Chapter 13
Of course, there was no reason for a patient to come to a clinic that hadn't even opened yet.
It was only a deliveryman who had gone upstairs by mistake.
He grumbled as he went back down.
Gain chuckled.
I'm glad it wasn't someone with an emergency.
She entered the treatment room and checked the power on the autoclave.
Then she inspected the medical instruments she would use tomorrow to make sure everything had been sterilized properly.
Her employee would handle it starting tomorrow.
But today, Gain wanted to do it herself.
And I've got a little divine power to spare.
After meeting Kwon Taeseong and his wife, her divine power had increased slightly again.
Gain walked farther inside and looked at the delivery room.
The room at the far end had no windows and was quiet.
She remembered what her medical-school classmates had told her only a few days earlier when she'd announced her clinic.
"Gain, are you insane? Who puts a delivery room in a private clinic these days? Just focus on checkups and gynecology. One bad delivery case and your life is over."
"Exactly. A private OB-GYN handling deliveries these days? That's practically suicide. Hardly anyone is even having babies anymore. Why take all that risk? Just give IV fluids and prescribe weight-loss medication. It's much easier."
Her classmates had genuinely been worried about her.
But Gain hadn't agreed.
"Childbirth is the flower of obstetrics. What's the point of a garden with no flowers?"
The moment life entered the world.
The instant a baby passed through the narrow birth canal and let out its first cry.
It was dangerous.
It was difficult.
But that moment was why Gain had chosen obstetrics and gynecology.
Click. Click.
Gain switched the surgical lights in the delivery room on and off to test them.
Cold light fell over the freshly cleaned stainless-steel tray.
There were almost no shadows.
"Good. The surgical lights are fine too."
The used surgical light she'd separately purchased and installed worked perfectly.
This place didn't have holy water capable of calling down miracles.
There were no magic circles that amplified mana.
But it had enough modern medical equipment.
Gain was more than satisfied.
"Good. Tomorrow it begins."
Tomorrow would only be a soft opening.
She couldn't start handling deliveries immediately.
She planned to begin with general gynecology.
Then, after obtaining more equipment and staff, she would gradually begin deliveries too.
Just thinking about it made her excited.
The next morning, 8:30 a.m.
Im Gain opened the clinic thirty minutes before the official start time.
To her surprise, someone was already pacing in front of the locked glass door.
It was Jo Eunjae, the second applicant from yesterday.
"You're early."
"I wanted to understand your work flow and inspect the equipment before starting."
The moment Jo Eunjae changed into her uniform, she headed straight to the treatment room.
She checked the autoclave pressure gauge Gain had prepared yesterday.
Then she inspected the color indicators on every sterilization pouch.
Watching her, Gain quietly nodded.
Sterilization costs money, but it's absolutely necessary.
I'm glad she's thorough.
Not long afterward, the final applicant rushed inside with a bright, energetic voice.
"Director! Good morning! I'm Choi Yuri, and I'll be handling the front desk starting today!"
Their duties were clearly divided.
Yuri repeatedly practiced registering fake patients in the DoctorYang program at the front desk.
Eunjae moved between the examination room and treatment room, rearranging the dressing cart supplies to match her preferred work flow.
Exactly 9:00 a.m.
"So... do we start seeing patients now?"
Yuri cautiously asked.
Gain shook her head.
"Read this manual for the program first. And..."
After a few more training sessions, lunchtime arrived surprisingly quickly.
"It's lunchtime. Should we eat outside?"
Gain looked at the clock and made the suggestion.
The two employees answered at the same time.
"Sure! There's a really good place right out front."
"I brought my own lunch. I don't trust food prepared outside."
Then it happened.
Jingle.
The door opened.
A woman cautiously stepped inside.
She was holding a newborn wrapped tightly in a blanket.
Deep shadows lay beneath her eyes.
Standing in front of the reception desk, the woman froze when she saw all three people gathered there.
Gain glanced at her employees.
"Yes! Welcome. Please come over to the desk."
Yuri stepped forward first.
Her cheerful, gentle voice loosened the mother's tense shoulders slightly.
"Let's register you first. This is your first visit, correct? Your name and resident registration number, please."
While Choi Yuri followed her training and registered the patient, Gain put her doctor's coat back on.
Then she washed her hands.
"Come in."
The moment the mother sat down inside the consultation room, she looked ready to burst into tears.
"Doctor... my breast hurts so much."
"Are you breastfeeding directly?"
"Yes. My baby is only fifteen days old. The baby can't latch properly and just keeps crying... I don't think they're gaining weight either. I'm so scared I don't know what to do."
Her shoulders were hunched from what looked like many sleepless nights.
Her eyes were red from crying.
The baby also seemed to have cried constantly, with swollen eyes and occasional hiccups.
Gain calmly examined the mother's stiff shoulders and chest.
