Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century [4]
Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century [4]
Once again, I failed to faint.
It seemed my mental fortitude was far stronger than I had thought.
Good grief. To think I could still remain conscious after seeing that.
“Come this way.”
Robert Liston gestured at me as he spoke.
The man had already fled far away, so Joseph and I had no choice but to follow him by ourselves.
To be honest, I did not want to follow him either.
What is with this lighting?
The nineteenth century was more developed than I had expected, so there were electric lights.
But they were quite different from the kind of lights we usually used. How should I put it…?
They gave off the kind of light that made it feel like a ghost might appear at any moment.
And since this was a place where real corpses were laid out in rows, that only made it worse.
“Come here and take a look. This is the human body.”
Robert Liston seemed perfectly used to it.
Naturally so.
He might look more like a gang boss, but he was still a professor here.
And he was a surgeon too, so dissection must have been more important to him than it was to other doctors.
But I do not think this is the right way to learn…
The corpse that Doctor Liston, or whatever he was supposed to be, pointed at had its abdomen opened.
To begin with, I did not like that the incision had been made in an X shape.
Of course, it was possible.
If the purpose was an autopsy.
But maybe because I had just watched him cut off a leg…
He is not doing surgery like this too, is he? Right? Surely not. Right?
I kept getting the awful feeling that he probably did treat actual patients this way too.
“This is… let’s see, the spleen. I still do not know what it does yet, but it must have some function.”
The spleen.
Hm.
That was not what it was supposed to look like.
I had no idea how long this corpse had been dead, but in any case, its original shape had already broken down.
“This is the liver.”
At least the liver still looked close to its original form.
Yes. That much, at least.
“This is the stomach. Below it, the intestines continue downward. And if you look behind it, there is this strange soft thing here.”
That is called the pancreas.
“If we get a corpse brought in quickly enough, you can see the pancreas.”
Ah, so he did know.
Thank fucking God.
I had thought he did not.
Right. Well, medicine in the nineteenth century probably was not a complete disaster.
After all, in just a hundred years, it would already be the twentieth century.
I had been born in the twentieth century myself, you know.
“Now if you look back here… yes, this is the kidney. See this tube? That is where the urine goes down.”
The explanation continued after that.
And as I listened, there was something that felt very strange.
But maybe because I had seen too many strange things already, I could not immediately put my finger on exactly what felt off.
There was not much time to think about it either.
“Ugh…”
I was only managing because I already knew the original anatomy and was skilled enough at anatomy that I could have slapped Doctor Liston around three or four times over.
So I was enduring it by roughly recalling things from memory.
But Joseph could not do that.
For him, dissection had amounted to little more than shrimp or frogs.
And even then, I had been the one doing the cutting and showing him. He had only looked.
“Ughhh!”
The fact that he had lasted this long at all was impressive.
“Use this.”
“Wow… you have something like this? Ugh.”
Doctor Liston seemed to think the same, because with a look of approval, he held out a tin bucket that had been under the dissection table.
Wow.
That was even harder for me.
Inside, I could glimpse traces left behind by previous students that had not been cleaned out properly.
You filthy bastards.
No matter how dirty the Anatomy Room was, you were still medical students, people who would become doctors. Shouldn’t you at least have basic hygiene drilled into you?
If I were a professor here, there are several people I would have hanged…
Thinking that, I patted Joseph on the back while he struggled to leave one more trace behind.
You held out a long time too.
Joseph was no ordinary kid either.
I had known he was decent enough, but now that I looked, huh? He had backbone too.
The fact that he was only vomiting and had not fainted was honestly surprising.
Because this was not horrifying only from a doctor’s perspective.
It was horrifying from anyone’s perspective.
It was getting close to exactly the sort of scene ordinary people imagined when they thought of an Anatomy Room.
Bang!
Just then, a door opened.
Not the one we had entered through.
A door opened in such a dark, remote corner that I had not even realized there was a door there.
“Oh, you boys are very lucky.”
“What?”
Then a group that looked as though they did nothing but bad things barged in.
And he said we were lucky.
What, was a fight about to break out?
Then again, even if those men rushed us right now, it felt like our Doctor Liston alone would be enough.
He could cut off an entire leg in thirty seconds, so if it were a thinner neck, could he not take it off in a single second?
Rattle—
Anyway, the group dragged in something like a carriage.
No, more like a handcart.
There was a straw mat draped over it.
And underneath…
That is a corpse.
Yes. No matter how you looked at it, what lay beneath was a corpse.
“A fine one, Professor.”
Fine?
Was that not a corpse?
Were they trading something else?
Flap—
But when Liston pulled away the mat, there really was a corpse lying there.
Fuck.
You sons of bitches.
“Oh. Indeed. It looks like it has not been dead for long. It has not even gone cold yet.”
“What? Ah, yes. That is right. We got it fresh.”
Professor, does that not sound strange no matter how you hear it?
They brought in a corpse that had not even gone cold yet.
Shouldn’t these bastards be murder suspects?
Just going by their faces, that would already count as evidence, would it not?
It was prejudice, sure, but honestly speaking, even a detective with twenty years of experience would probably lock them up first and ask questions later.
