“Mr. Lee Donghyeon, please leave now.”
Taeho’s voice rang out coldly.
“What? No, what’s so terribly wrong about eating one meal?”
Lee Donghyeon’s eyes widened in confusion. But when he saw Taeho’s face, a chill soon ran down his spine.
“How am I supposed to treat a patient who refuses to listen to his doctor? Go to another hospital immediately.”
“P-please calm down. I just really wanted to eat eel, so I asked them to bring me some. I won’t do it again. I promise. Please? Let it slide just this once.”
Lee Donghyeon spoke with a shameless smile that bordered on servile.
Secretary Kim, who had been watching from the side, opened his eyes wide. Aside from the group chairman, he had never seen Lee Donghyeon bow his head to someone like this before.
But it did not work on Taeho.
“What did you do to the people at the market?”
“Uh, that, that was just a mistake. I got angry for a second and ended up…”
“A mistake? Cursing at people and trying to hit them was a mistake?”
Lee Donghyeon, at a loss for words, squeezed his eyes shut. Instinctively, he knew that making any more excuses to this man would not work.
Taeho crossed his arms and glared at Lee Donghyeon as he asked,
“Let’s hear it one last time. How did you know about me? I heard you specifically named me at Seyoung Hospital.”
“That was… I was just referred…”
“Referred? By whom?”
“That… Mei? You know, that girl group kid. I heard you treated her.”
In that instant, Taeho’s expression turned icy.
“How do you know Mei?”
“I just know a little. She’s famous.”
He had heard that celebrities were dragged around here and there by people in power. Had even Mei, who had suffered from a serious illness, been called around like that?
“You privately summoned a young girl like Mei?”
“No! It was absolutely nothing like that!”
Lee Donghyeon hurriedly waved his hands, trying to explain.
“Get out. Now.”
“Director, please hear me out…”
“I have no intention of treating someone like you.”
Lee Donghyeon tried to stand up to grab Taeho, but suddenly his body swayed.
“Ugh, u…”
“Don’t act, Mr. Lee Donghyeon.”
“I can’t… I can’t breathe properly! Hrk…”
“That still won’t work.”
Taeho was about to leave just like that when he suddenly stopped. Lee Donghyeon’s breathing did not sound normal.
Taeho quickly turned back, rushed over, and lifted Lee Donghyeon’s patient gown.
His skin swelled up in an instant as if it had been burned. The rash that appeared on his neck, shoulders, and forearms soon spread rapidly to his face, abdomen, and legs. His lips were so swollen that he could barely speak. Tears streamed from his puffy eyelids.
“Hueugh…”
Lee Donghyeon clutched at his throat in agony, as if someone were strangling him.
Taeho shouted,
“Nurse Park!”
Park Geumja came running in from outside.
“What happened to his face? This is…!”
“Get me epinephrine! Quickly!”
Taeho took the syringe and drove it precisely into the right thigh of the thrashing Lee Donghyeon. Once the epinephrine entered, Lee Donghyeon stopped convulsing and went limp.
Taeho shouted,
“Oxygen at 10 liters, connect an NRB mask! Secure an IV line right away. Latex-free needle, start NS 500 mL.”
“Yes. Blood pressure is 80 over 50, pulse 142!”
“Prepare Peniramin 4 mg IV from tray one. Keep that IV line stable.”
As the oxygen mask was placed over his face, Lee Donghyeon drew in a rough breath. His eyes rolled back until the whites showed beyond his eyelids, and his whole body trembled.
“Oxygen is going in. Check his blood pressure again.”
“100 over 70. Pulse is down to 124!”
“Good. We still can’t relax, but he’s responding. Keep monitoring him for another five minutes and maintain.”
Taeho caught his breath.
Park Geumja, too, let out a long sigh of relief and muttered,
“I thought something truly terrible was going to happen.”
