Chapter 67
Chapter 67
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Wrapping Up Year One (3) - An Intern's Perspective
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A few months ago, I was still just a clueless intern, more comfortable being called a student than "Doctor."
And that day, I was peacefully handling all sorts of odd jobs in the emergency room.
Peaceful, in this case, meant the passive kind—stemming from the fact that I didn't have to bear the responsibility of deciding patients' life or death with my own hands.
That's just what interns do.
Sprinting full speed to the lab at 3 a.m. with an ABGA sample because the air stretcher was under maintenance.
Processing dozens of backed-up EKG strips at 7 a.m.
Wheeling a patient who needed a CT at 2 p.m. on a rickety stretcher to radiology, then going back an hour later to pick them up.
And endlessly answering the phone to relay messages.
That was intern life.
Of all those tasks, the absolute worst was drawing blood.
"Ow!"
The needle in my hand had missed the frail vein in the elderly woman's arm yet again.
It was already my fifth attempt.
Her skinny forearm was covered in dark bruises, like evidence of my incompetence.
"Doctor... do we really have to draw blood? My mom's in pain...."
Finally, the nurse who'd been watching this disaster approached me with a deep sigh.
"Intern, step aside for a sec."
The charge nurse retied the tourniquet.
Then, without a moment's hesitation, she found the vein I'd been unable to locate.
Dark red blood filled the syringe smoothly.
I stood there beside her, wishing I could crawl into a mouse hole.
The kind of person who stabbed patients' arms multiple times for a blood draw, needed the nurse's help in the end, and then got chewed out by the resident senior back at the station: "Do you even have hands?"
The emergency room I'd imagined as a med student was nothing like the reality I faced as an intern.
Dramas portrayed the ER as endlessly dramatic.
Heart attack patients rolling in every day, genius doctors pulling off miracles to save them.
I'd dreamed of being that hero.
But reality was different.
During my month rotating through the ER as an intern, dozens of cardiac arrest patients were wheeled into the resuscitation room.
We pounded on chests like maniacs, pumped them full of drugs, defibrillated them.
But only one walked out of the ER alive.
Most cardiac arrest patients were already dead before they arrived, or despite everything we did, they just cooled off on the resus bed.
The ER wasn't just a place to watch patients die every day, either.
Quite the opposite.
"My nose has been stuffy since yesterday—can you prescribe something for my runny nose?"
"I work nearby. Hangover headache—mind giving me a vitamin IV?"
"I looked online, and my symptoms match end-stage pancreatic cancer. Run a CT and MRI right now."
And the ER doctors weren't the heroes I'd imagined.
They seemed more like scrappers, viciously battling diseases, trauma, and sometimes patients or doctors from other departments.
They weren't emergency medicine specialists.
Just ordinary humans struggling to save the one patient in front of them—or at least pass them on alive to somewhere else.
Internship shattered a lot of my illusions.
About the job of being a doctor. About the wonder of life.
And even about myself.
At first, I'd aimed for emergency medicine.
As a student, I was obsessed with what was called a landmark medical drama.
The ER on screen was always tense, the doctors always heroes.
The protagonist never gave up on patients, even in near-impossible situations, saving lives like miracles.
I saw my path in that drama.
That's a real doctor.
Someone throwing their whole body into protecting lives on the front lines of life and death.
That's it.
That's the kind of doctor I wanted to be.
Yeah, it was probably that drama.
All my illusions stemmed from its tight script and flashy direction.
"Baek Eun-seo, are you crazy? EM's work-life balance was good back in the day—now the cons outweigh the pros."
"With your personality, you'd last less than a month in the ER before bolting. Fighting drunks every night, getting grabbed by the collar by family members, cleaning up after vomiting patients—that's not your dream."
Despite the warnings mixed with pleas from countless seniors and classmates in school, I didn't waver.
Their advice just sounded like excuses from quitters against my burning sense of mission.