“Well done. Well done.”
“Yes, then… how much…”
“Here you go. The condition is excellent. Young too. It will be a great help to our research.”
“Oh dear, thank you as always.”
“No, no. I should be the one thanking you. It is thanks to people like you that our students all become doctors. You should take pride in that.”
“Yes, Professor!”
No, Professor, you should not be paying them.
These men are… you know…?
Do you even know where they are getting these corpses from?
No, wait.
Are they really just getting them?
Aren’t they maybe doing a little slash-slash first?
“There are a great many mysterious deaths in London.”
Exactly, you idiot! That is not the kind of thing you should say!
You cannot just sweep every death under the label of mysterious.
“Still, those fellows are trustworthy. Others bring in corpses with obvious stab wounds in the belly or strangulation marks on the neck… but take a look.”
As I listened, my anger eased a little.
Then again, Doctor Liston was supposed to be London’s finest physician, was he not?
Surely someone at his level would not be supplied with corpses by murderers.
That was only common sense, right?
“Clean, aren’t they?”
“Ah. Yes. They are clean.”
“Right. As I understand it, they wait at the hospital, and when a hopeless patient dies, they bring the body over. I do not know the details myself.”
“I see.”
His saying he did not know the details made me uneasy.
It sounded like the kind of not knowing that came from not wanting to know.
As though learning the details would get you hurt.
“Anyway, things have become busy.”
Regardless of what I thought, Doctor Liston started moving briskly.
I wondered what he was in such a hurry about.
What was so urgent right now?
“You boys should leave now. Go fetch your father.”
“Ah, yes.”
That was a good thing.
I had very badly wanted to get out of here.
But I had been afraid that if I made it too obvious, he might find it rude and get angry.
Anyone looking at that face and that body would probably start having trouble regulating their fear.
“Let’s go.”
“Huh? O-okay.”
“Are you all right?”
“Hm? Yeah. I think so.”
“Can you still become a surgeon?”
“I want to.”
“Uh… right.”
As I said that, I looked after Joseph.
He could at least wipe the vomit from around his mouth before saying that.
If he said he still wanted to with that look on his face, it was hardly convincing.
Creeeak—
When we opened the door and stepped out, the man was standing there looking visibly haggard.
Apparently cotton alone had not been enough to block the smell, because in addition to that, he had his forearm clamped tightly over his nose.
“Ah, Mr. Liston.”
“Th-that… I am sorry. Earlier, I…”
“No, no. Haha. In any case, the two of them seem to have talent.”
“What? Really?”
Really?
Are you a fortune-teller?
All you know about us right now is our names and faces, and you are talking about talent?
“This friend in particular is very bold. He is perfectly suited to surgery. Your son too, by this point… well, most people react the way you did, Father.”
“Haha. Then…”
“You may enroll them. As long as you pay. The new term starts next month, so come then.”
What? Enroll?
Come here?
No…
That did not seem right.
Could you really get into medical school like this, with no exam, all on such casual terms?
“Oh. Yes. Let us do that.”
Of course, what I thought was not all that important.
The wishes of the person paying mattered most, did they not?
“Wow! Hurray!”
And besides, the kid looked that happy.
You little bastard, Joseph.
Even after seeing this place, how could you still…
Wow… come to think of it, this man is actually incredible.
Only then did I realize it.
Why I had felt that something was off.
This man.
Doctor Liston.
He was bare-handed.
He performed surgery and dissection with bare hands…
If only he would use those bare hands for martial arts and nothing else.
Did he even wash them?
It did not seem likely.
The place did not appear to have any kind of plumbing system at all.
I had not heard the sound of running water once.
And I was supposed to come here?
“Now then, this is only a little, but please accept it as the first sponsorship payment.”
Perhaps because he was a businessman, the man had a kind of boldness that cowards like me lacked.
It would have been nice if he had stopped being bold right there.
But he had already handed over money.
And it did not seem to be a small amount either.
Doctor Liston peeked inside, and his face lit up like the full moon.
“Hahaha! They are excellent students indeed!”
And just like that, we became excellent students before we had even enrolled.
Clatter, clatter—
On the way back, all the strength drained out of me, and I could barely speak.
Unlike me, the man and Joseph chattered away happily the whole time.
“Father, is there anything we need to prepare?”
“We should buy some books first, I suppose. And if you are staying in London, you will need a room as well.”
“Ah, then will we have to live apart?”
“It is not that far. And I come every week, so you need not worry about that. I am more worried about him than you. Taepyeong. The priest even gave you that name so you would live in peace, so why do you look so miserable?”
Because this is no time to be peaceful, old man…
After seeing all that… you know?
A medical school you could enter just by paying…
and the state of that place…
No. No. Who am I kidding? How else would I ever get in?
But when he told me to think positively, and I tried, it was not entirely a bad thing.
This was an era when some people did not see East Asians as human, but as some other kind of animal.
No matter how smart I was, would I really be able to get into medical school?
Probably not.
Which meant this was my last chance.
“No, well. It is a good thing. It is a good thing, but…”
That still did not make me feel any better.
Everything I had seen that day kept replaying in my head like a panorama.
“Hey, hey!”
At last, I fainted.