Ep. 27: Final Farewell
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Chief of Anesthesiology Jeong had canceled every appointment on his schedule to remain stationed in the CSICU. He kept checking the vital signs and reviewing the lab results, shaking his head the entire time.
This… is a little strange.
Normally, when a person receives someone else’s organs, their inflammation markers climb. It was only natural. Because the organs were not originally theirs, the immune cells treated them as invaders and attacked. That was why immunosuppressants were administered… so why, even after a considerable amount of time had passed since the drugs were given, were the inflammation levels not rising at all?
It’s a good sign, sure, but does this even make sense?
No matter how he turned it over in his mind, it refused to make sense. Just to be sure, he ran the tests again—and the numbers came back astonishingly normal. Considering how many patients were lost to rejection right after a transplant, this should have been cause for celebration. It was something to celebrate… and yet.
She received a heart transplant and a left lung, and the numbers look like this?
Chief Jeong felt his common sense crumbling. Why? Just… why? Things weren’t supposed to go this way.
“What the hell is going on…?”
With numbers this good, they could have removed the ventilator right then and there. All sorts of bizarre symptoms usually appeared immediately after a transplant. For everything to be this calm… Chief Jeong flipped through the chart. An extremely complicated list of underlying conditions and prescriptions unfurled before him. Was it related to Laron syndrome? But that was a condition of growth-hormone insensitivity, wasn’t it? It had nothing to do with immunity.
Rumble.
Professor Hwang, who had collapsed from exhaustion after the surgery and taken a short rest while on IV fluids, entered the room.
“How is she?”
“Professor Hwang. Something I can’t quite understand is happening…”
“What is it?”
“The patient isn’t showing any rejection.”
“…What?”
“I’m starting to want a proper genetic workup on Seol Ayeon. It’s not as if her immune system is completely wrecked.”
“Anyway—no rejection. And the numbers?”
“Every last one is within normal range. The heart is beating strongly… I think we could take the ventilator off right now. Brain waves are stable too…”
“Is that so? All right, I understand. You haven’t slept a wink, have you? Go get some rest. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“You’ll do that? Then I won’t refuse. I’m getting a little drowsy myself.”
“Go on. Get some sleep.”
And the next day, once the ventilator was removed, Ayeon opened her eyes almost at once.
When I opened my eyes, the familiar white hospital ceiling greeted me. It was almost funny—I had seen it so many times that it no longer stirred a single thought.
“Are you with us? Patient, cough! Cough for me!”
“Cough! Cough! Ah…”
“Good!”
The doctor beside me raised the head of the bed so that I was sitting up, and I found myself face-to-face with a familiar person. Professor Hwang, who had come by once a day to examine my heart.
“You conscious? Do you know who I am?”
“Professor… Hwang Uihyeon.”
“That’s right. How does your body feel? You can hear me clearly, I take it.”
Even behind the mask, Professor Hwang’s eyes crinkled with relief when he saw I understood him. …Thank you for everything.
“I can hear you fine.”
“Good…”
“Soyun… what happened to her?”
“Ah…”
Professor Hwang’s expression shifted into something that said, I knew this was coming. So it was real. All of it.
“I… heard everything.”
“…What are you talking about?”
“Your conversation with Soyun. Everything after that, too. I remember all of it. Vividly.”
“…What?”
“I said I heard it all.”
How long had it been? Tears spilled from my eyes. Were tears always this hot? The professor’s face in front of me blurred behind them.
“…Everyone, please leave. I want to be alone.”
“…All of you, out.”
Rumble.
The room was left to me alone. A bed that only I used. You, who had always been there, were no longer beside me. The warmth of you was still so clear in my memory. The sound of your laughter was still so clear. And yet you were not here. Your last words circled endlessly through my head.
That you couldn’t see in front of you. That you were so scared.
That you had wanted to see me smile—
Those final words rose up again. I forced the corners of my mouth upward. Soyun, what would you have said if you saw this face? Would you have laughed and told me it was another weird smile? Or teased me that if I cried and laughed at the same time I’d grow hair on my butt? Or would you have smiled and said,
that I finally looked a little pretty.
I laughed while I cried. I cried while I laughed.
I should have smiled for you. When you smiled, I should have smiled back.
Why couldn’t I?
Why does regret always arrive so late?
“Soyun… Soyun… Jin Soyun…”
I laid my trembling hand over my chest.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was not the sound of my own heart, the one that had barely managed to wheeze along. It was a strong, rapid heartbeat. The sound of Soyun’s heart—the one I had always listened to.
“Ahk… I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Augh. I… I… I’m so sorry I couldn’t smile for you until the very end… I’ll smile now, so… I was wrong about everything, so please… just once. Even once would be enough…”
I’m so cold right now. Hold me… just for a little while…
Professor Hwang asked Chief Jeong whether what he had just heard was even possible. Chief Jeong gave a bitter smile and nodded.
“It’s not an impossible story at all. It actually makes sense. Even if we put her under with sedatives, hearing is the sense that holds on until the very brink of death. The accepted view is that it can persist for about thirty seconds after clinical death. There have been cases of people waking from vegetative states who remembered every conversation that took place around them.”
