Chapter 59 – Young Patient with No Guardian (1)

In front of Kim Pil-sung’s ward.

“Look here, Professor Watanabe! There is no need to go this far! Isn’t it the proper order to consult with the Director first?”

Professor Chung Ki-ryeo, who had hurriedly followed Professor Watanabe, caught his arm.

“A person’s life is at stake. Is the Director the Creator? It won’t be too late to report after wrapping this up first. I believe Director Lee Tae-soo will fully understand!”

Professor Watanabe was not someone who would stop just because Professor Chung Ki-ryeo tried to hold him back.

“Aren’t you being too emotional, unlike yourself?”

“Oh! Do you truly think so? If you had made the same decision as me right now, I wouldn’t have stopped you but praised you! Making a mistake in a prescription as a doctor is different from children breaking a plate by mistake.”

Professor Watanabe had absolutely no intention of backing down from his will.

“Hmm… What stubborness! A-Alright. Who would break your stubborness? Let’s go in! Who said they wouldn’t go in?”

Slide—

As Professor Chung Ki-ryeo opened the sliding door, Professor Watanabe strode into the ward.

“Oh, what brings you professors here at this hour…”

Kim Yun-seok and Kim Ji-hyuk happened to be treating the patient, and were flustered by the sudden appearance of the two professors.

And.

“Patient, I offer my apologies!”

Professor Watanabe, who entered the ward in one breath, found Kim Pil-sung and bowed his head deeply before him.

“Oh my, Professor! What is this about?”

The flustered Kim Pil-sung came down from the bed, not knowing what to do.

“Because I failed to fulfill my responsibility as a doctor, you suffered a great deal. This is all my responsibility.”

“N-No! Rather than that, I need to know the reason…”

“Mr. Kim Pil-sung, I will explain that.”

At that, Professor Chung Ki-ryeo stepped forward and explained the whole story.

A moment later.

“Ah, such a thing happened.”

Kim Pil-sung, who heard the explanation from Professor Chung Ki-ryeo, smiled broadly.

“This is all my oversight, so please forgive the attending doctors generously. I will take all responsibility.”

“Oh my, if it were not for Professor Chung here, I would have already died on the street. Why talk of forgiveness or anything? I don’t know much, but hearing Professor Chung’s explanation, it is something that can easily happen.”

“But still…”

“It is fine. I am really fine! Isn’t this a life I live as a bonus anyway? Besides, didn’t the doctors here fix me up so well? So you do not need to do this.”

“I am truly sorry. I will make sure such a thing never happens in the future. I will personally take care of everything. I am truly sorry!”

Professor Watanabe bowed his head repeatedly to apologize to Kim Pil-sung.

‘Hehehe, a professor admits his prescription was wrong, and the patient generously forgives it? Would we be able to see such a sight in 2024? No, it’s unimaginable. 1954 and 2024! There is a 70-year gap, and in the meantime, humanity has developed at a tremendous speed. Naturally, the medical field is the same. But what about the mindset of a doctor? Can we truly say it has matured that much?’

Kim Ji-hyuk shook his head with a bitter smile.

A few days later.

In the end, Professor Watanabe was able to settle the matter by providing all necessary future treatments to Kim Pil-sung free of charge, along with a consolation payment.

“What consolation payment… I don’t need this kind of money. I have already received a tremendous favor from Professor Chung Ki-ryeo and my brother.”

“Still, you will need it to live after being discharged. So…”

“So, I want my brother to keep this money. Use it as travel expenses if you go to America later.”

Kim Pil-sung pressed the consolation money given by Watanabe into Kim Yun-seok’s hand.

“Sigh, if I go to America, I will take care of it myself. So stop talking nonsense and use this money usefully later. Please, do not stay in places like the shelter for vagrants.”

“Thank you, brother!”

“Yes. Since it turned out like this, you must live hard for your brother’s share too. Shake it off quickly, get up, and let’s go to America together. You should wear that cool leather jacket, slick back your hair, and ride a motorcycle.”

“Will such a day come?”

“Of course! Hyung, looking at your youth photos, even James Dean couldn’t compare!”

“Hehehe, well, western women did follow me a bit when I was young.”

“That’s right. So get treated well and recover quickly.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much!”

Kim Pil-sung held Yun-seok’s two hands tightly.

A moment later, the surgical department office.

“Ji-hyuk, to be honest, Professor Watanabe, although he is Japanese, is respectable!”

Kim Yun-seok was quite touched by Professor Watanabe’s honest response.

“That’s true. A doctor is not God. A doctor is also human, so they can make mistakes at any time. How they respond to that mistake is what’s important. In that sense, Professor Watanabe is definitely a true doctor.”

“Right. I also felt a lot of things this time. The saying that one should renew oneself daily seems correct. I think we need to engrave Professor Watanabe’s attitude deeply.”

“Of course.”

“By the way, if I want to go to America, do I have to take a ship? How long will it take to go to America by ship? When I contacted Korea Shipping Corporation, they said it takes roughly a bit over a fortnight?”

“Hehehe, you already looked into it?”

Kim Ji-hyuk snickered.

“Punk! Didn’t you say you’d cover my travel expenses? Let me also drink whiskey and eat hamburgers with the westerners. Besides, I also have this that hyung gave me! I found out that 1 dollar can buy as many as 20 bottles of that precious cola. So if it’s 500 dollars, how many bottles of cola is that? It’s as many as a thousand bottles! A thousand bottles!”

