InsaneJournal

The light is the sun. We find out that they've been operating for six hours, and it was dark when they started. The young man being praised by his colleagues is Kenzo Tenma, a Japanese doctor practicing in Germany.

Passing by a woman in Turkish garb, Tenma remembers that her husband had been brought in for surgery. Unfortunately, the man didn't make it.

Things happen, characters are introduced, when Tenma is confronted by the Turkish widow:




Tenma is understandably taken aback, and decides to bring this up to his fiance (the director's daughter, Eva) at dinner.





The director, likewise, is not very sympathetic. First he dismisses Tenma's current research because he wants Tenma to write a different thesis for him (in the director's name, of course), then he weighs in on the Turkish patient and what he believes a doctor should be.



Tenma takes this, because that's his boss.

Meanwhile, the police receive a call to a mansion. The inhabitants of the mansion had just moved in recently, being a defected East German trade adviser, his wife, and their two children. What the police find isn't all that pleasant.




The girl is in shock, and the boy at her feet (her twin brother) is the only survivor, despite a bullet to his head. They're rushed to Eisler Memorial Hospital, where Tenma is woken to operate on him. Tenma reviews the kids scans, and plans to extract the bullet from his brain.

Just as Tenma is ready to start, he receives a call. Apparently the mayor of Dusseldorf has collapsed because of a cerebral blood clot, and is being helicoptered in for surgery. They want Tenma to abandon the boy and operate on the mayor instead. Tenma believes he is the only one capable of saving the boy in his condition, but the director has personally phoned and insists that Tenma save the mayor. Because the mayor is planning on increasing the subsidy to the hospital, naturally.

Tenma starts off to work on the mayor, but his conscience (or at least flashbacks of the callousness of his boss and fiance, and the crying Turkish woman) gets the better of him, and he operates on the kid anyway.



And finally, we check back in on his sister.



As you can tell, the art isn't up to the same standards as later chapters. Still, there are some great and iconic moments here: the dead parents, the girl standing over her wounded brother, Tenma freezing in the hospital hallway (not shown here). And the faces, even if they haven't quite reached the level that they will later, are still some of the most expressive in comics.

So, I hope that wasn't too disjointed for everyone. Up next, people learn valuable lessons. Or they're killed horribly. I can't remember which. Maybe it's both.

All scans taken from Spectrum Nexus, and not the official translation by Viz Media.