Cesarean Section (2)
Clip-clop, clip-clop.
The very cobblestone road I had traversed for a lavish party not long ago, I was now traveling once more for a house call.
Liston's carriage was certainly high-end, but naturally, it couldn't hold a candle to Duke Jamie's. Such classic, inherited elegance was simply beyond the reach of a parvenu surgeon who had amassed his fortune in a few short years by lopping off other people's limbs. Not that this carriage was entirely without flaw, mind you.
Faint traces of green powder clung here and there to the carriage's molding. Apparently, Duke Jamie had slathered this carriage in arsenic-laced pigment as well.
"If we hadn't run that experiment back then, we would have breathed our last right here," Liston remarked.
There was no chance he would miss what had caught my eye. He reached down and picked up a tiny green wooden splinter from the floor.
"Indeed."
"Good heavens. To think one could perish in such a horrific manner."
Liston's shudder sent chills down my own spine as well. It brought back memories of those who had been executed by arsenic—a slow, agonizing demise so starkly different from hanging. The sight itself had been sickening, but what unsettled me far more was the public reaction that followed.
"The victims' families were positively thrilled. Why not continue using arsenic for capital punishment?"
"Ah, they were overjoyed, weren't they? Haha."
Admittedly, one could see why the bereaved families rejoiced. Hanging was, after all, practically instantaneous. By contrast, consider the torment the victims had endured—prolonged, horrific agony. Taking that into account, one might argue the more wretched an execution, the better. Even so...
There's just no way I can put my faith in the forensic science of this era.
Could anyone guarantee there wasn't a single wrongly convicted soul on death row? The instant that doubt surfaced, a cold knot of anxiety twisted in my stomach. Good grief, even in late twentieth-century South Korea, such horrors weren't unheard of. Back then, detectives still beat innocent suspects half to death to manufacture false confessions. Would Victorian London be any better?
"Ugh."
A smell shattered my reverie. Actually, "smell" was far too polite a word. A foul, gut-wrenching stench rattled my very cranium.
"I heard they decided to stick with hanging because arsenic proved too costly," Liston muttered. "Naturally, the Crown has no budget to squander on condemned wretches—not when they claim they haven't even the funds for that bloody sewer construction."
"Paris is building theirs, though..." I muttered. "Doesn't it feel less like we're keeping pace and more like they're leaving us in the dust?"
"It can't be helped. Ignorant fools babble on about how you laid a curse upon Paris, praising you as a true 'Honorary Briton,' but..."
"Is that rumor still circulating?"
"Still circulating? The high nobility has caught wind of it now. You might even receive a medal for it."
"Good grief..."
These absolute lunatics... Wasn't this supposed to be the Age of Science? The dawn of modernity? How in God's name did a shamanic curse fit into that equation? And even if I had hexed Paris, awarding a medal over the deaths of French civilians was sheer madness.
"Had you been a white man, you would have received it without question. A pity," Liston added.
"I... I have no desire for such an absurd medal, thank you very much. But is the sewer project truly scrapped?"
"Ah... as far as I understand, yes. Though, well... this isn't quite the place to discuss such matters."
Liston glanced warily around. London was bustling as ever, and pedestrians crowded the streets, yet not a single soul dared cast a sideways glance at our carriage. Its gilded exterior practically bellowed: A high-ranking peer or someone of equal stature rides within! Mind you, walking on foot wouldn't have been much different; who in their right mind would dare look Liston in the eye a second time? At best, a passerby might gawk in terrified disbelief, and even then, only for a fraction of a second before scrambling away.
"Come now, just tell me. Who could possibly overhear?"
"There is the coachman."
"The coachman? With all that racket outside? I can barely hear you myself, Brother Liston."
"Is that so? Well, then..."
If nineteenth-century folk had any physical advantage over people of the twenty-first century, it was probably their hearing. Earbuds didn't exist here, after all. Still, I was barely in my late teens, while the coachman looked fifty at the very least. Granted, life expectancy made age deceptive in this era, but with a weathered face like that, he certainly wasn't a youth. Whether Liston shared my reasoning or not, he leaned in and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"There is talk that the British Empire is preparing for war."
"Pardon? A war?"
"Hush! Keep your voice down."
"Right, right. But... against whom, exactly?"
The year was 1830. Was there a European war around this time? I recalled the historical term "Pax Britannica"—a supposed century of peace lasting until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Of course, that didn't mean these proud European imperialists had abstained from war entirely. The Crimean War, which was practically legendary among medical students thanks to Florence Nightingale's exploits, took place in the 1850s. But outside of that, what else was there?
"The Qing Empire. In your homeland's direction."
"The Qing... Ah."
Qing China...
Then again, did Europeans of this era ever treat inhabitants of other continents as full human beings? True, some treated East Asians with a grudging semblance of respect as civilized people, but that only meant they were treated marginally better than Black people; it certainly didn't mean equality. Even in my case, they brandished absurd titles like "Honorary White" or "Honorary Briton."
Opium...
Since opium was virtually ubiquitous in this era, the Opium Wars immediately dominated my thoughts. Those bastards. Wielding narcotics as a weapon to dismantle an entire nation—were they demonic?
Wait... or are they?
What muddied the waters was that opium was routinely prescribed as medicine. People gulped down laudanum almost like juice, and morphine was handed out like candy. I wasn't one to throw around words like "candy" lightly; the sheer recklessness of Victorian pharmacology was terrifying.
Did they genuinely hawk it believing it was merely good medicine...?
Who knew? How could I fathom the imperial machinations of the British Empire? Even if I did, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. What influence could a humble surgeon like me wield over global geopolitics?
