Chapter 48
Chapter 48
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Poster Presentation (1)
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I was holed up in the corner of the station, wrapping up the discharge charting for the last remaining patient.
My fingers felt heavy as they tapped on the keyboard, and my eyelids weighed a ton.
The clock read 6:55 PM.
Five minutes.
Just five more minutes, and this endless day shift would finally be over.
"Ah, I wanna go home...."
Yawn.
I stretched my jaw wide with a massive yawn.
I rolled my stiff neck and absentmindedly clicked on a popup from the hospital intranet announcements.
[Korean Society of Emergency Medicine Fall Conference Abstract Submission Guidelines]
Oh, right.
The fall conference is coming up soon.
Staring at the flashy posters and packed schedule, I muttered to myself like someone watching a fire across the river.
Not for me...
I closed the popup with a sense of relief.
Yeah, no need for me to worry about headaches like that.
My only goal was to clock out and stretch out in bed.
Right then.
"Hey, Joo-hyun. Not heading out yet?"
A familiar voice from behind—but one I wasn't thrilled to hear.
Professor Cheon Eun-jeong from Emergency Medicine staff.
I nearly jumped out of my chair but managed to compose myself and shot to my feet.
"Ah, yes? Yes, Professor! I just finished the last charting and was about to head out!"
My voice trembled slightly from the tension.
A professor right before clocking out was like a minefield.
Step wrong, and my life was over.
"Good work."
Professor Cheon gave me a brief compliment and seemed about to walk past.
Phew, dodged a bullet.
As I let out a sigh of relief and started to sit back down.
"Oh, wait, hang on. Before you go, let's have a quick chat. Five minutes tops."
Thud.
My heart plummeted to the floor.
A chat.
Five minutes.
In the world of doctors, that combo meant one thing.
Brace yourself to get grilled like a dog for at least thirty minutes.
I followed Professor Cheon to the small consultation room in the corner, feeling like a prisoner marching to the gallows.
Professor Cheon sat in a chair, and I sat ramrod straight across from her.
What did I do wrong?
Dumping that workplace foreign body case on the intern earlier?
Or drinking too much instant coffee?
"It's nothing major."
Professor Cheon turned on her tablet and showed me something.
It was the exact same conference announcement page I'd seen earlier.
"The fall conference abstract deadline is this Friday, right?"
Her voice was incredibly kind and bright.
"Ahaha... yeah. It's Wednesday today, so... only two days left."
I had no idea what to say, so I forced an awkward laugh and chimed in.
Then Professor Cheon delivered my death sentence with the most innocent smile in the world.
"Yeah. Let's just knock out one abstract."
...
...Come again?
My brain refused to process it.
"Did I hear that wrong?"
I asked, doubting my own ears.
I thought this hospital was great because it kept first-years glued to the hospital without extra crap.
"Abstract. One abstract to submit."
I was stunned.
My mind went blank.
It was Wednesday night.
Deadline was Friday midnight.
To write one abstract, I'd need to pick a case first, dig up related papers for background, organize patient data, write the intro, body, and conclusion in English, get professor approval... Physically impossible.
This was basically "don't sleep tonight or tomorrow."
"Whoa, no need to freak out like that. I'm not making you do an oral presentation. That'd be too much. Just a poster. One poster."
If oral presentation was the death penalty, poster was a prison sentence.
Sure, first-years did posters too. Everyone in residency did at least one, probably.
But two days before? No way.
Posters weren't hard.
The problem was two days notice.
Professor Cheon, ignoring my inner turmoil, excitedly started picking cases.
"You could use that TTP case we diagnosed recently. But TTP might be a bit weak... Super rare, so it'd get attention, but you didn't do much beyond the diagnosis. Oh! The abdominal stabbing! That's gold! 'Successful Case of Resuscitative Thoracotomy Performed in the ER.' Title's got impact right there."
Professor Cheon pondered for a moment, then shook her head.
