Chapter 65
Time passed indifferently.
Before long, autumn ended and winter arrived.
“Ugh, it's chilly.”
Even after pulling a thick padded coat over my sweats, I was shivering in the cold air.
As usual, I was riding in the back of a call taxi on my way to the hospital.
The streets of Busan outside the window looked, well...
very much like winter, I guess.
Once the frozen feeling in my body thawed a little in the warm heater air, I instinctively summoned my only conversation partners.
[Dead Medic Gallery]
=======================
Title: It's basically winter now. It's Busan, and it's a whopping -2 degrees!
Author: HellJoseonSlave1
Damn cold, for real.
=======================
My whining post was met by the gallery ghosts, who rushed in as if they'd been waiting for it and started mocking me.
Anon (210.94): It's insanely warm though?
BackInMyDay: You're whining over -2°C? lmao, have you ever rotted away as a military doctor in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province? There, -20°C is the bare minimum when you open your eyes in winter, you greenhouse flower.
Hippocrates' Descendant: Below freezing! What a brutally harsh environment for the human body to endure! But a young man like you is brimming with vitality, so you should be able to beat the cold!
God of the Scalpel: Stop whining. If you're just going to use your numb fingertips as an excuse, quit now.
...These bastards.
Still, not bad.
Let's look at it another way.
What would I even do to survive this hellish commute if these crazy bastards weren't around?
After a long barrage of snide remarks, someone finally left a fairly serious and useful comment.
Anon (39.7): You're almost done with your first year now, right? Once the rookie interns and first-years come in, you'll be a second-year. There are a few things you should start preparing for now.
Oh, now this was interesting.
Anon (39.7): First, check right now whether you missed any mandatory training or certifications you were supposed to complete during your first year. Second, start mentally organizing the basic procedures you'll have to teach the incoming interns next year.
One by one, the other ghosts started tossing out useful tips too.
BackInMyDay: In winter, watch out for elderly falls. It's the season when hip-fracture patients are packed to the rafters. There are tons of cases of people slipping on icy roads or catching their feet in the blanket at home and falling.
Cardiology Ghost: And you know myocardial infarctions and strokes hit the hardest on winter mornings when the temperature drops, right? As your body temperature falls, blood vessels constrict sharply. If an old person comes in with chest pain, never brush it off as just indigestion.
Hmm, as expected.
These tsunderes never disappoint me.
I traded silly jokes with them as I replied.
After chuckling for a while, the taxi had arrived at the familiar entrance to the hospital's emergency medical center.
I closed the gallery window and got out of the car.
Beep-
[The entrance door has opened]
“Ah, good morning. Thanks for your hard work.”
As I walked down the hallway, I offered a perfunctory greeting to everyone I passed.
After walking like that, I finally stood in front of the door to my only refuge, the resident room.
As soon as I opened the door and stepped inside, warm heater air greeted me.
Ah, nice and toasty.
This is the life.
I sipped freshly mixed instant coffee and stared blankly at the huge whiteboard hanging on the resident room wall.
The shift schedule.
Names and symbols indicating the times, packed in tightly.
My eyes naturally followed the names of the fourth-years, the resident big shots.
Lee Min-jae, Yoo Seong-hun, and Kim Min-uk, with whom I had almost no dealings.
...Huh, what?
I frowned.
Strange.
The boxes where names should have been were conspicuously empty.
Next to the names that should normally have been in the ER somewhere day or night, chewing us out, there was only [OFF] or the mysterious word [Research].
Research?
What research do residents even do?
What the hell is going on?
What are they doing it for?
In winter?
Are they running some secret project or something?
I was seized by an inexplicable sense of unease.
The fact that there were fewer seniors meant that the workload and responsibility for juniors like me would increase.
Hmm...
I couldn't come up with an answer no matter how hard I thought.
=======================
Title: What the hell is this? Our department's fourth-years suddenly disappeared from the schedule.
Author: HellJoseonSlave1
Anon, that says it all.
=======================
My question was met by the gallery, which mocked me as if it had been waiting for this.
BackInMyDay: Are you an idiot?
Anon (210.94): This bastard's really brain-dead, lmao.
Resident Training Ghost: Is your brain just for decoration? It's winter, remember.
BackInMyDay: What do you think fourth-years do in winter? They prepare for the board exam, you dummy! Those people have the final exam right around the corner; where would they find time to roll around in the ER with a rookie like you?
Ah!
Right!
That's right.
Exactly.
The board exam was right around the corner, wasn't it?
The final hurdle that would bring that detestable resident life to a close was just ahead.
While I was marveling and realizing how stupid I was, it happened.
Creak.
The resident room door opened, and Lee Min-jae walked in with a ghostly face.
“You're here, doctor?”
“Yep, I'm here~.”
Lee Min-jae answered weakly and flopped down beside me.
“You're almost a second-year now too. Hang in there for three more months and you'll be able to shed that cursed rookie title.”
“Ah, yes. That's right. Haha...”
