Chapter 126
So, a meeting was arranged in the main building's small conference room with the medical administration team's legal representative and the people from the opposing law firm.
The night before that fateful meeting.
Unable to sleep, I tossed and turned before eventually, as I always did, checking the gallery, my refuge.
[Dead Doctors Gallery]
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rAAA What the hell do I do, seriously, plz
Author : HellJoseonSlave1
I really did my best.
It's the day before I meet the lawyer, and my hands are shaking so bad I can't even sleep.
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The moment I hit refresh, a flurry of ghostly comments poured in.
[Comments]
Chest Jabber : Hell Slave, how many times have you said that already? I'm getting calluses in my ears.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ(211.36) : How many times has he said this now?
ㄴ Chest Jabber : Three already today.
Scalpel God : Unless you literally stabbed him with a knife, there's no way to prove causation.
ㅇㅇ (39.7) : I've done plenty of autopsies and plenty of court testimony, and your chart looks flawless to me. The prosecutor may even tear up reading it.
ㄴ HellJoseonSlave1 : Was the prosecutor really that sensitive?
ㄴ Scalpel God : Well, when you deal with knives, I doubt you're very sensitive. Knife-wielders are naturally cold.
ㄴ ㅇㅇ (39.7) : What kind of bullshit is that, fuck.
As I read their blunt comfort and forced a bitter smile, one serious comment caught my eye.
Hippocrates' Descendant: Living physician, it was not wrong to open the door. You willingly gave your space and your time for the dying. Do not blame yourself.
“Hah....”
My chest grew tight.
Right.
If I'd closed the door, I probably would have slept soundly tonight.
But I might have regretted it for the rest of my life.
Then it happened.
Ring-ring-ring-
A ringtone echoed through the silent room.
It was late, with dawn drawing near.
The hospital?
Did the ER call?
But the ER isn't a department that does on-call, is it?
What is it, did some major accident happen?
Looking at the screen, it was an unsaved number.
I almost ignored it, thinking it might be spam, but on a hunch I pressed the call button.
“Hello?”
[Hello, doctor. Sorry to call so late. I'm the PD from the documentary shoot the other day.]
What is this?
Why is the PD calling all of a sudden at this hour?
“Yes, yes. PD. What's the matter?”
[Well, the thing is, after the broadcast, I visited the hospital once more because of some work.]
“Ah, I see.”
[But I heard some things there. That deceased person who came in during our filming that day... I heard things got messy because of that, and that you've run into trouble.]
So the rumor had already spread that far.
Well, the hospital world is small.
“Yeah, that's how it turned out.”
I answered weakly.
Was he pitying me too?
I appreciate it, but even that kind of thing feels burdensome right now.
But the PD's next words completely missed my expectations.
[Doctor, about that. Actually, we kept filming that day, you know.]
The PD paused for a moment.
[We couldn't get the guardian's consent. And because the outcome ended so tragically, we couldn't air the treatment process, the CPR scenes, or the scenes of you making calls and running around, but...]
Of course.
You can't put a patient's image on terrestrial TV without consent.
[But the original source is still on our server. We can't use it for broadcast, but for records we've kept the data with the mosaic blur and rough cut already done.]
“Ah, yes... I figured.”
So what, is he saying he'll delete it?
Or is he asking if I want to keep a copy?
[Just in case, doctor. If you're having legal trouble now, I thought you might need it later.]
The PD's voice lowered.
[It could even serve as evidence in court. Everything you did that day is on video.]
Right.
The documentary crew had followed me around all day.
Which meant every step before the patient even arrived—the call I got and refused, then the second call, my hesitation, and my eventual acceptance—
and the thirty-minute struggle of me running out, inserting the REBOA, and performing CPR as soon as the patient arrived.
all of it had been recorded from the objective perspective of a third party.
'This is it.'
I sprang out of bed.
What if they could see with their own eyes that I hadn't delayed transfer, but had been frantically making calls to find a hospital that could save him?
“PD!”
[Yes?]
My voice rose so high it almost cracked.
“Do you have time tomorrow?”
[Uh... tomorrow? Tomorrow's Saturday, so I'm off, but I can make time. Is it urgent?]
I have to take this with me.
I need to bring this video to tomorrow's small conference room meeting and play it.
'Whether I was slacking off, or desperately fighting to save a life.'
“Yes! I'll see you at the hospital tomorrow!”
[Huh? Huh? The hospital? Tomorrow? Right now?]
“Yes. Tomorrow!”
***
“Good morning, PD.”
The lobby of the main hospital building.
Spotting a man fidgeting in the sparsely populated lobby on a weekend morning, I greeted him warmly.
It was the documentary PD.
He was carefully clutching a pouch containing an external hard drive in his arms.
“Ah... yes, doctor. Hello.”
The PD gave a half-hearted response to my greeting, then tugged on my sleeve and whispered,
“But is it really okay for me to go with you? I mean, it's a meeting about a lawsuit, right? And a lawyer's coming too. Won't I end up causing some legal trouble by tagging along?”
“Don't worry.”
“But what am I supposed to do, really? Do I just play it right away once we get there?”
“No, no. The legal team manager said to just sit quietly and stay still.”
“What?”
“Just stay put and, when the time's right, I'll ask. Depending on the situation, I'll give you a signal, and that's when you show it.”
“Is that so? But you've really gotten permission from all the bigwigs at the hospital, right? If the PR team or legal team says something different later, I'm seriously going to have to write an incident report....”
Faced with the PD's suspicious glare, I put on the most trustworthy expression in the world.
