The Right to Refuse Treatment

Eunha didn't refuse treatment.

She only refused while Dojin and Sera kept lying.

That condition hurt more than expected.

Oh Hyeonju read the two people's pre-deployment intake forms in front of the temporary treatment room door.

Yun Sera. Pain level 3. Right arm usable. Fit to command.

Baek Dojin. Slept 4 hours. Meal completed. Fit for agreement correction.

Hyeonju remembered the time Sera had gripped the bus handrail with her left hand. Dojin hadn't touched anything but a bottle of water since morning. Both had signed the intake forms with their own hands. Signatures didn't manufacture facts.

On the briefing screen at the end of the hallway, the server shipment countdown was ticking down.

47 minutes until the official account backup module was scheduled to ship out.

Destination: undisclosed.

They needed to get into the server storage facility before the access traces of the edited expense ledger disappeared. Sera tried to put on her bulletproof vest, but when her right arm wouldn't reach behind her back, she grabbed the buckle with her left hand instead. Dojin stepped closer to help.

"Contact consent?" Sera asked first.

"I was just going to check."

"If you didn't ask, it's not checking."

Dojin lowered his hand. That hand was shaking too.

Eunha didn't step between them. She closed the treatment kit.

"Intake again."

Sera checked her watch. "After we deploy."

"Deployment on hold."

"The server's on the move."

"I know." Eunha didn't raise her voice. "Commander, what's your right arm pain level?"

"Three."

"When you lower your arm?"

Sera didn't answer.

Eunha looked at Dojin. "Last meal?"

"This morning."

Hyeonju checked the time. She'd been with him since five forty in the morning. "What did you eat?"

Dojin's answer came a beat late. "Water."

"Water isn't a meal."

"The contract lists beverages as a provided item too, so, "

"Don't interpret the contract right now." Eunha cut him off. "Both of you, treatment on hold. Deployment on hold."

Sera took a step toward the door. Eunha didn't block her. Instead she sent a medical hold flag to the access terminal. The door didn't open.

"I can override that with command authority."

"You can."

"But?"

"If you override it, I stop being your caregiver and become forced-deployment personnel. In that condition I won't touch either of your bodies."

Hyeonju reflexively searched for an exception clause. Minimum treatment before deployment in cases of imminent evidence loss. It existed in the old emergency operations regulations. If applied, Sera could take one dose of painkiller and command, and Dojin could swallow some glucose and draft clauses in the car.

But the person who defined the scope of "minimum treatment" was also the commander. It was a structure where Sera, the patient, approved both her own body and Eunha's labor at the same time.

Hyeonju closed the exception clause screen.

Her own face reflected back at her on the closed screen. Losing the server was a legal failure. Erasing Eunha's refusal was a charter failure. She logged an objection to the emergency regulation: "Patient command authority and caregiver labor consent are not separated. Evidence loss is not grounds for presumed medical consent." While she typed in her own name, the count dropped by a minute.

"Medical hold stays in effect."

Sera turned around. "Legal's call too?"

"Not legal. My condition. If a patient and caregiver can't refuse under the command authority of the same person, I won't use that consent for this operation."

The server count dropped to 42 minutes.

Mina opened the remote screen. Behind her, comments about the leaked expense ledger kept piling up. She minimized the public window and pulled up only the vehicle registration data.

"Three backup module transport contracts. Two refrigerated vans, one document van. Don't know which vehicle has the server. Three samples, zero confirmed."

Sera said, "Send coordinates."

"I'll send them, but tracking commands come from the acting commander now. Right now the commander's in the patient chair."

Sera's jaw tightened. Still, she didn't repeat the order to Mina.

Eunha opened a blank form. The title read "Separated Consent."

Receiving treatment.

Being touched.

Working or deploying.

Each of the three fields had its own separate options: consent, refuse, decide later. Next to the patient's column sat an identical caregiver's column. A caregiver could consent to contact but refuse extra shifts, and consenting to give treatment didn't carry over into consenting to deploy.

Sera read the form. "Treatment consent. Consent to right arm exam and immobilization. Refuse painkiller injection. Contact limited to shoulder and arm only. Deployment?"

"You can't choose that now. After the exam, again."

"Decide later." Sera pressed it herself.

Eunha filled in her own column. "Consent to exam. Consent to immobilization. Not offering painkiller injection. Forty minutes of treatment, then thirty minutes of rest. Refusing additional calls during rest."

Sera looked up. "You rest even after my treatment's done?"

"My body doesn't shut off along with the treatment-end button."

"Thirty minutes, and what about the server?"

"That's why you appoint an acting commander."

Sera looked down at the command terminal in her left hand. Handing over command authority would leave a record that she'd been sidelined due to injury. Not handing it over would make the medical hold authority a piece of charter decoration.

"Temporary delegation of the server evidence preservation operation to Oh Hyeonju. No field rescue authority, only legal preservation, vehicle tracking, and escape route decisions. Excludes authority to execute agreement corrections."

Hyeonju didn't accept immediately. "State the duration and return conditions."

"From now until I pass a follow-up exam or two hours pass, whichever comes first. If a wide-scale correction is needed before then, full revote."

"Accepted."