Beyond the oxygen mask, Lee Donghyeon exhaled in sobbing breaths and laboriously opened his eyes. His lips were still badly swollen, but considering that he had just returned from the brink of death, it was nothing.
Secretary Kim, who had been standing in one corner of the hospital room trembling in fear, asked,
“What on earth is happening to him?”
Taeho answered in a calm voice.
“It’s an acute allergic reaction.”
“Haa…”
Secretary Kim gulped dryly.
Lee Donghyeon rolled his eyes to look at Taeho. The emotion visible between his swollen eyelids was fear.
“Director, I… I’m not going to die, am I?”
After a brief silence, Taeho answered in a cold but clear voice.
“At least not here.”
***
The clock on the wall was pointing to eleven at night.
Taeho sat alone in the quiet consultation room, clicking a ballpoint pen with his fingertips.
There was no doubt that it was an allergic reaction. Skin rash, angioedema, airway edema, low blood pressure, rapid pulse—it was, quite literally, a textbook reaction.
“Rema. Let’s review Mr. Lee Donghyeon’s case again today.”
—Emergency situation recorded as anaphylactic shock, occurred at 5:47 p.m.
—Recovered after administration of epinephrine 0.3 mg IM.
—Oxygen saturation recovered from 86% to 97%.
—Current vitals are being maintained within normal range.
Taeho picked up the pen, then set it back down.
“Things that can trigger allergies include food, medication, environmental antigens, or insect stings.”
As if answering Taeho’s words, Rema provided a response.
—No record of prescribed medication intake by patient Lee Donghyeon within the past 48 hours.
—No signs of exposure to environmental irritants.
—No insect sting reaction.
“Right. What’s left is food… Rema. About the lunchbox Secretary Kim brought. You can’t analyze the ingredients, can you?”
—Identification is impossible without a direct sample.
Taeho rose from his seat and slowly paced around the consultation room.
“Are there cases where repeated exposure accumulates and causes the immune response to grow exponentially?”
—Yes. Some allergens can cause an acute immune explosion reaction as sensitivity increases. However, patient Lee Donghyeon has no recorded history of reaction to the same antigen. If a severe reaction occurred despite this being the first reaction, a complex antigen or a new combination substance is highly likely.
Taeho’s eyes sharpened.
“For example?”
—Contaminated ingredients, mycotoxins, changes in food additives, or denaturation reactions of heterologous proteins. There are also cases in which food reactions increase after taking certain medications.
“But you said Lee Donghyeon didn’t take any medication.”
—Patient statement reliability is 72%. There is a possibility of concealment.
Taeho felt frustrated. It was as if something was just about to come into his grasp, yet still eluded him.
If only my intuition were even 10% higher…
“I need to see him one more time. Lee Donghyeon.”
Taeho headed to the inpatient room.
***
Taeho opened the door to the hospital room and looked inside.
The TV was on inside the room.
But Lee Donghyeon was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring blankly not at the TV, but at the night sky outside the window.
Taeho knocked on the door to announce his presence.
“Still awake?”
“Ah, Director…”
Lee Donghyeon slowly turned his head. The swelling in his face had gone down considerably, but he looked utterly exhausted.
“Feeling a bit better?”
“Yes, much better.”
“Why are you alone?”
“I told Secretary Kim to go home for a bit. He needs days off too.”
His voice was calm.
Taeho pulled over a chair and sat beside the bed.
Lee Donghyeon gave a bitter smile and muttered,
“I really thought I was going to meet my mother today.”
“The wife of Taeyang Group’s chairman is still alive, isn’t she?”
“I’m the chairman’s son from outside the family. They say my birth mother died in a car accident when I was two.”
It was something the media had never covered.
Lee Donghyeon turned his gaze back out the window.
“I didn’t know when I was little either. Why my mother and brothers ostracized me and looked down on me. It was only after I became an adult and looked into it myself that I found out. Only then did I see it clearly. No matter how hard I tried to do well, it wouldn’t work. It had been impossible from the start.”
