Chapter 15
Now that I think about it, there was one.
Back when I awakened as a ‘Hunter Trauma Surgeon’ through the status window.
A small number beside the name of the Skill Window.
[Lv.1.]
I didn't pay much attention to it then.
The scalpel went in, the chest tube was placed, and I had no trouble grasping tissue with forceps or stitching it closed.
I had somehow managed to operate even on a B-rank Hunter's body.
So naturally, I thought,
'Ah, so this is enough.'
But I was wrong.
A level wasn't just for show.
[Tutorial: Skill Level Up]
[Job equipment can be enhanced by consuming skill points.]
[Points required to enhance Lv.1 → Lv.2: 2P]
[Points required to enhance Lv.2 → Lv.3: 5P]
[Current skill points: 5P]
“⋯Haa.”
I let out a hollow laugh.
Five points.
At a glance, it looked like a lot.
But apparently, it wasn't.
It took two points to raise a Lv.1 piece of equipment to Lv.2.
Even if I spent all my points, I could raise only two pieces of equipment.
The problem was that Guild Master Han Yu-ra wasn't the kind of patient who could be treated that way.
I had to open up the enhanced tissue of an S-rank Hunter. Drain the abscess pooled around the spine. Debride the dead tissue. Relieve the pressure on the pinched nerves.
At minimum, I needed a scalpel, a suction device, and forceps.
All three had to be raised to Lv.2.
But.
“I'm⋯ short one point?”
Just one point.
But in an operating room, “just” didn't apply.
If the scalpel wasn't up to the task, I couldn't reach the affected area. If the suction device wasn't up to the task, I couldn't drain the pus.
If the forceps weren't up to the task, I couldn't safely hold the tissue around the nerves.
If even one was missing, it wasn't surgery but 'gambling.'
And I wasn't a surgeon who opened people's abdomens based on a gamble.
The conclusion was simple.
I couldn't treat the patient in my current state.
“⋯I'm sorry.”
I kept my mouth shut for a long time before finally saying,
“I don't think this is within my abilities.”
Only after saying it did I realize.
It had been a long time.
No, perhaps it was the first time.
It was the first time I'd said with my own mouth that I couldn't treat this patient with my skills.
Even if I brought in all my experience from my previous life.
Even after passing through countless operating rooms and living amid the smells of blood and disinfectant, I had finally backed away from a patient for the first time.
But what came back wasn't resentment.
“⋯No.”
Ms. Han So-ra lowered her head instead.
“I'm the one who came here out of nowhere, so thank you for examining me, at least this much, Jihoo.”
She was smiling.
Even though the corners of her lips were trembling.
Even though the corners of her eyes were shaking as if they might collapse at any moment.
She thanked me with a smile to the very end.
That was even more horrifying.
It might have been better if she'd gotten angry.
If she'd shouted that I should at least try, that I could save her, and that it made no sense to come all the way here only to say I couldn't do it now⋯
I might have been able to use that rudeness as an excuse to close myself off.
But Ms. Han So-ra didn't.
Her unauthorized entry.
Her investigation into my background.
Even forcing me to come all the way here.
As though all of it were her fault, she carefully sent me away.
Three days passed like that.
The last day of the special observer program at Daehan Central University Hospital.
If I could just get through today without incident, I could advance to my second year starting next semester.
I could keep attending medical school.
Graduate step by step.
Get my license.
Someday, I might open a small clinic in a quiet rural town, check the blood pressure of the elderly, prescribe cold medicine, and live like that.
I wouldn't die of overwork after being ground down day and night at a major trauma center like in my previous life.
I wouldn't have to reopen the abdomen of a Hunter who had returned from a dungeon half-dead.
I wouldn't have to grit my teeth in helplessness with an S-rank Hunter's rotting spine before me.
Such a normal, safe life for the rest of my days.
Just imagining it was peaceful.
Under normal circumstances, that was the sort of thing I would have dreamed of.
“Ms. Na Ha-young, do you have a moment?”
“Huh, what?! Jihoo came to me first⋯?”
Daehan Central University Hospital's Hunter Trauma Center.
It was inside Ms. Na Ha-young's office.
“I wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“A-a favor?! From me?! Tell me anything! An operating room? A research lab? A formal position at the Hunter Trauma Center? Or career counseling with marriage in mind?!”
“Could I take a look at some Hunter-related surgical records?”
“⋯Huh?”
Ms. Na Ha-young's expression froze.
I looked straight at her and said,
“Surgical records on high-ranking Hunters. Dungeon-related contamination. Chronic abscesses. Surgeries around the spine. If possible, cases involving nerve compression or osteomyelitis, too.”
The smile slowly faded from the face that had been playfully excited just moments earlier.
Her gaze changed.
It was the look of a specialist in Hunter trauma surgery.
“Jihoo.”
“Yes.”
“Do you even understand what you're saying right now?”
She asked in a low voice.
“University hospital surgical records aren't just study materials. Hunter-related surgical records are even more sensitive.”
She folded her arms and looked at me.
“A high-ranking Hunter's surgical records lay that person's weaknesses bare. Where they were torn, which organs were weak, where their mana circuits were severed, how long recovery took. They even contain information on how to open that person's body.”
“⋯⋯.”
“They're medical data, but they're also military secrets. To a guild, they're no different from a force-analysis report; to a hospital, they're the surgical know-how we've built up over the years.”
She wasn't wrong.
