In the Ilhyeon Hospital lobby, there were more people in doctors’ gowns to be seen than there were patients. Most of them were the senior physicians of Ilhyeon Hospital—department heads and the like—and among them even the hospital director stood with a nervous face alongside the other doctors. At this sight, the first they’d ever seen, the interns and residents, and the young doctors and nurses too, circled the edge of the lobby as they passed and couldn’t take their eyes off the curious scene.
“What’s going on? Is the President coming or something?”
“The President? Someone bigger than the President is coming.”
Nurse Choi, only recently come to the hospital, looked at the lobby and asked Nurse Yu.
“Someone bigger than the President? Is there such a person?”
“There is. Here at Ilhyeon Hospital, there’s someone bigger than the President.”
“And who’s that?”
Nurse Yu stuck up her thumb and answered.
“The Ilhyeon family. In this place, those people are bigger than the President.”
“The Ilhyeon family?”
Nurse Choi nodded at Yu’s words. Ilhyeon Hospital belonged under the Ilhyeon Group. Its character was said to differ from that of the other subsidiaries, but even so, Ilhyeon Hospital was a place that couldn’t run without the Ilhyeon Group’s financial support. For that reason, Ilhyeon Hospital had no choice but to mind the Ilhyeon Group, and to keep in the good graces of the Ilhyeon family, the group’s ruling force.
Nurse Choi looked at the doctors in the lobby waiting nervously for someone and asked,
“So is even the Chairman himself coming?”
“The Chairman?”
At Choi’s question, Nurse Yu burst out laughing. And drawing close to Choi, she said in a low voice,
“If the Chairman were coming, they wouldn’t do this.”
“Sorry? What do you mean by that?”
“You think the director could go telling other people that the Chairman was coming?”
“Ah!”
“Right. So he’d come more quietly still. He couldn’t come with all this fuss.”
Understanding, Choi nodded. And watching the lobby doctors recede as they rode the escalator up, she asked Yu,
“So who is it coming today? Is it the Chairman’s eldest son? Or the second? The third?”
“Not as much as the Chairman, but the person who holds the greatest power in the group right now. I hear the youngest son-in-law is coming.”
“The youngest… son-in-law?”
Not a son or a daughter but a son-in-law—the youngest one at that—Choi couldn’t understand how that squared with talk of the greatest power. Seeing the bewildered Choi, Yu smiled and said,
“The youngest son-in-law is precisely the Ilhyeon Group’s Restructuring Headquarters head. He’s the man who takes a blade and carves the whole group this way and that—a hospital like ours he could pare away more easily than an apple in his hand. So the director and the department heads can’t help but be this nervous.”
“So he’s the one who decides how much support money to give?”
“Well, you could put it that way.”
Yu smiled at the now-comprehending Choi, then stepped off the escalator. Handing Choi the chart she was holding, she said,
“Whichever way, we just need to look after the patients well, so don’t dwell on it any more than that. The rest, those people over there will see to. Go on and hand this chart over. I’ll be waiting.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Choi knew there was nothing she could do by dwelling on it. She looked one last time at the doctors down in the lobby, turned, and moved her feet toward where the patients were waiting.
When Choi had moved off to the exam room, Seong-ho—the man the director and doctors had been awaiting—appeared in the lobby.
“Welcome.”
“Head. We welcome you.”
“Head. It’s an honor to meet you.”
Seong-ho returned the greetings of the white-gowned doctors bowing to him, then raised his head and looked around. At that, the secretary at his side guided him before a doctor with only a few white hairs left, wearing glasses.
“Head. This is Hospital Director Gi-cheol Do.”
At the secretary’s introduction, the director bowed his head.
“Welcome. I’m Gi-cheol Do, director of the Seoul Ilhyeon Hospital.”
“A pleasure. I’m Seong-ho Kim, in charge of the Restructuring Headquarters.”
Seong-ho shook hands lightly with Director Gi-cheol Do and exchanged greetings one by one with the doctors surrounding him. Then he smiled at Gi-cheol Do and said,
“Then would you first show me to the room?”
“I’ll guide you myself.”
The hospital director stepped forward to personally show Seong-ho to the room where he’d be admitted. Seong-ho didn’t decline Director Gi-cheol Do’s courtesy and followed him toward where the elevator up to the rooms stood.
Waiting for the elevator, Director Gi-cheol Do introduced Ilhyeon Hospital.
