Chapter 48: That’s Not How You Do It… [1]
Chapter 48: That’s Not How You Do It… [1]
Blundell was a chatterbox.
No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was someone with endless curiosity.
“Haa.”
Anyway, because of him, I ended up having to stay up all night.
Not because of the patient, and not because I had been out having fun either, but because I stayed up all night talking with an old man.
What kind of situation even was this?
“Hoo.”
By the time I came back to myself, I had already sighed several times.
Maybe it looked like some kind of sign.
“W-why… why? Am I… dying?”
The patient, who had quite literally died and come back to life, blinked at me as he spoke.
He looked genuinely anxious.
Which was only natural.
Hadn’t he had a truly horrifying day?
Or had a full day already passed?
Anyway, he came in because of a headache, got his blood drawn, fainted, and then got locked inside a coffin.
He had only now finally begun to feel that he was still alive, so it was not strange for him to look like this.
“Ah, no. You’ve made it past the critical point. Please don’t worry too much now.”
If it had been anyone other than me, they probably would have said something bizarre again.
But who was I?
I had a reputation, in my own way, for being a kind doctor.
I had even made it onto the praise board before.
Some people might say, Shouldn’t doctors naturally be kind? But back then I was a resident.
In a situation where I was so busy I practically had to live in the hospital, just like the name suggested, the fact that I had still been kind could, in a way, be seen as proof of my character.
“Ah… thank you.”
“That’s right. Oh, right. If you happen to see Dr. Jémel, tell him your headache is gone now.”
“Huh? Ah, yes, yes.”
“But… well, it doesn’t still hurt, does it?”
Naturally, it was not as though I was simply kind.
Our hospital was, in its own way, the best in the country.
And if it was the best in Korea, then in terms of clinical ability alone, it might as well have been the best in the world.
So what did they do?
They filmed me treating patients and gave me feedback.
It felt like a public execution, but anyway, I did improve afterward.
“Ah… it does still hurt a bit…”
“Yes, but keep that a secret from Jémel. Or you’ll die again.”
“Yes, yes.”
The patient visibly shuddered.
For a moment, fear flickered through his eyes, and I wondered whether this was really all right.
PTSD… would be understandable.
Of course it would.
Good grief… to have nearly been buried alive inside a coffin.
If it had not been for me, they really would have covered him with dirt just like that…
Imagine hearing the sound of sand trickling down while trapped inside.
That would truly drive a person insane.
“For the headache too, let’s have me look at it for now. I won’t be drawing any blood, so don’t worry.”
“Yes.”
That aside, the patient did definitely look better than yesterday.
Of course, if the infection progressed later, who knew what would happen…
Still, well…
What mattered was that he looked better than yesterday.
Some color had returned to him too.
Maybe because he was young, his bone marrow seemed to be functioning very well.
“For now, you need to eat well too. You shouldn’t eat anything too heavy right away, so I’ll have them bring you some soup.”
“Ah… thank you. Thank you.”
Still, he really did need to eat well.
The calories needed to make blood were no joke.
And no matter how careful I had been, there was no way only one or two germs had gotten in.
And there was no point even thinking about how many germs that bastard Jémel had probably shoved into him, so the patient needed to be ready to fight them off.
Nutrition was important, that was the point.
There was a reason mothers always said you had to eat well to recover.
“I’ll come back later, so get some rest. For now, well… let’s just be careful of Jémel.”
“Yes, yes.”
Of course, it would have been safest for me to stay there the whole time, but I could not do that.
So I left the ward and headed toward the lecture hall.
After truly staying up all night, I felt a little dizzy.
The only fortunate thing was that my nutritional status was extremely good compared with the average for this era.
That was probably why, despite being East Asian, I was bigger than the average build in London.
And compared with my previous life, which had already passed well beyond my thirties, my current self was much younger, wasn’t it?
Medically speaking, age really was a cheat code.
“Hm?”
When I reached the lecture hall in a half-asleep daze, it was rather noisy inside.
Even though, judging by the clock, class was not due to start for a little while yet.
“What is it?”
“Oh. Colin didn’t come.”
At times like this, all I had to do was ask.
So I asked Joseph and Alfred.
I did not like how fresh and glossy they looked, clearly having slept wonderfully last night.
But expecting students to have a doctor’s heart was unreasonable.
People only started caring about patients once they had actually seen some.
“Class hasn’t started yet. Couldn’t he just not have come?”
“Uh… apparently he didn’t go home last night.”
“Huh…? Really? Isn’t he a noble?”
“He’s not high nobility, but he’s a wealthy noble. Something like that absolutely shouldn’t happen.”
“Huh.”
Anyway, I asked half-heartedly, and an unexpected answer came back.
Not entirely unexpected, though.
In truth, that bastard’s eyes had looked strange yesterday.
I had assumed he would do nothing more than pick a fight with me, but maybe he had just gone out drinking instead.
If so, then honestly, he was kinder than I had thought.
So he’s racist, but still kind-hearted?
That sounded absurd, but in this era, it was entirely possible.
Didn’t even the twenty-first century have people called good-hearted racists?
“Professor Blundell just got word from the cemetery.”
“Hm? Did he die?”
Had he been so hurt that he killed himself?
If so, then even if he was a racist, I would have felt bad.
“No, why would he die? Um… it seems like he tried to imitate us… I think he went to dig up a grave.”
