You Were the One Breaking Down (1)

So I spent the night in deep discussion with the ghosts of the Medical Gallery I'd been combing through.

The topic was one and one only.

'Scalpel God : How can I take down Center Director Park Gwang-seok perfectly—legally, medically, and politically?'

But the conclusion I reached after borrowing those genius ghosts' brains was far too anticlimactic.

Scalpel God : Can't really screw him over, can you?

….

That's right.

There was no medical malpractice, and no evidence of embezzlement either.

There was simply no way to get rid of my direct superior just because he had a filthy personality and was a stuffy old fossil.

Back in My Day : Don't you have anything locked in with the director? Like maybe you're in the same boat or something.

ㄴ HellJoseonSlave1 : Nothing like that exists. It's just the vibe.

ㄴ Back in My Day : Then it's ambiguous. The director does seem to like you, but whether that's enough weight to replace the center director is uncertain.

The gallery users' opinions were uniformly cold.

Because my answer to the most important variable—how solid my backing was—was vague.

A one-on-one with the director is definitely an awesome event for a resident.

But that didn't make me a guaranteed member of the true elite line.

'Who knows?'

The director might just be a philanthropist who calls even a dog passing by cute.

Say I went head-to-head with Park Gwang-seok.

If Director Lee Jae-yoon came back with, "Huh? I just called him in to encourage him. Why is he name-dropping me?" then what?

Then I'd have to give up my residency and throw in the towel.

"So in the end, I have to hold out on my own."

But that didn't mean I had only negative conclusions.

Because I calculated that even if I didn't have any offensive weapons, it would still be enough to survive.

'At least the chief of emergency medicine at the main hospital is on my side.'

Park Woong.

That crazy bastard hates it most when one of his own gets beaten up out there and comes back.

'And because the trauma center director and a few other professors are friendly toward me.'

At the very least, Park Woong, the chief of emergency medicine at the main hospital, is definitely on my side.

Kang Hyunjun, the main hospital trauma center director, Professor Hwang Jun of neonatology, and even Vice Director Yoon Tae-ryong.

The fact that the main hospital's key figures are friendly to me is my insurance policy.

'Even if I get singled out by Park Gwang-seok here and end up in mortal danger, I've still got an escape hatch!'

And there was one more important fact.

'Anyway, the assignment is only two months.'

Two months, long or short.

If I could somehow just keep breathing and hang on through that period, there'd be no major problem.

'If it gets truly shitty?'

Then I just call Park Woong, the chief at the main hospital, and unleash a Buster Call.

If I flopped down and yelled, "Chief! I can't work here anymore! I'm resigning!" that mad chief might chase me all the way to Geoje and smash the center director's office door in.

Yeah.

'Endure and you win.'

Just thinking about it made me feel reassured.

I've got backup.

Don't get scared.

…

***

And so, after that first encounter with Park Gwang-seok, nearly a month had passed in my Geoje assignment.

The Geoje Hospital system was gradually stabilizing, and the number of patients had increased quite a bit.

Life at the branch hospital was, surprisingly... not bad.

The first few days were hard, as expected.

Because Center Director Park Gwang-seok was keeping a close eye on me.

My mood was pretty shitty too, and I got the urge to just charge at him dozens of times a day.

Time was the medicine.

About a week later, once my personnel file from the main hospital came through and the evaluation reports written by several professors there arrived, the atmosphere changed.

And then there were the rumors.

"Dr. Han Hyeonjae? They say he's a mad dog, but he's really good at his job."

"The main hospital was buzzing about him too. A tabloid rumor? No way. It was going around even among the professors."

Once those rumors took shape, Park Gwang-seok became a little more subdued.

He'd instinctively sensed that even if he messed with me, he wouldn't even come out ahead.

Bully the weak, cower before the strong.

It was a move true to his life motto.

Instead, that arrow was aimed elsewhere.

"Hey! Yoon Tae-hyun! You're gonna do this like that? Huh?"

Center Director Park Gwang-seok was smacking the chart against the monitor and chewing out first-year Yoon Tae-hyun.

