1. A Stubborn Refusal on the Way to the Airport
I was heading to the airport after finishing some business in Vietnam. I was in the passenger seat of a car driven by my Vietnamese partner, Trung. Trung is exactly ten years younger than I am. He had studied in Korea and spoke Korean quite well. We were business partners, but our relationship was closer to that of two brothers. Even so, he always called me “Director Kwak.” He still does.
On the way to the airport, I suddenly felt a pain in my abdomen. At first, I tried to ignore it. The thought of going to a hospital in a foreign country made me uneasy. I did not speak the language, and I worried that I would not be able to explain my symptoms or understand what the doctors were telling me.
Trung looked at me and said, “Director Kwak, you need to go to a hospital.”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just take me to the airport. I’ll get treatment when I arrive in Korea.”
But the pain continued to grow. I began to sweat heavily, and soon I could barely sit upright. Even then, I kept insisting that we go to the airport.
2. The Decision That Turned Fate Around
Trung finally decided not to listen to me. He turned the car around and drove straight to a hospital.
Several tests followed. The doctors examined my abdomen, performed an ultrasound, and took a CT scan. At first, they did not seem certain about what was wrong. They studied the images, pressed different areas of my stomach, and spoke among themselves. The next day, a more experienced doctor reviewed the scans and ordered another CT.
This time, the diagnosis was clear: my appendix had ruptured.
The doctor explained that tissue around the ruptured area had contained the infection, preventing it from spreading more widely through my abdomen. I had been fortunate, but the situation was still dangerous. I needed surgery immediately.
After the operation, the doctor reportedly told Trung that boarding the flight could have put me in grave danger. The delay in treatment, together with the conditions inside the aircraft, might have caused my condition to worsen rapidly.
Only then did I understand what Trung’s decision had meant. That U-turn had saved my life.
3. Fear, Care, and the Bonus Life
The surgery itself was urgent, but there were still procedures to complete. The hospital needed consent and a guarantor, while my family was thousands of miles away in Korea. Calls were made to the Korean consular authorities. Trung agreed to act as my guarantor, and I signed the documents placed in front of me without fully understanding them. I was frightened, exhausted, and in too much pain to think clearly.
Just before the surgery, a nurse came over and spoke to me in hesitant Korean. Her Korean was not fluent, but hearing even a few familiar words in that unfamiliar hospital brought me an enormous sense of relief. A mask was placed over my face.
When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital room. The surgery was over. A drainage tube had been inserted into my abdomen. I could not go to the bathroom alone. Eating a meal was difficult. Ordinary things I had done without thought now required someone else’s help.
Trung still had his own work to do during the day, so he arranged for his friends to take turns staying with me. At night, he hired someone who spoke a little Korean to look after me. Whenever he had time, he came to the hospital himself, checked on my condition, and made sure I had everything I needed.
I later heard that before the operation, Trung had also privately given the surgeon a substantial amount of money. As Trung understood it, this was part of the local way of making an especially urgent and personal request. I was not there when it happened, and I cannot know exactly what was said. What I do know is that Trung was frightened for me. At that moment, he was doing everything he believed he could do to keep me alive.
A few days later, my condition stabilized. The drainage tube was removed, and I was allowed to return to Korea with the stitches still in place. I visited a large hospital after coming home. The doctor examined the surgical wound and said simply, “The surgery was done well.”
Only then did I finally relax.
I had been so afraid of receiving treatment in a foreign country that I had insisted on returning to Korea. Yet the hospital I had tried so hard to avoid was the place that saved me. And Trung, whom I had refused to listen to, was the person who made sure I reached it.
Had he given in to my stubbornness, we would have continued to the airport. Had I boarded the plane, my condition might have worsened before I could receive treatment. There would have been no operating room, no surgeon, and perhaps no time left to save me. This story might never have been written.
Since then, the time I have been given sometimes feels like a bonus.
4. The Physics of Affection: Virtue Is Not Solitary
Life did not suddenly become easier after the surgery. My financial situation remained difficult, and there were still many days when life felt heavy. On rare and particularly dark days, an ugly thought would pass through my mind: perhaps it would have been easier if everything had ended back then.
But people somehow continue living. We endure one day and then another. We gradually let go of things we once believed we could not live without. And when our expectations become smaller, the ordinary parts of life begin to look different:
- A warm meal.
- A peaceful afternoon.
- Someone asking how I am.
- A piece of writing completed at the end of the day.
When I was consumed by larger ambitions, these things seemed insignificant. Everything I did not have felt more important than everything already in front of me. But as I learned to let go, the small things began to carry more weight.
There is no doubt that Trung saved my life. But I do not believe that affection flows in only one direction.
Long before that day, I had also tried to be there for him. I had helped him through difficult situations without expecting anything in return. I had tried to care for him as an older brother would. I did not do those things because I believed that one day he might repay me. At the time, they were simply the things I felt I should do.
But perhaps those moments did not disappear. Perhaps they remained somewhere between us, quietly accumulating over the years. And when Trung saw me doubled over in pain, still stubbornly demanding that he take me to the airport, perhaps all those years made it impossible for him to obey me.
Not long ago, I wrote about another relationship that returned to me after many years. Someone I had once treated with kindness unexpectedly reappeared in my life as a trusted friend and colleague to my wife.[→ Related story]
In that case, an old connection returned to stand beside my wife. In Vietnam, it returned in the form of a man refusing to follow my instructions and turning the steering wheel instead.
There is an old saying from the Analects:
De bu gu, bi you lin — 德不孤 必有鄰.
“Virtue is not solitary. It always has neighbors.”
When I was young, I understood those words only in theory. Kindness does not always return immediately. It may not return from the same person, in the same form, or at a time when we are expecting it. But that does not mean it has disappeared.
Sometimes it remains hidden for years. Then, at a moment when we are most vulnerable, it returns in the form of a person standing beside us.
On that road in Vietnam, Trung was the one who turned the wheel. But when I look back now, I wonder whether the U-turn began long before that day. Perhaps it began in all the ordinary moments when two people chose to care for each other without keeping score.
Trung’s hands moved the steering wheel.
But the force behind them may have been the long, invisible physics of affection.