Geun-yeong, broken beyond recovery. My light, now casting a distorted shadow. Can I endure this? Can I bear it?
Perhaps it would be better if that guy just died. Perhaps it would be better if he died, and I had to endure this twisted world without him.
The air filling the room felt heavy. It was difficult to breathe.
Seokhun felt a tightness in his chest. He lowered his gaze from the clock he had been staring at and bowed his head. His head was foggy, filled with all kinds of anxious thoughts. He clutched his head. Just as he was painfully pulling at his hair—
A vibration traveled up his elbow. He raised his head. The dim glowing object in the darkness was his phone. Though it was an unknown number, he answered without hesitation.
“This is Ji Seokhun.”
[Ah, Professor, hello. This is Gwanghui Hospital in Seongshim-dong. You probably don’t know us, but we’re considered one of the larger secondary hospitals in Seongshim-dong. I’m calling about the email you sent. You said you were collecting cases of Type 1 diabetes patients coming to the emergency room with hypoglycemic shock, and asked to be contacted immediately upon arrival—]
“Yes. That’s correct.”
Ji Seokhun couldn’t tolerate the unnecessarily long chatter of the other party. He cut them off mid-sentence and asked:
“Do you have a case?”
[Yes, 30 minutes ago, a 24-year-old Type 1 diabetes patient came in with hypoglycemic shock—]
“Is he alive?!”
Ji Seokhun ended up shouting. The man on the other end seemed startled by the force through the receiver and was momentarily speechless. He barely managed to answer just before Ji Seokhun was about to inhale to shout at him to answer immediately.
[Yes… uh… I called because he’s alive… Um… do you also research deceased patients?]
“Where are you?!”
[I said earlier, Gwanghui Hospital Emergency Room in Seongshim-dong……]
Ji Seokhun hung up and sprang to his feet, rushing out. By the time the roughly pushed chair hit the bookshelf and bounced back to bump the desk, there was already no one left in the study.
## Track 10. Black River
It was as if not just any storm, but a powerful hurricane had passed through.
Kyung Jiho sat in the chair beside the bed, looking at the peacefully sleeping face. The one who had caused the hurricane wore an irritatingly calm expression.
Most nearby private clinics had finished their hours. When they arrived at the small hospital with an emergency room, his blood sugar was at 30.
After hearing the situation explanation that was no different from the shouts of Baek Moonjong and Bong Tae-hee, the medical staff who measured his blood sugar first gasped in shock. They seemed even more shocked than Kyung Jiho, who had turned as white as a sheet of paper, as if his soul had left his body. At the reading of 30, the truly terrified medical staff hurriedly inserted an IV and began pumping in high-concentration glucose solution.
Electrodes were attached to his chest and connected to a heart monitor. Fortunately, a very weak pulse was still beating. The medical staff who had begun preparing for cardiopulmonary resuscitation all sighed deeply at the same time. They said if they had been just a little later, it would have likely been cardiac arrest.
Cardiac arrest.
They were saying so elegantly that he would have died if they had been a little late.
Around the time when his blood sugar and various other fluctuating readings returned to normal, Kyung Jiho finally managed to send Baek Moonjong home with Bong Tae-hee’s help, despite his insistence on staying. The elderly man had been running around frantically. Kyung Jiho was as worried about that old man’s heart as he was about Geun-yeong’s heart, which had nearly stopped.
Ever since the two men reluctantly departed for home, Kyung Jiho had been sitting beside the bed like this. There was no other reason. It was simply because sitting beside him was all he could do.
Everything around was noisy. Chaotic. Everyone was busy and moving quickly. Amid all this, Geun-yeong was quiet, as if the earlier commotion had been a lie. The guy whose heart had nearly stopped had such a peaceful face that one might wonder if he was dead. So Kyung Jiho focused on the barely audible breathing sounds, and occasionally lowered his gaze from the face to check his chest. He confirmed the slight rise and fall of his chest and then looked back at his face. It remained serene.
His face might look like this now.
But when Kyung Jiho had carried the unconscious guy on his back, practically tumbling down three flights of stairs, and laid him in the back seat of the car, his face hadn’t looked like this. His eyeballs had rolled in a strange direction between his half-closed eyelids. Saliva had been flowing from his mouth like foam. The saying “foaming at the mouth” was something he had only heard of but never seen until now.
His shoulder where the guy’s face had touched was still damp. At the time, he hadn’t had the leisure to notice such things, but now he felt it. If not for the damp shoulder, he might have thought the face he saw earlier had been a dream or hallucination. That’s how clean and serene the face of the guy lying on the bed was now. Between Geun-yeong then and Geun-yeong now, one of them seemed like a lie.
Whether he was getting some deep sleep while unconscious, Geun-yeong still hadn’t regained consciousness even though his blood sugar and pulse had returned to normal.
