The Value of a Doctor (1)
Patient Park Gangjae was discharged, exactly as he had wished.
Whether it was the manner of discharge he had hoped for, however, was another question entirely.
"Even if you never call us, even if you are not sick at all — we will deliver you to the hospital with the utmost speed. Do not worry. You, too, can contribute to making this world a more beautiful place."
There was only one ambulance Echo in the world, so there was no need to narrow down the candidates.
The Night Regular Ambulance.
The moment you saw the word "Regular" plastered on the side of an ambulance, your gut told you something was wrong — because this was not a vehicle built to rescue patients.
I know better than anyone where this thing came from.
There was once an urban legend that swept through South Korea.
It said that if you went to China, you had to be careful about which taxis you hailed — because the moment you got in one, you'd be kidnapped and your organs harvested.
Of course, that was realistically impossible.
Not because kidnapping and organ trafficking were impossible in themselves, but because harvesting organs from random kidnap victims was utterly pointless.
Think about it logically. The most terrifying complication in organ transplantation is immune rejection.
Even between siblings, the compatibility rate is only twenty-five percent. So what were the odds that an organ ripped out of some stranger dragged off the street would match the patient waiting for it?
One in tens of thousands would have been a generous estimate.
And even if you extracted the organ in advance, storage time became a problem. A heart is unusable after six hours; even a kidney gives out within twenty-four.
Committing murder on a lottery-win probability, racing against the clock, mobilizing a state-of-the-art operating room and a surgical team, illegally transplanting the organ — all to save some rich underworld tycoon?
With that same effort, you'd be better off publishing in the academic journals. That level of dedication would win you a Nobel Prize, and you'd make far more money just lecturing at hospitals around the world.
That's exactly why I tore my hair out researching the realism of this Echo.
The Night Regular Ambulance was an Echo derived from that very urban legend.
At the time, the Game Director had wanted me to refine it into something as realistic as possible, to deliver a more authentic brand of horror.
And so it became an ambulance.
The Director re-created the legend as an Echo built around an ambulance, and I contributed the clinical authenticity.
The resulting narrative of the completed Echo went like this:
"The hospital first learns the HLA (major histocompatibility complex) profiles of its patients, then dispatches the ambulance to abduct them and harvest their organs."
Inside an ambulance, after all, there was more than enough room to pack the equipment needed to keep human organs fresh — which made it even more plausible than a taxi could ever be.
And this Echo was the very first "linked-type Echo."
Once you harvested the organs, you needed a hospital and doctors to transplant them.
The Night Regular Ambulance was no different. When they dragged their victims in, a hospital had to be there to receive the delivery.
When the Managers — the players — first discovered this Echo inside the game, they were met with a hospital introduction containing not a single word of explanation.
The hospital could not be entered, nor could it be destroyed — but it did nothing at all. And so, before long, the Managers forgot the hospital existed and turned their attention to other Entities.
Then, a few days later, when a new Echo — the Night Regular Ambulance — rolled into town and the three-ring circus began, they found themselves regretting why they hadn't prepared back then. That was the kind of Entity it was.
The hospital only operates when the ambulance exists, and the ambulance only runs because the hospital exists.
The two Entities were always one. The ambulance delivered the organs; the hospital transplanted them into recipients.
Alone, each was inert and harmless. Together, they made the Managers' lives miserable. This first synergy-type Entity pair was an element added when I began my authenticity work, so I remembered it in perfect detail.
I never wanted to meet them like this, though.
For a fleeting moment, I wondered whether he might go easy on me if I called him "son" — then I decided against it, since I'd probably end up strapped to an operating table having a wonderful dream.
"Let's stop the search for Patient Park Gangjae for now."
When the patient had escaped the ward, we had scrambled to find him. He'd been handed over to us by psychiatry, after all, and I was terrified of the fallout if we lost him.
Shiho and the rest of the internal medicine staff had torn the hospital apart searching for that one patient.
Unfortunately, what came back instead was the news that our patient had gone from being one person to gifting someone else a brand-new life.
"We need to tell Professor Kim, too."
"Jungwook. Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"Hard to say."
I wasn't certain either. But one thing I did know: coming clean immediately caused less grief down the road than lying and getting caught later.
Besides, the patient's death wasn't our fault, was it?
"Professor Kim will show some understanding of the circumstances, surely."
With those words, I relayed the news of Park Gangjae's death to Professor Kim — the professor of psychiatry — as well.
He wouldn't actually recommend a frontal lobotomy to a colleague over this.
...That was what I chose to believe, at least.
"If, hypothetically, Professor Kim tries to fiddle with my brain, Shiho, you'll save me, right?"
"Me? The Happy Relieved Hospital's doctor is a Danger Level 4??"
Danger Level was a metric of how many digits' worth of human lives an Entity could claim per month if it appeared and its golden time was missed.
The Beggar Royal, a Danger Level 1, sacrificed single-digit numbers of people every month. The Digital Portrait, a Danger Level 2, killed victims in the double digits. And Danger Level 6 — The Most Romantic Choice, still shaking the world to its foundations even now — inflicted casualties beyond all imagination.
And the Happy Relieved Hospital was a Danger Level 4.
"The equipment I brought when I escaped the Bureau only lets me handle up to Danger Level 2, you know?"
It meant that even Shiho could do nothing against a Professor Kim whose eyes had rolled back in his head.
My heart went cold at those words.
"...You can't manage it somehow, either?"
"If I grit my teeth and fight, I could maybe scrape by against a Level 3. But a 4? Even I'd be pushing it..."
