The Awakened Giant (2)
The appearance of the neurosurgery department chief—who had personally performed Chairman Kwon Byung-do’s surgery and knew the patient’s condition more intimately than even the hospital director—made us all tense up as well. After entering the guardians’ waiting room, the chief glanced around to see who remained, then asked carefully.
“Hello. Is the lady who was asking so persistently about Kwon Byung-do’s recovery prospects in the ICU earlier not here?”
He was referring to Oh Jeonghwa, Seong-gyun’s wife, who had been spouting nonsense about the patient possibly losing consciousness again right in front of someone who had just woken up after nearly a hundred days. When the chief finished, Kim Majin and Chief Secretary Han Seung-woo both looked at me. With both Seong-gyun and Je-gyun absent, it seemed I had become the representative guardian.
“My eldest brother and his wife stepped out for a dinner appointment. Is something the matter?”
At my answer, the chief’s expression visibly relaxed.
“You must be the guardian for Kwon Ho-gyun, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Could I speak with you privately outside for a moment?”
Just me? The fact that the department chief himself had come instead of sending a resident suggested the matter carried considerable weight.
“If this concerns my father’s condition, I think it would be better for everyone here to hear it together.”
“Ah, it’s not about that. The patient’s condition hasn’t changed significantly from what we discussed earlier today, and follow-up tests after he regained consciousness show his overall recovery is progressing smoothly.”
That was reassuring to hear, yet it only made it harder to guess why the chief had sought me out specifically. Still, he wasn’t trying to hide anything—he had come in person to speak with me—so I might as well go and find out. I signaled to Kim Majin and Han Seung-woo for their understanding, then followed the chief out of the waiting room.
The conversation we had sitting at the far end of the corridor left my head ringing. The very concern I had voiced in the ICU earlier had multiplied several times over and become reality.
“Earlier, we discussed the possibility of Kwon Byung-do’s recovery,” the chief began cautiously. I nodded.
“We did.”
“At the time, the hospital director answered instead of me. Since we’re not gods, we had no choice but to mention the possibility of deterioration. It wasn’t something to discuss in front of the patient, but the director seemed flustered by the urgent questions. I apologize on his behalf.”
So the director had sent the chief to clean up his own mess.
“What’s done is done. Did that lead to another problem?”
“Yes. After hearing that, Kwon Byung-do became quite anxious, and it took our medical team considerable time to reassure him that the situation wasn’t as pessimistic as it sounded.”
Of course he would be terrified. No matter how commanding a figure Chairman Kwon Byung-do had been in the business world and across all of Korea, hearing that he might lose consciousness again after waking after three months would shake anyone.
“Is my father all right now?”
“Yes. Fortunately, we’ve managed some minimal communication and switched him to a more comfortable ventilator. He seems less anxious than earlier. However…”
Up to this point, everything had stayed within my expectations. Now he was about to reveal why he had called me out alone.
“Yes?”
“Kwon Byung-do specifically wishes to see you, Kwon Ho-gyun.”
“Me? Wait—does that mean my father can speak now?”
“No. He can still only express yes or no with his eyes. We realized this while trying to calm his anxiety and asking various questions.”
This was getting stranger by the second. The chief had spent the entire day trying to interpret the chairman’s intentions, and now that minimal communication was possible, he had learned that Kwon Byung-do specifically wanted to see me? I could roughly guess the reason, but the problem remained: the chairman couldn’t speak. No matter how urgent or important the message, what good was it if it couldn’t be conveyed?
“When did my father say he wanted to see me?”
The chief hesitated, clearly sharing my concern, before relaying the chairman’s wish.
“It wasn’t communicated with perfect clarity, but he seemed to want to see you as soon as possible. That’s why I came to find you so urgently. It appears the patient has something he must tell you immediately, so I’ve postponed the scheduled sedative administration on my own authority.”
Now I understood why the chief had looked so tense when he first entered the waiting room. But my original question remained unanswered. Rather than guessing, the fastest way to learn what Kwon Byung-do wanted to say—and how he intended to say it—was to go see him myself.
