“My goodness. Listen to how you talk. You think this old man can afford to miss his time? Stop your unnecessary worrying and get going. If you’re not going to help, then your big frame just makes things dark and gloomy standing there.”
With a sigh to calm his excited heart, Geun-yeong took a step toward the autopsy table where the body lay, toward a life with a color scheme he had never once imagined.
* * *
They removed the heart, enlarged from long-term heart failure, took pictures, measured its weight and size, and then performed a detailed dissection. Following the family’s suspicion of poisoning, they removed the stomach, extracted its contents, and separated the solid materials. The gastric juice and gastric water were separately classified and placed in containers to be sent to the National Forensic Service. They thoroughly examined the inside of the stomach for signs of congestion or necrosis caused by toxic substances. Then they collected blood from the entire body and urine accumulated in the bladder, placing them in sample containers. Throughout this process, Geun-yeong had to move quickly as Baek Moonjong’s assistant.
It wasn’t just busy work the whole time. Thanks to the flood of explanations that began after a warning-like statement—”Becoming talkative at this age is a natural physiological phenomenon, so you young man will have to bear with it somehow”—Geun-yeong was able to learn and understand a great deal.
Not only about anatomical knowledge but also complaints about Korea’s autopsy system. He said there were only about 50 professional forensic pathologists qualified for autopsies nationwide, and since more old people were dying than new forensic pathologists were being produced, that number would continue to decrease. Who would want to do this job, he asked, receiving a civil servant’s salary while having to rush out day and night whenever a body came in for dissection? Above all, with so few institutions capable of professional autopsies nationwide, most bodies, except for the very few that the prosecution took interest in, were buried or cremated without proper examination. Therefore, there were probably far more unsolved cases than solved ones. All these problems stemmed from the lack of proper treatment for forensic pathologists.
Professor Baek Moonjong, who said he had opened his clinic after retiring from concurrent positions as a diagnostic pathology specialist at a university hospital and a professor of anatomy, couldn’t give up autopsy work for this reason. He said if he didn’t do it, the souls of those who died unjustly would appear in his dreams to protest.
Listening to these words while moving busily, the four-hour autopsy finally ended. The grandfather, whose chest had been widely opened, looked much cleaner than when he first lay down.
Watching Geun-yeong, who had meticulously moved his hands during the process of cleaning the sutured body, neatly arranging the disheveled hair into a slicked-back style, Baek Moonjong burst into laughter.
After completing the autopsy, Baek Moonjong began seeing scheduled patients. Most were observing the surgical sites of patients who had come in with simple lacerations and had their wounds sutured during brief pauses in the autopsy.
The changing of dressings for patients who had finished their consultations was handled by the man in pink clothes, who turned out to be a former nursing officer who had worked at a military hospital. His name was “Bong Tae-hee.” But since Dr. Baek Moonjong kept calling him “Tae-gu,” Geun-yeong was confused.
And now Geun-yeong had to help the man whom he had decided to call “Nurse Bong.”
The man lying on the treatment room bed looked like a gangster. His head was closely shaved, he had a long cut beside his eye, and both his arms were so covered in tattoos that no bare skin was visible. But Geun-yeong had decided to no longer be suspicious of people who looked like gangsters. So he tried not to think about the identity of the man lying on the bed.
The man with the unclear occupation flinched like a half-dead fish at the boisterous touch applying disinfectant to the long vertical suture wound beside his navel. Regardless, the cotton swab soaked in disinfectant moved relentlessly.
While waiting for the disinfectant to dry, Nurse Bong, standing with both hands on his waist like a kindergarten teacher about to start a rhythmic dance, asked:
“Isn’t Detective Kyung cool?”
“Pardon?”
Geun-yeong, who had momentarily paused while filling an empty can with used cotton balls on the opposite side of the treatment table, had to continue working more busily while asking back without particular reason. It was an unexpected question, and he was also embarrassed to answer honestly. In other words, it was a question like, what’s that all about, suddenly?