'Yoon Tae-hyun looked even more screwed, if anything.'

"Professor. But according to the guidelines...."

Yoon Tae-hyun opened his mouth, visibly intimidated.

Even so, the way he tried to argue in a voice that practically crawled along the floor, as if he still had to say his piece, felt very much like one of my juniors.

'He's definitely been influenced by Baek Eun-seo. Mm-hm. Proud of him.'

But the opponent was Park Gwang-seok.

But that was the problem.

"Hey! Put that paper away!"

Park Gwang-seok slapped the tablet away with his hand.

"There are clinical guidelines, aren't there? Practice guidelines! What, did you cook them into soup and eat them?"

"It differs a little from what's written here..."

"Is this a library? A lab? The patient's dying here, and you're going to sit there debating specificity and sensitivity?"

Park Gwang-seok thumped his chest in exasperation.

"Read the textbook once you're back on the ward! As for the disease you're suspecting, the finer differential will come out once you run the tests upstairs anyway, and the symptomatic treatment is the same either way, isn't it? Are you even a doctor?"

"Yes, sir! Sorry! I'll put in the orders right away!"

Yoon Tae-hyun bowed his head and backed off.

I watched the scene from a distance while drinking coffee.

'That guy could probably stand to get scolded a little more.'

Maybe because Yoon Tae-hyun is still a first-year, he has a tendency to cling too much to medicine learned from books.

The ER is the front line.

Rather than digging through papers to find a rare disease with a 0.1% probability, it's more important to stabilize the blood pressure of the patient in front of you who's breaking out in a cold sweat.

And above all, if your superior tells you to do something, you should at least say, "Yes, sir," and fix it later; if you say, "the guidelines this and that" right to his face, which professor is going to like that?

'Because at least he wasn't the kind of bastard who makes up reasons from nothing just to chew you out.'

This was the result of my month-long observation.

If Park Gwang-seok had chewed people out like, 'I'm in a bad mood, so don't breathe,' he'd truly be insane.

The Park Gwang-seok I'd seen so far at least took out his frustrations based on medical facts.

Of course, the intensity of that venting was excessive and mixed with insulting language, which was the problem, but the substance itself was often not all that wrong.

So after watching him for a month, my final assessment of Park Gwang-seok was as follows.

'I thought he was some big-shot villain who was amazing at political maneuvering... but nope.'

He wasn't a born political schemer.

He was just lucky.

When he was young, he chose the right side and lucked into the right line, climbing all the way to associate professor.

But because his ability didn't back it up, he never got proper recognition, and once his promotion path in Changwon was blocked and his position narrowed, he came down to the newly established hospital as a parachute appointment and got the center-director post on career clout.

A professor who feels like a crash landing because the parachute didn't fully open.

'I guess that's the general consensus.'

Rather than scary, he was kind of pathetic and pitiable.

***

It was a peaceful afternoon.

A lazy afternoon with no patients, no family members yelling, and no 119 sirens.

It was a workday, but we were spending what was practically downtime sitting at the station and shooting the breeze with Park Se-young.

"So I said, 'The ST segment is smiling, isn't it?'"

"So what did that resident say then?"

"He threw the chart at me."

That was when we were snickering and swapping old stories.

Bang.

The locker room door opened, and someone walked out.

We turned our heads without thinking and almost spat out the water in our mouths.

?

?

Park Se-young and I rubbed our eyes at the same time.

Standing there was Park Gwang-seok in a completely unfamiliar, bizarre getup—not his usual shabby scrubs or dingy gown.

A crisp white dress shirt, ironed stiff.

A dark navy tie knotted so tightly it looked like it could choke him.

And over that, a pure white lab coat.

'Wow....'

I had just witnessed a rather shocking sight.

Normally, emergency medicine doctors don't wear ties.

No, to be exact, most residents in other departments these days are the same.

A shirt-and-tie combo is hopeless if something splashes on it, and it's uncomfortable too.

So everyone just wears comfortable scrubs.

