Chapter 48
I was tucked away in a corner of the station, finishing the last discharge chart for my final patient.
My fingers on the keyboard were heavy, and my eyelids weighed a ton.
The clock read 6:55 p.m.
Five minutes.
If I could just hold on for five more minutes, this godforsaken day shift would finally be over.
‘Ah, I want to go home….’
Haaahm.
I yawned so hard it felt like my mouth would split open.
I rolled my stiff neck and absentmindedly clicked the notice popup on the hospital intranet.
[Notice of Abstract Submission for the Korean Society of Emergency Medicine Fall Conference]
Oh, right.
The fall academic conference is coming up soon, huh.
Looking at the flashy posters and jam-packed schedule, I muttered with the detached feeling of someone watching a fire from across the river.
Me? Nothing…
With a sigh of relief, I closed the popup window.
Yeah, I didn’t need to worry about that kind of headache.
My only goal was to go home, stretch out, and sleep.
That was when it happened.
“Oh, Hyeon-jae. Haven’t you clocked out yet?”
A familiar but never welcome voice came from behind me.
Professor Cheon Eun-jeong, an emergency medicine attending.
I barely managed to steady myself after nearly flying out of my chair and sprang to my feet.
“Ah, yes? Yes, professor! I just finished my last charting and was about to head home!”
My voice was trembling slightly with tension.
A professor right before clocking out is basically a minefield.
Step on the wrong one and my life would be blown away on the spot.
“Really? Good work.”
Professor Cheon gave me a brief compliment and seemed about to walk right past.
Phew, I’m saved.
Just as I was about to sit back down with a sigh of relief.
“Ah, uh, just a second, hey, let’s have a quick chat before you leave. Five minutes is enough.”
Thud-thud.
My heart plummeted to the floor.
A meeting.
Five minutes.
In the world of doctors, the combination of those two words means only one thing.
From this moment on, brace yourself to get ripped to shreds for at least thirty minutes.
Like a prisoner being dragged to the gallows, I followed Professor Cheon to a small counseling room in the corner.
Professor Cheon sat down in a chair, and I sat stiffly opposite her.
What had I done wrong again?
The rectal foreign body case I dumped on the intern earlier?
Or was it because I’d drunk too much mix coffee?
“Well, it’s not exactly that.”
Professor Cheon turned on her tablet and showed me something.
It was the same conference information page I’d seen earlier.
“You know, the deadline for this fall conference is this Friday?”
Professor Cheon’s voice was extremely gentle and cheerful.
“Ahahaha… right. Since today’s Wednesday… there are only two days left.”
Not knowing what to say, I gave an awkward laugh and nodded along.
Then Professor Cheon sentenced me to death with the brightest smile in the world.
“Yeah. Let’s write just one abstract.”
…
……What?
My brain refused to understand.
“Excuse me?”
I asked back, doubting my own ears.
I thought our hospital was such a wonderful place that it let first-years stay holed up in the hospital all year.
“An abstract. Just one abstract.”
I was dumbstruck.
My mind went blank.
It was Wednesday night.
The deadline was Friday midnight.
To write even one abstract, I’d first have to pick a case, dig through related papers to build background knowledge, organize the patient data, write the introduction, body, and conclusion in English, get the supervising professor’s approval… it was physically impossible.
That just meant no sleep for today or tomorrow.
“Oh, come on, why are you so surprised? I’m not making you do an oral presentation. That’d be too much pressure. Let’s just do a poster. A poster.”
If an oral presentation is the death penalty, a poster presentation is prison.
Of course, being a first-year doesn’t mean you never do poster presentations. You’ll probably do one at least once in your residency life.
But two days in advance is a bit much, isn’t it?
Poster presentations aren’t hard.
The problem is that it’s only two days away.
Professor Cheon, as if my feelings meant nothing at all, started picking a case with great excitement.
“Well, you could use that TTP case you diagnosed recently. But TTP might be a little weak... It is rare, so it would draw attention, but besides the diagnosis, there’s not much you did, right? Ah! The belly-slicing one! That’s good! ‘A Successful Case of Resuscitative Laparotomy Performed in the ER.’ The title alone has impact, doesn’t it?”
Professor Cheon thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“No, the belly-slicing one, in my opinion, should be done as an oral presentation when you’re a second-year, after the patient has been discharged. It’s too good a case to waste on a poster. But with only two days left, preparing an oral presentation would be a bit much, wouldn’t it?”
