Chapter 25
Chapter 25
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: TIME IS BRAIN (1)
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“Oh right, Hyun-jae.”
“Huh?”
I turned around at the voice calling my name, and there stood Fellow Park Se-young.
I was on my way out to head home, so why was she calling me?
Was it because I’d done something weird and she was about to chew me out?
No, looking closer, I could see she was holding out a wad of papers toward me.
Was it my transfer notice? Were they shipping me off to some branch hospital?
Or maybe a disciplinary notice? For wasting too much time?
But my wild imaginings ended there.
“Here—this is from the family of that myocardial infarction patient who came in for a sore throat before.”
On closer inspection, it looked like something that had been posted on the hospital’s “Let’s Give Praise” bulletin board or something similar.
It was a long thank-you note left by the patient’s family.
“…He was treated safely and is now stable after being admitted…”
“…Thank you for not dismissing it as just a cold, for paying attention, and for saving his life.”
As I read through it line by line, I felt a warm swell rising in my chest.
A thank-you note. A life restored.
…
Studying hard was never a bad idea.
Let’s do this, Hyun-jae.
I flashed a bright smile as I got ready to clock out.
***
The moment I stepped out of the hospital after my shift ended, all the tension drained from my body, leaving my legs shaky.
I let out a sigh and trudged toward the bus stop. The thank-you note had lifted my spirits a bit, but it hadn’t touched the exhaustion.
At least one thing went right—the bus pulled up right away.
Oh yeah.
I squeezed into a musty corner seat on the bus, and only then did a brief sense of freedom wash over me.
The world outside the window flowed by in perfect peace.
I opened the blue window in my head—my one outlet for communication and venting.
Wrapping up a shift was always best with these crazy ghost bastards.
I decided to toss out a new question.
Nothing major like a big test or anything.
I was just… curious. What other bizarre experiences had these dead experts gone through in their lives, stuff like mine?
**Title: So, any other experiences like that?**
**Author: HellJoseonSlave1**
Besides the one where I thought it was heart disease but it was just muscle pain, what else have you gotten tricked by? Spill your biggest fishing stories from your doctor life. I can’t be the only idiot.
My post was a self-deprecating mess, basically begging for some shared misery.
But to the ghosts, it seemed more interesting than any medical debate.
The moment it went up, the gallery turned into a story party.
Among them, one particularly eye-catching, systematically organized info post got concepted.
**Title: [Info] Mimics That’ll Fuck You Up in the ER: Total Summary.txt**
**Author: LatteIsJustWords**
I clicked it like I was hypnotized.
1. Aortic dissection
- Mimics: Myocardial infarction, herniated disc, abdominal pain, stroke, even syncope.
- Features: Classic is tearing pain, but tons of cases come in just saying “it hurts a bit.” Arm blood pressure difference is key, but over half have none. Parentless disease in one word.
Under it, a flood of tearful ghost stories started piling up in the comments.
**God’s Scalpel:** Aortic dissection is the worst. Back in my resident days, this old guy came in just saying his back hurt. Orthopedics gave him painkillers for a disc and sent him home—next morning, DOA. Autopsy showed ruptured abdominal aortic dissection. Ortho lounge flipped that day.
> **ORGhost3:** We had a 20-something guy wheeled in for syncope, thought it was just vasovagal. CT showed the ascending aorta torn from top to bottom. Rushed him straight to the OR from there…
I felt a chill run down my spine as I read their comments.
Bench presses were child’s play.
Real disasters come wearing everyday faces.
I scrolled down.
2. PE (Pulmonary embolism)
- Mimics: Simple dyspnea, panic attack, pleuritis, myocardial infarction.
- Features: Comes in short of breath, but sats are fine most of the time. EKG normal too. D-dimer’s super ambiguous. Unexplained tachycardia? Suspect it every time.
> **Anon (118.235):** Don’t miss PE. Guy comes in a little short of breath, sats good, brush it off—he gets up to go to the bathroom and arrests on the way. Tons of cases. Unexplained tachy—suspect always.
I burned those stories into the deepest recesses of my brain.
Finally, I posted something new in the gallery.
