Chapter 18: Obstetrics and Gynecology Practicum [3]
Chapter 18: Obstetrics and Gynecology Practicum [3]
Wow...
Fuck.
These fucking bastards.
“They’re all pretty similar, huh?”
“I guess our hospital really is the best after all.”
Since Alfred and Joseph were both idiots who knew nothing, they were mumbling nonsense like that.
I wanted to do the same, but there was no way I could.
No one washes their hands?
Most of them were actually proud of not washing their hands.
Maybe they all really thought that way, but if I let myself believe that, it would have been too miserable, so for now I decided not to.
Clatter-clatter—
Anyway, the carriage was now heading back to the house.
My senior and Joseph had been chatting the whole time.
“Our hospital really is the greatest!”
“No wonder Robert Liston is at our hospital!”
You bastards.
Do you have any idea how many people die every day at that so-called great hospital?
“Ah...”
“Why?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I did not know either.
Yes, it was true... I still did not really know what was happening in this place.
That was partly because I had not wanted to know.
But if I wanted to change something, it felt like I had to know.
Even if that meant I would suffer for it.
Still...
I had to know.
Fuck.
Tomorrow. I’ll start tomorrow.
Put it off as long as I could.
Having made up my mind like that, I first took my senior to the kitchen.
The stress had built up, and I needed to relieve it somehow.
As soon as I thought that, I started cursing.
“It’s healed.”
“Hm? Really? Wow... that’s a huge relief.”
No matter how stressed I was, I could not exactly cut into a hand that had already recovered.
If it was fully healed, then I ought to suture it, but that filled me with worry too.
First of all, the needle...
Would this even be clean...? If I suture it and it rots again, then what?
The same went for the thread.
As if there would be sterile thread.
I would have to boil it before using it...
After going through hell to carve out all the rotten flesh, I could not very well do something like that again.
But I also could not just leave it open.
“Hmm... this... hmm.”
I had to immobilize it.
And block anything else from getting in.
If I did that, it felt like one or two stitches would be needed.
“For now... boil some water.”
“Yes. It’s already boiling.”
“I’ll boil the alcohol too.”
“Yes.”
I did not warn him in advance.
He looked like he might run if I did.
Instead, I used Joseph, the friend who understood me just from a look, to pin my senior down first.
“W-wait?”
“Just stay still for now. This is the last time.”
“But why aren’t you holding a knife and fork... why are you holding something weird... something weird?”
Something weird.
Yes, that was true.
It was weird.
Sorry... Senior.
What else could I do?
There was no proper suture thread even if I wanted to die looking for one.
Instead, there was a sewing needle and thread.
I had been carrying them around because I thought I might need them someday, and today was that day.
Bubble, bubble.
Once the water started boiling, I dropped in the needle and thread.
Then I cleaned my hands with distilled alcohol and poured some over the wound.
“Hmm.”
Before, he had screamed like he was dying.
Now, maybe he had built up a tolerance, or maybe the alcohol’s toxicity had damaged his nerves, because he only looked like he was enduring it.
It was probably the latter.
Pain did not work like immunity.
If anything, when the body stopped reacting to a certain level of pain, it tended to raise the threshold instead.
That was why doctors had little hesitation about taking painkillers.
Anyway.
Right... maybe this won’t hurt that much either?
I scrubbed my hands with alcohol that had to be over 70 percent, unbelievably strong stuff, then examined the wound.
It definitely seemed ready to be stitched now.
Whatever bacteria had been on the corpse, they were dead now.
Definitely dead.
“All right, then... I’m going to stitch this.”
“Hm? After heating it up like that?”
“It cools quickly. And besides, this is how it has to be done.”
“What are you talking about? Everyone just stitches things up as they are.”
And that was why they died...
The ones who survived were simply incredibly strong people...
If things kept going without progress for a few more centuries, maybe humanity might even become the strongest land animal in the world.
Because only the strong would survive.
“Mmgh.”
Anyway, I drove the cleaned needle through my senior’s flesh.
The needle should have gone in with a neat pop, but...
“Ughhh...”
“Why is this happening?”
“Maybe... maybe we should ask Robert Liston...”
“Just stay still. Don’t move.”
“As if I can stay still. It hurts! It hurts!”
It was not going well.
Is it normally like this?
How was I supposed to know?
This was my first time sewing up human flesh with a needle like this.
Wow... I really was a greenhouse flower.
From the very beginning, I had only ever operated with prepared instruments, had I not?
This kind of thing too would build experience.
No... no!
I knew full well there was no need for me to experience this.
Anyway, while thinking such nonsense, I finally forced the needle through the flesh on the other side and pulled it out.
My senior, who had endured every imaginable torture—no, procedure—up until now, was drenched in cold sweat.
Only then was I able to check the tip of the needle.
I didn’t pierce it... I tore it.
The tip of the needle simply was not sharp enough.
It could go through cloth, but for flesh, it was too blunt.
Damn it.
I still had two more stitches to place.
I turned to my senior with an apologetic expression.
Next time I’ll sharpen this... make it sharper.
I’d do that next time.
This time, let’s just finish it.
