Chapter 2 : The Protagonist of a Regression Story (2)
Chapter 2 - The Protagonist of a Regression Story (2)
[Estimated Time of Arrival 8 : 16 PM]
Sihyeon hurriedly drove his car toward Samah University Hospital.
"Why is there so much traffic?"
Irritation welled up.
He was in a rush, but for some time now, the signal kept changing just before he passed through the intersections.
And every single time, at that.
He felt like abandoning the car and running.
‘Will they be okay?’
If their vitals were unstable due to burns, it must be a critical situation.
The faces of Kim Seok-yong and the Head Nurse, whom he had seen last, shimmered before his eyes.
‘Could it be because of the opening mechanism?’
The image of people trapped in a ward engulfed in flames, screaming, kept coming to mind.
His heart pounded and dizziness set in.
The feeling that he wasn't breathing, no matter how deeply he inhaled.
They were the exact symptoms panic disorder patients described in the consultation room.
By the time he felt like the breath was stuck at the tip of his throat, the green light turned on.
"What is that? Uh... what?"
Just as he was about to go straight with the signal, a freight truck from the opposite lane crossed the center line and was hurtling toward him.
Honk. Honk. Honnnnnnnk.
He honked the horn repeatedly, but the truck did not change its path and came straight at him.
‘I have to avoid it.’
Sihyeon immediately stepped on the accelerator to the floor and jerked the steering wheel to the left.
The RPM on the dashboard soared.
It was a situation where, if he was lucky, a head-on collision could be avoided.
But for some reason, in the next moment, the truck also turned its direction and began to charge toward him.
It was a movement just like a beast of prey targeting its prey.
‘I can't avoid this.’
Sihyeon reflexively gripped the steering wheel tightly and squeezed his eyes shut.
And a moment later, the heavy body of the truck swallowed the hood of the sedan Sihyeon was in.
……
"Ugh."
How much time had passed?
The crumpled hood covered his field of vision, and the pungent smell of burning vibrated in the air.
It seemed it was true that airbags deployed using gunpowder.
‘I have to get out.’
The driver's seat had narrowed as much as it could.
He struggled to escape somehow, but his legs didn't budge as if they were pinned.
‘There's no sensation of stepping on the floor...?’
It was a situation where it wouldn't be strange if something was badly broken, but he hadn't felt any pain for a while.
‘Is it a spinal cord injury?’
Not only his toes and ankles, but he couldn't put any strength into his knee joints at all.
Cold sweat ran down Sihyeon's back.
However, contrary to his immobile body, his flow of thought was more alert than ever.
‘The lesion level is around L3 (3rd lumbar vertebra position)... I mustn't lose consciousness.’
He decided to first stop the attempts to escape by force.
If he struggled recklessly, even the remaining nerves could be damaged.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Hey there! Are ya alright? Say somethin'!”
A middle-aged man dressed in a khaki-colored padded jacket shouted while tapping on the tattered car window.
It was the truck driver.
“First, call 119... and contact the emergency room at Samah University Hospital.”
“Yes! I got it!”
The truck driver was nodding his head repeatedly at those words.
Though his voice wouldn't come out properly, his message seemed to have been delivered for now.
It was right after that that Sihyeon's eyes widened.
The truck driver had abandoned the vehicle and vanished somewhere as if he were running away.
‘W-Where is he going?’
The police? Or 119?
He had to call for help.
Sihyeon reached out with all his strength toward the cell phone hanging off the end of the passenger seat.
Sting.
But an excruciating headache immediately followed.
Literally, it felt like his head was going to split open.
— I think it’s better if you don’t come. Everything is under investigation anyway...
Suddenly, the words of the junior who had tried to stop him before he left came to mind.
— Please, be careful. ...You might be in danger as well.
Also the image of the patient who had earnestly urged him to be careful during their final consultation.
‘How did things end up like this...’
Ding-dong!
In the next moment, a notification sound—unable to tell if it was an auditory hallucination or a real sensation—lingered in his ears.
