Say goodbye to your smile.
That time, she was rushed to the hospital. Covered in red blood... Mayumi's figure...
What is the purpose of being a doctor? My feelings when I decided to become a doctor and aimed for medical school, and my feelings now as a surgeon wielding a scalpel, are not the same.
There are various reasons for entering this world as a doctor.
Some aspire to be doctors as a kind of status.
Some follow their parents who are doctors, or from a medical environment.
Some choose the path of medicine after being saved by someone else's life.
And some witnessed their loved ones' lives disappear in front of them...
I...
I lived with my mother since I was little. I don't know my father.
My mother raised me alone until I was in high school.
I felt that she had a hard time, even when I was young.
I did what I could.
I wanted to lighten her burden a little. That was my wish.
We lived a hard life as a single-parent family. But my mother and I never lost our smiles.
No matter how hard or sad we were, we knew that if we made a sad face, only sadness would attack us.
I think we were happy.
In high school, I worked part-time, and did the housework. But I was happy.
Seeing my mother's smile was the only thing that made me happy...
Soon after I advanced to the second year of high school, my mother collapsed in the morning with severe pain.
The words that were told to me at the hospital where she was taken by ambulance were...
"You have six months left to live."
I couldn't understand the meaning of those words for a moment.
"Life expectancy", "six months". What is this doctor talking about? My head was so confused that all my thoughts stopped.
Maybe this is what they mean by having a blank mind.
"Pancreatic cancer" That's what the doctor told me.
It had been progressing for a long time. It's a cancer that is often too late by the time symptoms appear.
My mother already had metastases from her pancreas to her liver and lymph nodes.
"By the time it has progressed this far, surgery will only put a strain on your body. First, we need to relieve the pain and administer chemotherapy to slow down the progression as much as possible."
The doctor explained calmly. He told me in a roundabout way using difficult terms that there was nothing he could do for my only relative.
But I had no choice but to accept reality.
My mother would soon... die.
"How do you want to tell her?" He asked me, but I told him that I didn't want to tell her if possible.
But my mother seemed to know that she didn't have much time left.
When I went to her room, there was no sign of the pain she had been suffering from. My mother was lying on the bed with her usual smile.
"I'm sorry. I made you worry."
She said cheerfully with a twinkle in her eye.
Seeing her like that made me feel like what I had just heard was a lie.
"What did the doctor say?"
I stumbled over my words for a moment. How should I answer...
"You're working too hard." That was the first thing that came out of my mouth.
My mother looked at the white ceiling of the room from afar.
"I see." She muttered.
And then... "I'm sorry." She said one more thing.
At that moment, I saw tears welling up in her eyes, but I pretended not to see them.
My mother's cancer progressed faster than the doctor had expected. The cancer had already spread to almost all of her organs, and she stopped chemotherapy because she complained of pain.
Maybe it was because she stopped chemotherapy, but she seemed to regain some strength, and she smiled more than before.
"Hey Kou-chan. I want to go home once."
Around the time summer was approaching, my mother said that to me.
I asked the doctor in charge for permission to take her out.
"Sure. But this might be the last time." He told me.
When we returned home for the first time in a long time, my mother's expression was softer than when she was in the hospital, and it seemed like her smile had returned.
As if there was no cancer anywhere...
I also had a moment where I could look at her gentle smile like before.
It was only for a moment...
On the third day after returning home.
"I'm going to do some shopping, do you want anything?" I asked my mother who was sitting on the sofa and quietly looking at the blue sky.
"No. I don't need anything right now."
"Okay, then I'll be back soon."
"Yeah, be careful... and thank you."
She said that and showed me
The best smile ever.
When I came back from shopping,
My mother was lying on the sofa as if she had sunk into it, quietly taking her last breath.
Underneath her was a large amount of painkillers and sleeping pills.
After that, I was taken in by my mother's parents.
All that was left for me was
Her last... smile.
"People who waste their lives are unforgivable, right... still"
That word that Rituko said, it wasn't meant for my mother.
My mother who took her own life with only a little time left.
She left this world without using up her life until the end.
Maybe that was what my mother did for me.
To show me that smile while she could, to show me the "best smile" at the end.
And that smile... to leave it for me...
That word was meant for me.
I can't forgive myself for wasting my limited life.
And I started walking the path of medicine.
Mayumi's figure, covered in red blood. When I saw her, I denied that she was Mayumi even when I was told the name of the patient who was transported.
"There's no way, this could happen."
But the face that lay there could only be Mayumi.
Her smiling face was reflected in that bloody face.
She looked like... my mother's smile.
She looked like it. As if my mother, smiling with that smile, appeared in front of me.
I remember when I first met Mayumi, my heart almost stopped for a moment.
We got a line. Blood pressure dropping, monitor waveform becoming irregular.
Piroloro, piroloro. The sound I always heard, today it was piercing my ears.
I ran a probe over Mayumi's body.
A large amount of fluid retention was confirmed in the chest cavity. Internal bleeding in the chest.
"Open her chest." The senior doctor grabbed the scalpel.
He cut through her skin and inserted the scalpel.
A large amount of fresh blood gushed out. The blood spread over the operating table and flowed to the floor.
Bloody...
Prepare for defibrillation...! The paddle was attached to Mayumi's heart.
Charge complete.
Stand back! ... Pipipipi, the electrocardiogram beeped.
He pressed the paddle firmly against Mayumi's chest.
"Boom!" Mayumi's body bounced up for a moment.
But the waveform didn't come back.
He clamped the bleeding points. One, two, three. But the bleeding didn't stop.
Only time passed by like a prank.
One second, two seconds, three seconds... A minute felt shorter than a second.
I desperately touched Mayumi's heart and moved my hand to continue CPR.
He cut into her body again to widen the surgical field.
"Mayumi, Mayumi..." I called her name over and over again.
Don't give up, don't give up. If I give up... I'll never be able to see her smiling face again.
I don't want that...
I don't want to lose that smile from in front of me.
"Hey hey, Kouichi, do you remember?"
"What?"
"When you first talked to me. What did you say to me?"
"I don't know."
"Oh come on, don't play dumb. I remember it well... You said "mother"."
Blood transfusion added... Several clamps stood out like they were stabbed into Mayumi's body.
The bleeding didn't stop.
"Kouichi, you're not cut out to be a surgeon."
"Why?"
"Kouichi, you're too kind."
"Are you saying I'm a mama's boy and a wimp...?"
"No, that's not it. You're actually a very strong person. You're stronger than anyone I can match. That's why you can be kind to people. You can understand people's pain. The smile your mother left for you at the end. You're always looking for that smile. That's your unerasable feeling, and that's your wish. That's why... you can't accept people's death. Doctors, surgeons are always on the brink of death. There is no life that can be lost. But... doctors, surgeons have to distinguish between life and death. That means accepting death..."
"Doctor..."
His voice stopped the senior doctor's hand.
"Mayumi, Mayumi, Mayumi---Mayumii!!"
"Tanabe, Tanabe... It's over. I'm sorry."
"No, there's still hope. Mayumi can still be saved. She's still warm."
My hand twitched. But I couldn't stop it... I didn't want to stop it.
"Tanabe, stop it." The senior doctor shouted and grabbed my hand.
"Let Iwamisita-kun rest."
He whispered as if to say it softly.
With his voice, my hand
Left Mayumi's heart.
That was admitting Mayumi's death.
******
The copyright of this novel belongs to "Etuha Sakakihara さかき原枝都は".
Copying or resembling this novel is prohibited.
Click here for the original Japanese text
emergency doctor
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