“Ah… he wanted to try reviving a dead person too? How would he know which grave had someone in it who wasn’t actually dead?”
“Exactly.”
It brought to mind the saying about a little bird trying to imitate a stork and tearing its legs apart.
In truth, though, it was not even that.
This was not me bragging. I had access to knowledge built up over hundreds of years by humanity.
And in recent times, that accumulation had increased hundreds of times faster, with accuracy on a level that could not even be compared.
Poor bastard.
As I clicked my tongue inwardly, someone approached.
The tone was very familiar.
It was not Dr. Robert Liston.
Unexpectedly, it was Blundell.
“Dr. Pyeong.”
He was even calling me doctor.
Then again, the conversation we had shared yesterday had been no ordinary one.
Mostly it had felt like I was teaching him, though he probably had not quite perceived it that way…
He likely just thought that talking with a genius had been enormously helpful.
Anyway, perhaps because of that, despite having stayed up all night himself, Blundell kept smiling as he spoke.
“Would you come with me? There’s no real reason you must, but there’s something I need to discuss with you on the way.”
“Ah… yes. Then would it be all right if these two came along too?”
As the two of us continued speaking like that, Colin’s little followers started looking at us as if they had no idea what was going on.
Dr. Robert Liston alone had already been enough, but now Blundell was acting like this too, so of course they were sweating.
To be honest, this was completely accidental good fortune, but Blundell, while overshadowed by Dr. Robert Liston, was no lightweight.
He was, after all, a leading figure in obstetrics.
Though in this era, calling someone a leading figure in obstetrics was almost the same as calling them a leading figure in getting people killed…
Still, the point was that he had influence.
“Oh, certainly. Why would there be any difficulty? Come to think of it, these two were with you yesterday as well.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Then let’s go.”
How would it feel when someone like that not only personally called for you, but said he had urgent matters to discuss?
Gulp.
I could hear people swallowing dryly all the way from here.
Which was only natural.
Colin, whether he had a connection or not, had the background to keep rising either way—but would he drag the people beside him along too?
Those fellows were just hangers-on flattering him from the side.
But could they switch allegiances now?
That would not be easy either.
I, in my desire to benefit humanity, might be open to it, but the problem was that they themselves would find it difficult.
Clatter.
Anyway, we got into the carriage.
It was definitely different from the carriage Alfred’s father provided.
It was bigger, but how should I put it…
Shabbier?
It was shaking hard enough that I felt like I might bite my tongue if I spoke carelessly.
That was to say, I was not sure whether what I was riding in was a carriage or a horse.
“So then, this urgent matter.”
Even so, Blundell began speaking without any trouble at all.
He seemed used to riding in this sort of thing.
By contrast, I had to speak with the utmost caution.
“Yes.”
“The truth is… there’s been an opinion that cases like that patient’s may be rather common.”
“Ah… yes.”
I had heard that from Alfred.
But when a person with social standing said the same thing, it felt somewhat different.
How should I put it.
It sounded more credible.
Though honestly, I had already suspected as much.
Just burying people without any real verification?
Good grief.
“Not long ago… there was an investigation at a paupers’ cemetery on the outskirts of London. It was carried out in strict secrecy…”
And the moment he started saying it was secret, it became even more interesting.
Not just me, but everyone else was listening intently too.
“When they examined the coffins holding unclaimed bodies, there were many scratch marks.”
“On the outside?”
“No. On the inside.”
“Ah.”
Scratched from the inside.
What else could that mean?
That they had been buried alive and had struggled to be let out.
“And many of the corpses were missing their fingernails, and in many cases all their fingers were broken.”
“Ah…”
“So a countermeasure was devised. It’s called a rust bell.”
“A rust bell…?”
What was that?
I looked at Blundell blankly, and naturally, he continued.
“Think of it simply. You just attach a bell.”
“A bell…?”
“You place the cord attached to the bell inside the coffin as well. So if the person wakes up inside, they can ring it… it was made very recently.”
“Ah… that’s good, isn’t it?”
Right.
That was a lot better than clawing at the coffin, wasn’t it?
As I was thinking that, Blundell let out a sigh.
It seemed things had not gone as planned.
Otherwise, why would he be making that face?
“Because of that thing now… haa.”
Blundell could not even finish the sentence and instead pointed outside the carriage.
The carriage was so cheap that it had no window glass.
It was simply open, which actually made it easier to look outside.
No matter how good the glass was, in this era it always seemed slightly cloudy, perhaps because of impurities.
“You’ll see when we get there. Colin must have really been badly frightened.”
“Frightened?”
“Yes. They heard the bell ringing and pulled the coffin up…”
“Mm.”
I could not quite picture it at first.
Didn’t that mean there was a living person inside?
Then hadn’t he gotten exactly what he wanted?
So why was he frightened?
Was he an idiot?
Thinking that, I kept walking, and once again, a foul smell drifted over.
It was much worse than yesterday.
“Ugh.”
Even the gravedigger was sighing.
The fact that even a man like that was reacting told me right away that this smell was far from normal.
Though to be fair, if this were normal, that really would have been hell.
“Ugh. Ugh.”
When we got closer, I saw Colin collapsed on the ground, trembling.
Blundell patted his shoulder briefly, then asked the gravedigger, “Where is that coffin?”
“Ah, over there… couldn’t we just bury it again quickly?”
“This is no time for that. Haven’t we got a serious problem here?”
“Yes, yes. My apologies.”
The atmosphere was grave.