Chapter 3
An awkward silence hung over the ward after Professor Choi Youngjun left.
Until just a moment ago, the nurses had been sneaking glances at me with those excited eyes that said, “That bastard’s about to get chewed up like a dog,” but now they were glancing at me with awe and surprise mixed together.
What are you looking at, you people.
I saw all of you betting on whether I’d get roasted.
I’m telling you, I’m a human being with at least a shred of sense!
I could hear the whispers of the nurses and a few medical techs from here.
“Isn’t he insane? And he’s not even in internal medicine, what kind of EM
(*Emergency Medicine, emergency medicine)
first-year resident would know a rare rheumatologic disease?”
“He called the professor directly and didn’t even get torn apart—he got praised?”
Shut up, you people.
And I can hear every word of it, I’m about to die of embarrassment, so please just be quiet.
I stared blankly down the hallway.
My body, drained of adrenaline and heavy as lead, was exhausted, but my brain was clearer than ever.
Something hot that had been building in one corner of my chest now felt like it was warming the blood in my whole body.
Blazing.
Is this what passion is?
‘Good job.’
What a simple line, and yet.
During my miserable residency, all I ever heard were things like
“You don’t even know this?”
“Snap out of it!”
“If you’re going to do it like that, quit.”
That was all, really.
Of course there were compliments once in a while, but if you think about which kind of words a bumbling first-year resident hears more often, the difference in frequency was obvious.
And today I’d heard genuine praise from a professor.
Along with the heavy sense of accomplishment that I might have saved a patient’s life.
And the beginning of all that was....
Probably that insane delusion that had popped into my head.
[Dead Medical Scholar Gallery]
I quickly said goodbye to Kang Taejin while avoiding the surrounding gazes and slipped into a random corner of the hallway.
The moment I threw myself into a chair, I closed my eyes and brought that damn gallery back to mind.
‘Gallery.’
With a ping, the familiar yet dreary blue interface spread across my vision.
For now, I needed to focus more on this so-called gallery.
What exactly was it?
I stared at the screen.
Hmm, what kind of users are on here?
And what is this interface, anyway.
It was a crude design that looked like something from the early 2000s, but it was astonishingly similar to a site I knew.
For now, the interface was very intuitive.
A number of gallery lists were lined up at the top of the screen.
[Dead Medical Scholar Gallery]
[Dead Internist Gallery]
[Dead Surgeon Gallery]
[Dead Pediatrician Gallery]
[Dead Psychiatrist Gallery]
They’d split them up neatly by specialty.
I had clicked on [Dead Medical Scholar Gallery]. It seemed like a kind of general board.
“Ha....”
A dry laugh escaped me.
Could this really be some delusion in my brain?
An elaborate hallucination conjured by my subconscious after stress crossed the breaking point?
I’d been sleeping badly lately, and my meals had been irregular too. Maybe it was a psychotic symptom that appeared as part of burnout syndrome.
‘Should I get a psychiatric consultation?’
The idea of diagnosing myself with that had me stunned.
What was I supposed to say? “Doctor, I can see a community site full of dead doctors in my eyes.”? If I said that, I’d be shot up with a sedative and sent straight to the closed ward.
But... if this really was a delusion, how did I explain VEXAS syndrome?
In the tiniest corner of my knowledge, in the farthest reaches of my forgetting curve, there was no disease name called VEXAS syndrome.
Only after searching UpToDate did I learn it was a rare disease defined just a few years ago.
The possibility that I’d come up with this on my own came close to zero.
Then this was... a real gallery?
Did it actually exist?
Trying to clear my confused head, I started lurking through the other posts. I scrolled through the latest list.
Title : What do kids these days use to evaluate Neuroblastoma
(*Neuroblastoma, a type of pediatric cancer)
besides N-myc?
Author : Pediatric Ghost 77
Back in my day, all we did was blast chemo and pray. Any ALK mutation or other target? Any new drug that made it through Phase 3
(*Phase 3 clinical trials)
trials or something like that.
Comments
ㅇㅇ (1.234) : What do you mean, “back in my day” lol? You’ve been dead for over 20 years, haven’t you? These days they use ALK-targeting Lorlatinib
(*Lorlatinib, a third-generation anticancer drug)
But it’s got resistance problems fast, so it’s a pain.
ㅇㅇ (211.36) : Just CAR-T.
(*Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell therapy, an immunotherapy)
is the answer. Money’s the problem. The GD2-targeted CAR-T trial results looked good, but is it still not available in Korea?
