Chapter 60

Her father stepped back with a flinch. For Suhyuk’s piercing gaze was stinging like a sharp blade.

“Are you sure she fell from the stairs?”

He looked at Suhyuk as if he did not understand his question.

“Did you find any other parts injured…?”

Suhyuk’s dry voice cut off his words.

“Does your child go to a school or kindergarten?”

At his question, he shook his head with a sigh that seemed to blame himself.

“No, she doesn’t.”

Suhyuk’s lips were slightly twisted.

Her bruise. Even if her father did not tell him, any doctor could infer how she was hurt.

But n.o.body noticed it, which meant that doctors did not care about the patient.

At the guardian’s description, he doctor moves like a machine and diagnoses and categorizes the patient. The resident who initially diagnosed the child or her father who was lying were the same in that they did not care enough.

“Yejin’s fractures were not caused by falling from the stairs…”

Suhyuk quietly looked at the middle-aged man. His black pupil trembled a little.

“Fractures caused by violence.”

There arose a capillary in the middle-aged man’s eyes because Suhyuk grabbed his neck.

Suhyuk pushed him to the wall and spoke eerily, “Feel the same thing!”

He was tripped by Suhyuk. Suhyuk put his foot on his wing bone (shoulder blade), with his body lying sprawled on the floor. He also grabbed one of his arms as if he were about to break it against a fixed chair.

“Your arm will now break, I’ll show you an X-ray of it.”

“Sir? Sir?!”

The child’s father was looking at him strangely.

Suddenly he was breathing out roughly while leaning against the wall.

Suhyuk was calming his mind and breathing. He was plunging into an imagination like that before he knew it. He almost lost his mind. He shook his head to blow away the dizziness.

Suhyuk, who took his hand off the wall, looked at him straight.

“Is it you, who hit your daughter?”

He shook his head.

Suhyuk knitted his brows more and more.

The bleeding from the capillaries and veins around the site of the fracture told such a story.

A fracture caused by a blunt object. It was clear on the X-ray.

Checking it from various angles, it did not make sense that she fell down the stairs.

“I’ll call the police.”

Suhyuk pulled out his cell phone in his pocket.

At that moment, he heard a child’s crying sound.

The child screamed in the imaging room.

Suhyuk hurriedly opened the door and went inside.

“What’s the problem?”

The radiologist was holding the small child’s body lying down as if he were calming down a man who had a seizure.

“This child is strange,” said the radiologist.

Suhyuk quickly approached.

“Yejin, we just want to take an X-ray. We’re not trying to hurt you.”

“Let me go! Let me go! Dad! Dad!”

The child shouted as much as she could to get out of the radiologist’s hands.

Suhyuk carefully took the child’s swollen shoulders.

If a fracture occurred, the sharp bone could destroy the muscle or pop out.

Suhyuk constantly calmed the child and confirmed her condition.

‘It’s not like a seizure. Why is she doing this suddenly?’

The pupil of the child recognized things clearly.

Then, the child who rolled her feet lifted her head.

At the same time, she went to hit the back of her head on the floor.

However, Suhyuk was one step faster. He put his hand on the floor and picked up her falling head. Then the child repeated the action many times. Without Suhyuk’s actions, her head would have been broken.

‘Did she hurt herself?’

In his head, the name of a disease came to his mind.

‘Impulse control disorder?’

It is a disease with a comprehensive symptom, which makes the patient repeat harmful actions to oneself or others.

“I’m going home! I’m going home!”

The child cried with a sore throat, and tearful eyes.

She also continued to shake her body. But two adults were holding on to it, and it was impossible for her to move.

“Yes, Yejin, I’m here. Dad is here.”

Her father was beside her already.

“Dad!”

The tears on her face just stopped suddenly. Her father started hugging her gently.

“I think the child is scared, so please take a quick shot. Good daughter. It’s only an X-ray.”

She just nodded at his words.

She had an X-ray taken calmly as if nothing had happened. It was such a contrast to her behavior from just a moment ago. Of course, the pain she felt in her arm was reflected in her face. Suhyuk looked at the daughter and father alternately.

The father of the child who lied that she fell from the stairs, and the daughter constantly glancing at him as if he were fleeing somewhere.

If her father had been violent, one could never have found such a look in her eyes.

There was nothing like dread in her eyes looking at him.

And the act of her hitting her head on the floor. It was obviously self-injury.

When he saw her actions, he could think about her in other aspects.

A bruise in her ears, and the bruises where fractures are expected to have occured. If she hit her arms on a desk or an object, it could easily happen, and no luck was required for it to happen.

Suhyuk opened his mouth to speak to the child’s father while he watched Yejin, who had her X-ray taken gently.

“Yejin did not fall from the stairs. Why are you hiding it?”

Suhyuk’s tone wa full of confidence in his question.

