Dead Man Walking (TaeKook / VKook FF)

Chapter 6: Mayday

"Here it is"
Namjoon tugged at his gloves and put on his mouth mask.
That was right. There it was.
Seemingly dead but due to machines it was kept on life support. It was breathing flatly, eyes closed.
And when the assistants rolled the bier closer, Namjoon was able to identify it as a she.
"Thank you" the doctor nodded at the assistants and gestured shortly at them to leave the room.
"Uhm, excuse me, doctor Kim" one of the males said and the doctor looked at him, raising an eyebrow.
Doctor Kim looked like an even more mysterious person with that mouth mask on his face, his eyes barely showing anything of him beside his cold, neutral understanding of nature and human's.
The assistant cleared his throat.
"But ... uhm, I don't think cats are allowed inside the autopsy area, so-"
"Diana is allowed. It's not of your business. I know the rules. And now please leave. I have to do my work"
The black cat laid inside her bed in the corner of the obduction room and mewled protest, like she had understand the assistant and rose against his claim.
Namjoon stared into the nervous eyes of the male.
"Alright. Just as you say it, Doctor Kim. But ... may I ask one last question?"
The doctor exhaled.
"If I am able to do my work in peace after that question you shall ask. What is it?"
"Why do we bring that contaminated person into the autopsy area while it is still alive due to the life support?"
Namjoon looked at the flatly breathing contaminated woman in front of him, then at his cat.
"Because the life support might be not longer necessary while the process is going on"
The other assistant, a young woman, went into the discussion.
"But this is still a human and she is alive. You can't just get off the life support and kill her and make experiments and"
"Watch your sharp tongue, young lady" the doctor interrupted her sharply with a cold tone.
The assistant shut quiet immediately, insecure because of Namjoon's intimidating presence.
"You were speaking informally and criticized a higher doctor's decision. Consider yourself lucky I'm not kicking you out right away"
The young woman looked at her feet.
"I am sorry, Doctor Kim. It won't happen again"
Namjoon sent her a cold gaze.
"Leave. I don't want to see anyone until I leave this room. Did you understand?"
The assistants nodded and left the room. The doctor sighed heavily.
"Science doesn't seem as easy as it is, huh?" he asked and chuckled while he looked at his cat. Diana's black wide eyes were fixing him alertly.
"It's hard to bring the new spirits of those young people the truth about their dreams"
Namjoon took a scalpel from the sterile metal plate next to him, looked at the sharp blade.
"What a pity that dreams and reality had never got along since the beginning of humanity"
Namjoon looked at the dictation machine next to him and pressed the button to switch it on.
"The American Dream, Hitler's dreams, Martin Luther King's dreams" the doctor mumbled and hesitated.
"My dreams when I was young"
He sighed and noted a few things about the contaminated woman's pulse and blood pressure.
"They were dreams. No matter how good or bad they were" he kept on speaking to himself and inserted a new sterile needle into a syringe.
He chuckled. "If dreams can be even good or bad, who knows? But in the end it doesn't even matter. Truth hurts and had always crushed dreams"
Namjoon carefully inserted the needle in the woman's arm, pricked through the skin right into the vein. He stopped and pulled the syringe plunger back and sucked the little amount of blood out of the woman's arm.
Her lids were jolting, but she kept on breathing flatly, not moving any farther.
Namjoon took of the needle and laid the filled syringe onto the metallic plate.
"Seems like that's why I became a scientist" he mumbled and chuckled confidently.
"The best of all"
Namjoon took the microscope from a counter and took the glass plate from it, dribbled a tiny amount of blood onto it, laid the next little glass plate onto it and watched that there were no bubbles.
Carefully he inserted it into the microscope again and looked through the lens.
"Yes. Indeed. It had worked out as I had hoped it would. The virus is clearly visible. For the parasite I'll need another trial from a new specimen since the parasite is not inside the Vas Sanguineum"
He waited.
"Not inside the bloodstream, for everyone who does not know the Latin word for it"
Namjoon looked at the woman's hands, they were attached with leashes onto the bier.
"I'll name here 'Test Object 1'. It's the woman we had watched in the Yangsan streets. Her face still shows of the marks from the kick the boy had gave her face"
The doctor made a face.
"Oh boy" he mumbled and took a little lamp from the metallic plate. He carefully opened her eyelids and shone on her pupils.
"The pupils are red due to the blood, the eyeball is extremely small and the iris doesn't wide or minimise"
Namjoon looked at the woman's throat.