Feeling the strength drain from his grip on the steering wheel, Sihyeon gradually lost consciousness.
……
"Huff, huff."
Inside a dark room.
Sihyeon sat up, gasping for breath.
Beep-beep-beep-beep— Beep-beep-beep-beep—
It was a familiar alarm he had heard somewhere before.
‘Where is this?’
Did it matter where he woke up?
It was a relief for now that he didn't seem to have died even after suffering that accident.
Even his legs moved normally.
Sihyeon hurriedly checked the time first.
[6:00 AM]
It was a series of reliefs.
His body, which he thought was severely injured, was normal, and there was still time before the exam.
Phew.
A sigh of relief escaped his lips.
‘Wait a minute.’
But before that breath could even finish, Sihyeon froze in place.
As if he were a still frame.
Unable to take his eyes off the cell phone.
"What on earth is going on?"
—---
[ D - Day ]
March 2, 20XX, 6:00 AM. Weather: Sunny.
—---
Today, which should have been the day of the specialist exam,
Had turned into that day four years ago.
The first day of duty as a first-year psychiatry resident.
“My phone... why is it like this?”
Beep beep beep beep ring.
Before the absurdity could even fade, someone opened the door lock and entered.
“Sihyeon, you have to wake up. Are you going to be late starting from the first day?”
The person who opened the door and entered was Sihyeon's senior, Kim Seok-yong.
“D-Doctor!”
Could Kim Won-gi have made a prank call?
He looked too healthy for someone who was supposedly lying in the ICU hovering between life and death due to a fire.
“You're not badly hurt, right? Are you okay? But how are you here?”
Sihyeon continued speaking while grabbing both of Kim Seok-yong's arms.
“Si-Sihyeon?”
“Yes?”
“Are you not fully awake, or are you not fully sober? How much did you drink yesterday?”
Kim Seok-yong looked at Sihyeon with a pathetic expression.
“…….”
“And who's hurt? Do you still think this is the intern dormitory?”
Kim Seok-yong's face looked subtly younger.
Down to the sky-blue surgical scrubs he loved to wear on duty and the black Crocs.
He looked exactly as he did during his residency.
When he regained his composure and looked around, it was an all-too-familiar sight.
A bunk bed.
A steel cabinet.
And the main building of Samah University Hospital visible through the window.
The place where Sihyeon practically lived throughout his first and second years.
It was the psychiatry medical office.
‘Why am I here?’
On the open door hung a sign for the ‘Psychiatry Medical Office,’ which was used before the department was renamed the Department of Mental Health.
‘Did I fall asleep here last night?’
He had clearly been in a major accident on his way back to the hospital, yet he woke up in the dormitory in a perfectly fine condition without a single scratch.
Furthermore, until just a few hours ago, he had completed all his training and was facing the specialist exam, but when he opened his eyes, he had suddenly become a first-year resident.
“Doctor, but why am I here...”
“Wait a minute. His orientation (Orientation: sense of time, place, and person) is off. Is there anywhere you're hurting?”
Kim Seok-yong asked in a suddenly worried tone.
“I feel a bit sick. The back of my neck is stiff, and I have a slight headache...”
Sihyeon grimaced and rubbed his upper abdomen.
“Do you have a fever by any chance? Not dizzy?”
Nausea, headache, nuchal rigidity, and disorientation.
The judgment that this was not a condition to be taken lightly flashed through Kim Seok-yong's mind.
Sihyeon’s appearance was far too different from usual to be considered merely a half-asleep state.
He immediately checked Sihyeon's pupil response with a penlight.
Whether the light was shining in front of his eyes or not, Sihyeon was struggling to understand this situation somehow.
‘Is it a dream? There’s no other way to explain it...’
After a long while, Sihyeon nodded his head slowly as if he had realized something.
“I understand the situation. And why I am here.”
“Of course! A first-year should naturally be in the medical office! Now that you've come to your senses a bit...”
“Freud said it. Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.”
Sihyeon looked at Kim Seok-yong with gleaming eyes.
