The cause of death was simple.
"Cardiac arrest."
On paper, that was all.
Time, location, and the medical vacuum were not recorded.The deployment suspension order was not listed as a contributing factor.
Everything was reduced to a single word.
Cardiac arrest.
The health authority briefing was calm.
"This death occurred within the existing emergency medical systemand is classified as an unavoidable incident—"
Few people listened to the sentence until the end.What stayed longer was the caption at the bottom of the screen.
"Doctor Truck: Deployment Suspended."
That was when people began to change the direction of their questions.
Not,"Why did he die?"
But,"Why did no one come?"
A Divided Medical Community
The medical community split.
"Illegal is illegal.""They should have gone anyway.""If you go and lose your license, who takes responsibility?""Then if you don't go and someone dies, who does?"
At some point, those questions became knives,thrown not at the system, but at each other.
Song Jaemin quietly returned his hospital ID badge.
No one asked him to.
He said,
"If you have a license but can't save a life,that's a certificate—not a profession."
The interview was brief, but the impact was not.
The phrase "doctors' revolt" appeared for the first time.
But the word revolt was wrong.
This wasn't a fight.It was a line being drawn.
One side chose to remain inside the law.The other chose to stand beside people.
Another Night, Another Scene
That night, a similar situation unfolded in another district.
There was no Doctor Truck.The ambulance was delayed.
This time, someone filmed the scene on a phone.
In the video, the camera lingered longer on the crying childthan on the collapsed adult beside him.
At the end of the clip, a caption appeared.
"If it hadn't been illegal, would my dad have lived?"
The question was simple.
Which was why no one could answer it immediately.
Inside the TF Team Room
Han Seojin looked down at the paper in front of him and spoke.
"It's not numbers anymore," he said."It's faces."
"Policy always starts with numbers," someone argued.
"True," Han nodded."But it always ends with faces."
"When we look away from that,policy becomes administration—and administration takes no responsibility."
The Question Spreads Beyond Borders
At the same time, an overseas outlet moved again.
It was a short article.
"Doctors in Korea Ask:Are We Following the Law,or Avoiding Life?"
Comments followed.
Not in Korean.
"Why was it illegal to save him?""Who decides when help is allowed?""This is not a medical issue. This is moral paralysis."
At the bottom of the article, one last line appeared.
"Doctor Truck has stopped,but the questions have not."
Song Jaemin read the sentence and smiled quietly.
This time, it wasn't a dry smile.
"Now it begins," he said.