Thus I returned to the neurosurgical ICU. After guiding me in, the chief tactfully withdrew. This was the third time my eyes had met Kwon Byung-do’s since he collapsed. The first time, I had felt as though I were facing someone deep within him rather than the chairman himself. When our eyes met the second time earlier that day, he had looked disoriented—like a newborn suddenly thrust into the world after waking after three months. Now, however, he seemed strangely calm, as if he had been sorting through his life’s accomplishments in his mind. Whether this was because time had passed since waking and he was adapting to the world again, or because he had heard he might lose consciousness once more, was unclear. But one thing was certain: he still could not move his limbs, let alone speak, and even moving the muscles around his face appeared difficult.
I deliberately rested my arms on the bed so that my eyes—our only channel of communication—were directly aligned with his. Kwon Byung-do did not look away. After a moment only the two of us could understand, his eyes began to blink. Several times quickly, then several times slowly, then quickly again, then slowly. All I had been told was that short blinks meant yes and long blinks meant no. But the pattern the chairman was showing now could not be interpreted within that framework. He would not be repeating “yes” or “no” so rapidly, and at times the two seemed to overlap multiple times. This was undoubtedly the message he had resolved to deliver to me after hearing what sounded like a death sentence right after returning from the brink of death. With that single-minded determination, I stared into his eyes without blinking, desperate to catch anything.
Then a pattern emerged. His short and long blinks seemed to repeat in a regular cycle: long, long, short, short, long, short, pause, long, short, long, short, short, short, short, short, long, long, short, short, long, pause, short, long, short, short, short, short. What on earth was he saying?
At that moment, a memory surfaced from long ago—back when I had lived as Kang Min-chan, not Kwon Ho-gyun. Specifically, during my time as a prosecutor. Criminals had used exactly this kind of signaling to exchange secret orders. Those criminals had been arrested, and the investigation had revealed the true nature of the signal.
I gripped Kwon Byung-do’s hand tightly and asked, “Father, is this Morse code?”
If anything could move faster than light at that moment, it was the chairman’s blink. The affirmation was unmistakable. I pulled out my phone.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t memorize everything you’ve said so far. I’ll write it down from now on. Can you start over from the beginning?”
Another lightning-fast blink. After that, the words Kwon Byung-do could not speak—the message he had been desperate to deliver in what might be his final moments—flowed out in a steady stream. Of course, I couldn’t understand it on the spot. I could only record the words he was leaving behind like a will. While an eternity seemed to pass between us, only about ten minutes had gone by outside. The voice of the neurosurgery chief, who had said he would return in ten minutes after leaving us alone in the ICU, drifted in.
“Do you need more time?”
At those words, Kwon Byung-do’s eyes blinked very slowly—unlike me, who wanted to capture even one more word of his final message. It was a clear “no,” more specifically, that he had said everything he needed to say and required no more time. The message was clear not only to me but to the chief as well. I was given only enough time for a single sentence.
“Father, I’m not even sure if this form of address is accurate, but—”
Before I could finish, the chairman’s eyes blinked at the speed of light once more. Yes? He was affirming that I should call him Father? I couldn’t begin to guess how much he already knew.
“Thank you. And please recover quickly.”
With those words, I had no choice but to leave the ICU.
Whew. After removing the gown, hair cap, and gloves I had worn to enter the ICU, a long, uncontrollable sigh escaped me. I checked the Morse code message from Kwon Byung-do saved on my phone over and over. Thankfully, there had been no recording errors. All that remained was to decipher what he had been so desperate to tell me in what he believed might be his final moments.
Morse code was internationally famous, so I could have attempted the translation right there in the hospital corridor. Yet I felt strangely reluctant. I would probably need paper and pen anyway, and more than anything, I didn’t want to interpret his dying message so carelessly. With that thought, I headed straight back to QS Tower without even stopping by the waiting room. Sitting in the division director’s office—the position Kwon Byung-do had entrusted to me—I pulled up a large Morse code translation guide on the computer screen. On my phone, the chairman’s message remained displayed in Morse code. Matching the two, I began writing letter by letter on the A4 paper beside me. His very first words sent a shock through me.
M I N C H A N
A H