were people who had to stay at the hospital and continue to see Yoo Seong-ho.
There was no one who would take the risk of having their livelihood cut off to take the side of the powerless Choi Moo-gyeol.
Except for Park Seok-hun.
‘To be discarded from the place I have been a part of for over ten years since medical school. If my frontal lobe were intact, what emotions would I feel?’
If he were a person of ordinary emotions, would he have trembled with misery?
It would have been something he could never emotionally accept.
But for Choi Moo-gyeol, only rational judgment operated.
An irrational reality given to him.
And a result he must accept.
If he ever regains his emotions, he might want to take revenge, but for now, finding the next hospital to work at was the priority.
Perhaps, for Choi Moo-gyeol now, his characteristic of not feeling emotions was fortunate.
Because he did not become unbearably depressed, sad, or angry.
“I understand the disciplinary result well.”
Choi Moo-gyeol stood up from his seat.
“However, I will not acknowledge responsibility. I merely tried to save the patient.”
Everyone who had taken Yoo Seong-ho’s side in that room made uncomfortable expressions.
* * *
Because of the VIP incident, Choi Moo-gyeol took responsibility for the medical lawsuit and stepped down.
Hankook University Hospital, as promised, covered the lawsuit costs and the compensation for damages.
However, one thing was different from what Yoo Seong-ho had said.
‘You’re young, so you can start again elsewhere, right?’
But no hospital was willing to hire Choi Moo-gyeol, who had become a party to a medical lawsuit.
Even on the non-Hankook University Hospital side.
He had suddenly been stuck with a very dirty label.
The full story of the incident is a fact shared by only a very few people within Hankook University Hospital. And only among those who became Yoo Seong-ho’s accomplices.
Therefore, most hospitals that did not know the inside story would not accept a fellow who had caused a major accident in an important surgery.
After Choi Moo-gyeol left the hospital.
His classmate Park Seok-hun, greatly disappointed, also ended up leaving Hankook University Hospital.
It was something he had been prepared for since he spoke on the opposite side of Yoo Seong-ho at the response committee.
That he might not be able to work here.
Eventually, he moved to another hospital.
Not a top domestic hospital like Hankook University Hospital, nor a small general hospital with a budget as plentiful as other top five hospitals.
And with the rumor that he could not find work in Korea and went abroad, the existence known as Choi Moo-gyeol was gradually forgotten in the medical world.
* * *
Daon General Hospital.
It is the general hospital where Park Seok-hun has been working for five years now.
A small and modest hospital located about an hour away from the imposing Hankook University Hospital.
A place where patients come who could not get an appointment because the large hospital’s treatments were backlogged, or who were refused treatment.
But it is also a bona fide general hospital with basic functions.
An ambulance entered there with a loud siren.
Rattle, rumble―.
The ambulance door opened, and the paramedics quickly moved the patient to a stretcher and transported them.
The emergency room staff greeting them were also busy.
The paramedic reported the patient’s vital signs.
“Thirty-five-year-old female, name is Ahn Jeong-mi, she called the ambulance two hours ago complaining of extreme headache and neck stiffness. Body temperature is thirty-seven point five degrees, blood pressure is one-sixty over one hundred.”
The emergency medicine doctor asked the paramedic while receiving the patient.
“Where is the patient’s home that it took two hours to get here? It’s not even rush hour.”
“It’s not far from here. It’s originally a twenty-minute distance, but because of the emergency room bed-hopping…….”
“Emergency room bed-hopping?”
The patient, who had been clutching her forehead due to the extreme headache, protested at those words as if feeling wronged.
“No, does it make sense that hospitals refuse to accept a patient?”
“Indeed.”
The emergency medicine doctor nodded. The patient’s complaint was understandable.
For some time now, receiving essential medical treatment in Korea has been becoming increasingly difficult.
“If it’s around here, they must have been rejected by Hankook University, right?”
“Yes, they said there were no beds available because they were full.”
“They have several times more beds than us, and yet they keep sending patients to us. What will they do if a big accident happens?”
It was a vicious cycle.
Patients in bad condition need emergency treatment, but due to the hospital’s circumstances, they cannot receive urgent care, and as time is delayed, their condition worsens further.
After going around like that, by the time they find a hospital that accepts them, they arrive in a state already beyond what the doctor can solve.
“If it blows up at another hospital, it’s not their responsibility anyway.”
“Why is it getting worse day by day.”
The emergency doctor clicked his tongue at the paramedic’s words and shouted to the intern.
“Intern, it seems like meningitis, so prepare for a CT and call NR in advance!”
“Yes! Understood.”
Meningitis is a disease handled by NR, that is, neurology.
The not-so-large emergency room of Daon General Hospital was bustling.
A nurse urgently called the emergency doctor.
“Doctor, patient Ahn Jeong-mi suddenly can’t understand speech.”
“She can’t understand speech? She understood well just a moment ago?”
The emergency doctor rushedon to Ahn Jeong-mi.
“Ms. Ahn Jeong-mi, could you try speaking?”
“…….”
“Can’t you speak?”
Ahn Jeong-mi nodded, clutching her head with her hands.
‘Could it be something more serious than meningitis?’
When the CT results came out a moment later, the emergency doctor was shocked at the result differing from his thoughts.
* * *
“We should have called NS from the beginning, not NR. We’re already short-staffed and dying of busyness.”
The neurology doctor, always on edge due to the lack of medical staff.
He grumbled and complained to the emergency doctor before going up.
Da General Hospital is not a hospital where doctors only work two days a week like at large hospitals; they have to be attached to the hospital almost five days a week.
Because of the lack of manpower, there are doctors with a lot of irritation.
Park Seok-hun, a neurosurgeon who came down after receiving a new notification, adjusted his glasses and said.
“It seemed like meningitis symptoms, but she couldn’t speak, and now she’s recovered?”
Park Seok-hun looked at the white mass on the CT and thought inwardly.
‘This might be quite serious. Can our hospital handle it?’
After confirming the patient’s condition, he moved her to the cerebral angiography room.
Soon, the patient’s emergency cerebral angiography began.
Just because a cerebral hemorrhage was identified through CT does not mean it is over.
To understand the structure of all the blood vessels in the head, and to know exactly where in the blood vessels the problem occurred, there is a necessary procedure.
Park Seok-hun laid the patient on an angiography machine that looked somewhat old. It was incomparably inferior to the angiography machine at Hankook University Hospital before he came to Daon General Hospital.
It was at a level where it was fortunate it had not broken down yet.
Park Seok-hun disinfected the area where the femoral artery passes above Ahn Jeong-mi’s leg and administered a local anesthetic injection.
Prick―.
After making a small incision with a scalpel over the femoral artery in the groin area, he inserted a catheter.
He manipulated the machine to send the catheter up to the cerebral blood vessels and then injected a contrast agent.
Now the problematic cerebral blood vessel was clearly captured on the X-ray image.
Park Seok-hun looked at the monitor and said.
“AVM in the left temporal. Size is five centimeters…… an enormous size.”
* * *