I laughed awkwardly.
“So, uh, have you been treating the interns nicely lately?”
“Huh?”
“Been treating them nicely? It's almost time to assign interns to departments. Depending on what you do, the number of juniors who come into our department next year will be decided. You need to show them that emergency medicine is a warm, capable, cool specialty so they'll think, 'Emergency medicine is fucking awesome! I want to be like that senior too!' and apply. Right?”
At those words, a vivid scene from the past flashed through my mind.
“Doctor, it looks like you only took the history and didn't do anything else...”
Me, tossing the rectal foreign-body patient straight to the naive intern Park Seong-jeong.
“...”
Lee Min-jae seemed to take my silence as agreement.
“Yeah, I knew you'd be good at it. The future of our department is on your shoulders.”
He patted my shoulder a couple of times like that and buried his head back in the textbook.
“I'm treating them in a very educational... way.”
Yeah. Very educational.
I had shown them, body and soul, the very essence of this godawful hospital ecosystem where interns' dignity is ground to dust for the seniors' comfort.
Hmm, yeah.
I did well.
I don't know.
Right now I could barely keep myself alive; how was I supposed to take responsibility for the future of a department?
But those words wouldn't leave my head so easily.
'Be warm to the interns...'
Good.
Let's do it.
I roamed the ER, hunting for prey.
Right, Park Seong-jeong.
I at least had to make some token atonement.
And if, in the process of that atonement, I could subtly plant the greatness of emergency medicine in him, wouldn't that be a win-win?
As expected, I'm a genius.
I headed for the vending machine. Then I pulled out a can of the most aggressively fizzy-looking soda.
Scurry.
I walked toward Park Seong-jeong, who was sorting EKG strips in a corner of the station, with the most natural, benevolent-senior air I could muster.
"...Seong-jeong."
At my voice, Park Seong-jeong's shoulders jolted.
"Huh? Yes, doctor?"
"Here."
I handed over my first trump card, Bribe No. 1, in an effort to break down his guard.
"This is an ice-cold soda I just got from the machine. You must be tired; want some?"
"Um... yes. Thank you, doctor."
"Yeah, yeah. So, has the ER been manageable lately? Nothing too hard?"
"Yes. I think it's okay. There's still a lot to learn..."
"Compared to what? Internal medicine? Surgery? Isn't surgery, where you're always getting chewed out by the professors in the OR, better? Or orthopedics or neurology, where you just see the same patients every day? Our ER is way more dynamic and fun. What exactly is okay about it?"
At my relentless questioning, the intern's eyes shook uneasily.
"...Uh... um... everybody... is nice..."
"Exactly! They are nice! Sure, the people in our department may have terrible personalities, but they're all warm on the inside."
I tapped his shoulder and launched into the full sales pitch.
"Seong-jeong, honestly, emergency medicine is a really good specialty. In your life..."
Wait. How do I persuade him?
=======================
Title: How the hell do I rope interns into EM?
Author: HellJoseonSlave1
I'm in the middle of sweet-talking him right now, yep. EM is really a good specialty.
=======================
BackInMyDay: You scammer. You're selling snake oil to an innocent kid.
God of the Scalpel: Anyone who'd fall for a pathetic sales pitch like that doesn't have the qualifications to be a doctor in the first place.
Anon (118.235): Just be honest. We work like dogs, but it's rewarding too.
Pediatrics Ghost 77: No! You have to plant dreams and hope! Tell him that he'll master the knowledge of every specialty and become a frontline hero saving dying lives!
Amid the conflicting advice, I decided to forge my own killer move.
Yes, honesty and a little exaggeration.
I was going to find that golden ratio.
The same kind of 7-to-3 ratio as soju and beer.
"Seong-jeong, to be honest, our department is hard. But..."
I paused for a moment and looked him straight in the eye.
That was a line from the book called 'The Art of Conversation' that I'd borrowed from an e-book store earlier.
"But saving someone whose heart has stopped, intubating someone who can't breathe, and being the first to pin down the diagnosis of a mystery disease—that kind of thrill, you only know once you've experienced it. It's about completely changing a person's life with your own hands."
I delivered the clincher.
"Of course, the choice is yours. But think it over seriously. Do you want to become just a stable specialist, or become a real doctor on the front line of this hell?"
It was a pretty impressive speech, much more convincing than I'd expected.
Park Seong-jeong was staring at me with a blank expression.
"Ah, yes. I heard you, doctor. I'll... think positively about it."
...Positively?
The moment I heard that, fireworks exploded in my head.
"Yeah, yeah! You absolutely should!"
I seized Park Seong-jeong's hand and shook it like a madman.
Done! I did it!
I ran to the gallery in high spirits to announce the victory.
=======================
Title: Hey!!!!! He says he'll think positively!! Isn't that basically a done deal?? We're getting one junior next year!!!!!
Author: HellJoseonSlave1
Kyaa!!!
=======================
God of the Scalpel: Like hell he will, you idiot.