After his condition stabilized, the doctor who was catching his breath said that when diabetic patients lose consciousness and collapse, uninformed ordinary people often pour sugar water into their mouths first. This often leads to aspiration into the airways, resulting in brain damage. But in this case, they had handled it well. Currently, the patient lacked strength as his body was recovering from a temporary state of collapse, but once his overall condition improved, he would wake up without any problems.
What would have happened if he had been the only one by Geun-yeong’s side?
The uninformed ordinary person, the stupid layperson who messes things up without knowing anything—that was referring to him. He had wanted to give him sugar water. If Baek Moonjong and Bong Tae-hee hadn’t been there, if this had happened when he was alone with Geun-yeong, that’s what he would have done. He would have poured sugar water into his mouth. And Geun-yeong might have ended up in an irreversible state. They say there’s nothing scarier than an ignorant fool being industrious—that’s exactly what it was.
He had thought he was losing out when he had to share the meat he’d intended to feed Geun-yeong. But if those two hadn’t come along, Geun-yeong might have died. Kyung Jiho wanted to cut off his seemingly useless head and throw it in the trash.
A small breath amid the constant silence interrupted his self-deprecating thoughts. Thinking he might be waking up, Kyung Jiho examined his expression, but that wasn’t the case. It seemed he had just sighed as if the effort to recover was taxing.
When would he wake up? Would he sleep like this until morning?
There were many things he wanted to ask when the guy woke up. He wanted to ask why this had happened. Hadn’t he said it would be fine if he ate properly? Hadn’t he answered with that sly face of his that he could manage it well? He wanted to confront him.
While the guy from whom he wanted answers showed no signs of waking, a completely different voice started talking instead.
‘I was remotely adjusting the insulin dosage by linking the monitor on his forearm with the insulin pump in case his blood sugar fluctuated. But now that the forearm monitor has been removed, I can’t regulate it. Soon, there will definitely be a problem, and I hope such a thing doesn’t happen. You need to find Geun-yeong. Within 24 hours.’
Those were the words of the man who had pleaded with him to find Geun-yeong. At the time, he thought it was a story made up by a man with a violent obsession. Even though he wasn’t completely ignorant about diabetes, he thought the man was exaggerating. But the guy had been right. This happened exactly 24 hours later.
Was it really thanks to that man’s efforts that he had been okay? Did this happen now because I ignored that man’s words? Is it ultimately my fault?
When the guy who seemed to have sighed once became quiet again, Kyung Jiho’s mind once more drifted toward self-blame. As his self-blame reached the level of self-deprecation, a sound joined the persistent noise around them. It was the sound of hurried, busy footsteps.
Perhaps due to his profession that relied on intuition and perception, Kyung Jiho knew that the person making the busy footsteps was quite angry. And he sensed that the knife-like anger carried in the gradually increasing sound was directed at him.
But he didn’t move. He remained seated, looking at the peacefully sleeping face. He thought he might not be able to see this face for quite a while, and he felt considerably regretful. He was surprised at himself for feeling such deep regret about not seeing this guy, to the extent that he wondered if not seeing him should be such a regrettable thing.
The curtain opened with the sound of metal rings scraping against the rod.
Even seeing the long shadow cast over Geun-yeong’s face, Kyung Jiho didn’t turn his head.
“Geun-yeong!”
Even hearing the man’s voice, he didn’t turn his head.
“You bastard! You, you dog of a bastard!”
Even as he was grabbed by the collar and shaken, he kept looking at Geun-yeong.
“You ignored what I said, and now look at this disaster!”
A harsh sound like cold water pouring down all at once was heard, and only after a long moment did a dull sensation register. It was stinging and burning. Yet somehow, it didn’t hurt. He turned his head, which had been forcibly turned by the slap. He looked once more at the still-serene face of the guy.
“You piece of trash, are you a cop? Are you human? Huh? Answer me! You devil of a bastard!”
Besides the cheek that had been cleanly slapped, besides the collar that was tightly grabbed and being shaken, somewhere much deeper hurt a little.
His hearing recovered faster than his senses.
“I’m not staying in the hospital.”
Only after hearing the piercing voice ringing in his ears did Geun-yeong feel the throbbing headache, causing his brow to furrow deeply.
“If there’s any problem, we’ll transfer him to Samjeong Hospital.”
Before he could even identify whose voice it was, his body reacted first. Goosebumps ran down his shoulders.
“Don’t display the test results. Please cancel all of them.”
By the time the goosebumps subsided and his heart began racing, he already knew whose voice it was.
“Please process his discharge.”
Not wanting to make his presence known to the owner of the voice, Geun-yeong squinted his eyes open. It was more foolish than a three-year-old who thinks they can’t be found by simply hiding their head. Through his narrowed eyes, he didn’t see a ceiling with warm wooden molding. It was just a plain white ceiling.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
