autumn outside the post office | sunwon

nine.

"How's the patient in Room 005 doing?"

"Patient Kim Sunoo, preliminary tests show the tumors are growing a lot faster than we expected. See here, on the PET scans, they've almost doubled in size since the diagnostic scans from two months ago."

"The experimental drugs, how are they on him?"

"Ineffective. We've tried chemotherapy, the dosage of temozolomide he's on is the highest his body can take without shutting down, but it doesn't seem to be changing anything."

"If it continues this way, it seems there isn't much time left for him."

"Do you have an estimate? I'm sure his parents would want to know."

"A month, at most. Maybe less."

Thirty days.