I even pitied them.
They lacked the passion to throw everything away for a patient like the drama's hero.
I'd counted the days until I could join the ER.
But the reality I faced as an intern was more horrific than any hell I'd imagined, hitting me with a massive disconnect.
In dramas, when a heart-stopped patient arrived, the hero rushed in and revived them miraculously.
The first CPR I witnessed in the real ER failed.
In dramas, rookie doctors make breakthrough diagnoses and surgeries, earning praise.
The first patient I did chest compressions on died right in front of me.
Hearing the professor's emotionless voice declare time of death, I ran into the hallway, collapsed, and sobbed, overwhelmed by helplessness.
I cried for a long time.
ER doctors fought diseases and trauma.
And irrational patients, other departments refusing beds, hospital budget cuts.
Their faces were filled not with mission, but bitter cynicism.
That reality pushed me further from EM than any senior's warnings.
"Ah, this isn't it."
As my internship neared its end, I finally realized.
The hero I'd dreamed of doesn't exist in this hell.
No—doesn't exist in the world.
I gave up on emergency medicine.
But I couldn't abandon medicine altogether.
"At least go to another field that deals with lives."
Somewhere not this front-line hell, somewhere more orderly and predictable—maybe I could get closer to the doctor I'd dreamed of.
That was the last way to hold onto my naive beliefs.
Of course, the ER people weren't bad.
Especially the first-year seniors I interacted with most—they were coping in their own ways.
Han Hyun-jae and Senior Jo Soo-yeon were kind.
Han Hyun-jae taught me patiently, in between seeing his patients, how to angle for ABGA draws I'd failed dozens of times, how to feel the arterial pulse—without a hint of annoyance.
He never demoed it himself, though.
Why was that?
Senior Kim Ji-hoon... just always seemed busy.
Always maniacally typing at the station computer or glued to the phone.
And Senior Choi Min-jun... just seemed a bit dim.
He wandered the halls with a blank expression, sometimes forgetting what orders he'd just written.
Sorry, seniors.
Just my honest impression.
The first-year seniors were all good people.
But their exhausted looks were an even bigger warning to me.
That's what I'll be like in a year.
I never wanted that.
Yeah, not EM.
That's what I firmly resolved on my last day in the ER.
The moment I walked out that door, I'd never look back at emergency medicine.
And then, that day.
A trauma patient arrived.
No siren, no warning.
A man collapsing to the floor, bleeding out with a rebar impaled in his abdomen.
Everyone panicked, faces etched with despair.
Blood pressure bottomed out, heart on the verge of stopping.
I watched from the corner of the resus room, darting around.
"See? This is reality."
I muttered to myself.
This is the true face of the ER.
No drama heroes.
Just ordinary humans crumbling helplessly before overwhelming death.
That's when it happened.
One person started moving.
First-year senior Han Hyun-jae.
His voice, his gestures—everything changed.
"Scalpel."
That one word froze everyone.
Seniors screamed he was crazy.
Yelled his license would be revoked.
I saw it.
His hands moving faster and more precisely than any surgeon's I'd seen in rotations.
Pouring Betadine, opening sterile drapes—it felt like a work of art.
The scalpel in Senior Han's hand saved the fading life without a second's hesitation.
In my eyes, only that one person existed.
A doctor in the midst of blood and death, transcending rules and common sense with the single conviction to save the patient, wielding the blade.
Ah, this is it.
My heart started pounding again.
This is what I saw in that drama.
Of course, it looked different.
Not noble like in the drama.
Desperate.
But the essence was the same.
This is emergency medicine.
I finally understood.
That's when I made up my mind.
Yeah.
I resolved firmly.
I'll go into emergency medicine.
I don't know if I can become like him.
No confidence I can turn into that kind of monster.
But at least behind him, in the heart of that battlefield, I want to be a doctor who doesn't run away.
That night, I gathered the shards of my broken dream.