"I'm sorry, we can't do stitches here." - fun fun Korean hospital trip

Her voice came wavering over the phone "I've cut myself really bad and need to go to hospital," in the - we're raised tough in Indiana but things have turned South - kind of way.
Moving to a new country like Korea and not speaking the language can be a frustration at times but when there's a genuine emergency and you've been in-country just two weeks, things can get pretty scary as it did for my friend two nights ago.
It was out the door and ran straight into neighbor from Washington on her way out the door to give assistance as well.
"I don't even know where she lives," she tells me.
When you're in a town of 50,000 with just a dozen or so expats, you see each other on weekends and have a few laughs, but when it comes to the crunch they can be the only help you have some days and it's an interesting note how little we know of each other at times.
We found Indiana in the parking section of her building sounding very meek and clutching a bloody paper towel to her hand. It was straight in a taxi as noone has a car and up to the nearest hospital which, due to a public holiday was meagerly staffed.
A short wait and our patient was able to see the doctor who quickly stated, "I'm sorry, we can't do stitches here."
Bewildered, we were told the nearest place to get a sliced finger repaired was the next city, Daejeon which meant after they bandaged the hanging piece of flesh attempting to escape the ring finger, we would be on a 40 minute train out of town, then a ten minute taxi, just to get there.
A frantic search for the emergency room resulted in a wonderful, if tiny, lady escorting us down to the basement level where there was paperwork and many questions before we could get in to see a professional.
The first noticeable thing about a Korean emergency room was the lack of curtains, they're present but all nicely tucked away so you share the space with the other patients quite intimately.
The nurses were very efficient and practical and a fantastic young Doctor came to her aid, announcing it would only be 30 minutes before he could stitch her up.
We were led to a small surgery room and Washington was straight out the door again due to the fact a young man was having a side wound treated in full view as right in the doorway. Myself and Indiana were left there in the corner, able to observe someone else having minor surgery for a while - neat but not for the faint stomached and certainly did not ease the patient's mind.
The Doctor was a stunning craftsman and six stitches into a smallish flap of skin to essentially reattach it was done even with a phone call and one or two text messages in between - although he did change gloves between each checked message.
It was then time for the post-op which for some reason involved an allergy test before four injections of anti-biotics which had our patient reaching for the puke bag.