Misunderstanding

Clock-in time is what I hate most.

The clock said 6:55 p.m.

After getting out of the taxi, I looked up at the familiar and sickening hospital building.

[Regional Emergency Medical Center]

Yeah, nice to see you too, ER.

I'm back again.

Fuck.

You got here right on time.

Arrived five minutes early.

Perfect timing.

Just the right time—no need to come earlier and make a fuss, and no reason to get side-eyes for being late.

I straightened my tie and forced the corners of my mouth upward.

Well, I was going to change into scrubs anyway.

Workplace mode: ON.

I put on my most obedient slave smile.

Whoosh-

The automatic doors opened, and the familiar smell of disinfectant washed over me.

It was that chaotic time when the tired faces of the day shift heading home crossed paths with the hollow-eyed night shift staff just arriving.

I couldn't exactly greet them with, "It's another shitty evening…"

So I called out in the brightest, cheeriest voice I could muster.

“Good evening! Thanks for all your hard work!”

A few nurses sitting at the station glanced at me and gave slight nods.

Just then, my classmate Jo Su-yeon, who had finished handing off her patients and was packing her things, spotted me.

Her face looked dull and exhausted.

“Oh, Hyunjae. Good evening.”

Jo Su-yeon's voice had no soul in it.

“Yeah, you've worked hard. Now get out of the hospital.”

“I was just about to clock out, you bastard.”

Jo Su-yeon slung her bag over her shoulder and quickly started rattling off the handoff notes.

“The main patient I'm handing off to you is the old lady in B-zone, bed 6. She's an 82-year-old woman who has been weak and hasn't been eating since yesterday. She came from a nursing home. Her vitals are still stable, but she has a low-grade fever of 37.8 and shows some signs of dehydration, so I started her on fluids for now. I sent out routine labs and a urinalysis, but the results still aren't back, okay? When they do, check them right away, and if there's a UTI

(*urinary tract infection)

or aspiration pneumonia

(*aspiration pneumonia)

or something like that, you'll need to check for it. Nothing else unusual.”

“Okay. Got it.”

I nodded, storing Jo Su-yeon's instructions in my head.

With that, I finished the brief, dry handoff with my classmate Jo Su-yeon, and she left the ER without a trace of hesitation.

I envied that back view heading toward freedom.

I flopped into my seat.

The familiar creak of the cheap chair.

I heard the chairman even recently switch his car to a German brand.

The chair should be replaced too.

Beside me, Baek Eun-seo, who must have come in absurdly early to already be at her seat, had already powered on her computer and was looking at something intently.

What, does she punch in thirty minutes early or something?

Passion, maybe.

Too much passion and you'll burn out fast.

I decided to ignore it, sat down in front of the computer, and logged into the EMR system.

The cold glow of the screen stabbed at my eyes.

What a shitty hospital office monitor, not even capable of blocking blue light.

And so, as I flipped through charts, I started preparing to greet the new patients who would keep tormenting me all night.

I opened the chart for the old lady in B-6 and skimmed the nursing notes and previous medical records.

Dementia, hypertension, diabetes…

A typical elderly patient's history.

There was nothing much I could do until the lab results came back.

I went back to the main screen and slowly scrolled through the list of the other patients currently in the ER.

A cold, abdominal pain, a simple laceration…

Pretty peaceful so far.

Hmm.

There was still no sign of the lab results for the old lady in B-6.

Even after digging through the other patients' charts, nothing in particular stood out.

It was just when I was offering a vain prayer that nothing would happen until quitting time.

“…Um, doctor.”

A small, cautious voice came from beside me.

When I turned my head, first-year resident Baek Eun-seo was looking at me with an uneasy expression.

Hm, what is it?

A first-year is calling for me of all people.

In situations like this, there are usually two possibilities.

First, they bring over some ridiculously difficult case and try to test me with, 'Doctor, what is this?'

Second, they messed up themselves and want to drag me in as an accomplice with, 'Doctor, I'm screwed.'

Both are bad.

Fuck.

This is making me nervous.

I remembered last year, when I was the first-year.

All sorts of interns and classmates would come find me at any time of day and barrage me with questions.

'Doctor, please take a look at this EKG.'

'Doctor, this patient says his stomach hurts. Could it be appendicitis?'

'Doctor, I just gave the patient the wrong medication. What do I do?'

'Doctor, should I confess to her?'

If it seems like there's one strange sentence in there, that's your imagination.

I had to act like a living update machine and the fixer who handled the aftermath of every kind of accident.

Of course, by borrowing the gallery ghosts' brains, not my own.

Was that role coming back to me after such a long time?

I answered, deliberately looking as tired and annoyed as possible.

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Doctor. It’s nothing serious, but during last week’s day shift….”

Baek Eun-seo fidgeted with her fingers, as if she was having trouble starting.

“Um… how did you do that?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

Last week’s day shift? What did I do again?

Wasn't that the very day I did a REBOA on my first patient, then got hit with punishment-level muscle pain at the end, couldn't do a thing, and was carried out after passing out?

What did I do? I didn't do anything.

I just passed out and slept.

“That thing in the resuscitation room… the balloon resuscitation technique!”

Baek Eun-seo's eyes sparkled with reverence.

“Did you learn that somewhere? I saw it briefly when I was an intern, but it was really the first time I’d seen a resident do it….”

Oh, shit….

That.

That was the Scalpel God's doing.

