Chapter 57
Professor Cheon looked back and forth between us with her arms crossed.
“Tell me what kinds of questions came up, from start to finish. Start with Hyeonjae.”
I glanced sidelong at Kim Jihoon, who looked like his soul had left his body.
I swallowed hard and started going over the questions I’d been asked, one by one.
“Yes, Professor. At first, most of them were basic questions about the abstract. They asked about the patient’s vital signs at admission, the peak cardiac enzyme levels, and the coronary angiography findings, and I answered them as I had prepared beforehand.”
“Right. Nothing unusual. What else?”
“And Professor Kim Hyeokjae from Oseong Seoul Hospital asked about how to differentiate it from nonocclusive mesenteric ischemia.”
Professor Cheon’s eyes widened slightly at that.
“Professor Kim Hyeokjae? So, did you answer well?”
“Yes. Fortunately, I explained that it was unlikely based on the abdominal exam findings and lactate levels.”
“Good job.”
A satisfied smile spread across Professor Cheon’s lips.
“What about Jihoon? What questions did you get?”
Kim Jihoon flinched.
“I… uh… got asked about the effectiveness of urine alkalinization therapy in rhabdomyolysis… but I couldn’t answer properly. I’m sorry.”
His voice trembled at the end. Professor Cheon said nothing for a moment.
“Who was the guy that asked that, anyway? What kind of person asks a first-year something like that?”
“It was Professor Park Juseong from Seoul Catholic Sacred Heart Hospital….”
“Oh, boy.”
Professor Cheon pressed a hand to her forehead.
“Why on earth would he ask something like that? You got unlucky.”
It was then that an awkward, heavy silence settled between us.
From far away, a loud, insane voice rang out.
“Han Hyeonjae-eeeeee!!!”
When I turned my head, Chief Resident Lee Minjae was forcing his way through the crowd like a rabid dog and running toward us.
“Is it true?! That you beheaded an Aseong Hospital resident…!!”
Just as that appalling, low-class metaphor was about to echo through the entire venue.
Lee Minjae’s gaze met Professor Cheon Eunjeong’s face, the one standing beside me.
“...Ah!”
Lee Minjae’s body screeched to a halt in place like a bus braking hard.
All the madness vanished from his face as if it had never been there.
In 0.1 seconds, Lee Minjae wiped away his lunatic expression and put on the mask of the most courteous, well-mannered model resident in the world.
Lee Minjae bent at a 90-degree angle and shouted in a booming voice.
“Professor! Good afternoon!”
“Yes, yes. Minjae, you’re here? Did your oral presentation go well?”
Professor Cheon accepted his greeting as if nothing were unusual.
“Yes, ma’am! Thanks to your guidance, Professor! It went very successfully!”
“Good. You worked hard.”
Where had that lunatic gone, the one who’d just been talking about beheading people? How could someone so perfectly well-adjusted be standing there now.
…So that’s how you handle people.
That miraculous about-face.
That perfect mask-wearing skill.
I marveled at Lee Minjae’s incredible social skills and quietly waited for the conversation to end.
Professor Cheon gave a few compliments about Lee Minjae’s oral presentation, then turned her gaze back to us.
“Right! That’s the part we need to talk about! I heard Hyeonjae made a real scene back at the oral presentation hall earlier?”
Lee Minjae eagerly started spreading the rumor.
Professor Cheon’s eyebrows rose slightly.
“Hyeonjae? Hyeonjae was doing a poster presentation, wasn’t he?”
“Exactly! He caused trouble during someone else’s presentation Q&A session!”
Lee Minjae shouted, unable to hide his excitement.
Professor Cheon’s gaze swept back and forth between Kim Jihoon and me.
“What happened? Jihoon, you tell me.”
All the spotlight turned to the silent Kim Jihoon.
“Uh… um… well… Professor… it’s a bit long to explain….”
“It’s fine if it’s long. Go ahead.”
Kim Jihoon shot me a quick glance, then began recounting the full story of the disaster that had unfolded in the seminar room earlier.
“…So Hyeonjae raised his hand and, based on the fact that the apical muscle looked thick on the echocardiogram and that there was giant T-wave inversion on the ECG, he challenged the presenter’s diagnosis. He said it was more likely apical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy rather than Takotsubo….”
The longer the explanation went on, the more Professor Cheon’s brow slowly furrowed.
“So you mean you verbally clobbered an Aseong Hospital resident in front of dozens of professors?”
‘No, why is everyone at this hospital so crude with their words? “Beat him up,” seriously…’
I clicked my tongue inwardly, but I couldn’t deny that Professor Cheon’s phrasing was more accurate than any explanation.