Of course, whether he believed it is another matter.
“It's fine. Really. I got permission from the hospital legal team manager, so don't worry.”
“R-right? I'm counting on you, doctor?”
“I'm telling you, yes.”
Of course, that ‘permission’ consisted entirely of a text I sent the legal team manager at 11 last night:
[Manager, the PD is bringing the video over. Is it okay if he comes in with me? It's useful as evidence.]
and the text that said
[Do whatever you think is best.]
was the entirety of his dry reply, but I didn't bother mentioning that.
“Let's go. We'll be late.”
I half-forcibly led the anxious PD into the elevator.
“Ah, Dr. Han. You're here.”
The legal team manager was waiting for me with his arms crossed in front of the small conference room in the main building's administrative wing.
He glanced at the PD standing behind me and raised an eyebrow slightly, but didn't stop him.
Looks like yesterday's text had some effect after all.
“Is that the PD?”
“Yes. He brought the video.”
“Understood. Let's go in. The lawyer on the other side has arrived.”
The manager let out a short sigh and led the way.
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Creak.
The small conference room was silent.
Three people were seated across the table.
In the middle, a man with a sharp face and a neat suit was reviewing documents.
A lawyer, plain and simple.
And on either side of him—
On the left, a middle-aged woman with a gaunt face.
It was the wife of the patient I'd met in the ER that day.
On the right, a big man who looked to be in his late twenties was glaring at me with his arms crossed.
He must have been the patient's son.
I bowed my head politely.
“Hello. I'm Han Hyeonjae from Emergency Medicine.”
They didn't answer. The man who seemed to be the son merely snorted.
The legal team manager, the PD, and I sat down on the opposite side.
The PD was practically cowering in the corner.
“Let's begin.”
The opposing lawyer adjusted his glasses and spoke.
His voice was so dry and businesslike it made him seem like a robot.
“First, I'm the lawyer representing the victim's bereaved family. For now, I'll be speaking on behalf of the family regarding this matter and related issues.”
He slid his business card across the table.
A quick search showed he was from a firm famous for very aggressive lawsuits.
“I assume you've seen the certified letter.”
“We have.”
Our legal team manager replied.
The lawyer tapped the papers and looked at me.
“From the diagnosis, it was a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. Isn't that a condition where you have to operate immediately to save the patient? You doctors would know that best. So why didn't you operate?”
“Because all of our surgical staff were already in surgery at the time, it was physically impossible.”
“Then why did you accept the patient?”
The lawyer pushed his glasses up.
“If you couldn't operate, you should have told him to go somewhere else. Is it ethical to hold on to a patient whose every second is critical and say you'll take him in even though you can't operate?
'Hah....'
“Doctor.”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn't you have refused him and immediately connected him to another hospital that could operate? Why did you lure the patient into a hospital that couldn't even perform surgery and waste the golden time?”
“At the time, the patient had already been delayed by about twelve minutes, and shock was progressing while his vitals were collapsing. I judged that if transport continued, the likelihood of death on the road was extremely high, so we accepted him for emergency treatment and resuscitation.”
“Emergency treatment?”
The son sitting beside him cut in.
His voice was quite loud.
“Was the treatment actually done properly? After he died, we heard you put in some kind of balloon thing, and that you just wasted time doing that instead of surgery, and that's how he died, isn't it?”
“Calm down.”
The legal team manager stepped in.
“As you can see from the records, as soon as he arrived we laid him in the resuscitation bay and several staff members immediately worked on him continuously. He was never left unattended.”
The lawyer continued again.
The conversation kept going in parallel lines.
The wife still looked mentally shattered.
The son looking for somewhere to vent his anger.
And the lawyer, trying to seize the upper hand by exploiting that emotion.
It seemed the conversation would end with no gain, only mutual wounds.
It couldn't end like this.
“Um, you see...”
As soon as I opened my mouth, all eyes turned to me.
“Counsel. And members of the bereaved family.”
I glanced toward the PD.
I could see him swallowing nervously.
“Did you know that a documentary was being filmed that day?”
At my words, the son's expression, which had been barely holding onto composure, twisted.
“Why bring that up all of a sudden? Are you asking us to go easy on you because you worked hard enough to get on TV?”
“No.”
“That's a separate matter. If anything, didn't you pay less attention to the deceased because you were busy filming for broadcast?”
The lawyer joined in.
“It's all preserved in the data.”
I looked straight into the family's eyes.
“From the moment the deceased entered the ER, every step of the treatment we performed... is on video.”
I pointed at the PD.
“The PD here brought the original footage.”
“What are you talking about?”
The lawyer shot to his feet.
“You're saying you're going to show the bereaved family the deceased's final moments just to defend yourselves? That's secondary victimization. Do you think psychological trauma is a joke?”
“I want you to see with your own eyes that the deceased didn't die abandoned in a corner. That we didn't give up.”
I raised my voice, refusing to back down.
“We'll leave.”
The lawyer gathered his papers and pulled on the son's arm.
And just when it seemed the whole thing was about to fall apart—
“..I'll watch.”
The deceased's wife spoke.
The lawyer froze.
“Mom?”
“Ma'am. You'll only be shocked if you watch.”
The lawyer hurriedly tried to stop her.
But she shook her head.
“Will you be all right?”
I asked carefully.
“I'll watch. His final moments.”
Tears began to well in her eyes.
“How he went. Whether he went while struggling like you said, doctor, or whether he was left unfairly neglected like you said, counsel.”
She clenched her fist tightly.
“I'll see it with my own eyes.”