"I heard this second-hand as well, but your name came up," Liston continued.
"Excuse me?"
Why on earth would my name come up?
"Is it not common knowledge that you have a fondness for opium?"
"Wait, that's a complete misunderstanding!"
"Why be embarrassed? You indulge in opium yet function perfectly well in high society. At any rate, it seems you aren't an isolated case."
"Pardon?"
"It appears Asians have an extraordinary affinity for opium. There are opium dens and the like, after all. Granted, plenty among our own populace fancy opium, but they are predominantly from the lower classes, are they not?"
Modern medicine held various theories regarding drug addiction. Few substances exerted such devastating influence on the individual and society as narcotics. Because that impact was almost exclusively catastrophic, modern science had researched addiction exhaustively. One prominent theory suggested that an individual who derived ample happiness from other avenues—family, friends, romance, social prestige, or material wealth—was far less prone to addiction even when exposed to the same drug. And looking at Victorian reality, that made perfect sense. The hardships borne by London's lower class were beyond ordinary imagination. Some factories even worked their laborers to the bone and handed out narcotics whenever someone was mangled by the machinery.
"Indeed," I murmured.
"And then you arrived on the scene," Liston said.
"Wait, why drag me into this?"
"By any standard, you are an intellectual. Do not take offense; those aren't my words, but the consensus of high society. To their eyes, you are not merely clever 'for an Asian'—you are exceptionally brilliant, period. You have earned the patronage of Duke Jamie and Sir Damien, not to mention the deep favor of Her Royal Highness the Princess. That alone speaks volumes."
"What does my intellect have to do with anything...?"
"They wondered whether educated, affluent Asians might also harbor a ravenous appetite for opium. So they tested the waters on that demographic—and discovered, sure enough, that they went utterly mad for it."
"Good heavens..."
Bloody hell. Did my existence inadvertently validate their colonial narcotics market research?!
"There may very well be war with the Qing soon," Liston said. "According to what you mentioned before, Joseon and Qing do not share particularly cordial relations, do they? If they were allies, I might have attempted to put in a word on your behalf—though I cannot say how much weight my voice would carry."
"Well..."
I stared at Liston for a moment. He looked terrifying. By all rights, I should have grown accustomed to his mug by now, but he still looked like an absolute ogre. Yet London's politicians and nobility, true tea-swilling imperialists that they were, possessed the sheer audacity not to flinch even before a visage like his. Besides, the Opium Wars had effectively been brewing since the eighteenth century. Would they halt an imperial trade war just because some surgeon told them to stop?
Besides, whether the Qing falls flat on its face has little bearing on Joseon... right?
And Joseon. My homeland, my ancestral country. Looking back, it was the country that had stolen three precious years of mandatory military service from a life already cut short by terminal cancer, yet my chest still twinged with a faint ache whenever I thought of it. At the end of the day, I was still a Korean who craved a patriotic swell of pride. But was I patriotic enough to run off and become a freedom fighter? Absolutely not. Did my brain spin with political revolution? Not in the slightest. Above all, Joseon around this time was likely rotting from the inside out anyway. King Sunjo... the Andong Kim clan's sedo politics...
"No, why bother?" I replied.
"Well, that is a relief. Truth be told, would they even listen to me? They won't even build a sewer. Still, if we triumph over there and the Crown lines its coffers, who knows what may come of it."
"That's a silver lining, at least."
"Indeed. Ah, it seems we have arrived."
When there is nothing you can do, sitting back and observing is a valid strategy. After all, Eugene Kim from Black-Haired U.S. Generalissimo was an utter monster of a protagonist; there was no way I could pull off geopolitical acrobatics like that. At any rate, the rationalization worked wonders.
Splendid, my conscience was clear!
"You have arrived. Please, right this way."
I followed Liston inside. Passing through a manicured garden into the estate, I noticed walls marred by patchy remnants where emerald green wallpaper had been hastily stripped away. In all likelihood, they had torn it down in sheer panic. After watching those hulking, sinister-looking convicts drop dead before their very eyes, could anyone bear to keep that wallpaper up?
A blessing in disguise. Imagine giving birth in a room like that...
The infant, the mother, the midwife—they all would have perished.
"There's Blundell," Liston pointed out.
Counting our blessings, we followed the butler into the bedchamber, where Blundell—the very man who had summoned me here—was already waiting. I bore no grudge against him. In fact, attempting a Cesarean Section solo and butchering the patient would have been the real disaster; calling for assistance before causing a catastrophe was conduct worthy of praise.
"Ah, you're here! Thank heavens."
"What is the situation? Is it bad?"
"Ngh... ahhh..."
Glancing at the patient, who writhed in continuous, agonized moaning, I directed my question to Blundell. He was an obstetrician, after all; having been here for some time, he should have formed a clinical assessment.
"Well, I haven't the faintest idea," Blundell replied with brazen honesty.
Noticing my souring expression, however, he hurriedly scrambled to qualify his assessment.
"Ahem. She is in pain. But then, all laboring women are in pain. That is typical, yes?"
"Yes. And?"
"However, she has been in pain for far too long. That is concerning. Some deliver quite swiftly, you see."
"And...?"
"I cannot tell whether the head is presenting upward or downward. Even upon palpation, I simply can't tell."
"Mmm."
In essence, he had merely taken a very long walk to say, 'I know nothing.'
Christ almighty, bloody hell.
Muttering a profanity while invoking the Lord, I stepped toward the patient. Thank goodness my memories of modern Cesarean sections had resurfaced during our prior surgery. If this call had come yesterday... I didn't even want to imagine it.