When Taeho subdued Minsu by force, Minsu struggled even more violently.
"Let go! Let go of me! You devil!"
"Minsu, the Director isn't that kind of person. He came to help Mom. Please... Minsu...!"
Park Geumja begged and pleaded from beside them.
"It's a lie! It's all a lie! Why is Mom trying to sell me off? Mom, are you really Mom? I'm asking if you're really my mom!"
Minsu's eyes were not normal. His pupils trembled unnaturally, and his focus was blurred. He shouted toward the empty air as if his mother were not present in that place.
"Stop it, Minsu. It's okay. You're safe."
Taeho carefully pressed Minsu down and sat him on the sofa.
The child tried to push Taeho away with all his might, but ultimately, the child's struggles could not overcome Taeho's strength.
"Director... I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Park Geumja shed tears endlessly.
Why had their kind son ended up like this?
Her heart ached as if it were being torn apart.
Minsu cried out, wailing.
"You came to send me to a psychiatric hospital, didn't you? You think I'm crazy? Let go! I'm telling you, I'm not crazy!"
"I know, Minsu, Mom knows. Mom knows that you're not crazy."
Park Geumja eventually knelt before Minsu and pleaded.
"Please, Minsu... believe Mom. Mom, Mom will protect you no matter what. Please... believe Mom...!"
Minsu shook his head violently and thrashed.
"Lies! Mom is going to abandon me! You're trying to throw me away! I can hear it all! I can hear everything they're saying over there!"
Minsu clutched his head and began to shake it violently. He suddenly began making strange sounds as if his tongue were twisting.
Then, in an instant, Minsu's body went limp and collapsed with a soft thud.
"Minsu! Minsu, wake up!"
Park Geumja screamed and shook the child as her son collapsed.
Taeho hurriedly assessed Minsu's condition. Looking closely at his face, he appeared peaceful. The pained expression he had shown just moments ago had disappeared. It was as if he had fallen into a deep sleep.
He took out a penlight from his pocket, lifted Minsu's eyelids, and checked his pupils. The reaction was normal.
"Right now his breathing is stable and his pulse is normal too. It seems he's temporarily exhausted after a seizure."
"Is our Minsu really okay?"
Taeho cautiously nodded toward Nurse Park.
"It's too early to be completely relieved, but there are no immediately dangerous signs. Let's monitor his progress."
Park Geumja looked at her son with a completely drained face, then brushed his forehead with her hand.
"He's a good child, so why is this happening to my son..."
As her tension released, Park Geumja's legs seemed to give out, and she sank down before her son.
"Director, I'm truly sorry. For showing you even this side of things..."
"Don't be. How difficult it must have been for you alone."
At Taeho's composed comfort, Park Geumja forcefully swallowed the sobs that threatened to burst forth.
"After the divorce eight years ago, I lived only for Minsu. Since he didn't have a father, I tried to love him twice as much and protect him twice as hard..."
A hoarse, metallic sound came from Park Geumja's voice. It was from the sob rising up from deep inside her belly.
"I feel like it's all my fault that my child ended up like this."
Park Geumja eventually covered her face and broke down. Her wailing filled the narrow house.
Taeho quietly placed a tissue before Park Geumja.
This was the first time he had seen Park Geumja so broken.
At Geumsan Clinic, Park Geumja had been like a seasoned veteran. Even when a sudden flood of patients rushed in, she didn't bat an eye, and she fearlessly led the nursing assistants and patients. She was someone who was always kind and listened attentively and gently, even to elderly patients making unreasonable demands or dermatitis patients snapping due to pain.
That solid person, that woman who had been more steadfast than anyone, was now crumbling. The guilt toward her child and the fear that she might lose him were swallowing her whole.
Taeho opened his mouth.
"Why didn't you tell me all this time? This isn't something you should endure alone inside..."
"I was ashamed. The Director is busy too, with the clinic, the research institute, and even making house calls on weekends. Still, it seemed like I couldn't handle it anymore, so I called you just a little while ago."
"Did you take him to the hospital to get examined?"
"Yes. A month ago. When Minsu first said strange things, I took him straight to a psychiatrist in Seoul. He said someone was watching him, that someone kept whispering in his ear. The child was so scared then. I was frightened too."
Park Geumja squeezed her eyes shut. Even recalling that moment again seemed painful.
"But the diagnosis the psychiatrist gave was early-stage schizophrenia. He took the prescribed medicine, but instead he got worse. His gaze became strange, and after a few days he couldn't even recognize me. I feel like the medicine prescribed back then ended up breaking Minsu instead."
"Have you tried other hospitals?"
"When we first received the diagnosis, I couldn't believe it at all, so I went to another famous psychiatrist too. But again, we received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the prescriptions were similar—Risperidone, Quetiapine, and Olanzapine. If I went back now with his current condition, they'd tell me to admit him for inpatient treatment. But from what I've observed at his side, those kinds of medicines will only worsen his symptoms. Just a little while ago, I even thought about dying together with my son. But then, as if God had sent you, the Director arrived. Director. Please, please help our Minsu."
Park Geumja clasped her hands tightly before Taeho and spoke.
"Director, I know. Since you came here, you've cured people that other hospitals had all given up on. Even diseases they called incurable, you raised them back up with your own hands."
She looked at Taeho with desperate eyes.
"Can't you help us? Please save our Minsu. Director."
Taeho couldn't say anything. Park Geumja was not a nurse at Geumsan Clinic right now. She was a mother who would do anything for her child.