ㄴ Pediatric Ghost 77 : What the hell is CAR-T.... So many things have been invented since I died. Send me the paper link.
Title: Which bastard prescribed fentanyl for my patient, fucking hell
Author: Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
You couldn’t see he was a patient with end-stage renal failure? I got the info from some newbie who was probably working at the same hospital, and he prescribed fentanyl. Even med students know that norfentanyl, fentanyl’s metabolite, accumulates and causes respiratory depression. You should’ve used hydromorphone, you fucking quack. Because of you, the patient ended up in the ICU.
Comments
ㅇㅇ(101.11) : I was under a bastard like that too and died, so I know. He just doesn’t think.
ㅇㅇ(58.235) : Why the hell are you so angry if he’s dead anyway? Just kick your feet up and rest easy in the afterlife.
ㄴ Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine : How the fuck am I supposed to not be angry? He was a patient I spent years painstakingly saving.
…What the fuck.
I was speechless, staring at the screen.
The tone was every bit the cheap community site, with profanity and slurs flying everywhere, yet the level of conversation inside it was reminiscent of a conference held by active professors.
All kinds of cutting-edge findings and in-depth medical discussions were going on.
Hmm....
I rested my chin on my hand and sank into thought.
Is there anyone alive here besides me?
Judging by the tone of the posts and comments, everyone was using expressions like ‘when I was dead’ or ‘when I was alive.’
...At least from the posts, that seemed to be the case.
Wait, then?
It felt like my heart dropped with a thud.
With trembling hands—no, trembling thoughts—I went back to the post I’d written and scrolled down to check the comment section.
Beneath the comment I’d last seen, ‘Seems like VEXAS, send out the test,’ new comments had been added.
ㅇㅇ (182.21) : But isn’t this bastard’s post kind of weird? ‘I have a patient, can someone take a look?’ means he’s looking at it right now.
ㅇㅇ (39.7) : Right? ‘The patient keeps running a fever and looks like crap, but I don’t know the cause’ is in the present tense.
Operating Room Ghost 3: What? You’re looking at that patient? Are you a living doctor?
Descendant of Hippocrates: ?? How do you look at a patient, living doctor, and how are you supposed to give orders! This isn’t even some kind of possession.
Bone Geek 88: You’re seeing patients? Are there patients in the afterlife? Does the afterlife even have an ER?
Ah, shit.
I’m fucked.
It felt as if the blood in my entire body had gone cold.
Cold sweat ran down my spine. I had absentmindedly written from the perspective of a living person.
In the middle of these dead bastards, I had used present-tense language all by myself.
I’d been caught. My identity had been exposed.
The fact that there was a living human in this insane community of dead bastards had been laid bare.
What happens now? Am I getting forcibly kicked out? Or will this delusion disappear without a trace?
Just as all kinds of anxious thoughts flashed through my head, the atmosphere in the comments started to shift strangely.
ㅇㅇ (118.235): ...Wait. Is that bastard really alive?
Heo Jun’s Traditional Medicine Thinking: Holy shit.
ㅇㅇ (210.94): No fucking way. The guy from “Hell-Joseon Slave 1” is an actual living doctor?
Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine: ?? Holy shit. It’s been ages since I’ve been able to see a patient live (been dead 3 years)
Pediatric Ghost 77: You crazy bastard, are you seriously alive? Alive, I’m asking, fuck. Answer me—before I beat the shit out of you, tell me if you really are alive
Bone Geek 88: Hey, then can you live-stream this VEXAS patient? You’re going to do a bone marrow biopsy, right? Can you show me the bone marrow slide? I’m really good at reading marrow, so let me see it just once, seriously. I’ll give you an amazing read, for real.
ㄴ Bone Geek 88: Wow, so now we don’t have to suck up new medical knowledge from our freshly dead gallery lurkers?? We can just ask a live doctor right away? insane;;
Operating Room Ghost 3: Damn, that’s wild. So this is medicine of the living, huh? OP, hurry up and tell us what laparoscopic machine your hospital uses. Are you on the latest Da Vinci version? I mean, share the operative view, yeah
“....”
I couldn’t believe the sight before my eyes.
Their wariness and suspicion had turned into frenzied excitement and cheers in an instant.
Like people who’d found an oasis in a barren desert, these dead doctors were thrilled by the appearance of a living doctor.
They weren’t shunning me.
If anything, they were craving me.
Alone in the empty on-call room, I muttered into thin air.
“That’s a sweet deal, isn’t it?”