Trying to stay calm, I desperately went over in my head the excuse the Scalpel God had used to brush off Lee Min-jae that day.

Where was it again? North Chungcheong? South Chungcheong?

Ah, I'm getting confused.

Whatever.

Let's just keep it vague.

“I… um….”

I cleared my throat once and spat out a lie as naturally as possible.

“There used to be a trauma-related training program at another university hospital in Chungcheong Province. I learned it then, when I took part for a bit. I tried it a few times in simulation.”

“Wow… you learned it back then?”

Why are her eyes so sparkling?

She had the pure, clear gaze of someone who'd just met a hero from a children's biography.

That look stabbed at my conscience mercilessly.

You're putting pressure on me, kid.

“Yeah. Well… I learned it then. I was lucky.”

I laughed awkwardly and brushed it off.

I wish she'd just go away now.

But the first-year's curiosity seemed to have only just begun burning.

“Then, then after that, you didn't really learn anything else separately or do any practice, right?!”

Her voice went up a little.

It was as if she were asking, 'Are you telling me you showed that kind of divine skill with just that one experience?'

“…Yeah.”

I gave a short answer.

At my brief reply, the sparkle in Baek Eun-seo's eyes only deepened.

'Shit. I think I poked the wrong thing.'

I muttered to myself.

In that innocent junior's head, I'd probably already become something like 'the legendary genius senior who succeeded at a REBOA in the ER with only one training experience.'

I'm screwed.

How am I supposed to deal with this misunderstanding later?

To escape Baek Eun-seo's sparkling gaze, I forced my eyes onto the monitor.

Please just say, 'I see,' and go back to your seat.

But Baek Eun-seo didn't seem to have any intention of doing that.

In Baek Eun-seo's head, it seemed like a huge Wikipedia entry about me was already being written.

“Doctor.”

Baek Eun-seo called me again.

Please stop calling me. I'm starting to get PTSD.

“Then did you originally prepare for surgery during your intern days and only come over here, to emergency medicine, at the end?”

That question was actually pretty reasonable.

The interest and skill in surgical procedures that I'd apparently shown were not something you'd normally expect from a regular emergency medicine resident.

Baek Eun-seo was probably imagining some tragic genius story where I had once dreamed of being a surgeon, changed direction to emergency medicine for some reason, and yet couldn't give up on surgical techniques, so I'd been honing them alone ever since.

Well, not at all.

Completely wrong.

I've been a man who's run straight for nothing but EM since my med school days.

No, to be exact, it was the path I chose for the extremely simple and immature reason that EM looked the coolest.

Surgery?

A life spent cooped up in the operating room all day, taking the professors' anger head-on?

Just thinking about it was horrifying.

I'd thought surgery was cool, but I'd never seriously considered the path of a surgeon even once.

Just look at my hands.

How am I supposed to do surgery with these?

Should I tell the truth?

'No, I just came here because I watched dramas and EM looked cool?'

Hmm, there was no need to lie this much here.

I'd already piled on a bottomless stack of lies about REBOA anyway.

Adding another lie on top of that would be way too risky.

So I stated only the facts, as plainly as possible.

“No, I barely considered any other department during internship. I wanted emergency medicine from the start. Why?”

At my answer, Baek Eun-seo's eyes became even brighter than before.

What, hadn't she already written an epic saga about me all by herself?

Why isn't she disappointed?

On Baek Eun-seo's face, admiration rose instead of disappointment.

“Wow….”

Baek Eun-seo let out a low exclamation.

“Then… then after you came to emergency medicine, you started learning surgical procedures on your own so you could treat trauma patients brought into the ER even better! And you started back when you were a resident, no less! That's amazing!”

...Hm?

Wait a second.

Did I hear that wrong?

I racked my brain for a moment to make sense of Baek Eun-seo's words.

So this was Baek Eun-seo's interpretation?

'He dreamed of emergency medicine from the very beginning. But once he got here, he realized that to save trauma patients, even an emergency medicine doctor needed surgical skills. So Senior Han Hyunjae stayed behind alone while everyone else went home and practiced suturing with a scalpel, honing laparotomy and REBOA skills in simulation. All with one conviction: to save patients!'

This was a much crazier misunderstanding than I'd intended.

Maybe I should've just said I was a surgery hopeful?

All I ever did was sew up some pig skin to get out of having clumsy hands.

She's basically rewriting a biography of a great person here.

How am I supposed to respond to this?

Should I humbly deny it with, 'No, it's not that much…'?

But my conscience hurt too much to admit, 'That's right! I'm exactly that kind of person!'

I stood at a crossroads. And, as always, I chose the easiest and most convenient path.

Um… let's just be confident. If I get awkward and back down here, she'll think it's even weirder.

I cleared my throat once and replied with a very natural, slightly arrogant smile.

“Haha, I guess you could see it that way. In emergencies, there's no dividing internal medicine and surgery. A doctor has to do everything they can.”

My perfect performance made Baek Eun-seo's eyes practically shine with admiration.

Baek Eun-seo clasped her hands together and looked at me with a very earnest gaze.

“Doctor.”

“Yeah?”

“Then I'm really sorry, but… could you help me with something?”

…

This flow.

This look.

This was an unambiguous flag.

Baek Eun-seo was definitely about to ask me to teach her something, or suggest we do it together.

Something I had absolutely no idea how to do.

I'm screwed.