“Is that so…”
“In a way, this is for the best.”
“…What did you just say? What is that supposed to mean?”
The director, who had been listening from the side, spoke up. Professor Hwang shot back in a sharp voice.
“We’ve achieved the intended goal, after all. Video letters, photos, recordings—we prepared everything. We don’t have to hand them over just yet.”
“…Collect them all later and give them to Ayeon.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure I can even face Seol Ayeon myself. If she heard Jin Soyun asking you for that favor, she might try to kill me on sight.”
“You know that perfectly well.”
“Nothing to be done about it. Besides, even if I never see her again, it won’t interfere with the papers. Oh, and the surgical footage has already been sent to the International Pediatric Cardiology Society.”
“Hah… Director Yoo. Before you become a capable director, how about becoming a human being first?”
“We are doctors, Professor Hwang. In the end, we saved Seol Ayeon, didn’t we? Because of Jin Soyun’s dying wish that she live, she won’t try to die. And since she can hear, the sensory loss from that self-destructive attack is gone as well, isn’t it?”
“Have you even tried to imagine how terrified Soyun must have been?”
“…Jin Soyun had already guessed. She knew what a hospice ward was from the start. I feel a little wronged, honestly.”
“…What?”
Professor Hwang stared blankly. The director answered in a calm voice.
“Don’t people say kids these days grow up fast? Children aren’t fools, Professor Hwang. Jin Soyun already knew she didn’t have much time left. She must have felt it instinctively.”
“Don’t justify it. What you did clearly crossed a line. Even if she knew she was going to die, there was no need to push her into saying she had to give her heart.”
“If you had seen how happy Jin Soyun was, you wouldn’t say that.”
“…Happy, you say…”
“You should have seen her reaction when I told her she could give her heart to Seol Ayeon. Even I almost teared up without meaning to. How can someone care so deeply for a stranger who doesn’t share a single drop of blood with her? I still wonder about that.”
“…You’re shameless, you know that? Fine. Why make her ask me for the favor?”
“Because I thought that would make you give the surgery everything you had.”
“Hah… I really didn’t know you at all.”
Suddenly, the conversation he had once shared with Chief Kim floated up in his mind. It had definitely been about DID.
An alter called Bulja? Some kind of monk personality? Fascinating.
Yes. The moment that personality met the director, it told him to get out. He was a bit of a boorish monk type… but honestly, it was the first time I’d ever seen the director get put in his place like that. It was pretty satisfying.
He threw Director Yoo out?
He looked completely disgusted. What did he say again? That creating a situation where everything is under your control and then making people move exactly as planned is a nasty hobby. Something like that.
…That personality hadn’t been a boorish monk. He had been a living buddha.
In the end, once everything was over, every situation had unfolded exactly as Director Yoo Wonjun had intended. This surgical case, too, would prove useful for hospital promotion.
How many papers could be written from Seol Ayeon’s data alone? Postmortem gender transition followed by resuscitation—something modern medicine still could not explain. You could write papers on the physical changes alone.
There were plenty of psychiatric papers to be had as well. A condition similar to DID, yet different. In ordinary DID, the other personalities try to eliminate the host and each other. But Seol Ayeon’s personalities had wanted to help the host.
Another world-first case. On top of that, the self-destructive attack and sensory shutdown triggered by an unnameable manifestation of will—something close to alexithymia yet not quite. Using Jin Soyun to stop that still made him angry… but in the end, Seol Ayeon had lived.
Even if it had been for the sake of extracting paper data, she had lived, so one could call it good enough. In truth, that was a doctor’s virtue—and the whole of it.
They had even gone ahead with an organ transplant from a cancer patient, something modern medicine treated as taboo. There had been precedents. Every patient who received organs from a cancer patient had, of course, been immunosuppressed and had developed cancer without exception.
But Seol Ayeon had Laron syndrome. If Laron syndrome was left untreated, the probability of developing cancer was low. This was a case worth taking all the way into research. Looking back now, it gave him chills.
“I only act for the good of the hospital. Isn’t that why I sit in the director’s chair?”
“Right… Please stay in administration and never return to clinical practice. You’ll be the next director as well, I suppose.”
“Thank you for the kind words.”
“You hear that as kind words? You know I’m telling you to be a businessman, not a doctor.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Good. Go to your office right now and bring everything you prepared.”
“Yes. I’ll leave the delivery to you.”
As the director’s back receded, Professor Hwang flung a mountain-shaped hand sign after him—the middle-finger gesture.
“That’s rather childish of you, Professor Hwang.”
…Did that bastard grow eyes on the back of his head?
“I did not.”
“…Did it look childish to you too?”
Professor Hwang made a hollow face and asked Chief Jeong, who had been listening. Chief Jeong glanced around carefully before answering in a flat tone.
“…A little.”
“They say you get childish when you get older, so just understand.”
“That didn’t look childish so much as shameless.”
“…”
Struck right on the mark, Professor Hwang averted his gaze and turned his head away.
Fine. As long as we saved her, it’s enough. When I finally go home for the first time in ages, I’ll have to ask my wife to get the mourning clothes ready.
…Because I need to prepare a final farewell.