Chapter 146
I hurled myself onto the bed in the most tucked-away corner of the on-call room.
Anyway, if I had to come back out tomorrow morning for handoff and whatever else, it’d be a waste to go home and return.
Besides, my body right now didn’t even have enough strength to walk to the hospital front gate and catch a taxi, and I’d probably run out of energy right before I got home.
Well, I could buy a few more, but did I really need to brace myself for LP loss?
‘I can sleep here. The chief already gave me permission to go home.’
I buried my face in the pillow and imagined blissful things.
This softness.
This comfort.
The feel of the mattress against my back was so sweet it was unbelievable.
“Mm-hmm….”
A hum slipped out of my mouth on its own.
Yeah, sure, the possession penalty really did hurt like hell!
I really felt like I was going to die, and I passed out all the time!
By now I’d probably gotten used to it, right!
It was right when I was trying hard to rationalize it and lie down comfortably, very comfortably.
“Mm, well, for now I can hold out….”
Kwadudduk.
“Agh!”
Every vertebra in my spine started screaming.
It felt like a giant had grabbed me and was wringing my body out like laundry.
‘Scratch that. I take back the part about being able to hold out.’
“Fuck….”
I groaned and clutched the blanket tightly.
Just like that, I fell asleep as if I’d passed out.
…
.
.
…
Chirp, chirp.
Somewhere, I could hear birdsong like an auditory hallucination.
No, was that a monitor alarm instead of birdsong?
Forcing open my leaden eyelids, I looked out the window. Birds, my ass.
It was just night.
After confirming the pitch-black window, I picked up my phone and checked the time.
[23:14]
“…Huh?”
I did the math in a half-dream.
I’d come in around 10 in the morning, so….
Roughly 13 hours had passed.
Hmm, if I calculated it exactly, maybe it was about 12 hours.
“Ugh….”
As I sat up, my joints cracked loudly.
My body still ached.
But it wasn’t the kind of pain that made me feel like I was going to die, so I was fine.
Just…. Like the morning after a 50-km walking challenge?
Why I did a challenge like that is a secret.
“The 12-hour penalty is definitely real, goddammit….”
Exactly.
These damn system bastards.
The way it took the pain away only after exactly 12 hours, not a second more or less, was so mercilessly precise it nearly made me cry.
Do I really have to keep doing this?
More emergency patients would keep coming in, and even if I let the cases I could handle on my own handle themselves, situations like today—where there was truly nothing I could do—were different.
If I had to possess someone and spend 12 hours laid up in agony every time that happened, that’d be a problem.
Yeah, sure, I’d let things slide until now, but somehow the results kept coming out weird.
Taking early leave is one thing, but I can’t keep firing off ‘Chief, I was awesome, right? I’m heading home’ every single time.
I waved my hand and brought the shop window back up.
The points I’d steadily saved up.
I had almost 80,000 points piled up, and there wasn’t really anywhere to spend them anyway.
“I still have quite a few points left. Anything useful? Maybe last time….”
I scrolled down.
[Possession Upgrade]
[Price : 30,000 LP]
[Description : For 30 minutes, a designated Gallery user can possess your body, or float beside you in midair for 1 hour and guide you in real time.]
[Penalty : After using the skill, you fall into a state of severe full-body muscle pain for 6 hours.]
….
I stared hard at the description.
Right.
I’d checked this last time, too.
Expensive.
Damn expensive.
But now, looking at it again, it was a lot more tempting.
Why, though?
Anyway, the penalty's half as long.
The difference between 12 hours and 6 hours is huge.
And even more important is the guide mode.
Actually, the original possession skill had possession and floating guidance both set to 30 minutes, so I couldn’t really feel much merit in it.
But now there’s an advantage that’s almost twice as long—no, exactly twice as long, with 30 minutes and 1 hour—so the options are widening.
Besides, if someone guides me from beside me, I can learn by doing it myself.
That would be training in the truest sense.
“This... I guess that’s good, right?”
Of course, the 30,000 points stung.
But considering my body right now, this wasn’t an investment. It was insurance.
“Whatever, screw it.”
I pressed the buy button.
‘Buy it. If my body survives, I can keep practicing medicine.’
[Purchase complete!]
[Remaining LP : 54,330]
Upgrade complete.
I got up from the bed while gathering my things.
I’m hungry, so first I’ll go raid a convenience store.
And then I’ll decide whether to go home depending on the situation.
I threw on my coat carelessly and opened the on-call room door.
The hallway was quiet, but the emergency room side was still brightly lit.
Plod, plod.
As I approached the ER station, faces glinting in the monitor light came into view.
“Oh! Doctor! You’re here?!”
The first person to spot me was Baek Eun-seo.
She stared at me with wide eyes.
“You didn’t go home? I heard the chief let you leave early. This morning, too.”
“Uh, well... I was so tired I just crashed in the on-call room. I didn’t even have the strength to go home.”
I scratched my neck and yawned.
