Chapter 91
I had seen only a sliver of hope to escape this hellish situation.
So this professor had accepted my reasonable argument.
Right, we had to avoid friction with surgery.
I thought Professor Cheon had finally decided not to send me to the conference.
No, if you thought about it rationally, would they really make a resident give a presentation on such a crazy topic? Especially in a situation they themselves found awkward?
If I were the professor, I'd be too worried to ever send me out.
Exactly.
If I were the professor, I wouldn't send me either.
There was no reason to needlessly increase friction with another department, or to destroy a fellow resident's social life in the same department.
But why wasn't this conversation ending?
What is this.
Why wasn't Professor Cheon saying they'd end this horrible interview?
Weren't we done talking now?
I was starting to want to go home—no, back to the station.
Then Professor Cheon Eunjeong tapped the tablet PC as if mocking my relief and said,
“Anyway, let's submit it as an oral presentation!”
“...What?”
That stupid one-octave-higher voice came out of my mouth again.
Just now.
What had I just heard?
Laparotomy?
Oral presentation?
‘What the hell, hadn't I just succeeded in persuading her?’
My brain couldn't keep up with the situation.
I was sure I'd won the defense with the perfect, peak-hospital-ecosystem argument that "the surgery doctors would hate it."
Hadn't Professor Cheon herself even agreed it was a reasonable analysis?
I'm sure that's what I heard, so had my ears rotted or something?
Should I book an ENT outpatient appointment?
She had clearly agreed, so why had the conclusion gone back to square one—no, to an even worse hell?
‘I thought I wasn't going to be sent to the conference.... Was this build-up just so she could say, "Yep, laparotomy is impossible. Then let's do REBOA!"? Or TTP? Please let that be better. No, just a poster...’
I barely moved my trembling lips and scraped together the last excuse I had left.
Right, second-years are busy.
They're the backbone of the hospital.
What happens if the hospital loses its backbone?
Obviously, the hospital would collapse!
Then the hospital would have to walk around with a cane... no, let's stop the weird daydreams here.
The ER won't run without me.
Right, let's go with that logic.
“Haha, Professor.”
I laughed first.
Damn, the laugh came out awkwardly.
“I also submitted a poster to a conference last year when I was a first-year, and if I end up being away from the hospital for such a short period two years in a row, my reputation...”
‘The problem isn't my reputation; without me, the ER will be paralyzed!’
I wanted to shout that, but when I pictured first-year Baek Eunseo and Park Seongjeong briskly running around behind me, and Lee Minjae, now a fellow, wandering around the department unable to contain his excess energy, I couldn't bring myself to say it.
In the end, the only thing I could lean on was the utterly useless word "reputation."
“Heh. It's fine.”
Professor Cheon smiled kindly.
“Huh?”
“I said it's fine.”
Professor Cheon's voice sounded warm.
Professor Cheon's voice had a really warm timbre.
But to me, it sounded colder than a blizzard in the middle of Siberia.
‘What's fine about it? Is it fine that my dignity is getting crushed, or fine because the ER can run just fine without me? It's the latter, isn't it.’
I answered in a voice drained of its soul.
“Uh... yes...”
“I said it's fine.”
Professor Cheon repeated, as if delivering the final blow.
“Well...”
“It's fine.”
“Yes.”
And so I decided to sacrifice my second-year spring to the conference as well.
I'm already uneasy.
Would I end up surrendering my third and fourth years to conferences like this too?
“Good. You understood well.”
Professor Cheon, very satisfied with my quick surrender, went back to manipulating the tablet.
“First, let's apply for IRB exemption. I'll handle that.”
“Yes, Professor.”
I answered mechanically.
Ah, that devilish administrative speed.
She did the same with that sore throat case last fall, too.
I was reminded once again that the professor's scariest power wasn't knowledge, but the authority to get IRB approval through with a few clicks.
“As for you, um...”
Professor Cheon looked me over.
“Look up a case report or some related reference material. But you'll probably need to check the trauma journals.”
“…Yes.”
Trauma journals.
In other words, she was telling me to go to an emergency medicine conference and give a presentation that trespassed into surgery's territory.
If not for the fact that I had apparently incurred a debt to trauma surgery Professor Jeon Taejeong over the REBOA case last time, I would probably have knelt right there.
‘Professor, if the surgeons put me on their blacklist, I won't survive in this hospital.’
But Professor Cheon seemed to think they'd already heard the perfect answer from me, and lightly waved a hand.