Sera didn't hand the command terminal to Hyeonju. She sent only the authority token, without contact. Four lines of temporary command scope appeared at the top of Hyeonju's screen.

Dojin's turn.

"Treatment consent. Consent to blood sugar test. Contact limited to fingertip blood draw only. Deployment: decide later."

Eunha asked, "Drafting agreement correction language is work. Do it now?"

Dojin looked at the server count. 36 minutes.

"Refuse. One hour."

"Fine."

"Does that mean it's a good choice?"

"I'm not making a judgment. I mean I logged it."

Before opening the treatment kit, Eunha picked up the voting terminal.

"Change of operation order during medical hold. First, treat both patients. Second, I rest forty minutes later. Third, under Hyeonju's temporary command, Mina confirms vehicle location only. Fourth, Taeho confirms the escape route and passenger capacity of the tracking vehicles. Fifth, no server contact permitted until warrant scope is confirmed."

Hyeonju attached her own condition. "There's still no legal basis to stop the transport vehicle. I approve only preservation of plate numbers and route, and I oppose forced stopping."

Mina raised her analysis sheet. "In favor. Display the three vehicles as probabilities and don't broadcast them as confirmed."

Taeho raised the logistics sheet. "Conditional approval. Two tracking vehicles, two people each. Leave one seat open per vehicle for the return trip."

Sera didn't raise the field sheet from the patient's column. She pressed only "command delegation confirmed." Dojin didn't raise the correction sheet either.

Eunha raised the medical sheet. "In favor. Maintain separation of treatment and deployment until the false intake is resolved."

Hyeonju raised the legal sheet. "In favor. Includes my stated objection."

Operation order change passed.

The treatment room door switched from locked to standby. Eunha didn't try to take off Sera's vest herself. She asked instead. "Should you undo it yourself, or should I undo only the left buckle?"

"Only the left."

Eunha touched only the one permitted buckle. Sera laid her right arm on the exam table. Asked about the pain again, this time she answered "eight."

Eunha picked up the ultrasound probe and confirmed the contact range again. "I need to check the front of the shoulder and near the armpit. Are both okay?"

"Front of the shoulder. Armpit, later."

Eunha examined only the permitted range. Swelling around the tendon had increased since the day before, and there was an angle where lowering the arm pressed on a nerve. Full rupture couldn't be confirmed without examining the armpit area.

"What I can confirm now: increased swelling. What I can't confirm: whether there's a rupture. Two choices." Eunha turned the screen toward Sera. "Widen the contact range for the exam now, or fix the current range and schedule a detailed exam."

"Fix the current range. Detailed exam in two hours."

Before wrapping the immobilizer, Eunha asked again. "Should I wrap it, or you?"

"You. Right arm only."

Sera found it frustrating that one treatment required so many answers, but none of the questions stole a different answer. Hyeonju logged that sequence exactly as it happened.

On the temporary command screen, Hyeonju confirmed Mina's three vehicles. One refrigerated van had left the storage facility 23 minutes ahead of schedule. The destination field was blank.

"Movement confirmed. No stop order. Taeho, keep distance with both vehicles."

"Escape route secured. One seat left open per vehicle."

Dojin's blood sugar reading was 61. Eunha handed him juice, confirmed he drank it, then set her own rest timer to 30 minutes first.

Dojin tried to drink only half, citing the sweetness. Eunha logged the taste refusal separately from treatment refusal and explained the necessary amount again. Dojin drank all of it. During the twelve minutes his hand tremor eased, he didn't open the drafting screen, and wrote the end condition for his work refusal as "blood sugar 80 or above, meal completed, one hour elapsed."

Eunha handed the observation chart for both patients to an assistant caregiver. When the assistant asked, "Should I wake them when the vehicle arrives?" she shook her head.

"Only for emergency deterioration. The server moving isn't my emergency."

She lay down on the cot inside the treatment room. She hadn't even taken off her shoes, but she didn't cancel the rest timer. Sera saw this and still didn't order an early return.

Hyeonju enlarged the separated consent form on the treatment room wall. "Consent to contact is not presumed to be consent to work." The three-branch mark at the end of the sentence was the same series as her own objection stamp. No author was listed.

She preserved the original text and timestamp without attaching meaning to it.

The temporary command screen showed three options: forced stop, destination preservation, remote tracking. She couldn't stop the vehicle without proving it carried the server.

Hyeonju called the shipping company. "I won't ask about the vehicle's contents. Please ask the driver whether they consent to preserving route information and staying reachable."

The shipping company refused, citing route confidentiality. Instead of a personal number, Hyeonju sent a preservation notice that left a record of the time it was received.

"Mina, preserve only the plate number from the registration data. No guessing at cargo."

"Server field deleted. Refrigerated van A, route anomaly 62 percent."

Taeho's two tracking vehicles split at a fork in the road. One didn't pull ahead, the other didn't block the return route. Hyeonju reported progress to Sera but didn't ask for a conclusion. Handing delegated judgment back to the patient would have made it something other than acting command.

Mina called out. "Refrigerated van changed route. Entering the outer ring road."

The server evidence had started moving while everyone else rested.

Eunha set down the voting terminal before she set down the treatment kit.