Then the front of the slipper scraped the floor as it slid. It was because Seonwoo, who’d been walking with long strides, suddenly stopped.
The lobby was dim and silent. All the lights on the high ceiling were off, and only faint emergency lights were dimly illuminating the surroundings. Dozens of chairs that were usually crowded with people were completely empty.
The place Seonwoo’s gaze was directed at was a sofa a bit more in the corner than that. It was in front of the outpatient elevators.
The instrument panel number was stopped in one place. The unmoving number glowed red, subtly coloring the surroundings. But the light didn’t reach in front of the sofa as if a boundary line had been drawn.
So because the surroundings were too dark, and because he happened to always wear clothes like shadows, Seonwoo had almost missed it and passed by.
Discovering the back figure leaning against the sofa was purely by chance. There was no other explanation.
“What are you doing here?”
His expression and voice looking down while standing in front of the sofa were no different from usual, but the unconcealed anxiety seeped from his hands that kept clenching and unclenching.
“Hey.”
Even when he spoke again, the large body didn’t move at all. His head was deeply lowered so his face couldn’t be seen. His entire face was hidden beneath hair that hung down limply like wet seaweed.
Seonwoo’s gaze slowly moved downward. Bandages were wrapped around the arm and shoulder fixed in place against his chest. Since he’d swung a golf club so brutishly, his bones couldn’t be fine. Then shouldn’t he be in the emergency room or moved to a patient room? Taejeong was left abandoned with only bandages wrapped on him without even an IV connected to his body.
Even to Seonwoo’s eyes, who had no medical knowledge whatsoever, he could tell this wasn’t normal. Seonwoo stopped while trying to return to the emergency room to request help. It was because he recalled the nurse’s words that there wasn’t even a record in the system.
“……”
Seonwoo now saw the situation. There had been no intention to treat him properly from the start.
Where had the Vice Director gone? What was Taejeong’s condition? What could he do right now? Seonwoo felt like dozens of branches were tangled in his mind, shaking his skull.
Seonwoo bit down hard on the swollen wound inside his cheek, then took a long deep breath. Then he reached out both hands toward the motionless body. Careful hands lifted the drooping head. He wondered if he’d fainted, but the moment the head faced upward, he met eyes with pitch-black pupils.
Taejeong was not normal. He was more precarious than any time Seonwoo had seen him.
His unfocused eyes were murky, and the whites were dyed red from burst blood vessels. His lips were so torn up that they were a mess with scabs on them. His pale skin looked not just pallid but ghastly blue. Seonwoo silently swallowed dry air.
“Listen carefully to what I say from now on.”
He held Taejeong’s face with both hands. A slight tremor occurred in his right hand where a large scar was located.
“I’m going to take responsibility and fix you. From now on, only think about that. Don’t think about anything else. Got it?”
It also seemed like words he was saying to himself.
“Answer if you understand.”
“……”
Taejeong had no reaction. He couldn’t tell for sure whether the unfocused pupils even properly recognized Seonwoo. Seonwoo put force into the hands holding his cheeks and forcibly made him nod.
“Get up.”
When he grabbed his arm and forcibly raised him, the body that couldn’t keep its balance leaned against Seonwoo. When the distance closed, Seonwoo’s wet clothes stuck and moisture transferred to Taejeong as well. The drooping body was too heavy, so Seonwoo staggered several times. He gritted his teeth and endured with mental strength, fearing they might both roll on the floor in a ridiculous scene.
The time heading from the lobby to the hospital entrance felt much longer than the time he’d run through the downpour to the hospital. Seonwoo himself couldn’t believe how he was moving this heavy body.
When he exited the hospital entrance, taxis were lined up in a nearby area. Seonwoo headed toward any taxi in sight. And at the same time as opening the back seat door, he spoke.
“Please go to another emergency room. Anywhere is fine, so please hurry.”
Even after Taejeong slowly got into the back seat so his body wouldn’t bump into anything, the taxi didn’t depart. When Seonwoo looked forward, the driver was looking back while holding the steering wheel.
“Wait, why? They won’t treat you here?”
“Yes. Please hurry.”
“Are there that many people? Then it’ll be the same even if you go to another hospital, you know? Look, because it’s raining like this……”
The driver reacted unenthusiastically and the taxi showed no signs of departing. Seonwoo, whose patience had run out long before arriving at the emergency room, eventually raised his voice.
“Hurry up and go!”
***
There were no voices exchanging words inside the taxi. As if to replace that, the sound of raindrops heavily pouring on the ceiling and hitting the windows mixed chaotically, and the sound of rain heard from all directions didn’t cease.
“……”
Seonwoo, looking like a drowned mouse, only stared forward. The heavy body leaning on his left shoulder didn’t even move. It had been like that for a while. Even when he tapped the back of the hand with his fingertips, there was no reaction.
Once the body put weight on him, it didn’t return to its original position. But Seonwoo neither pushed Taejeong away nor repositioned him. Instead, he silently held his wrist. It didn’t all fit in one hand, so his thumb and middle finger were far apart.
Seonwoo had never thought his hands were on the small side until now. But Taejeong’s wrist was so thick that when held with one hand, a large empty space remained. The skin touching his palm was colder than rain-soaked Seonwoo. The wet skin slipped, so from some point on, Seonwoo had been putting full strength into his grip.
Even after arriving at another hospital, Taejeong didn’t regain consciousness. It was burdensome for Seonwoo alone to get the limp body out of the taxi. In the end, he received the taxi driver’s help and moved him to the emergency room.
“Which hospital did you come from?”
“I don’t know. It was so hectic……”
When the nurse who confirmed the bandage wrapped around Taejeong’s shoulder asked, Seonwoo made an excuse that there were many people at the previous hospital so they only received emergency treatment.
“Do you know the guardian’s contact information?”
“No.”
“Then do you have the patient’s ID or phone?”
“Neither. We came in a hurry.”
Besides that, he consistently pleaded ignorance to the nurse’s continued questions. Whether unfortunate or fortunate, it sounded sincere because of his drenched appearance.
“It might be difficult to proceed without a guardian.”
“Then I’ll be the guardian.”
“It’s difficult if you’re not family. Once the doctor comes, they’ll check the condition and probably start with an X-ray examination. If the patient is a legal adult, surgery is possible after their consent, but since they’re unconscious now, you’ll have to wait until the doctor checks. For now, please go to that desk over there and register first. Among the things they ask, you can just answer what you know.”
A lot of information rushed into his head in an instant. Seonwoo consciously nodded his head a couple of times to not miss a single thing the nurse said.
But when Seonwoo headed to the desk, there was nothing he could answer properly. He had clearly seen the contact information and birthday with his eyes, but they just passed through his head without being stored, so what Seonwoo could say was only the same birth year as himself and Taejeong’s name.
Because of that, patient registration paused for a moment and they waited for the doctor to appear. After a while, the doctor who entered the emergency room checked his condition and then sent Taejeong to the examination room, saying treatment was priority.
“Guardian, please wait here for a moment.”
After Taejeong left, the spot next to the empty bed was Seonwoo’s place. When he sat in the chair, his whole body suddenly felt heavy. He didn’t know if it was because he ran around barefoot in the pouring rain or if it came from the helplessness he had forgotten while moving desperately.
He had boldly volunteered as a guardian, but there was nothing Seonwoo could do. The sensation in his entire body was hazy. The urgently operating emergency room interior didn’t enter his eyes. He just stared fixedly at the door where Taejeong had disappeared.
“Guardian of patient Ju Taejeong.”
Seonwoo’s name wasn’t in those words. But Seonwoo turned his head sharply as if his name had been called.