That outfit was, how should I put it.

It was the kind of unreal full getup you'd have seen in a hospital in the early 2010s.

"Ahem. Cough!"

Park Gwang-seok walked out to the center of the station, deliberately making a lot of noise so we’d notice him.

Then he glanced around for no reason and made gestures he would never normally make.

"Our ER is very clean. Very good."

Park Gwang-seok showed us a clenched fist.

"All right! Keep watching the ER closely! Our ER, fighting! The face of Geoje Hospital is the ER! Got it?"

?

?

Without even checking our reaction, Park Gwang-seok straightened his clothes with a grave expression and walked out of the ER.

"...Hah."

I looked at Park Se-young with a face that said I couldn't even process what I'd just seen.

"Professor, what's wrong with the chief? Did he take something bad? Or is he going on a blind date somewhere?"

"Hey, hey. Shh. You should at least say Chief-nim. Calling him chief like that? He can hear you."

"Ah, yes. Chief... nim."

Of course, I didn't forget to blur the pronunciation of 'nim' into something that sat at a very subtle midpoint between 'nom' and 'nim'.

This was my last shred of pride.

"Isn't today that day? The day he's coming."

Park Se-young pointed at the calendar.

"That person? Who... ah!"

Ah.

I remembered.

"So today was the day."

Today was the day Hospital Director Lee Jae-yoon was making an official visit to Geoje Hospital.

Why was the main hospital director coming to a branch hospital?

Because when Cheongjin University Hospital opened the Geoje branch, it was upgraded into a corporate entity called Cheongjin University Medical Center.

I don't know the first thing about complicated corporate registration procedures or anything, but apparently Hospital Director Lee Jae-yoon also got the title of inaugural medical center director.

In other words, Lee Jae-yoon seemed to be in charge of everything, not just the main hospital but the branch too.

So from the perspective of a mere center director like Park Gwang-seok, he'd have to suck up.

That wasn't unreasonable for him to cinch his tie that tight and prepare some showy display of loyalty.

"Since you're here, might you give me a one-on-one later? I've got a lot to say."

When I muttered half joking, half serious, Park Se-young made a disgusted face and waved me off.

"You don't have to keep up that 'I'm on the director's line' act. Seriously, you're relentless."

"Come on, I'm telling you it's real. When I get back to the main hospital later, I'll make sure to put in a good word about Professor Park's matter too, so why don't you believe me?"

"Oh, yes~ yes~ thank you so much. I'm honored."

Park Se-young clearly didn't believe me at all.

Well, we'll see later.

I checked the hospital notice displayed on the monitor.

"By the way, looking at the schedule, there's also a time for visiting each department and giving encouragement after the main auditorium event. Will they come to the ER too?"

If they do, should I change clothes too?

My hair was a bit flattened right now.

For reference, after taking Baek Eun-seo's advice seriously, I'd gone back to wearing my hair with bangs down.

"That? Don't worry about it."

Park Se-young waved a hand.

"I heard from PR that they probably won't come to the ER. The route gets tangled, and the ER has too many unexpected situations to host VIPs safely. If blood splashes around or patients start yelling, it'll ruin the picture."

"I see."

"So we didn't do any deep cleaning or special prep. We just act normally like always. It's only Chief Park Gwang-seok who's overdoing it like that."

"Thank goodness."

I let out a sigh of relief.

I hate it most when some bigwig comes in and patient care gets paralyzed because of protocol, but fortunately the ER was being skipped.

That was when my mood improved a little.

Brrrrring—

A phone rang, breaking the silence.

"Yes, this is the Geoje Cheongjin University Hospital ER."

The senior nurse sitting at the station picked up the receiver.

"Yes. Yes? ...Oh. Right now?"

The nurse's expression hardened instantly, and her hand hurriedly searched for a notepad.

"Yes. Understood."

Click.

"Professor. There's been an accident at the shipyard site."

"An accident?"

"Yes. It sounds like it was pretty big. They say the local ER can't possibly handle it, so they're bringing the patient straight here."