“As you’ll know, Head, Ilhyeon Hospital sits in each of the nation’s five metropolitan cities. Here in Seoul, and in Busan, Daegu, Gwangju, and Gangneung, our Ilhyeon Hospitals hold the finest facilities and medical staff in all of Korea. Among them, the Seoul Ilhyeon Hospital, with its 3,000 beds, is Korea’s finest and largest hospital…”
Listening to Gi-cheol Do’s explanation, Seong-ho stepped into the elevator that had stopped before them. When Seong-ho boarded, the department heads bowed deeply. Judging that following him all the way to the room would be excessive, they’d made their bows there at the elevator.
“Ah! Is the neurosurgery department head here, by any chance?”
Receiving the department heads’ bows from within the elevator, Seong-ho looked at the doctors with their heads bowed and asked. One of the white-gowned doctors quietly raised his head and answered.
“I’m the neurosurgery head… may I ask why you’re looking for me?”
“Come with us.”
Seong-ho stepped aside and invited him onto the elevator. The neurosurgery head glanced for a moment at the other department heads standing in a row.
“Doctor Kim. Come in, quick.”
Director Gi-cheol Do called to the neurosurgery head, who stood only wearing a bewildered look, not boarding.
“Sorry? Ah! Yes.”
Neurosurgery Head Chang-mu Kim hurriedly boarded the elevator. Seong-ho looked at Chang-mu Kim for a moment, then greeted the department heads blinking outside the elevator.
“Then I’ll see you all again. Well…”
When Seong-ho turned to his secretary, the secretary closed the elevator doors.
Aboard the elevator, Head Chang-mu Kim still wore a bewildered look, as if he didn’t know why he’d been made to get on, and Director Gi-cheol Do went on with his introduction of the hospital.
“The screening center, which opened last year at a cost of 30 billion won, we take pride is the best not only in Korea but in all of Asia. Everything is done in the very latest fashion, and it’s Korea’s only screening center where screening, treatment, and recovery can be carried out at the same time. At the screening center, more than fifty different conditions can be…”
Inside the elevator, Seong-ho let Gi-cheol Do’s explanation go in one ear and out the other as he mapped out, in his head, the situation to come.
“This is Center Director No-nam Yun, who has charge of the screening center.”
Director Gi-cheol Do introduced No-nam Yun, the screening center’s director, who had come ahead to wait in the room where Seong-ho would stay. Seong-ho exchanged a brief greeting with Center Director No-nam Yun, and once done, No-nam Yun immediately began his briefing.
“Head. It’s an honor to have you. Allow me to briefly brief the screening schedule you’ll be undergoing.”
Taking off his outer things, Seong-ho listened to No-nam Yun.
“Today we’ll finish with the admission procedures, and the screening proper begins tomorrow. Having started your fast at nine o’clock tonight, Head, you’ll begin tomorrow at seven with a blood test…”
Having changed clothes with his secretary’s help, Seong-ho perched on the edge of the hospital bed and listened to No-nam Yun’s briefing all the way through. Having finished the whole briefing, No-nam Yun asked Seong-ho carefully,
“Then, Head, do you have any questions?”
Seong-ho pointed a finger at the space beside the hospital bed and said,
“Could you put one more bed here?”
“A bed?”
Center Director No-nam Yun, who’d expected a screening-related question—cautions to observe, the order of things, or what would happen if the results came back poor—couldn’t answer Seong-ho’s request straightaway. Standing beside him, Director Gi-cheol Do jabbed No-nam Yun in the side and answered in his stead.
“Yes. We’ll see to it at once.”
“And Doctor Kim.”
Neurosurgery Head Chang-mu Kim, who since boarding the elevator had been standing off to one side like a spare barley sack, hurriedly came to himself at Seong-ho’s call and answered.
“Yes, Head.”
“If it’s all right with you, could you guide my screening tomorrow?”
“Me? That’s… a nurse…”
Chang-mu Kim was about to say why should he do the guiding when there were nurses. But Gi-cheol Do jabbed him in the side and hurriedly cut off his words.
“No problem at all. Tomorrow Doctor Kim will take full charge of guiding your screening, Head. And the day after, and the day after that, we’ll have Doctor Kim attend you closely.”
“Director. Then my surgeries…”
“You needn’t worry about the surgeries. Neurosurgery isn’t only you, is it? I’ll adjust the schedule and clear yours through three days from now, so explain the screening well at the Head’s side, and when the results come out, analyze them yourself and report them to the Head directly.”