“So.”
Professor Cheon looked at me.
“Well? What happened? Did that presenter step down in tears?”
“Ah, no… his advisor came up, apologized, said they’d contact the patient again, and that was the end of it.”
“Hmm. Then what happened after that?”
“Pardon?”
“You humiliated him that publicly, so there’s no way there was no fallout afterward. Didn’t anyone come over and say something?”
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I tell her this?
If I said it, would I just come off as a smug, obnoxious show-off?
“Uh… well… they just said the question was impressive, and I got a little praise from Director Kim Hyeokjae at Oseong Seoul Hospital and Professor Park Juseong at Seoul Catholic Sacred Heart Hospital….”
When I answered in a tiny voice, Professor Cheon shrugged as if she didn’t think much of it.
“Hmm, you didn’t need to tell me that. The people in Seoul like to lay claim to promising young folks.”
I took a crumpled business card out of my pocket.
“Well, Professor. It wasn’t just praise…”
I held Director Kim Hyeokjae’s business card out to her.
“The director at Oseong Seoul Hospital gave me his card and told me to contact him sometime later.”
At that moment, all the air around me seemed to stop.
Kim Jihoon’s mouth fell open like a goldfish’s.
Lee Minjae’s once-triumphant expression froze in place.
And for the first time, a faint crack appeared in Professor Cheon Eunjeong’s always composed smile.
“Whaaat…!!”
Professor Cheon almost snatched the business card from my hand.
After a moment, the wariness melted away from Professor Cheon’s face as she examined the card over and over.
Professor Cheon lightly put the Oseong Seoul Hospital director’s business card back into my hand.
Then she asked in a very soft, gentle voice.
“Hyeonjae.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Still, you’ll finish your residency training here at our hospital in Busan, right?”
Behind Professor Cheon’s smiling face, I could almost see a cold aura that said, ‘You won’t take a single step outside my turf without my permission, you punk.’
I answered almost reflexively.
“...Yes. Of course.”
“Good.”
Professor Cheon smiled with satisfaction.
“As long as you finish your residency training properly, nobody’s going to say anything if you do your fellowship in Seoul after that. There are plenty of paths.”
Professor Cheon gave Lee Minjae a sideways glance.
“Our chief resident Lee Minjae here has already been snooping around for a fellowship spot at Aseong Hospital, hasn’t he?”
“Gasp!”
A wheezing sound burst from Lee Minjae’s mouth.
His face turned bright red.
“P-professor! How did you know that!”
“You were openly looking at job postings on your phone every break. If I didn’t know that, I’d be blind.”
Professor Cheon clicked her tongue and smacked Lee Minjae on the back.
“Aaaagh! Professor! Please spare me! I was just… just looking, that’s all! Preparing for the future…!”
“Quiet. Go buy dinner for the kids.”
‘...Anyway, is this thanks to these guys? Why does this hellhole of a hospital suddenly seem a little more human?’
I snorted out a laugh.
***
And just like that, the storm-like conference was over before I knew it.
Those two days were truly dreamlike.
I was bombarded with questions in front of my poster, and I’d even gotten acquainted with a few professors and received their business cards.
At night, I was treated to expensive beef, and on the bus ride back to Busan, I slept like I was unconscious.
A dream. Yes, it had been a dream.
And now I was awake from that dream.
“Waaaaaah!!!!”
Right next to my ear, a scream so ear-splitting it was hard to believe it came from a four-year-old’s lungs burst out.
“Shhh! Seunghoon, be good! Okay, the doctor’s just going to look at your ear once! Look! What’s this? An airplane is flying byyyyy~ Vrooooom~”
I waved the otoscope in my hand like an airplane and put on a desperate performance.
But the child didn’t fall for my childish trick.
He pushed my hand away and cried even more violently.
“Nooooo!! Go awayyyy!!! Moommmmmm!!!”
Here I was, right in the middle of the pediatric ER, the toughest one of all the emergency room units.
And I was stuck right in the middle of it.
So what if I got called a genius first-year at the conference?
In reality, I was just a nobody doctor floundering because I couldn’t even properly look into the ear canal of a four-year-old suspected of having otitis media.
“Dr. Han!”
Just as I was locked in a desperate battle with the child and bathing in sweat, a nurse called me in a voice I couldn’t tell was that of a savior or the grim reaper.
“Another little patient came in. The fever’s at 40°C right now, and the kid is all limp….”
I handed the wailing child over to the nurse for a moment and staggered to my feet.
Ah.
The dream was over.