In the 1950s, the value of 1 dollar was roughly 20,000 won by 2024 standards, and 500 dollars was worth about 10 million won. Of course, the 500 dollars in the promissory note Kim Yun-seok held was worth hundreds of thousands of times more.

Even by current standards, 500 dollars was quite a large sum of money.

‘Cola is not everything! Because a 10% share of a massive supermarket company that can sell that cola worldwide is grandfather’s. Hehehe, of course, I will inherit it all!’

“Yes. I will cover the travel expenses no matter what! So do not worry, and if you get a chance, go over to America and make sure to get the details in that promissory note notarized!”

“Notarized? Instead of receiving 500 dollars?”

“Of course! 500 dollars is not what’s important, we must secure 10% of the Ben Franklin store’s shares no matter what! Got it?”

Kim Ji-hyuk repeatedly urged Kim Yun-seok.

“What if that store or whatever goes bankrupt? Then wouldn’t we just blow a cold 500 dollars?”

“Such a thing will never happen, so do not listen to my words lightly. Because the Ben Franklin store must already be operating successfully by now.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just know! So do not ask questions and just get it notarized!”

“Hmph, send me to America first before saying such words.”

“If you want to go to America next month, I can send you!”

“Hahaha, it seems you are serious? A-Alright, you don’t have to shine your eyes so greedily!”

‘How can I not look greedy? How much money is that?’

“Anyway, once you decide, tell me right away. I will prepare the departure!”

“I know! It’s time for me to go to patient Kim Pil-sung. Let’s talk again later!”

“Okay. Work hard.”

In that way, Kim Pil-sung was able to continue his treatment under the help of Professor Chung Ki-ryeo, the dedication of Professor Watanabe, and the care of Kim Yun-seok and Kim Ji-hyuk.

As a bonus, or rather by heaven’s grace, Kim Yun-seok secured a 10% share of the future Walmart.

* * *

In that way, the National Medical Center was gradually finding stability and taking shape, centering around internal medicine, surgery, and obstetrics and gynecology.

Then one day, another patient was carried into the National Medical Center.

It was a traffic accident patient, an extreme emergency patient whose life was in danger.

Although his identity had not been figured out yet, judging by his short hair and the fact that he was holding study materials at the time of the accident, he was undoubtedly a teenage student.

The place where this student met with the accident was near Seoul Station.

The offending vehicle invaded the sidewalk and hit the passing student as he was.

The offending vehicle fled immediately, and a passing taxi driver found the student groaning and collapsed on the sidewalk, loaded him into his car, and transported him to the National Medical Center.

Since there were almost no hospitals equipped with proper ambulances and no emergency medical system was established at all, it was a dangerous and urgent situation where he could have lost his life if the taxi driver had not found the patient.

“What happened?”

As the patient entered the emergency room, Kim Ji-hyuk immediately went down to check the patient’s condition.

“I don’t know well. Since this student was collapsed on the street, I loaded and brought him.”

“There must have been a hospital nearby?”

“Of course I went to a nearby hospital. But they turned away this young kid saying he has no guardian. I went to a few more places, but they were all the same. I will act as a guardian instead, so please treat him first.”

‘It’s not an easy thing…’

“A-Alright. What time did you find the patient?”

“About three or four hours have passed.”

‘Sigh, three or four hours! If so, considering the time the accident occurred, it means it’s even longer than that?’

Kim Ji-hyuk looked troubled.

“First, please go to the admissions office and register!”

“I will!”

With that, the taxi driver headed to the admissions office, and Kim Ji-hyuk immediately began emergency measures.

‘The patient has already lost consciousness, and the blood pressure is not caught!’

The condition of the young patient was the worst.

As was typical of TA (traffic accident) patients, he looked fine on the outside, but it was highly likely that this patient had no healthy spots from head to toe.

“Sigh, it seems the golden hour has passed…”

“Ji-hyuk! What on earth is going on?”

Yun-seok, who was contacted shortly after, came down to the emergency room.

The golden hour for trauma patients in traffic accidents was around one hour.

However, this patient completely missed the golden hour while wandering around nearby hospitals.

Even so, they could not give up on the patient.

“It’s a traffic accident patient! First, we need to secure blood. Can you draw blood and confirm the blood type?”

“A-Alright.”

Kim Yun-seok drew blood from the patient’s arm and ran to the clinical pathology lab.

‘Pupillary reflex too…!’

As Kim Yun-seok went to confirm the blood type, Ji-hyuk continued emergency measures.

Not to mention the blood pressure, his pulse was faint, and the patient’s condition was the worst to the point that even his pupillary reflex did not react.

“Nurse Kim! Please administer fluids until Dr. Yun-seok comes. Warm them up!”

“Yes, understood.”

“Nurse Park! Secure an operating room and contact anesthesiology. As soon as the blood is secured, we will go straight into surgery. We have already delayed too much, we must move quickly!”

“Understood!”

The nurses who received Kim Ji-hyuk’s instructions began to move in a hurry.

“The operating room is set up! You may move the patient now!”

“Yes. Thank you for your hard work!”

Slide—

Kim Ji-hyuk and the nurse hurriedly pushed the gurney and headed for the operating room.