Too tired - fact
Collapsed in the on-call room - fact
So this isn’t a lie.
Come to think of it, why was Baek Eun-seo still here?
She came in this morning, so by now she should’ve been off work already.
“Why are you still in the ER? Aren’t you going home?”
At my question, Baek Eun-seo answered with a bright, sunny smile.
“I’m on a 24-hour shift today, so I’m supposed to get off tomorrow morning!”
“Ah.”
A sigh escaped me.
So today was her 24-hour shift.
“Sorry. Hang in there.”
I didn’t know because I was on a 12-hour shift.
Really sorry.
“Yes! Thank you!”
“Then what about those guys?”
I pointed to the first-years sitting in the corner behind Baek Eun-seo.
Yoon Tae-hyun and Kang Jeong-hun, who had looked pretty lively in the morning.
Now they looked, well, hmm.
Like anchovies that had been out of the water for three hours?
Their energy and spark were gone, leaving them looking dried out and skinny.
Their eyes had lost their sparkle, and their souls looked half-escaped.
“Ah, yes! They’re on 24-hour shifts too! They’re going through first-year initiation properly.”
Baek Eun-seo chuckled softly.
“Seo-ah’s in a pretty bad state right now, so I dumped her in the on-call room. I’m planning to let her sleep a bit and then put her back to work.”
“Oh, really? They’re getting hammered from day one.”
I nodded.
Kim Seo-ah.
She already looked a little shaky this morning—did she get knocked out that fast?
I’ll have to check later whether it’s a stamina issue or a mental one.
Then Baek Eun-seo suddenly brightened, eyes sparkling, and came right up to me.
“Yes, Doctor! By the way, about earlier today.”
“Huh?”
“The helicopter. What happened on the helicopter?”
Baek Eun-seo’s voice went up a notch.
“So the interns rotating through the children’s hospital and all that—you know how fast hospital gossip spreads. It had already gone around everywhere. I heard even Professor Hwang Jun in Neonatology praised you... what on earth did you do to get that picky guy to praise you?”
Hmm, did that guy praise me?
Was he saying it behind my back?
Baek Eun-seo’s eyes turned dazzlingly bright.
I could feel Yoon Tae-hyun and Kang Jeong-hun, sitting behind her, snapping out of zombie mode and focusing.
Hospital gossip really is fast, huh.
I shrugged, looking exhausted.
“Uh... well... so, on the way there, the mother went into labor and gave birth.”
“Gave birth?! On the helicopter?!”
“Yeah. I guess that’s what happened.”
That’s a lot of pressure.
She looked like she was about to shoot beams from her eyes.
‘Our senior doctor delivered a baby on a helicopter!’ was practically written on her face.
But I have to tell the truth.
Because I wasn’t the one who delivered the baby.
To be precise, I didn’t actually handle the mother.
“No, no. OB/GYN Dr. Ahn Hyeon-jeong handled the delivery. I just held the legs. There was an OB specialist there, so why would I stick my nose in?”
I waved my hand and took the wind out of her sails.
“Ah.... Really?”
Baek Eun-seo’s expression turned sullen in an instant.
‘No, don’t make your disappointment that obvious, you crazy junior.’
I cleared my throat and went on.
“Right. The mother was handled by the OB doctor. I handled the newborn.”
“Ah, is that so?!”
Baek Eun-seo’s crazy switch flipped back on as she leaned forward.
“Newborns aren’t even in emergency medicine’s domain. Besides, there wouldn’t have been any equipment in the helicopter!”
“Right. But the situation was bad. There was meconium aspiration. The baby came out limp and wasn’t breathing.”
I tossed out a casual question.
“What’s the first thing you do when a newborn who aspirated meconium isn’t breathing on its own?”
Baek Eun-seo answered in a heartbeat.
“Positive-pressure ventilation! The latest guidelines say to start with an Ambu bag.”
‘Shit. Baek Eun-seo knew that too. Had my NRP knowledge been stuck in 2014 or earlier?’
“Uh... yeah. Exactly.”
I nodded.
“But that failed. Even after bagging, the chest wouldn’t rise. The airway was completely blocked.”
“So then?”
“I intubated right away. Suctioned the meconium out.”
“On the helicopter? To that tiny newborn?”
Baek Eun-seo’s mouth fell slightly open.
“Yeah. And when the heart rate dropped below 60 and still wouldn’t come back up, I did some chest compressions, inserted an umbilical venous catheter, and gave epi. I saved the baby. That’s basically it.”
“....”
Baek Eun-seo froze right there.
Frozen.
Umbilical venous catheter insertion.
That microscopic procedure of finding the umbilical vein, something even in a university hospital pediatrics department you’d hardly ever attempt unless you were aiming for neonatology or another subspecialty.
The fact that a third-year emergency medicine resident had pulled it off alone on the swaying floor of a helicopter fully sank in.
‘Ah, I shouldn’t have told her that.’
Baek Eun-seo swept her hair back and shouted.
“Doc, are you seriously insane?!?!”