“Fine, then get ready. Bring me a draft by tomorrow lunchtime... no, since this time it's an oral presentation, that's a bit tight. Bring me at least an outline by the day after tomorrow.”
‘...Fuck.’
I don't know.
Really.
Is this really okay?
I started to speak in a fit of pointless impatience.
“…But then, before I go back to work—no, before I go to work to get my brain circulating before I write the abstract, this is really my last question. Did Professor Kang Hyunjoon really say it was okay? Because when I saw him then, he looked almost like he was looking at a murderer...”
“Hey! I said it's fine.”
Professor Cheon cut me off.
It was the first expression I'd seen from Professor Cheon today, and it was extremely firm.
“Professor Kang's always been a bit tsundere anyway. Later, he told me he acknowledged that first-year's guts. Said it was thanks to you the patient survived. Good enough? If the god of our hospital's trauma team says it's fine, what's the problem?”
‘The trauma god is a god, sure... but that ghost bastard that got into my body was a surgery god too... maybe gods just understand each other.’
I could no longer find any grounds to argue back.
Professor Cheon, seeing my resignation, smiled with satisfaction and said,
“The day after tomorrow... that's too much. Right, you've become a second-year now too. And it's an oral presentation, after all. I can't treat it the same as a poster session.”
Oh.
Was a ray of light finally shining on my presentation life at last?
“I'll give you five days, so get the abstract ready.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Going from two days to five was a huge relief.
I was grateful enough.
I nodded happily.
In the end, whether it was five days or two, I still wouldn't be doing it myself, but squeezing it out of the underworld slaves; still, at least I felt relieved I wouldn't have to pull as many all-nighters.
“And.”
Ah, again.
Why was that conjunction, "and," so frequent today?
“Professor Kang says the patient's next follow-up visit is... let's see. This Friday. He's asking whether you have time then.”
“…Ah, I have day shift that day.”
I answered reflexively.
Friday day shift.
Start at 7:30, off at 7.
Just thinking about it was horrifying.
“Oh, I'll add another junior resident into the schedule that day,”
Professor Cheon entered it into the roster with a tap-tap.
“Go up to the trauma surgery outpatient clinic for a bit and come back.”
“Huh?”
My brain stopped again.
Trauma surgery?
Outpatient clinic?
Exam room?
Me?
Me, an emergency medicine second-year resident?
“Well, there's the research consent and whatever else... stuff like that.”
Professor Cheon trailed off as if it were a hassle.
“He said he wanted to show you how that patient is doing. You saved the patient, after all.”
“…Yes?”
I'd never heard of a case like this before.
I could hear the sound of every bit of common sense I'd learned since my first-year emergency medicine days—no, since my days as a med student up to today as a second-year—shattering in my head.
As you know, emergency medicine is the first-line care for acute diseases, while family medicine is the first-line care for chronic diseases.
So even at our hospital, a tertiary hospital where referral letters are normally required, those two departments are places you can be seen without one.
But among them, emergency medicine is really just a place you pass through briefly, so something like this simply doesn't happen.
We don't see what comes next for the patient.
Save them, let them die, or hand them off to another department.
Our role ends there.
What kind of life the patient lives after discharge, whether the surgery went well, whether rehabilitation is going well....
To be clear, that's not our area.
We don't need to know, and we certainly don't go out of our way to learn every patient's prognosis.
In the first place, emergency medicine doesn't run outpatient clinics.
As far as I know, that's how it is.
But go to the trauma surgery outpatient clinic?
To see the patient I saved?
“Um... is it really okay for me to go there? An emergency medicine resident in a surgery outpatient exam room... and to see a patient, of all things...”
“Well, what's there not to be okay about?”
Professor Cheon brushed aside my unease with ease.
“Actually, Professor Kang Hyunjoon suggested it first. He personally called and said, 'That first-year... no, is he a second-year now? Please send him up on Friday,' and asked if you were the one who saved the patient.”
‘...It was the God of the Scalpel who saved him, though.’
I couldn't bring myself to say that truth and just nodded with a bitter smile.
“Ah... yes. Understood.”
“Mm, good. Anyway, if Professor Kang contacts you, go up then. Now really, go on. You need to work.”
“Yes, understood, Professor!”
As I left the professor's office, I replayed this absurd situation in my head.
Spring Conference oral presentation confirmed.
Topic: ER laparotomy.
And on top of that, observing the trauma surgery outpatient clinic.
‘...What a load of crap.’
Second-year.
From the very start, things were getting spectacularly tangled.