Chapter 39: I Made the Newspaper [4]
Chapter 39: I Made the Newspaper [4]
“Extra, extra!”
It was an ordinary morning, no different from usual.
The gloomy weather and the wretched air greeted me.
“They say anesthesia succeeded at London College!”
Morning?
British food, that’s what it was. British food.
Even twenty-first-century British food was bad, so what do you think it was like back then?
It truly tasted like the kind of thing that made you want to shove kimchi into your mouth.
This was not nationalistic bias. I genuinely did not understand why people ate this stuff.
“They say surgery might not hurt anymore!”
If there was one thing I liked, it was the carriage.
Thanks to the old man’s consideration, we were able to ride in a high-class carriage as soon as we left the manor.
Granted, it still rattled and the ride quality was poor.
But not having to walk these filthy streets on foot—especially when most people had no choice but to walk—was a kind of privilege.
“A new world has opened!”
As we rode along, children who could only be called children ran through the streets with newspapers in their hands.
It was surprising enough that kids that age were working, and even more surprising that there were already newspapers.
In any case, we usually bought one on the way.
Or rather, Alfred did.
“Ah, you see, if I fail to become a doctor, I’ll have to inherit the family business first.”
He always gave that excuse, probably because the other medical students had said things like, Do you really have time to care about other things when you should be studying?
A doctor ought to know how the world works. Besides, medicine is a kind of comprehensive science, so it’s heavily influenced by other fields….
That was the sort of thing only ignorant bastards said.
I had gone through a phase like that too.
The phase where, for some reason, it felt like I knew the most.
Of course, that period had not lasted long.
Twenty-first-century medicine—modern medicine—had advanced like mad, so it only took a little studying before you felt in your bones that you were a nobody.
There isn’t enough knowledge here for grain to ripen.
But what about the nineteenth century?
Even Doctor Robert himself lacked knowledge, so what could be expected of the students…?
“Hey! You’re in here! Your name is too!”
“Hm? Me? Ah, the reporters from yesterday.”
Anyway, while I was thinking all this, Alfred showed me the newspaper.
Calling it a newspaper was generous. It was only one side of a sheet of paper.
This was not an age when all kinds of things happened every day the way they did in modern society, so that was enough.
Sometimes even a single sheet felt excessive, and once something made the news, people might talk about it for days.
But for me to appear in it….
“It’s true….”
“They wrote it really well. Of course Doctor Liston is described as London’s greatest physician, but you’re also written up as the promising genius medical student being trained by that great physician. It even says you’ll soon become a doctor. You really must be about to become one.”
“Oh….”
It was something I should have been happy about.
And I definitely was, but at the same time, it also felt a little burdensome.
It would have been better if this were Korea, or if I were white.
But it was neither, was it?
I could get… attacked, maybe?
Doctor Robert Liston would probably shield me with his body, but still.
“Wow! That’s amazing!”
“My junior is already becoming a doctor. Well, you did save me too. Maybe it’s only natural.”
Unlike Joseph and Alfred, who were delighted without a care, I could not simply rejoice.
Of course, the carriage was extremely luxurious, and not many people were bold enough to peer inside, so our group reached the school without much trouble.
“Wow! A genius!”
“So you’re that famous Pyeong.”
“That Oriental fellow’s impressive. Is he white on the inside?”
No one openly attacked me.
Now and then there were comments so blatantly racist that I wondered what kind of nonsense they were, but considering the era—and considering this was Britain—it was bearable enough.
“That bastard…. I’m the one who had my tooth pulled. He’s the one stealing all the credit….”
Ah, so there was some hostility after all.
Colin.
The bastard I had beaten up, and whose tooth had been pulled, was glaring at me.
But it was not much use.
“Hahaha! Pyeong!”
Because Robert Liston’s huge body appeared and blocked the space between Colin and me.
“Urk.”
He grabbed me with one massive hand and lifted me right up.
He had a newspaper in the other hand, which meant he had practically lifted me with one hand alone.
That was not especially surprising.
If a man like him could not lift someone like me, who weighed not even sixty kilos, that would have been stranger.
“You saw the article, didn’t you? I knew it was the right idea to visit them. Look here—it says Pyeong is well versed in anatomy. Hahahaha. They wrote something odd, so I corrected it for them.”
“Th-thank you.”
Doctor Liston was not the only one who had come running over.
There was also someone I had never seen before, though thanks to Alfred I knew who it was.
“D-director!”
“Haha. No need to greet me like that. Oh, so you’re Pyeong!”
“Ah, yes. Hello.”
“Congratulations, congratulations! You and Professor Robert have really accomplished something tremendous!”
“Th-thank you.”
“What do you mean, thank me? Look at this!”
The director laughed heartily and held out a sheet of paper.
Professor Robert’s face did not brighten much at the sight of it, but the director completely ignored that.
In any case, the paper was filled with neat handwriting.
Looking more closely, I saw that they were names.
Some even had dates written beside them, and the closest date was tomorrow.
“This is…?”
“These are people hoping for surgery! Now that anesthesia is possible, everyone from the other hospitals is coming here!”
“Ah….”
These were all people hoping for surgery…?
There had to be at least hundreds of them.