"Nah, the stabbing's too good for a poster. When the patient gets discharged, we should save it for your second-year oral presentation. Too valuable for a poster. But prepping an oral two days out would be a burden, right?"
Professor Cheon sought my agreement with a devilish smile.
All I could do was nod.
"So that leaves one option. The sore throat MI case. 'Early Diagnosis of Acute Myocardial Infarction Presenting with Atypical Symptoms.' Clean and solid, yeah? Let's go with that."
And just like that, my first conference abstract topic was decided in five seconds.
Without a single gram of my input.
"Heh... hehehe...."
Only a hollow laugh escaped my lips.
Professor Cheon took it as agreement and turned off the tablet with a satisfied look.
"Alright! Get a draft to me by email before lunch tomorrow. I'll review it and tell you what to fix. You got this, right?"
I had no choice but to answer her devilish question with a soulless voice.
"...Yes, Professor."
Professor Cheon rose with a pleased smile.
She patted my shoulder encouragingly.
"Posters are just one page anyway. Nothing to sweat. First-years do it all the time. Fighting! Fighting!"
With that devilishly cheerful cheer, Professor Cheon sauntered out of the consultation room.
'No, one page... That's the final output hanging in the conference hall, you jerk....'
My inner self screamed, vomiting blood.
***
I got up from my seat like a zombie.
Shuffle, shuffle.
I trudged across the ER to the locker room.
Clock out.
Yeah, clock out first.
As I changed clothes, scenarios of the impending disaster started simulating wildly in my head.
Step one: data collection.
The most basic, but the hardest part.
Start by combing through that entire sore-throat MI patient's medical records.
I pictured myself logging into the EMR and pulling up the chart.
Vitals on arrival, my physical exam notes, subtle changes in the ECG waveforms over time, graphs of troponin levels from serial draws.
Consult notes from Cardiology, black-and-white angiogram images showing the narrowed vessels, final diagnosis, treatment course, discharge summary.
Everything from A to Z, scouring hundreds of pages to extract meaningful data worthy of presenting.
Just this would take at least three or four hours.
Step two: literature search.
Can't just dump data and say "Here's a weird patient, cool huh? Done!"
Need to explain its medical significance. How? Read papers, obviously.
I imagined myself at my tiny officetel desk, firing up PubMed.
Stuffing keywords like 'atypical MI', 'sore throat ACS', 'non-chest pain ACS' into the search bar.
Then [2,134 results found]—a number straight out of hell.
Sift through thousands of English papers to pick at least ten most relevant.
Read them all, translate, compare to my case, build evidence for my points.
English.
Just thinking about it made me nauseous.
The nightmare of original texts that tormented me through six years of med school.
Step three: writing the abstract.
After all that hell, finally time to write. And it was the most urgent—draft by lunch tomorrow. Fit the strict conference format: intro, case, discussion, conclusion. All in English.
Easier said than done.
With my English skills, condense all that into something succinct, logical, professional?
Might as well dive into the Han River—or the Nakdong—for a quicker, painless end.
I stared at my reflection in the locker room mirror.
'...Still.'
I groped for a sliver of hope.
'The final poster has to be super concise anyway... Focus on images and graphs... It'll work out somehow....'
I comforted myself.
'Yeah... Oral presentation... Better than that... If it was oral, I'd have quit on the spot....'
In the end, one conclusion remained.
'Ha, guess I gotta hit up those gallery ghost bastards for help again.'
Damn it.
Gonna have to beg those lunatics again.
A cold night breeze hit me as I left the hospital.
Head home, shower, sit at the desk, start data organizing...
Ugh, horrifying just thinking about it.
But what can you do.
When the professor says jump, you jump. That's the fate of this world.
I boarded an empty bus and stared blankly out the window at the night view.
"Ha... whatever. Let's try. Fuck it."
Screw it, what's the worst—skipping sleep won't kill me.