By Kim Heung-sook

She heard something in her sleep. She got up instantly to find her husband writhing. He had been famous for his perseverance but this time his body seemed to betray him. ``I need to see a doctor,'' he said through the pain. His forehead was wet with perspiration and his hands were clasping his abdomen. There was no time to think. She drove him to the nearest hospital where doctors advised her to go to a university medical center.

``All the beds are full except for the VIP rooms. Put him in one of them,'' a medical professor said as he read the CT scan results. He said he couldn't tell exactly what was causing the problem, and that there was something requiring further examination. The patient made faces due to the recurring pain. Again, there was no time to think. She signed papers necessary to put the patient into one of the VIP rooms.

The VIP floor was on the highest floor as reflected by its cost. It was carpeted from right outside the elevator and a handsome young man in freshly ironed suit greeted her entourage when the lift door opened. Wow, it is more like a five-star hotel than a hospital, she exclaimed silently. If it had not been for the nurses in white uniforms, no one could imagine that the floor was part of the hospital.

Rooms were on the right side only, unlike the lower levels where both sides of the corridors had rooms, On each door was a nametag indicating the temporary owner, but it didn't have the full name. The first thing you lose upon checking into a hospital ward is privacy and you are downgraded from a person to a patient, but here you keep your identity, she thought.

When an orderly pushed her husband's bed into one of the rooms, a condo unfolded before her: two rooms, presumably one for the patient and the other for the family or helpers, a kitchen, two bathrooms, a couple of couches, armchairs, wide screen TVs, and a computer monitor. In the kitchen were a tea table, an electric pot, a big refrigerator, and three white porcelain cups. Everything from the floor to the cups was shiny. On the white wall behind the patient's bed was a large replica of a Henri Matisse style painting.

The doctors soon figured out what was wrong with her husband and scheduled a laparoscopy. The patient seemed relieved and decided to take a shower in the larger bathroom. When he came out from the bath, he said he felt better despite the sporadic pain. She felt eased and joked, ``Thank you, dear, for giving me this opportunity to experience a VIP life.'' Her husband chuckled. ``Enjoy while you can. We will have to eat ramyeon for the next few months.''

Nurses streamed in and out, offering lengthy answers to whatever questions she and her husband asked. ``If you need anything, I mean anything, just let us know,'' a nurse said. The best hospital staff I've ever seen, she talked to herself, remembering how difficult it was to grab a scurrying nurse, let alone a doctor, while staying downstairs. Here, it was almost like honeymooning, if only he was free of pain.

The room was quite warm. Her husband lay down on the bed and dozed off, breathing evenly. She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. There were two 1.5-liter bottles of mineral water. She poured a full cup of water and drank it down and then one more cup. She was reminded of a nurse saying, ``If you need more water, just tell us.''

It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps the staff here was so kind because of the bill, nearly 20 times the charge for a bed downstairs. She thought about the four or five nametags on each door showing full names of all the patients sharing each room, compared to the secretive nametag on her door. Here are two bathrooms, one with a bathtub and the other with a shower, but people in the ordinary rooms have to use a public bathroom.

``It is so quiet here … like a grave,'' she was startled at her own thinking. Downstairs noise came ceaselessly from the next bed or the next room. When you share a room with four other patients, you hear five different groans, five different consolations. You have to fight against your illness with all your might, because your war is your roommates' war, too.

She glanced at her husband still asleep with a frown. She left the room and went to the nurses' desk. ``As soon as you find an opening downstairs, inform us immediately. We have to go down.''

kimsook@hotmail.com