Emergency Quest (3)

At this rate, in seven minutes I would watch 1,000 LP and a Hidden Trait vanish right in front of my eyes.

I couldn't let that happen.

Time to grasp at straws.

In the end, I reached for my last resort.

I have never, in my life, been able to resist a hive mind.

I called the Dead Medical Scholars Gallery into the empty air once more.

The instant I hit submit, comment notifications started exploding across my vision.

Same as always.

These ghost bastards had zero interest in my actual question. They were obsessed with me, and only me.

And then that IP showed up again.

Huh...?

Fish...?

Out of nowhere...?

I narrowed my eyes.

Southeast Asia? Fish? What on earth did either of those have to do with gastroenteritis and a temperature sensory abnormality?

I ransacked every scrap of medical knowledge in my head and still couldn't find the connection. DescendantOfHippocrates suggesting a stroke actually sounded more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠plausible.

I was suspicious of the Gallery. No — of that Anonymous (118.235).

But I was out of options. Four minutes left. Nothing to lose.

I headed back to Bed B-17.

The patient, paler than before, was groaning softly. He cracked his eyes open with effort when he saw me.

"Doc, what is it this time...?"

"Sir, I need to ask you a few more questions. They're important."

"Have you traveled anywhere in Southeast Asia recently?"

The patient shook his head.

"Southeast Asia? The farthest I've ever been is Jeju Island. What's this about Southeast Asia?"

First lead, dead end.

"Then what about yesterday or today — did you eat sashimi, or any unusual fish dish? Something you don't normally have?"

At that, a faint light kindled in the patient's eyes.

"Ah. The fish!"

"Yesterday at lunch, our company president came back from the Philippines and made a fish stew. What was it called... lapu... lapu-something. I ate that, and three or four hours later my stomach turned inside out and all of this started."

Philippine fish. Lapu-lapu.

I shouted, "Understood — just wait a moment!" and sprinted back to the station like a man possessed. Then I slammed a second post onto the Gallery.

Less than a second after the post went up, the Gallery detonated.

Have these lunatic ghosts lost their collective minds?

And then, threading through all that mockery, the answer I had actually wanted finally appeared.

Ciguatera. Ciguatoxin.

Right. That was a thing.

The rare toxin I had underlined once in a textbook and promptly forgotten, certain I would never see it in Korea as long as I lived.

Once again, I had found the answer thanks to these deranged ghost bastards. Getting treated like a quack idiot in the process was just the price of admission.

I was out of time.

"Soo-min!"

I shouted toward my senior, who was sitting at the station.

"Bed B-17 — it's Ciguatera Fish Poisoning!"

Every sound at the nursing station died at once. The rustle of charts, the phone, the idle chatter — all of it cut out.

Soo-min's eyes were full of a very reasonable question: What the hell is this kid talking about now?

"Hyeon-jae, hang on. Ciguatera? The tropical fish toxin?"

A perfectly normal reaction.

Ciguatera. A disease that, at best, turned up as the occasional case report from the deep south of the south — places like Jeju Island. A textbook illness a clinician in Korea might encounter once in an entire career, if they were unlucky. And a first-year resident had just diagnosed it in a gastroenteritis patient?

I wouldn't have believed me either.

I went on, breathing hard.

"The patient ate a stew yesterday made from lapu-lapu that an acquaintance caught in the Philippines and brought back. GI symptoms started a few hours later, and now he's showing cold-hot sensory reversal."

The moment I finished, Soo-min's eyes flashed open.

"...Ah, wait! That's it!"

With that short burst of recognition, she turned without a second's hesitation and put her hands on the keyboard.

Clackclackclackclackclack—!

She started slamming orders into the EMR at a speed that defied physics.

"Get another IV line in, mannitol 20%, calculate one gram per kilo, load over thirty minutes! Right now!"

"Keep him on continuous EKG monitoring, BP checks every hour! Watch for bradycardia or hypotension!"

"Gabapentin 300 milligrams, give it now, and if the pain isn't controlled, redose on schedule!"

"We need urine output — get a Foley in now!"

Holy shit.

I stared at the spectacle, a helpless little sound of awe slipping out of me. There was a reason third-years were third-years. The speed was just on a different level.

All I had done was throw out a single diagnosis — Ciguatera — and she was pouring out orders like a storm, without even pausing to think. So this was what years on the job looked like?

I would have had to look it up, ask a senior, and groan over every one of those orders for minutes on end. She finished the entire process in a few dozen seconds.

I felt genuine respect for her. The savior of my life. Or rather, of my LP.

In the last breath before the quest timer ran out, Choi Soo-min stabbed the Enter key and locked in the final order.

Whew. I did it.

I let out a long breath of relief. I hadn't done anything except name the diagnosis, but a win was a win.

1,000 LP and a Hidden Trait.

What even was a Hidden Trait? The anticipation was delicious. Heh heh heh.

And then—

A low, cold chime rang out, and a new system window bloomed across my vision.

"..."

My brain stopped.

What?

LP earned, reduced by 50%?

One thousand points had become five hundred in a blink. And after Hidden Trait Unlock, that godforsaken little parenthesis: (LOCKED).

I was the one who asked the Gallery. I was the one who figured it out. I was the one who reported it!

The reward gets cut in half because my senior entered the orders? How was that even remotely fair?

Something inside me snapped with an audible twang.

Exhaustion, tension, and a boiling sense of injustice tangled together and short-circuited my brain, and before I knew it the voice in my head came out of my mouth with the filter ripped clean off.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me!"

Too loud to be a mutter. Too quiet to be a shout.

The rapid-fire clatter of Soo-min's keyboard stopped.

The air in the emergency room froze solid.

Choi Soo-min peeled her gaze off the EMR screen and turned it, slowly, onto me. An unreadable expression. A face overtaken by shock and confusion.

She opened her mouth and asked, very quietly:

"...Hyeon-jae. What did you just say?"

...Huh?

Did I just say that out loud?

For real? I actually said it? A full-on curse?

In front of my senior?

Have I lost my mind?

Yes. Yes I had.

Emergency Medicine first-year Han Hyeon-jae. A complete nobody, the lowest rung on the ladder, had just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠become the lunatic who dropped a full-throated curse at a third-year's orders — the third-year they called the Angel of the ER — right to her face.