Since I had already started stitching... I might as well see it through.
“Ugh...”
“Pyeong. Is this really okay?”
My senior looked practically on the verge of fainting.
Joseph looked at me anxiously, but I ignored him.
“It has to be done now. It’ll hurt less.”
“Hurt less? I feel like I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying. I’m saving you.”
“Mmm.”
Since I was being so firm, Joseph helped without much thought and pressed my senior down harder.
“Y-you bastards.”
I think my senior cursed at us again, but I decided not to hear it.
Crunch.
Anyway, I pierced my senior’s flesh again and again.
Because the needle was straight, proper suturing was no easy matter, but surgical-professor experience did not disappear just because the tools were awful, so I still managed something I found reasonably satisfactory.
“Is it really okay for the flesh to turn upward like this?”
Watching it, Joseph said something that made my insides churn.
You idiot...
The flesh was supposed to rise slightly when you stitched it.
Otherwise it would not join properly.
“Hey... maybe we really should ask Robert Liston...”
My senior was the same.
Well, if you only looked right after stitching, Robert Liston’s results probably did look prettier.
He simply stitched human flesh the way people sewed cloth.
But that was not how it should be done.
In fact, Robert Liston or whoever the hell he thought he was left wounds gaping wide open.
If it only worked because it was a leg and there was enough extra flesh to spare, that was one thing. If it had been the abdomen, they all would have died just from that alone.
“It’ll heal fine like this. I told you, didn’t I? This is how we do it in Joseon.”
“But... I heard Joseon is some kind of hermit kingdom.”
“Who said that?”
“My father.”
Your father?
Ah, our patron?
If it came from him, then I could not exactly act too proud.
And in the early nineteenth century, it probably really was called that.
“That part may be true. But anyway, our medical arts are quite good.”
With that, I abruptly shifted gears and started rationalizing what I was saying.
Before.
That was, before I died once.
Back then, my evaluation of our country’s traditional medicine had been extremely harsh.
But after coming here... at least at this point in time, Korean medicine was better.
I had not gone to see it myself, but I was sure.
It was hard to imagine anything worse than this.
“Mmm.”
“See? You lived, didn’t you, Senior? Normally, you’d have died.”
“How can you say that when I’m sitting here wide awake...”
“Whether you like it or not, it’s true.”
“That... that is true. And you do seem to show some fairly impressive medical insight from time to time.”
Not seem.
I simply had it.
It might sound arrogant, but I was the best doctor in the world.
At this point in time, no one could even compare.
“So please listen to me.”
“All right, well... I will.”
He should have considered it an honor just to be talking to me.
But my senior was nodding with a strangely dubious expression.
Bastard.
Just wait.
Once I really became a doctor... my name would shake the world as a famous physician.
Ah... I’ll be working at Senior’s hospital.
I’ll do well for you, Senior.
“Where’s the pregnant woman?”
While I was thinking that, I heard a noisy commotion outside.
Then someone started asking for the pregnant woman.
The pregnant woman?
Surely not...
Senior’s mother?
Come to think of it, I had never seen Senior’s mother even once.
Was it because she was pregnant?
Though they did not seem like the kind of people to have even that level of hygiene awareness.
While I was thinking nonsense like that and staring fixedly at my senior, he gave me a bitter smile.
“My mother passed away.”
I pulled a complete Talulah without even meaning to.
I had not even said anything, so it felt a little unfair, but still.
No matter the era, if you made someone think of their dead mother, you apologized.
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. She died giving birth to me... so I barely remember her.”
“Even so.”
“Anyway... one of our maids is pregnant, and it looks like the baby’s coming.”
I gave him a full bow of apology.
My senior accepted it more coolly than I expected, then looked outside.
An older woman in neatly arranged white clothes and a middle-aged man dressed in gentleman’s wear had come inside.
Just as the butler began leading them somewhere, a thought flashed through my mind.
Wait... isn’t this just another death about to happen?
The man and woman were walking along with genial smiles, and they looked pleasant enough.
But to my eyes, they were nothing more than two murderers.
I had already received all kinds of help from this family, and I planned to keep piling up more debts in the future, so would it not be best to make them owe me one in advance?
They would certainly be easier to deal with than hospital staff.
My lies had worked so well that this household thought I was something like a Joseon nobleman.
In this life I might not have been, but in my past life I had definitely been a commoner low enough to need to buy a family registry, so it stung a little.
But what mattered in front of saving a life?
“Senior.”
“Hm?”
“We had obstetrics practicum too, so let’s go there as well.”
“Uh...?”
“Ah, hmm. Shall we? But that woman there... hmm. She looks like a midwife.”
You bastard...
What did it matter whether she was a midwife or not?
Did you think you people were real doctors?
What kind of ridiculous thing was that to say?
I wanted to curse at him, but I held it back.
Hah.
It was exhausting.
“Yes, well... in Joseon, we have a saying: T'asanjiseok.”
“T'asanjiseok?”
“It means that even a stone from another mountain can be of help to me... in other words, even another person’s mistakes can be useful.”
“That makes sense.”
“Exactly. So let’s go and have a look.”
“All right, then. Let’s go see.”