The time he had spent with her was not yet a year. It was a short time, if one could call it that. But during those few months, because she had been there, Taeho could focus solely on treating patients, and because she had been there, he could build trust with the village people.
Above all, she was the first person who had believed in the person named Gang Taeho.
Taeho slowly closed his eyes. His heart sank heavily.
But his decision was already made.
"I understand."
Taeho let out a deep breath and opened his eyes again.
"I will try treating Minsu."
"Hah..."
Park Geumja burst into tears again.
At that moment, holographic letters appeared before Taeho's eyes.
-User Gang Taeho's will to treat has broken the all-time highest record.
-Emotional immersion has reached the critical point.
-An abnormal emotional resonance phenomenon is occurring in User Gang Taeho.
-Stage 1 [Patient Empathy Sense] has been unlocked.
-[Patient Empathy Sense] is an ability allowing you to directly experience a patient's subjective pain and symptoms.
-Warning: Extreme mental shock possible upon use.
Taeho's pupils were fixed on the letters on the screen.
Patient Empathy Sense?
He could understand what it meant.
It was similar in principle to feeling sad just by seeing someone crying sorrowfully, or smiling along when seeing someone smile happily.
It meant that Taeho could directly experience the symptoms Minsu felt.
His acutely developed intuition had been upgraded to another level.
Taeho looked at Minsu.
The boy slumped limply without strength.
Taeho placed his hand on Minsu's forehead.
Cold, damp skin.
It grew quiet, as if time had momentarily stopped.
It was at that moment. Something slowly flowed into his ear.
-Lies... it's all lies... They're deceiving you even now...
A sound flowing into his ear. No, rather than a sound coming from outside, it was like a sound heard from inside his brain.
Dozens of voices drifted from the surroundings. Some whispered faintly, while others screamed.
-Mom sold me out.
-It was all according to plan.
-They're trying to throw you away. They are deceiving you.
-Where did your real mom go?
And then a severe headache flooded in.
His vision twisted.
The horizon tilted, and the surrounding objects swayed.
The very sense of perceiving reality felt like it was collapsing. It was a feeling of the boundary between hallucination and reality becoming tangled.
This couldn't be explained by a simple mental illness.
"This is..."
Taeho opened his eyes. Sweat was trickling down his forehead.
He removed his hand from Minsu's forehead and looked at Minsu again.
Auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and delusions are symptoms that can raise suspicion of schizophrenia. But Minsu was slightly different.
Irregularly moving pupils, repeating meaningless words or mumbling, hand and foot movements that seemed to thrash about his surroundings, autonomic nervous system abnormalities...
Taeho muttered as if to himself.
"This might be autoimmune encephalitis; specifically, I need to immediately analyze for anti-NMDA receptor abnormal reactions."
-Yes. I will analyze.
Rema understood immediately and analyzed.
-Anti-NMDA receptor abnormal reaction similarity: 82%
-The patient belongs to the top 1.7% of patient groups consistent with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.
-Immediate confirmation through antibody testing and high-intensity immunotherapy is recommended.
Taeho drew a short breath. The Minsu lying before him now looked different.
"Nurse Park. Minsu doesn't have schizophrenia."
At those words, Park Geumja asked back in surprise.
"Yes? What did you say?"
"It's not a mental illness. It's the result of his immune system attacking his own brain. It can be treated."
Park Geumja's eyes and mouth widened simultaneously. Because these were words coming from Director Gang Taeho, they were all the more surprising and welcome.
"Director, thank you. Truly, thank you."
***
Minsu was admitted to Geumsan Clinic.
After a blood test, Taeho began steroid treatment according to the standard treatment protocol.
"Minsu, this medicine will calm the inflammation in your head."
Taeho spoke to Minsu as he prepared the Prednisolone injection. Minsu looked up at Taeho with anxious eyes.
"Doctor, can I really get better?"
"Of course. Let's just hang in there a little."
Depending on the patient's constitution, the reaction to medicine varies. Having begun the most standard treatment for autoimmune encephalitis, they now had to wait and see how things progressed.
It was that night.
Raindrops began to fall one by one outside the window.
Park Yeonji, the assistant nurse on night duty, was looking at Minsu inside the room. Minsu's breathing could be heard evenly, as if he were in a deep sleep.
"Minsu, how did you end up..."
Park Yeonji let out a short sigh.
She had watched Minsu since he was a baby. Her older sister Geumja said that although her married life was unhappy, she didn't regret it because she had a son like Minsu. Whenever she saw Minsu deliberately following his mom to the market and carrying the market basket because he worried she might find it heavy, she had even felt envious.
"Auntie." Because it was cute how he followed her around calling "Auntie," until recently she had been worrying over what to buy him as an entrance gift when he started high school...
Park Yeonji spoke in a small voice.
"Minsu. Don't worry. Our Director's skill is truly amazing. You'll definitely get better."
Park Yeonji carefully covered Minsu with a sheet and left the room.
Twenty minutes later, when Park Yeonji opened the door to check the room, she nearly stopped breathing.
The bed was completely empty. Minsu had disappeared.
"Minsu?"
Park Yeonji looked around the room then rushed out into the corridor in a flurry.
"Minsu! Minsu, where are you!"
She checked by opening the men's restroom and other rooms, but the child's figure was nowhere to be seen.
Park Yeonji hurriedly took out her phone and made a call.
"Director! Minsu has disappeared!"