Professor Cheon asked for my agreement with a devilish smile.
I could only nod.
“Then there’s only one left. The MI case we caught because of a sore throat. ‘A Case of Early Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction Presenting with Atypical Symptoms.’ How about it? Clean and good, right? Let’s do that.”
And just like that, the topic of my first conference abstract was decided in five seconds.
With not even a gram of my own will reflected in it.
“Heh... hehe...”
Only a hollow laugh leaked out of my mouth.
Professor Cheon seemed to take that laugh as agreement and turned off the tablet with a satisfied expression.
“Good! Then we’ll go with that. Write a draft by before lunchtime tomorrow and email it to me. I’ll look it over and tell you what to revise. You can do that, right?”
I had no choice but to answer that devilish question in a lifeless voice.
“…Yes, professor.”
Professor Cheon Eun-jeong rose from her seat with a satisfied smile.
Professor Cheon lightly patted my shoulder in encouragement.
“Anyway, a poster is just one page. Nothing to be scared of. Even first-years do it, you brat. Fighting! Fighting!”
Professor Cheon left the counseling room with that devilishly cheerful encouragement.
‘No, one page is... the thing hanging in the conference hall is the one-page final product, you idiot...’
My inner self cried out, spewing blood.
***
I rose from my seat like someone who’d lost his soul.
Trudge, trudge.
I crossed the emergency department and headed to the locker room.
Off work.
Right, I had to clock out first, at least.
While I changed clothes, scenarios for the disaster that lay ahead began running wild in my head.
First, data collection.
The most basic, yet the hardest, part.
First, I’d have to dig through the entire medical record of that myocardial infarction patient who came in with a sore throat.
I imagined myself logging into the EMR and opening the patient’s chart.
From the vital signs at presentation, the physical exam notes I’d performed, and the subtle changes in the ECG waveforms, to the graphs showing changes in cardiac enzyme levels over time.
The comments on the cardiology consult note, the black-and-white image attached to the coronary angiography results showing the blood vessel squeezed so tightly it was practically closed, the final diagnosis, the treatment course, and the discharge summary.
I’d have to comb through everything about that patient from A to Z and extract meaningful data worthy of a conference presentation.
From those hundreds of pages of records, I’d have to find clues that proved what made this case special.
That alone would take at least three or four hours.
Second, literature search.
I couldn’t just organize the data and submit it with, ‘We had this kind of patient, isn’t it amazing? The end!’
I had to say what medical significance this case held. And to do that, what did I need to do? Read papers, of course.
I imagined myself sitting at the small desk in my officetel and logging into PubMed.
I’d cram the search box full of case-related keywords like ‘atypical MI,’ ‘sore throat ACS,’ and ‘non-chest pain ACS.’
Then a depressing number like [2,134 results found] would pop up on my screen.
From among the thousands of English papers pouring out like that, I’d have to pick out at least ten or so that were most relevant to my case.
And then I’d have to read them all, interpret them, compare and analyze them with my case, and turn them into evidence to support my argument.
English.
Just thinking about it made me want to vomit.
The nightmare of those damn original English texts that had tormented me all six years of med school.
Third, writing the abstract.
After going through all those hellish steps, it would finally be time to write. This was the most urgent part: by before lunchtime tomorrow, I had to finish an English abstract in the strict format required by the conference, with an introduction, case presentation, discussion, and conclusion.
Easy to say.
Me, with my English skills, condensing all of that into something concise, logical, and professional?
It might be quicker and more comfortable to go dive into the Han River—no, the Nakdong River—instead.
I looked at my reflection in the locker room mirror.
‘…Still.’
I desperately searched for a sliver of hope.
‘Anyway, the final product, the poster, has to be as concise as possible... if I make it mostly pictures and graphs... maybe I can manage...’
I comforted myself.
‘Yeah... oral... better than an oral presentation... If it were that, I would’ve just written my resignation letter right here today...’
In the end, only one conclusion remained.
‘Hah, I guess I’ll have to get help from those gallery ghost bastards again.’
Damn it.
In the end, I was going to have to beg those lunatics for help again.
As I left the hospital, the cold night air hit me.
Go home, wash up, and then sit right down at my desk to start organizing the data...
Ugh, just thinking about it was awful.
But what could I do?
If the professor says do it, you do it—that’s the fate of this line of work.
I boarded an empty bus and stared blankly at the night view outside.
“Ha... whatever. Let’s do it. Fuck it.”
It’s not like skipping a little sleep would kill me.