Notes: Chapters Split is 1500+ words per chapters. Thank you!
- Uninvited Guest
On the 12th floor surgical ward of Taewoong Hospital, there’s been talk circulating lately behind the scenes.
It was a topic stimulating enough to make even medical staff suffering under a murderous workload perk up their ears at least once.
“Yoon saem, he’s here again.”
At the low murmur, one nurse glanced toward a private room at the end of the corridor. There was a patient who had been hospitalized long-term for nearly two months.
In fact, for a hospital with over 1,000 beds, this wasn’t particularly unusual. Moreover, given the nature of the surgical ward, when major surgeries were performed, a month or two would pass quickly during the recovery process.
In other words, the medical staff’s interest wasn’t in the patient, but in the person who persistently visited there. Anyone who had worked at this hospital for a while couldn’t help but know this person.
His name was Baek Jinseok. A vice director who came from being a surgery department head.
The next label attached to him was that he was talent the current director had personally scouted from another hospital. He wasn’t particularly young or old for the vice director position, and he didn’t have the kind of academic background worth boasting about in a place where doctors from Korea University were everywhere.
But his face wasn’t ordinary. From the day he started his first shift as a trauma surgeon until he took on the department head title, he was more often gossiped about for his appearance than his skills.
Now he was approaching his fifties and had been wearing rimless glasses for quite some time, but that didn’t diminish his appearance.
His long, narrow eyes slanted down slightly so they always appeared half-closed, but it never gave a stuffy impression. The deep atmosphere and the slight wrinkles visible beyond his glasses gave a sense of ease that came with age.
His neatly combed hair was always immaculate and full, the suits he changed into daily stuck to subdued colors without deviation, and his white coat didn’t have a single wrinkle.
In fact, he’d put down the scalpel upon becoming department head, and after becoming vice director had no more occasions to meet patients face-to-face, but perhaps because he valued his identity as a doctor, he always went about his life wearing his coat.
Seeing this, fellow doctors had sometimes shown reactions mixing envy and inferiority, saying the person who became his wife must have skilled hands.
But despite having long stopped visiting the operating room, as rumors circulated about his empty ring finger and how the lights were on in the vice director’s office even late at night during holidays like Christmas, he didn’t seem like someone with a family. Unexpectedly, he might be a worthless person as a head of household.
If you looked closely, he was someone where only meaningful elements kept piling up. Such a person diligently visiting one specific patient was enough to pique the medical staff’s interest.
The other party was a patient brought in from a traffic accident.
He had crossed the emergency room threshold on Christmas Day evening without consciousness. By the time he was moved to the surgical ward after emergency surgery, Christmas had already ended.
Some time passed before the patient regained consciousness. It was enough time for the Santa-shaped post-its stuck inside the nurses’ station to disappear.
The vice director’s visits began from then.
Since the patient’s age made him young enough to be his child, at first they wondered if it was a father-son relationship. But the two had different surnames and didn’t resemble each other in the slightest.
More than anything, the patient could have been moved to a premium room close to the vice director’s office, but he only stayed in the general ward. It was strange treatment, leaving opportunities to keep him close and deliberately going back and forth over a long distance.
If not relatives, there was even talk of whether he might be the vice director’s illegitimate child, but such stuffy gossip quickly faded away, buried under busy work.
After all kinds of speculation swept through, only pure curiosity remained in the medical staff’s minds. Just what was the purpose of these visits?
All this speculation came to an end on discharge day.
“Patient-nim, I’ll help you with the discharge procedures. First, go to the administrative office on the first floor and… oh, um… the payment has already been completed?”
The lost mouse cursor stopped in the middle of the screen. Right below it was written the patient’s personal information. His age showed he had just turned twenty, meaning his hospitalization had been long enough that he’d spent the moment of becoming an adult in the hospital.
“Yes. Ahjussi said he’d take care of it.”
“Ah, I see. Then I’ll explain right away how to take your prescription medication. There seem to be many types, but they’re all to be taken three times a day after meals, so there’s nothing too confusing. And…”
The nurse in charge conducted her duties with a calm face. Meanwhile, her mind was spinning rapidly, taking in the new information. The other medical staff nearby were the same.
Looking at the form of address, it seemed they weren’t blood relatives after all. Yet he’d paid the hospital fees on his behalf, which seemed all the more meaningful. The sound of keyboards being mechanically tapped while pretending not to notice the patient overlapped from several places.
“…”
Whether he knew this atmosphere or not, the person in question kept his mouth quietly shut while receiving information from medication instructions to outpatient appointment schedules.
At first glance, his appearance brought to mind a puppy. His long, beautifully lined eyes drooped slightly downward, and with the addition of thin double eyelids, created a comfortable and gentle atmosphere.
The hair that had grown long from being neglected during his extended hospitalization didn’t look messy at all, only calm. The InBody exam measured his height at 175cm, but his thin, long legs made him appear taller.
With his handsome appearance and complete harmlessness that showed no aggression whatsoever, it was a face one could guess would have received quite a bit of favor from girls his age. On top of that, he still had a teenage air about him that made him look young, so just standing still and listening attentively drew one’s gaze.
When the instructions were finished, his quietly closed mouth moved.
“Ahjussi told me to come to the front of the CT room. How do I get there?”
It was a form of address that felt off even hearing it again. Excluding the common denominator of being from surgery, the vice director had no connection point, so to the low-year nurses he was no different from a complete stranger.
The only time the vice director’s existence became a topic of conversation among them was when discussing his extraordinary appearance. Even that was mostly through interview photos published in articles rather than actually seeing him.
His presence that had been there yet not there had been recalled who knows how many times recently. But thinking that it would end today, the day when the vice director first appeared in the surgical ward flashed through the nurse in charge’s mind like a revolving lantern.
“The CT room is on the first floor. Exit our ward entrance, turn the corner, and keep going and there’s an elevator for outpatients. Take that down and you’ll see it right away. It’s the same way you went to get X-rays last time.”
“…”
“Do you know where it is?”
“No.”
The nurse who nodded guided him to the end of the ward corridor. When the door opened automatically, a corner in the distance came into view. After explaining the route and turning around, the visitation guidance rules written at the ward entrance caught her eye.
Looking back, the center of attention was only the vice director, while the patient himself had spent the entire hospitalization period quietly, there yet not there. Excluding the vice director, there was no one else who came to visit.
He had no belongings either, so he had nothing but the prescription medication. Seeing this, the nurse’s mouth twitched. Even though there were no more things to convey, her heart went out to him somehow, and she carefully asked.
“Isn’t any family coming to pick you up?”
Then the gaze that had been looking into the distance turned toward the nurse. The pupils within the downward-slanting eyes seemed both deep and vacant. It was clearly a gentle impression, yet somehow his eyes were unreadable.
“Ahjussi said he’d take me.”
“Ah, I see…”
“I didn’t know either, but he says we’re family.”
“Yes. I see, yes?”
His voice was so calm without any change in pitch that she thought it was just idle talk passing by. His nonchalant face also played a part, not matching the sudden statement.
Whether the other party was surprised or not, his right hand slowly caressing the medicine bag was wrapped in a thin bandage. Between the passing fingers, the three characters written as ‘Song Seonwoo’ were visible.