"Nurse Eunjae, raise the temperature a little in the breastfeeding and postpartum recovery room. And please watch the baby in the bassinet for a moment."
Gain stood up and lowered herself to the woman's eye level.
Reassuring the frightened mother came first.
Countess Harrington's breasts swelled like this several times. I had to massage them again and again...
Knowing modern medicine didn't mean Gain knew everything automatically.
Back when she worked at the hospital, postpartum breast care had usually been handled by nurses or breastfeeding specialists.
But in the other world, Countess Harrington had once summoned her because she was suffering from what people there called 'rotting breast disease.'
Gain had been forced to perform a breast massage she'd previously only learned about in theory.
She drained the pus and healed the infection.
Then she taught the priests how to properly treat the condition.
Before that, they'd used holy healing without draining the pus first, making the infection even worse.
Later, even Elf mothers and Dwarf mothers started coming to me.
Under the warm lights of the breastfeeding and postpartum recovery room, Gain examined the patient's condition.
At close range, the breast looked severe.
It was red across a wide area.
The skin was stretched tight and hot enough to feel feverish.
The mastitis had progressed significantly.
"I went to the emergency room at a university hospital..."
The mother spoke tearfully.
"They said there was a large breast abscess around the areola."
Her voice shook.
"They said it was already too severe and that I'd come too late, so I'd probably need part of the breast removed. If I have surgery, I won't be able to breastfeed for a while... I really want to feed my baby myself, and I didn't know what else to do. That's why I came here."
"Nurse Eunjae, please prepare a sterile warm compress and sterile gauze. Ultrasound gel too."
Eunjae immediately moved.
Gain washed her hands.
Then she carefully felt the swollen breast with her bare hands.
"!"
Jo Eunjae's expression changed for a moment.
She was shocked that Gain had touched the patient without sterile gloves.
Gain didn't notice.
Except during surgery, Gain had rarely used gloves in the other world.
Gloves there had been extremely precious, made from carefully prepared animal intestines.
After decades of examining patients with bare hands, it had become habit.
The woman's skin felt burning hot beneath Gain's fingertips.
Under the stretched red skin was a hard mass that felt almost like stone.
Tsk.
If breast milk isn't emptied regularly, it builds up inside the ducts.
If a newborn was too weak to fully drain the breast, the milk left inside slowly lost moisture and became thick.
Eventually it could harden like cheese.
The duct became blocked.
At that point, even when the baby sucked, nothing came out.
Then bacteria entered through cracks in the damaged nipple.
Breast milk was rich in nutrients.
It was the perfect culture medium for bacteria to multiply explosively.
Trapped milk and bacteria mixed together and produced thick pus.
With nowhere to escape, the pus collected deep inside the breast and formed a large abscess.
The hard mass beneath Gain's fingers was inflammation itself.
"This will hurt. But we can drain it without removing part of your breast. I'll help you, so take a deep breath."
Gain briefly stood and ran warm water from the sink.
She soaked both hands in it.
"May I open your clothes a little?"
"Y-yes..."
"I'll need to touch your breast."
"I don't care what you have to do. Please just make it stop hurting!"
The mother cried desperately.
"I'm going to touch around here."
Using her thumb and index finger, Gain carefully felt the hardened tissue around the areola.
The sensation she'd gained after touching hundreds of infected, damaged breasts during famine and plague in the other world remained perfectly alive in her fingertips.
From tiny differences in heat and pressure alone, she could estimate where the infection had spread and how severe it was.
Her long experience told her something important.
Fortunately, the milk-producing tissue itself was still alive.
There wasn't enough necrosis to require excision.
But the degree of blockage was serious.
This is bad.
It's completely blocked.
This wasn't simple breast engorgement.
The narrow milk ducts were packed solid with hard pus and old milk thickened almost like cheese.
Ordinary breast-massage techniques wouldn't be enough.
If she simply squeezed harder, the blockage might not open at all.
The pressure could instead rupture healthy surrounding tissue.
Still, recommending breast removal after giving up on massage was excessive.
Even an incision and drainage would've been enough.
Gain sighed quietly to herself.
No choice.
I can't do this with my hands alone.
In the other world, Gain's hands had been naturally sterile.
No bacteria could survive where her divine power flowed.
But she couldn't tell anyone that divine power disinfected her hands.
She couldn't reveal that she possessed a strange supernatural ability.
If she wanted to open the blocked ducts without tearing healthy tissue, simple physical force wouldn't be enough.
She needed something else to protect the tissues from that pressure.
"Warm compress, please."
Eunjae soon brought over the towel.
Gain covered the mother's breast with the warm cloth and placed her fingers over it.
At the tips of her fingers, she gathered an extremely tiny amount of power.
So little that no one could possibly notice.
A grain-of-rice-sized amount of divine power flowed into the patient.
Good.
If the mother felt the strange deep warmth of divine power, the warm towel and Gain's heated hands would give her an easy explanation.