“Even for cases that others would usually just brush aside and take the easy way out, Detective Kyung doesn’t give up easily. He’s also the only one who brings bodies that the National Forensic Service won’t accept here.”
“Ah…”
With talk of detectives, the National Forensic Service, and bodies, the man receiving the dressing had to remain silent, somehow stopping even his involuntary flinching caused by the stinging sensation.
“I thought Detective Kyung was a really scary person at first. When I first saw him, I thought he was definitely a gangster! Didn’t you think so too?”
“Ah… yes. Actually, I did…”
“Right! Right!”
Pleased with Geun-yeong’s honest answer, Nurse Bong slapped the arm of the man lying on the bed. Nevertheless, the man on the bed remained silent. Regardless of the conversation content, the imposing presence of the man who looked like a giant pink sausage was not to be taken lightly.
“Do you know that Detective Kyung has a dragon tattoo on his body? Have you seen it?”
“Ah… yes.”
Geun-yeong hesitated but decided to answer honestly, while wondering what to say if asked how he had seen it.
“He must be the only police officer in the entire country with a tattoo, don’t you think?”
Probably so. Geun-yeong nodded and continued filling the can with used cotton balls.
“Do you know how he got it?”
“No.”
Even after answering that he didn’t know, Geun-yeong somehow felt uneasy and quickly added:
“How did he get it?”
He had always been curious about how that tattoo came to be, whether it existed before he became a police officer, or whether it appeared after. Both scenarios seemed strange, so he had been constantly wondering about the reason. And Nurse Bong seemed to know that reason. So Geun-yeong urged him to answer. Tell me quickly, he implied. I’m dizzy with curiosity.
“When he first became a police officer, his body was clean. But then he didn’t like being called Officer Kyung or Sergeant Kyung, so he took the exam to become a detective. Isn’t that mind-blowing?”
Geun-yeong chuckled and nodded. The man receiving treatment also started to smile but stopped, intimidated by the demeanor of the approaching man holding dressing materials. Even as he applied the dressing to the suture site where the disinfectant had thoroughly dried, the story about Detective Kyung’s past continued.
“His first assignment after becoming a detective was to bust some high-ranking members of a violent organization. Since he couldn’t be distinguished from actual gangsters at a glance, he was assigned to undercover work. One way or another, he infiltrated the organization, but as luck would have it, the initiation ritual for that organization was a dragon tattoo. He should have refused and escaped right there, but Detective Kyung, full of enthusiasm for his first assignment as a detective, remained silent as they wrapped a dragon around his body.”
“Ah…”
The mystery of the tattoo was resolved in a rather anticlimactic way. And Geun-yeong let out an ambiguous sound, somewhere between admiration and a sigh. There was, specifically, nothing to say. ‘I’m so dumbfounded I have nothing to say’ was exactly the phrase for a situation like this.
Nurse Bong, who had laughed for a long time when he first heard it and found it funny again while telling it, began to cackle while slapping the arm of the man lying beneath him. The man being slapped on the arm also smiled slightly, checking the atmosphere, and then began to laugh out loud.
With both of them laughing, Geun-yeong wondered if he should laugh too, but that deliberation became prolonged. Just as he was thinking maybe he should laugh a bit, the laughter of the two men subsided, and he missed the timing to laugh.
After laughing so much that his voice tone suddenly lowered, ending up roaring with laughter in a resonant male voice, Nurse Bong said:
“That was about 5 years ago, right? When he was at Gangseo Police Station next door, the whole station was turned upside down. Since they couldn’t prevent a police officer who got tattooed while on duty from working because of the tattoo, the higher-ups had a headache for a while. It really blew their minds.”
And then he burst into uproarious laughter again. Now speaking and laughing completely in a male voice, Nurse Bong wiped his tears with the back of his hand holding forceps. The man lying on the bed seemed to have relaxed a bit and was laughing with a slightly louder voice. Watching the two of them, Geun-yeong turned his body again and moved his hands, also laughing silently along with them.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