The problem was that more than ten had already been scheduled for a single day.
No, that was not the only problem.
You could just as well call this not a surgical waiting list, but a suicide waiting list….
Surgery was certain to advance now.
As actual history had proven, with the discovery of anesthesia, surgery would indeed develop at an incredible speed.
But this was not it.
What surgery could actually be done right now besides amputation?
So put differently, this meant London was about to gain hundreds more people without arms or legs.
The problem was that even this was an optimistic hope.
It was unclear whether the number increasing would be patients or corpses.
The fortunate thing was that Doctor Robert seemed to be thinking something very similar.
“Isn’t this all a bit too hasty?”
He spoke to the director with a grave expression.
Normally, when Doctor Robert spoke like that, anyone would have backed down, but the director was not in his right mind.
“Too hasty? When there are patients, a doctor runs to them.”
“No….”
His eyes were not normal.
I did not know how much they were charging for surgery, but surely it was not cheap.
And if it was the surgery of the first doctor in the world to succeed with anesthesia, then it was certain to be expensive.
What is this, some kind of coin pump-and-dump? He’s trying to make a fortune off surgery….
His eyes were completely intoxicated.
What was I supposed to do with this?
“In any case, get ready. You’ll have to serve as assistant too.”
If it were just Doctor Robert, that would be one thing, but now it looked like I was about to be swept along with him too.
As I stood there making a troubled face, Robert stepped in.
“Let’s discuss it later. What kind of spectacle is this in front of the students?”
“A spectacle? We’re discussing the advancement of medicine!”
“And in order to advance it, we need to teach, so step back for now.”
Their voices were rising more and more.
The moment that tension crossed a certain threshold, the director seemed to return to reality.
From beside them, I could feel him finally taking in Robert’s ugly face hanging at a height that made eye contact difficult, his thick neck, and those forearms that looked capable of delivering not anesthesia but death in a single blow.
“R-right. We’ll talk later. In any case, this is a good thing, isn’t it? Now we can cut off arms and legs without pain!”
“I said I understand, so leave.”
“All right.”
The director withdrew as though being chased off, and as Doctor Robert watched him go, he let out a long sigh.
“What a mess.”
He looked thoroughly unhappy.
That was a relief.
If even this man had come over here raving too, I would have had no way out.
It would have meant being dragged along to cut off other people’s arms and legs.
And since Doctor Robert’s blade would almost certainly have gained experience quickly at that rate, the later a patient came in, the likelier it would be that not only their limbs but also their life would be cut away.
“Ha….”
The thought made a sigh slip out of me as well.
Unlike the doctor’s, mine was a sigh of relief, but as everyone knew, he was not exactly a delicate man.
He merely assumed I felt the same as he did.
“This really is… well, it’s not as if the director’s reaction is entirely unreasonable, but….”
Doctor Robert looked at me, then at the rest of the group.
“This is no time for that. Let’s head to the Anatomy Lab first.”
“Ah, yes.”
Since he had driven off the director under the pretext of teaching, he had to teach now, didn’t he?
Apparently he did not feel like standing in front of a chalkboard, because he herded everyone straight into the Anatomy Lab.
It was a wise decision.
The cadavers that had come in yesterday had to be examined before they rotted any further.
Besides, hadn’t we only looked at the arm yesterday?
We needed to see the rest too.
“Pyeong, sit in front of me.”
“Yes.”
Naturally, I sat with the doctor.
As soon as he picked up the knife, he put dissection aside and opened his mouth first.
He seemed more worried than anything else.
Which made sense.
No matter how much of a thug he might have seemed, the other party was still the director.
No, that was wrong. This man was not a thug. He was a doctor.
“At this rate, it looks like we’ll end up cutting off hundreds of arms and legs.”
“You’re searching for a better surgical method now, aren’t you, Professor?”
“Exactly! I knew you’d understand me! Do you think I spent my life hacking off limbs because I enjoyed being so crude? At the time, that was the best option. If someone had to suffer either way, wasn’t it better for it to be brief?”
“But now there’s an Anesthetic. In that case….”
“Right, now we can slowly cut out only the diseased part! But no matter how much of a genius I am, I still need time to figure out how to do that.”
Oh.
To openly insist that he was a genius like that.
Well… he is a genius.
If a man who could cut off a leg in thirty seconds was not a genius, then who was?
So I nodded with a face that said I agreed.
Honestly, part of it was because I was a little scared, so I nodded more eagerly.
“I thought he’d listen if I explained it like that… but the director’s gone mad. The moment he saw the money, his eyes turned.”
“Mm… just how much are they charging…?”
“With only a little exaggeration, just the surgeries already scheduled could earn enough to build another hospital of this size.”
“Ah.”
Oh….
Even I found that a little tempting.
At most it would take a month, maybe two, and for that, an entire hospital?
No, no… I’m a doctor….
I shook my head, throwing off the demonic temptation that had crept into my heart, and then asked, “Is there really no other way?”
“There is.”
At my question, Doctor Liston looked back and forth between his own arm and mine as he answered.
A bad feeling crept over me.
“What… way?”
Even so, I asked.
“Break them. Surely they won’t expect someone with a broken arm to perform surgery.”