Looking sadly at his daughter, he sighed deeply. Then he saw himself in the child’s eyes and said with a small voice,

“Because I wanted to curry favor with her.”

Suhyuk made an expression as if he did not understand at all.

He continued, “It all began when our second baby was born. Because she complained she was sick on any day she could, we took her to the hospital many many times as if it were our house. On all such occasions, doctors said it was only her feigned sickness, and that there was nothing wrong with her body. Still she kept saying she was sick. I gave her a scolding with a warning that she shouldn’t do it again…”

Recalling the past memories, he opened his mouth again,

“After she got that scolding, she began to hurt her own body. In addition, she had a habit of beating her ears with her own palms, and doing that playfully.”

When he noticed it, he did not take his eyes off her for a moment. However, the scratched and torn wounds were found here and there, and he had to take her to the hospital again.

And while he was consulting with the doctor, he carefully brought it up: she was hurting herself.

Was she ashamed of it? Or did she not want to appear weird to her other friends?

She was crying and screaming to the extent that doctors shook their heads.

Going beyond making trouble with her feigned sickness, she made a big fuss at the hospital.

It was natural that the hospital staff did not like her.

He learned later that Yejin was chosen as a person that needs a watchful eye, with her name put on the blacklist. The hospital did not accept his daughter anymore. It was a refusal to treat her feigned illness, and it was decided to not give medical treatment.

So when she got hurt or was sick, he had to take her to another hospital without mentioning anything about her self-injury.

If the child heard him saying it was a self-injury, she might cause a seizure and make a fuss.

Even her homeschooling was effective only for a brief moment. His daughter’s rebellious behavior became more and more intense.

And today, while he did not pay attention momentarily, his daughter struck her arm down against the TV set. It was the most severe act of hers ever.

The doctor was suspicious of any possible fractures.

Hearing all his explanation, Suhyuk sighed shortly. Yejin was suppressing her tears before her father. Did she do that to get his praise? On the other hand, she was crying in the imaging room.

She was scared and surprised, because she was separated from her father, and the strange s.p.a.ce could have fully stimulated the child’s fear.

“She’s got a fracture on the bone,” the radiologist approached and said she was fortunate.

Yejin, who lied on a stretcher, told him with a white pale face.

“Dad, I did not cry.”

“Yes, good daughter.”

He stroked her head, lying on bed.

“Let’s go,” Suhyuk moved, pus.h.i.+ng the child’s bed.

***

A woman who was anxiously waiting outside came up hastily. She was Yejin’s mother.

She wrapped her two-year-old baby in a baby blanket.

“Is she okay, sir?”

Suhyuk nodded his head.

“Fortunately, she doesn’t need surgery. She would be fine with just acast.”

Looking at the baby she was holding onto, the man said to his wife, “Is Kahyon okay?”

“Yes, he’s just a little surprised.”

He sighed relievedly at her words. Yejin, while holding her brother, dropped him on the floor. Then when her father approached her in a surprise, she was. .h.i.tting her arm down on the TV.

So, they took their children to the hospital, but they were treated by different doctors.

Suhyuk looked at the baby in her arms quietly. He talked to the radiologist in the imaging room.

“Can I ask you to take care of Yejin?”

The radiologist nodded gladly.

And Suhyuk told her father, “Can I talk with you briefly?”

He nodded his head.

“First of all, I’m sorry I misunderstood you as an a.s.saultant.”

At Suhyuk’s words, he smiled bitterly.

“It’s okay, It can happen. I appreciate it. You don’t look like other doctors. By the way, what do you want to say?”

“I saw those bruises on her body. It seems she had them because she pinched herself, right?”

He sighed and nodded. He also made an expression wondering how he could figure it out.

Suhyuk was able to firmly establish his thoughts at his reply.

“You can’t correct her behavior just with discipline.”

Suhyuk had pulled out one piece of the vast medical knowledge he kept stored in his head. Yejin’s behavior was explained with this.

“It seems to be a munchausen syndrome.”

“What is it?”

“It is a mental illness that causes a desire for the interest and compa.s.sion from others.”

Her illness was not just one. Impulse control disorder seemed to have attacked her.

Even though one who has this disease knows their behavior is harmful to themselves and others, one does not stop committing such violence and self-harm. Besides, she also has munchausen syndrome.

It is a desire to receive the attention of others by using falsehood and self-harm.

His eyes became wider at Suhyuk’s explanation.

He thought she might have a mental illness, but it was hard for him to admit it when he heard it from the doctor directly. She was an adorable child he did not beat with his hands even once.

“Are you sure? Are you really sure? Really? What is the cause?”

Amid his questions asked with an unbelievable expression, Suhyuk recalled the mother and the baby the mother held in her arms.

“I think it’s because of her brother.”

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