“Actually, there was a major accident yesterday. I had no sensation in my lower extremities, so perhaps I might never be able to walk again.”
“You're standing right now. What are you talking about?”
Kim Seok-yong asked back with a look of disbelief.
“That is likely my mind reflecting the denial of becoming disabled through injury in a dream. Telling me to go back to the beginning and start over... You appearing in such a healthy state, Doctor, is probably in the same vein. It's a defense mechanism suppressing anxiety that the consciousness simply cannot accept. It's probably to reduce guilt...”
“Si-Sihyeon? What are you... what? Suppression? Defense mechanism?”
“But the silver lining is that dreaming means I'm still alive, doesn't it? More precisely, it means I'm in the REM sleep stage, and my neuronal activity is at almost the same level as when I'm awake.”
“…….”
Regardless, Sihyeon continued his explanation, muttering to himself.
Even if it was in a dream, he wanted to organize the current situation as much as possible.
Beep-beep-beep-beep ring.
Meanwhile, another person entered the room.
“You're out early? Sihyeon, you're up too?”
It was Hwang Jin-ho, the colleague he had worked with for four years.
“The appearance of my colleague Jin-ho probably signifies a desire for recognition and the pressure of competition...”
“Doctor, what's wrong with him?”
Hwang Jin-ho—specifically, the image of Hwang Jin-ho that existed in Sihyeon's memory—spoke.
“Good timing. I think we need to get a Brain CT for Sihyeon. Help me support him and let's go to the ER right now.”
“Huh? Why is a guy who was perfectly fine until yesterday...”
“He's not fine at all right now! Hurry! Now!”
“…….”
Sihyeon was bewildered but couldn't find anything else to say.
Before he had a chance to think more deeply, Sihyeon was practically dragged out of the medical office by the two.
……
“Huh? We don't have any psychiatry patients?”
The ER charge nurse asked with an expression that said, "What's going on so early in the morning?"
“Please register him. Dr. Cheon Si-hyeon.”
“Why Dr. Cheon? Ah! It's because he went too hard on his last day of internship the day before yesterday, right? You know we don't take drunks, so why bring him here?”
The charge nurse said teasingly.
“It's not like that. I think we need an emergency Brain CT. We'll be using contrast, so please set up an 18-gauge line with 500cc of NS. Do the samples also.”
Kim Seok-yong said while sitting at the station and entering the orders.
He had a serious expression with not a hint of playfulness.
“Oh my! Is Dr. Cheon really sick? I'll prepare right away.”
The acting nurse quickly brought a tray containing the IV set.
“Ah, ow!”
The needle piercing his left forearm.
The normal saline entering his vein drop by drop.
Even the nurse's familiar hand movements as she divided the drawn blood into purple, red, and yellow tubes.
It was an incredibly vivid sensation.
“Let’s go right away. The CT room is empty now,” Kim Seok-yong said, having called the imaging room to arrange for a brain CT to be taken immediately.
“I’ll take him. Jinho, you go up and prepare for rounds.”
“Yes, Doctor!”
As Hwang Jin-ho went up to the ward, Kim Seok-yong offered Sihyeon a wheelchair.
“Sit here.”
“I’m fine. I can walk.”
“You don’t look fine, so just get in! We need to get the scans done quickly!”
Since he had no particular reason to refuse, Sihyeon obediently got into the wheelchair.
From the emergency room, through the first-floor lobby, and down to the imaging room in the basement.
Urgency could be felt in Kim Seok-yong’s footsteps.
Staff members arriving for work stopped and stared at them.
The faces of several employees who had already quit the hospital also caught his eye.
‘It’s pointlessly detailed. It’s definitely a dream.’
“Let’s check the results once we go up to the ward. We have to prepare for rounds, too,” Kim Seok-yong said after the examination was completed without a hitch.
“Stay in the wheelchair for now. You might feel dizzy because of the contrast agent, so keep the IV attached.”
“Ah, yes…”
Riding in a wheelchair pushed personally by his senior resident.
That was how Sihyeon’s first day of work began.