Even ordinary patients' surgical records couldn't simply be accessed.
How much more so for Hunters?
Each Hunter, individually, was a nation's military strength, not merely a guild asset.
Especially high-ranking Hunters of B-rank and above—their bodies themselves would be close to strategic assets.
An outsider reviewing such material could amount to stealing the hospital's techniques or prying into a guild's weaknesses.
But.
A patient who could neither die nor recover, slowly rotting away inside.
After seeing that body, there was no way I could attend classes, think about graduation, or smile while dreaming of work-life balance as though nothing had happened.
Because I had been a surgeon who worked myself to the bone opening people up and saving them.
I had seen patients.
I had seen wounds.
I had seen where death began to crawl up from.
And yet I had done nothing.
That sensation had been lodged in my throat for three days.
Even when I ate, it felt like I was chewing sand, and even lying in bed, I saw the abscess pooled around Guild Master Han Yu-ra's lower back and pelvis hovering before my eyes.
If I could pretend not to see that, I would no longer be a doctor.
Those who had opened up Hunters' bodies.
Doctors who had treated dungeon-related contamination.
Records of doctors who had refused to give up on patients in the face of mana abscesses and infectious osteomyelitis.
There might be at least one tiny hint hidden among them.
Thump.
I sank to my knees right there.
“Hunter-related surgical records.”
“Huh, w-what?!”
“I absolutely⋯ absolutely have to see them.”
I bowed my head.
Pride didn't matter.
Although they looked exactly like humans, their bodies were actually entirely different.
The higher the rank, the tougher the skin and muscles became, the more complicated the mana circuits grew, and the farther surgery drifted from the common sense of general surgery.
So Hunter medicine must have developed its own path.
Cut.
Open.
Pierce.
Block.
At times, they must have used methods utterly unlike ordinary medicine to get around the problem of opening bodies that couldn't be opened.
That was the knowledge I needed.
My surgical experience from my previous life wasn't enough.
The equipment from the status window alone wasn't enough.
What I needed now was the accumulated failures and successes of this world's Hunter medicine.
Of course, even kneeling like this, there was a good chance she'd refuse.
The Hunter Trauma Center's surgical records were inaccessible not only to outsiders but even to people inside the hospital.
There was no way a first-year medical student admitted to the special observer program would have access.
But she was the only person who could help me now.
‘I refuse every time you tell me to be your assistant, then come crawling over and kneel only when I need something.’
Even I thought it was shameless.
I was prepared to be cursed out.
I was prepared to be thrown out.
But I didn't care.
As a doctor.
As a surgeon who saved people's lives.
Because pretending not to see someone dying right in front of me was something I could only do once.
So even if it meant humiliating myself, I intended to beg and plead for a glimpse of those records.
But.
“Jihoo. But⋯”
The voice that came back was unexpectedly gentle.
“I've been curious about this for a while. Why do you call me Ms. Na Ha-young?”
“Yes?”
Ms. Na Ha-young perked up her fox ears.
“Don't medical students normally call doctors Doctor?”
“⋯⋯.”
I was speechless for a moment.
No, was that really the important issue right now?
The words rose to my throat, but I couldn't bring myself to say them.
Then Ms. Na Ha-young came around behind me, lifted me up like a baby, and set me down in a chair.
“No more kneeling. Sit down first.”
“Ah, yes⋯”
“And correct the form of address first.”
“The form of address?”
“Not Ms. Na Ha-young—Dr. Na. That's what you should call me in public.”
“⋯Come to think of it, you're right.”
Come to think of it, medical students usually addressed hospital doctors that way.
Dr. Na.
Dr. Kim.
Professor Park.
Something like that.
In my previous life, I had always been the one addressed that way.
My juniors called me Doctor, the nurses called me Doctor, and even senior colleagues with more experience than I had respectfully greeted me as Doctor.
Maybe that was why.
I never thought I'd be reminded in such a trivial way that I had started over as a rookie medical student.
“I'm sorry. Come to think of it, I was being rude.”
“Good grief. Even if our age difference isn't that great, still. In private, maybe, but normally you should call me Dr. Na!”
“Yes, understood, Dr. Na Ha-young.”
“Too long. Dr. Na.”
“Yes. Dr. Na.”
At that, Dr. Na Ha-young shrugged, looking strangely satisfied.
How should I put it?
It brought to mind the juniors from my previous life who had wanted to play the senior for no reason when they first got an assistant.
But the mood didn't last long.
“So.”
Dr. Na Ha-young's voice lowered again.
“Why do you suddenly need Hunter-related records?”
It was a question that cut straight to the heart of the matter.
I was silent for a moment.
I couldn't tell her Guild Master Han Yu-ra's condition.
It was a top-secret matter concealed by the Baekho Guild.
Above all, disclosing a patient's condition to someone without the patient's permission was unthinkable for a doctor.
Even if I was still a medical student without a license, that was one boundary I couldn't cross.
So I thought for a moment.
But in the end, there was only one thing I could say.
“Because there's a patient who needs to be saved.”
“⋯!”
Dr. Na Ha-young's eyes widened ever so slightly.
I raised my head.
“I can't tell you the patient's name, affiliation, or condition. That's beyond what I'm allowed to say.”
“⋯⋯.”
“But the patient has to be saved.”
I clenched my fists tightly.
“Without fail.”
I am a doctor.
A doctor's job is to do everything possible for the patient.