A One-Star Amusement Park (5)
The police? Just from looking at this single bone scan?
I thought this crazy ghost had finally gone senile, spouting absolute nonsense about reporting a kid with a broken bone to the police.
…CML?
…Ah!
A gray forensic medicine lecture hall. The expressionless face of the professor. And the black-and-white image on the screen that looked exactly like this X-ray.
An injury uniquely characteristic of child abuse.
The memory I had crammed so hard to memorize finally rushed back.
…Ah.
I stood up and walked across the station. Lee Min-jae was looking at another patient's chart, giving instructions to an intern. I approached his back, trying my best to keep my voice from trembling as I called out to him.
"Senior."
"What is it?" He turned his head casually.
"You know the X-ray for the patient in C-7..."
"Ah, the kid with the suspected fracture? What about it? Weren't we discharging him with a splint? It turned out not to be a fracture after all."
"No, just... take a look at this for a second."
I led Lee Min-jae to an empty terminal in the corner. Then, I pulled up the X-ray in question with the mouse.
"Come on, what is it now... We already looked at it. It was clean." Lee Min-jae peered at the screen, sounding annoyed.
Without saying a word, I used the cursor to zoom in as much as possible on the faint shadow I had discovered earlier.
"Why are you zooming in on—"
The annoyance slowly drained from Lee Min-jae's face. His eyes narrowed. A deep furrow formed between his brows. The faint smile vanished from his lips. His face hardened like stone.
"Hey, this..."
"...Yes, it must be, right?"
We stared at the small black-and-white image in silence for a long time. A single faint line in the photo was telling us a massive, horrific truth.
"I'll... go to the security guards at the entrance right now and ask them to keep an eye on the guardians in case they try to leave. You call the police immediately. Quietly explain the situation to the other nurses, too. We can't let the parents notice anything."
"Understood."
He squeezed my shoulder tightly once, then walked toward the ER entrance with a calm, nonchalant stride, as if nothing was wrong.
I picked up the phone with trembling hands. My fingers wouldn't cooperate properly.
112.
Ring, ring, ring—
[Yes, this is the 112 emergency hotline.]
"Hello... This is the pediatric emergency room at Cheongjin University Medical Center. We have a patient here with suspected child abuse, so I'm calling to report it."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
I put the phone down and looked toward bed C-7.
And so, the hellish surveillance began.
On the surface, time in the ER flowed as usual. The cries of other patients, the busy footsteps of nurses, the monotonous beeping of machines. But the reality was slightly different.
Lee Min-jae pretended to chat with the security guards at the ER entrance, effectively blocking the parents' path so they couldn't slip out of the hospital.
Nurse Jung, the veteran charge nurse, went inside the curtains every ten minutes under the guise of "checking the IV drip rate," naturally keeping an eye on the child's condition and the parents' movements.
I sat at the computer in the furthest corner of the station, where bed C-7 was most visible, keeping a meaningless chart open while monitoring the situation.
Now that I looked, the parents' expressions did seem a bit strange. At first, I thought they were just ordinary, panicked parents who were overwhelmed because their child was in pain. But looking at them through the horrific lens of abuse, every single action seemed suspicious.
The child's parents stood by the bed, doing nothing but constantly fidgeting with their phones. They didn't look down at the child, talk to him, or touch him.
I watched the situation anxiously, praying that my judgment was right—and at the same time, praying that I was wrong.
How much time had passed?
Beyond the thick glass windows of the ER, red and blue emergency lights flashed alternately, drawing closer. My heart sank.
A moment later, a police car pulled up at the hospital's entrance roundabout. The doors opened, and two police officers stepped out, walking toward the ER's automatic doors.
Whoosh—
The automatic doors slid open, and the officers entered the pediatric ER. They headed straight for the station.
"We received a report of suspected child abuse here. Where are the caller and the child?"
I stood up immediately.
"I made the call. The patient is over there, in bed C-7 behind the curtain."
The officer nodded at my words. He then turned to the young officer beside him.
"Junsu. I'll check on the baby's condition and the scene first, so you separate the parents. Keep them apart."
"Yes, sir."
Once the senior officer confirmed the younger officer was heading toward the bed, he turned back to me.
"Doctor, would you mind coming with me for a moment?"
"Of course."
"As we walk, could you please explain what exactly that medical finding you mentioned over the phone means, in terms I can understand?"
"First of all, the guardians claimed that the child tripped on a threshold while in a baby walker and fell."
"Yes, I heard."
The officer pulled out a notepad. I turned on the monitor and zoomed in on the image.
"But the finding we just discovered on the X-ray is an injury that could absolutely never occur from the impact of tripping in a baby walker. In the medical field, we call this a CML..."
Damn it. CML. How do I explain this so a layperson can understand? My brain temporarily buffered.
Pretending to think, I stared into space for a moment and summoned my mentors in my head.
"The ends of the bones in children who haven't finished growing—specifically near the growth plates—are structurally very weak. However, the injury we found on the X-ray almost never occurs from a simple fall or collision. It's a highly specific finding that only appears when a force is applied to twist or pull the child's leg violently. Forensically, it's one of the key pieces of evidence used to strongly indicate child abuse."
At my explanation, the officer's expression turned cold and rigid. He quickly jotted down my words in his notepad, as if determined not to miss a single detail.
"I see. For now, I understand..."
Before he could even finish his sentence.
From the consultation room down the hall, where the young officer had taken the parents, raised voices erupted.
"Who do you think you are?! Why are you separating me from my kid right now?! Do you have a warrant? I'm calling my lawyer! Is this how public authority behaves?!"
It was the father's voice.
"We brought our sick kid to the hospital, so why the hell is the police here making a scene?! What did we do wrong?!"
The mother's sharp shriek followed immediately.
I reflexively looked in that direction. Through the crack in the consultation room door, I could hear the young officer trying his best to calm them down.
"The medical staff has raised suspicions of child abuse, so we are just following procedure to verify..."
"Abuse? What fucking abuse?! That incompetent rookie doctor is just spouting nonsense!"
"We're leaving with our kid, so bring him to us! Right now!"
The situation instantly devolved into utter chaos. The senior officer standing next to me could only let out a deep sigh.
"...Sigh..."
He turned back to me.
"Doctor. Between that reaction and the medical findings you just explained... I can pretty much see the whole picture."
He closed his notepad.
"For now, we'll investigate further to see if there are any other signs of abuse. We need to check if there are other injuries on the child's body. Will you cooperate with us?"
"Yes. Of course."
We headed back to bed C-7.
Inside the curtains, the child was left all alone. He had stopped crying, but his round eyes were darting around, looking terrified of the unfamiliar environment.
"Hey there, little buddy. We're not scary people. The police officer here and the doctor you saw earlier are just going to take a quick look to see if you hurt anywhere else, okay? Is that alright?"
I didn't know if he understood, but the child gave a very tiny nod.