Chapter 8: You Mustn’t Do That [2]
Chapter 8: You Mustn’t Do That [2]
“You mustn’t talk to a sick person like that.”
I was in the middle of asking where it hurt when Doctor Jémel said that.
That lunatic.
Of course I needed to know where it hurt.
Before jabbing a filthy needle into his stomach like you did, you bastard.
“Um…”
My thoughts were flowing smoothly enough inside my head.
But I could not let them flow out that way.
Doctors were the very embodiment of apprenticeship-style education, were they not?
Of course, it was not as though I actually needed to learn from these people.
But this seemed like the only school that would accept an East Asian and, on top of that, grant him a license.
“No, let him continue.”
At that moment, Doctor Liston stepped in.
Even though he spoke quietly, Jémel flinched and stepped back.
That was probably because Liston was still holding the knife.
Blood was still dripping from it too.
To be honest, I stepped back too.
The whole atmosphere was such that it would not have been strange at all if he were thinking, Say one more word and I’ll start with your legs.
“He’s asking in a skillful way. It really does seem he learned in that country called Joseon. There’s something new about it.”
Fortunately, Doctor Liston was feeling a tremendous amount of curiosity.
Then again, was he not the very embodiment of an investigative spirit?
I had heard that the knife he always carried around was not some inherited blade, but one he had commissioned himself.
Its name was the Liston knife.
Judging by its appearance alone, it looked like a weapon from Bloodborne, but it was a surgical knife capable of cutting off a man’s leg in under thirty seconds.
The more I thought about it, the less sure I was what kind of compliment this actually was, but in any case, that was the kind of person Doctor Liston was.
“Go on a little more.”
“Yes, Professor.”
When the man holding the knife tells you to continue, there is really no way not to.
No one objected.
Jémel looked between the knife, me, and the patient, then bit down on his lip.
It seemed he had something he wanted to say, but thought a disaster would follow if he said it.
That was a good thing.
Thanks to that, I had bought myself some time.
“Sir, I’m going to press on your stomach now.”
“Ugh…”
Of course, only I had time.
The patient looked noticeably worse than before.
Could he survive?
I don’t think so…
If someone heard me, they might say that for a surgery professor, I was awfully quick to give up.
But according to Jémel, it had already been a full week since this patient first began complaining of abdominal pain.
If left untreated that long, even appendicitis could become fatal.
And that was true even in the twenty-first century, with antibiotics and all kinds of treatment available. This was nineteenth-century London, where even those treatments did not exist.
“Does it hurt?”
“Urgh… it hurts, it hurts.”
“What about when I let go?”
“AAAGH!”
“Ah, that’s not good.”
Anyway, I pressed down on the patient’s lower right abdomen, then released.
He showed tenderness when I pressed, and rebound tenderness when I let go.
Judging from the fact that his reaction was much stronger with the rebound tenderness, it was not hard to infer that the inside of this man’s abdomen was a complete mess.
What would it look like if opened?
Would everything inside be clumped together?
“Of course it’s not good. That’s exactly why we need to draw blood first and reduce the swelling.”
While a real doctor was deep in serious thought, that quack bastard whined beside me.
Ah.
If only I were Liston.
Then I could have smashed Jémel’s head in on the spot with the Liston knife.
No, that was not actually possible.
This was still an era where the legal system functioned quite strictly, after all.
“What if we opened the abdomen?”
Anyway, instead of addressing the quack—no, the Paris-trained Jémel—I looked at Doctor Liston and asked.
This man was bold enough to match his appearance, was he not?
So might he not be willing to open the abdomen too?
Come on.
Let’s open it.
“Don’t talk nonsense. That is taboo.”
Ah…
Surprisingly, he had a rather old-fashioned side too.
“Taboo… may I ask the reason why?”
Anyway, I asked as carefully as I could so as not to offend him.
“If you open the abdomen, the patient dies. For some reason they develop a fever and die.”
“No…”
You lunatic.
That’s because you lot keep poking around in there with that knife.
If you just washed it with water and lightly disinfected it with fire, they would not die quite so—
No, wait.
Maybe not?
I stopped thinking and looked down at my own hands.
By sight alone, they did not look contaminated at all.
No, I had washed them with soap, so most of the bacteria ought to have been killed.
But could I call them clean?
Clean enough to put inside someone else’s body? Clean enough to call them sterile?
There were no sterile gloves, so I would have to do it bare-handed.
“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to hang your head so much. Not knowing isn’t a crime. You’re still a new student.”
While I was staring at my hands, Liston continued.
He looked somewhat pleased.
That was not especially rare.
Professors tended to like it when students were afraid of them.
Since he had already misunderstood anyway, I thought I might as well let that misunderstanding settle in, so I kept quiet.
“Anyway, you should all listen well. You mustn’t touch the abdomen. Even so… that way of examining the abdomen was fresh. Asking in such detail where it hurts… even if we cannot operate on the abdomen, there is no harm in knowing that much.”
“Yes, we’ll remember it!”
The one who shouted the loudest was the rich brat.
In truth, I could not be sure whether he really was rich or not, but outwardly that was how he looked.
“Then… we’ll end it here for today. Tomorrow I’ll be asking about what you learned today, so study thoroughly.”
“Yes, Professor!”
With Doctor Liston’s words, we left the ward.
Naturally, I still had regrets.
That patient.
If I had seen him from the beginning, I felt there might at least have been some chance.
No, even now, it still felt as though it would be better for him if I treated him rather than leaving him like this.