Even within the Bureau, she said, once something hit Danger Level 4, it became the job of special operatives. The "regular" Suppression Department like Shiho handled up to Level 2 at most, and executives like her could perhaps manage a 3 — but from Level 4 on, you were no longer dealing with something you fought with anti-personnel firearms.
"Then what happens if Professor Kim comes to collect me?"
At my question, Shiho thought long and hard before answering.
"As long as you don't die, I'll look for some item that can patch you back up."
"...And our contract?"
"I'll have done my best, so I don't consider it a breach of contract. Probably."
The nerve of her. Should I starve her tonight?
When I glared at her with that thought, she averted her eyes as if she'd read my mind.
"...I won't let you die."
Well, that was comforting.
And so I was basking in Shiho's decidedly un-comforting comfort when—
Knock, knock.
Someone rapped on the wall instead of the door, announcing a visitor to my office.
"Who is it?"
"Professor, it's me. Soyeon."
I shot a glance at Shiho. I had some ability to screen out Entities myself, but a former checkpoint commander like her was far better at telling them apart.
She spoke toward the far side of the curtain.
"Tell me about your residency."
"Uh... I'm sorry, Dr. Shiho. I don't know."
"Correct. Come in."
With Shiho's permission, Soyeon — third-year resident in internal medicine — drew back the curtain and stepped inside.
"Good day, Professor. Are you busy at the moment?"
"No, internal medicine's about as idle as it gets — we've transferred every patient out. What is it?"
"W-well, um..."
Soyeon hesitated, then finally forced the words out.
"Professor Kim Seok-tae from psychiatry came asking about Lee Hyo-sang — the patient who received a heart transplant this time and is now in the ICU."
"Did you tell him where the patient was?"
"Yes. I'm sorry."
Soyeon bowed her head. Looking closely, I saw her eyes were red and bloodshot — she'd been crying just moments before.
The fact that Professor Kim had resonated was common knowledge throughout our department by now. Which made it entirely understandable that she'd broken down in front of the man.
"You did fine. I'm just glad you weren't hurt."
I didn't scold her. My own contributions amounted to nothing but useless excuses and empty prattle — who was I to lecture?
Facing a madman who scraped people's brains out with an icepick, she had answered without so much as chewing her tongue. As far as a doctor's duty went, that was more than enough.
"So what happened with the patient?"
An Entity report — or an Echo compendium — never explained everything about an Entity. It only told you how to respond to them, how to manage them. It never gave you the exact future.
Which was why I couldn't begin to imagine how Professor Kim would react to the man who had received his patient's heart.
With Entities, it wouldn't have been strange at all if he'd cracked open the recipient's chest on the grounds that the man "used to be his patient."
But Soyeon's answer was nothing like what I'd expected.
"He just looked at him and left."
"What?"
"He saw the patient, and then he simply left."
The moment I heard that, I let out a sigh of relief.
I was no Jesus Christ, a being who loved all of humanity unconditionally — but still, the fewer tragedies that reached my ears, the better. That much was only natural.
Shiho also breathed a sigh of relief, murmuring her thanks.
But before long, a message from another professor forced me to reconsider.
It was a message from the professor holding down the internal medicine outpatient clinic. The medicine and surgery clinic rooms sat on the same floor, which was presumably why he'd sent a text.
The video attached to that message laid bare, with brutal clarity, why Entities were so impossible to predict.
[Professor Heo. Do you remember Patient Park Gangjae?]
The video opened with Professor Kim — wearing a warm, kindly face — speaking with Heo Gi-hun, the professor of transplant and vascular surgery.
[Of course I remember. I remember the names of every single donor.]
Kim Sook-ja, Yoo Chae-won, Lee Han-ong...
One by one, Professor Heo recited the names of the noble victims he had operated upon.
[But why are you suddenly asking about donor Park Gangjae?]
[Did he truly wish to donate?]
[Well, of course he did?]
Professor Heo showed Professor Kim the donation consent form, complete with signatures.
[Everything was carried out with full consent.]
But Professor Kim raised his doubts about that consent form.
[Was Patient Park Gangjae brain-dead?]
[Yes. He was most certainly brain-dead.]
[I see... Then here is what puzzles me.]
Professor Kim tilted his head.
[Why was the recipient fully prepped and ready for the transplant before the donor had even fallen into brain death?]
[...]
[You could have declared brain death, cross-matched the HLA, confirmed compatibility, and only then begun the surgery. Rather strange, wouldn't you say?]
[...]
[Professor Heo. Furthermore — you scheduled this surgery in advance, at the very hour Patient Park Gangjae went missing from within the hospital. Didn't you?]
Tsk.
Professor Heo clicked his tongue.
[Kim. You really are too sharp for your own good.]
And there the video cut off. Just before it ended, there had been the sound of something shattering and hurtling through the air, but the details were impossible to make out.
Presumably the professor filming had fled in too much of a hurry to capture the rest.
Without a word needing to be said, Shiho and I locked eyes.
"Shiho."
"Yeah. I'll go alone."
When whales fight, the shrimp's back can break. No matter how much I knew about Entities, I had no business wedging myself between two of them that had decided to go all out.
Leaving me and Soyeon in the office, Shiho sprinted toward the outpatient clinic.
A few minutes later, the video she sent from the clinic room lay far beyond anything I had predicted.
"Huh?"
Contrary to my fears, Professor Kim was nowhere in the footage.
All that filled the screen was Professor Heo — looking perfectly, utterly normal.
And yet I could not feel relieved at the sight.
I will respect human life from the moment of conception, without exception. Even under threat, I will not use my knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity. I will respect human life...
Because Professor Heo was babbling the words of the Geneva Declaration — a text he likely hadn't read once since graduation — over and over and over again, brain matter dribbling sluggishly from his nostrils as he did.