**Title: What other weird cases are making the rounds here right now?**
**Author: HellJoseonSlave1**
At my question, the ghosts unleashed a barrage of wild tales like they’d been waiting.
**Anon (Semianon):** Just some guy who came in headachy after drinking. CT? Ruptured aneurysm. Nearly fucked.
**TakeCareOfYourMentalHealth:** Thought it was real psychosis, turns out brain tumor. Thought brain tumor, actually psychosis. Life’s a gacha. Pure RNG. Just image everything.
**Anon (39.7):** Guy hit by a truck walks in fine. Could drop from internal bleeding. Press the belly. He’ll scream and collapse.
Got it. Gotta etch that in.
That’s when it hit.
A cold, sharp stare from the seat next to me.
I turned, and the young woman sitting there was eyeing me with full-on wariness.
She flinched when our eyes met and scooted away from me bit by bit.
‘What the hell? Why’s she like that?’
I cleared my throat and straightened up.
That’s when I accidentally glimpsed her phone screen. She was messaging a friend.
And I saw it.
The yellow speech bubble she’d just typed.
[Guy next to me is weird;; staring into space, laughing and muttering to himself. Fresh out of university hospital psych ward I bet]
…
My brain froze.
I slowly turned to look out the window again. My reflection in the glass looked exactly like Patient A who’d just escaped the psych ward.
Grinning at thin air like a maniac.
Perfect.
..That’s not it..
I could only repeat the world’s most pathetic, heartbroken excuse in my mind, where she couldn’t hear.
The woman bolted at the next stop.
All that lingered in her empty seat was my bitter self-loathing, wondering if I really was crazy.
Yeah, anyone would think I was nuts.
Cackling at nothing, muttering with a serious face.
I could picture her telling her friends the “crazy guy on the bus” story.
***
The bus had been going for about ten minutes.
I was trying to shake off the gallery thoughts, staring blankly at the street.
That’s when it happened.
My head was turned right, so I could kind of see the back. The old lady by the window behind me, who’d been dozing off, suddenly lolled her head to the side with a jerk.
The motion was so unnatural that my eyes snapped there involuntarily.
One corner of her mouth drooped, her slack jaw spilling drool.
At first, I thought she was just deeply asleep from exhaustion.
Soon, the woman next to her shook her shoulder lightly with a worried voice.
“Excuse me, are you okay? You must be really tired.”
The old lady’s eyes fluttered open faintly then.
But her response pierced through all the bus noise like a dagger to my ear.
“Uh… F-f-fine…”
Slurred, weird pronunciation.
Words smeared out like her tongue was numb.
I started feeling uneasy.
Facial droop.
Dysarthria.
Stroke? flashed through my mind.
Two of the classic four stroke symptoms unfolding live in front of me.
But I couldn’t move rashly.
No, what if I was wrong?
Memories from hours ago grabbed my ankle. Bench press x mala xiang guo collab. My freakout and the massive reality crash.
What if she was just super tired, or her dentures were loose and that’s why her speech was off?
If I jumped up again yelling “I’m a doctor! This is a stroke!” and it turned out to be nothing?
Everyone on the bus would treat me like that woman did—like a psycho.
I turned away, pretending to look out the window.
Behind me, the lady couldn’t hide her worry and kept asking.
“Are you really okay? Your color’s awful. Anything hurt?”
“Uh… Head… Squeezing…”
The old lady’s reply was still slurred. The drooping mouth corner didn’t budge.
Wait, hold on.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
The ghosts’ voices, their nagging echoes, swept through my brain.
‘Patients don’t come straight from the textbook. Always assume the worst.’
‘That little symptom you ignored? It decides the patient’s whole life.’
In brain disease, time is gold—or more.
Stroke: every minute, brain cells die forever.
Even now, as I hesitated, some vessel in that old lady’s brain might be clogging or bursting, causing irreversible damage.
Embarrassment vs. one person’s life.
The scale had already tipped.
So in the end, I turned around.
I stood from my seat and headed to the back. The lady eyed me warily. I pulled my wallet from my pocket and flashed my staff ID.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m an emergency medicine doctor…”
My voice didn’t shake.
I looked straight into the old lady’s eyes.
“Could you do exactly as I say, just once?”