It should have been better.
I can’t say that with one hundred percent certainty… now that I think about it… there aren’t even gloves.
The reason I had not stepped forward more aggressively was because I lacked the confidence to say I could absolutely do it.
Even in Korea, if a student acted out and something went wrong, there would be chaos. So here?
And with me as some mysterious East Asian from Joseon?
That was the perfect way to get royally screwed.
“Pyeong.”
“Hm?”
Yes. So walking away was the right thing.
That was what I was thinking when Joseph called to me.
“They say we can do anatomy practice on our own. Let’s go.”
He was calling me into hell.
No, Joseph. That’s hell in there.
“For anatomy practice… shouldn’t we look at pictures first?”
“Pictures? Ah, the textbook? Would that be better?”
“Exactly. You should know what you’re cutting into before you start digging around. It doesn’t seem right to go in blind and just poke around.”
“When you dissected frogs, what did you know? You just poked around too, and you still saw the beating heart and the organs just fine.”
Joseph…
Your big brother—no.
This old man is actually a surgery professor.
I might not be able to dissect frogs with my feet, but I could do it with just my left hand.
Stop generalizing me.
You need to study.
I just don’t want to go in there.
“Are people and frogs the same?”
“Ah… well, no. That’s true. All right, then let’s look at the books first.”
That was a relief.
Joseph was not all that stubborn.
“That bastard. He acts all hardworking in front of the professor, but the moment the professor’s gone, he won’t even set foot in the anatomy room.”
Just as I was painstakingly persuading Joseph, someone sneered.
It was the rich brat.
How should I put this.
Should I kill him with knowledge?
I was confident I could beat him to death too.
Though if he doesn’t understand a word, maybe it won’t hit him at all. But if he gets pissed off and tattles to his parents…
What if he started saying something like, “There’s some Eastern heathen at the school”?
The man would probably block it if he could.
But this was London, not Upton.
There were plenty of families here with influence on the same level as his.
“Why are you picking a fight, idiot? If you want to go in, go in by yourself. What, are you scared?”
Fortunately, our Joseph had quite the temper too.
Then again, if he were not tough, he never could have watched Doctor Liston and dreamed of becoming like him.
And even if he was smaller than Doctor Liston, Joseph was still over 175 centimeters tall.
Compared to him, these little bastards were practically dwarfs carrying sacks of shit.
At most, 160?
“Scared? Hardly. It just pisses me off, seeing him act up. That yellow bastard.”
“If you call Pyeong yellow one more time…”
“What, you going to hit me?”
“If I hit you, I think you’ll die. I think instead of anatomy practice, you’ll end up being the anatomy specimen.”
Sharp…
Joseph, that’s sharp.
“Y-you…”
Well, naturally. Some pampered London boy could not win against kids from Upton.
Unless he was from the slums, maybe.
“Y-you…”
“What, are you crying? Crying? Do you even know how the Lacrimal Gland is shaped while you cry?”
“Uh…”
“I’m going to go study that. You can go in there and cry until you figure it out.”
Joseph patted the rich brat on the shoulder and headed for the lecture hall.
I followed him there.
It sounded like I could really hear sniffling behind us, but I deliberately did not turn around.
It was satisfying, sure, but I had no desire to get caught in the fallout.
Anyway, the lecture hall was filled with books.
It was called a lecture hall, but with fewer than twenty students total, even counting all years, it was almost more like a study than a classroom.
“He said we’re allowed to look at everything from here to here…”
“Gray’s Anatomy… isn’t here after all.”
“Hm?”
“No, nothing.”
I had naturally thought there would be anatomy books.
Instead, there were only things that looked like magazines.
And even those were flimsy in content.
The illustrations were well drawn, but…
they were nothing more than diagrams of muscles.
There still seemed to be no real observation of the internal organs, nor any understanding at all of the nervous system or vascular distribution.
Should I draw it myself?
Joseph.
Aside from what had just happened, I owed that guy more than I could count.
Thanks to him, I had not starved to death, and I had not been beaten to death either.
Compared to that, the only favor I had done for him was saddle him with the outdated dream of becoming a surgeon.
I could hardly tell him now that he should not do it.
If that was the case, then shouldn’t I at least make him into a proper doctor?
But what excuse would I use while drawing it?
This is Joseon shamanism…
I can see Henry Gray, the father of anatomy…
Behold, everyone! This is Gray’s Anatomy!
Was I supposed to say some nonsense like that?
If I did, it felt like I would be dragged out to that square and, for the first time in quite a while, burned alive as a witch—no, as Satan’s child.
To begin with, my memory isn’t even clear enough that I can draw it all without looking.
In that case, I had no choice but to become a master of anatomy practice.
I was good with my hands, so I could probably draw it to some extent.
But even so…
Go in there and handle a rotting corpse with my bare hands…?
I was repulsed.
Of course, seeing how little fear the medical students seemed to have of dissection, I did wonder whether it might not actually be that dangerous.
“Hey, are you okay?”
At that moment, a commotion broke out behind us.
When I looked, one of the senior students was clutching a hand that was streaming blood.
Judging by the smell, he had definitely come out of the anatomy room.
“Uh… I’m fine.”
“You’re not hurt too badly. That’s a relief.”
No, it’s not a relief.
Didn’t you injure that hand while handling a corpse?
You could really die from that…
“Stop the bleeding a little, then come back in.”
“Yeah, I will.”
Don’t.
You really mustn’t do that…