Lee Donghyeon laughed self-deprecatingly.
“Maybe that’s why I acted even rougher. To my family, I was a thorn in their side anyway. It’s not like I lived this way from the time I was a child.”
But the answer that came back was cold.
“What a trite, pathetic excuse. Blaming your own behavior on your environment.”
“Don’t say it like that. No matter how hard I tried, all I got back was cynicism and ridicule. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be treated that way by the family closest to you since you were young, Director?”
“Mr. Lee Donghyeon, you’re living trapped in your childhood. You’re already an adult, lording over other people, but mentally, you’re still a victim from your childhood. Drenched in self-pity, at that.”
Lee Donghyeon felt as if ice water had been poured over him. He had nothing to say. If he had heard words like this in the past, he would have flipped everything over and caused a scene, but now was different.
Thinking about it, no one had ever criticized him this coldly until now. Most people just indulged him, catered to his moods, and cursed him behind his back.
He had truly thought he was going to die.
In that moment, tens of thousands of thoughts had come to him.
What remained most vividly was the sense of unfairness. He did not want to die being remembered in this world as a good-for-nothing scoundrel. He did not want to disappear without having done anything properly.
“Go to Seyoung Hospital tomorrow.”
Taeho rose from his seat. He was about to open the door and leave when Lee Donghyeon, who had been lowering his head, asked,
“Would there even be anyone who’d be sad if I died? I feel like there’d be more people who’d be happy. People at the company, my brothers, my mother, my father…”
Deep loneliness was soaked into his voice. Because of that, Taeho could not simply shake him off and leave.
“What about Secretary Kim? If I died, would he be sad too?”
“…”
“They say people change when they come back from the brink of death. I guess that’s true.”
Taeho’s heart softened slightly.
Just then, cheerful music flowed from the TV.
—This is Seasons’ new song, “Dream Light”!
Along with the MC’s introduction, Mei and the other members stood on stage with bright faces.
Taeho’s expression stiffened for an instant. Seeing Mei’s bright appearance on the screen made anger rise in his heart again. The thought that such a young girl had been exposed to a dark world weighed heavily on his chest.
Taeho asked in a cold voice,
“So, are young girls like that your type?”
“What?”
Lee Donghyeon looked at Taeho in shock.
“I’m talking about Mei. You know her.”
“You mean her?”
Lee Donghyeon asked, pointing at the TV screen.
“I’ve never met her in person. Girls that young aren’t my type.”
“…Then how did you come to know about me?”
“You know CEO Kim Seonwoo of KSY, right?”
“CEO Kim Seonwoo? Yes, I know him.”
“He’s a hyung I’ve been close to for a while. One day, he saw me scratching until I bled and told me about it. He said a trainee at his company had suffered from a rare skin disease and was miraculously treated at a countryside clinic.”
Taeho’s eyes widened in surprise.
“So I asked him who that doctor was. That’s when he told me your name and even showed me a video.”
“So you’ve never met Mei in person?”
“No, not at all. I only heard about her from Seonwoo hyung and saw her in the video. I heard how difficult the situation was for that girl Mei. They said it was serious enough to threaten her life.”
“That’s right. It was.”
Taeho nodded. For some reason, he felt relieved.
“That’s why I came looking for you, Director. I believed that if you were a doctor who cured such a difficult illness, you’d definitely be able to cure mine too.”
“…”
“Wait, don’t tell me you were thinking of me in that kind of bad way? It’s true I have a lot of problems and a bad personality, but I’m not that much of a bastard. Well, I guess my usual behavior was enough to invite misunderstanding.”
“Get some good rest now. We’ll examine you again tomorrow.”
“What? I don’t have to go to Seyoung?”
Lee Donghyeon asked, his face lighting up.
At that moment, Taeho felt the hair on his body stand on end. His intuition had activated.
“That’s strange.”