“Me…”
Chang-mu Kim tilted his head and turned to Center Director No-nam Yun. He looked at Yun with a gaze that asked why he should do work the screening center ought to handle. But No-nam Yun couldn’t oppose Seong-ho’s proposal either. The screening center was completed, but the mountains still to be crossed were legion. And the money needed to cross those mountains was staggering. In a situation where the group’s support was desperately needed, No-nam Yun’s liver was not big enough to oppose the Restructuring Headquarters head who held the group’s purse strings.
“That’s a fine idea.”
No-nam Yun answered Seong-ho’s request in the affirmative and, looking at Chang-mu Kim, said,
“All things considered, Doctor Kim will be able to analyze the screening results more accurately and in finer detail than a nurse. And that way you, Head, will be able to hear the screening findings well. Doctor Kim. I’ll share the Head’s screening schedule with you shortly, so from tomorrow, I’m counting on you.”
“But—”
With even No-nam Yun telling him to stay at Seong-ho’s side during the screening, Chang-mu Kim could no longer hold any question about why he had to be there. He held only the wish that Seong-ho wouldn’t turn out to be a difficult man.
“Then I’ll rest now, so all of you go about your business. Because of me, you’ve all been kept from your work and had your time taken.”
“Not at all. The Head has come, so this much time we’d make even if we didn’t have it to spare.”
Center Director No-nam Yun smiled as if it were nothing and said to Seong-ho,
“But, Head. Might I ask one thing?”
“Yes. Ask.”
Center Director No-nam Yun looked at the space beside Seong-ho’s bed and asked,
“Why did you ask us to place the bed?”
Having asked it out of curiosity, No-nam Yun quickly raised a hand and added,
“Ah! It’s not that I don’t want to do it. It’s just that I need to know the reason to know which sort of bed to bring. There’s a caregiver’s bed, and among patient beds there’s the general kind and the VIP kind and so on, all sorts…”
Seong-ho nodded as if he understood and said,
“I understand. It’s just that it seems my wife will need to be with me tonight.”
“Ah, I see. Then a caregiver’s bed would…”
No-nam Yun’s words—about to say a caregiver’s bed would surely suffice—came to a stop. And in No-nam Yun’s place, Director Gi-cheol Do asked in a trembling voice,
“Then… you mean President Gyeong-eun Lee… will spend the night here?”
“Yes. That’s the plan. She’ll stay the night and go around the screening with me tomorrow, so I’m counting on you.”
At Seong-ho’s words, Director Gi-cheol Do and Center Director No-nam Yun, their faces tense, could not say a thing.
The screening center went into a state of hyper-tension. Having resolved to take no other patients and to move for three whole days attending Head Kim alone, the screening center had entered a state of extreme tension at the news that Gyeong-eun was coming as Head Kim’s caregiver.
“I know Head Seong-ho Kim is a formidable man, but why go to such lengths?”
Chang-mu Kim, wearing an uncomprehending expression, walked toward the room where Seong-ho was. And he asked Center Director No-nam Yun, walking along to meet Seong-ho with him.
Carrying the chart with the schedule written on it himself as he walked, Center Director No-nam Yun explained to Neurosurgery Head Chang-mu Kim.
“You know Head Seong-ho Kim runs the Restructuring Headquarters?”
“How would I not know that? Our budget’s in that man’s hands—that’s why we’re doing all this. But isn’t it a bit much?”
“It is. It’s much. But that’s because his wife is President Gyeong-eun Lee.”
Even after the answer, Chang-mu Kim still didn’t understand; he tilted his head and asked No-nam Yun,
“What about President Gyeong-eun Lee? Head Kim holds budget-execution authority, granted—but President Gyeong-eun Lee has nothing to do with us, does she?”
“Nothing to do with us? She’s the Chairman’s youngest daughter, isn’t she?”
“The youngest daughter… so what?”
Chang-mu Kim still wore an uncomprehending expression. Center Director No-nam Yun stopped his steps, turned to face Chang-mu Kim, and said in a low voice,
“Considering the Chairman’s age, it’s about time to think of the group’s succession. And when you consider that the hospital is usually given to a daughter… it means there’s a strong chance President Gyeong-eun Lee will become our board chairperson. Do you understand now? She may well be the person who pays our salaries.”
At No-nam Yun’s words, Neurosurgery Head Chang-mu Kim finally understood. But understanding it didn’t make him grow nervous the way No-nam Yun was. Because the thought that the one who pays your salary is not, after all, a god sat larger in Chang-mu Kim’s head. And so the two moved their halted steps again and headed for Seong-ho’s room.
(End of Chapter 144)