It's Okay
The air in General Surgery Ward 4 at Korea University Hospital at six in the morning was, as always, thick with the mingled scents of disinfectant and the exhaustion of overnight shifts. Baek Ijun pushed the blood-draw cart down the hallway at his usual measured pace. His route deviated not one inch from yesterday's. It was the optimal trajectory that allowed him to collect blood samples most efficiently without disturbing the patients' sleep. The way his hands moved and the precise pressure he applied with the tourniquet were also mechanically consistent.
Yet the speed of his internal calculations was subtly different from normal. Ijun became clearly aware of this fact as he stood in front of Room 405, the third patient room. He had begun lagging by approximately 2.1 seconds. It was an extremely slight delay, but Ijun's internal senses caught the gap with perfect accuracy. The cause was obvious. He had finished organizing the case of the seven-year-old patient Park Ji-ho, whom he had operated on yesterday, and had placed his final signature on the resident's record at two in the morning. It was severe sleep deprivation. His brain's computational circuits were stuttering like an overheated engine.
'Central nervous system response time reduced due to sleep deprivation. Rather than forcing an increase in speed, it's better to focus on stability.'
Ijun kept walking without stopping. By the time he had finished drawing blood from the patients in the fourth and fifth rooms, Jeong Dain emerged from behind a curtain far down the end of the corridor. Spotting him, she naturally approached and matched his stride. The two walked side by side in silence, keeping time with the sound of the blood-draw cart's wheels.
As they reached the station, Dain was the first to break the quiet with a low voice.
"The mother of that child from yesterday came by early this morning to say goodbye."
Ijun stopped the cart and looked at her.
"She asked me to be sure to tell you, Dr. Baek. She was sorry she couldn't thank you in person, and that she was truly grateful."
Ijun nodded as he pumped hand sanitizer from the dispenser beside the cart.
"Thank you for delivering the message. I'm glad to hear the child is recovering well."
Dain studied the side of Ijun's face as he wiped his hands. The dark circles from the overnight shift and the slightly deeper weariness in his voice seemed to concern her. She added carefully,
"How are you feeling today, Doctor? You worked so hard yesterday."
Ijun picked up a bundle of charts and offered a faint smile.
"As you can see, I'm fine. Once I finish the morning orders, I'll recover quickly."
Dain stared at him for a moment before giving a small nod.
"I see. That's good, then."
That was all. She didn't press further, and Ijun didn't feel the need to explain his inner state in more detail. But Ijun instinctively understood. The word "I see" that Dain had spoken was not a simple affirmation. It was a silent confirmation that she had already recognized he was not fine at all.
She had seen through the way his computational circuits—circuits that usually converted patients' pain into system errors to be solved—had shaken violently yesterday in the face of the biological variable known as "seven years old."
Ijun opened the next patient's chart.
'The system has returned to its normal trajectory. There are three scheduled cases today. Personal sentiments do not aid in computation.'
During morning rounds, third-year resident Oh Jae-hyeong accompanied Ijun through the ward in place of the department chief, Choi Dusik. Oh Jae-hyeong inspected the dressing conditions with far more meticulous attention than usual. Stopping in front of Room 412, the tenth patient room, he flipped through the chart and suddenly asked,
"That pediatric appendicitis case in Room 11 yesterday. Exactly what time did you personally confirm the rebound tenderness?"
Ijun answered without hesitation.
"It was 2:20 PM yesterday afternoon."
"Then what time did you finally enter the CT order for Radiology?"
"2:45 PM. It took an additional fifteen minutes for the reading results to come back."
Oh Jae-hyeong glanced inside the room, then started walking down the corridor again.
"Twenty-five minutes from report to order. Not bad reaction speed for a first-year."
Following behind him, Ijun calmly added an explanation.
"That included the time for my verbal report to you first, and for you to personally palpate and confirm. I judged that following the official chain of command rather than acting unilaterally would be safer."
Oh Jae-hyeong stopped walking and turned his head.
"What would you have done if I'd ignored what you said yesterday?"
Ijun looked straight into Oh Jae-hyeong's eyes. Without waiting for an answer, Oh Jae-hyeong turned forward again and continued in a detached tone.
"You probably would've run straight to Dr. Park Dong-hun in Emergency Medicine. Like last time."
"Because I was certain the patient's condition was at the pre-perforation stage. If it needed to be opened through any route, I might have done exactly that."
Oh Jae-hyeong glanced at Ijun, his lips parting as if he wanted to say more. But he soon closed his mouth and opened the door to the next room.
'Senior Oh Jae-hyeong directly referenced the bypass route from the past. This is not simple criticism. It's a signal that he has begun to recognize the basis and speed of my judgment as a team asset.'
The hospital cafeteria at lunchtime resembled a rest area for soldiers momentarily withdrawn from the front lines. Ijun sat alone in a corner seat, quietly spooning his rice. He was eating a little slower than usual to supply glucose to his brain.
At that moment, Lim Dohyeon, a neurosurgery resident carrying a food tray, approached. Instead of sitting across from him, he set his tray down right beside Ijun and plopped into the seat.
"Hyung."
"You're here. Looks like Neurosurgery has been busy since morning."
"I saw that seven-year-old kid from yesterday when I went to check vitals this morning. He was bouncing with energy. The ER nurses can't stop praising how well the surgery went."
"I know. Nurse Jeong told me earlier."
Dohyeon took a sip of soup, set his utensils down, and stared directly at Ijun.
"But why do you look like that?"
Ijun paused mid-bite and asked,
"What's wrong with my face? Are you talking about the tired face from pulling an all-nighter?"
"No... being tired is the default setting. It's not your usual sly, clever Baek Ijun face."
"Huh? What does it look like then?"
"You're smiling on the outside, but your eyes are frozen stiff like a machine analyzing system logs."
Ijun gazed quietly at Dohyeon. Dohyeon didn't ask any more questions and simply started eating again. After silently clearing most of his tray while avoiding Ijun's gaze, he finally spoke in a low voice much later.
"My neurosurgery shift ends tonight. I'll have some time after. Let's step out of the hospital for a bit."
"Suddenly?"
"Yeah. Let's just get some air somewhere that doesn't smell like the hospital. It's obvious you're overloaded right now."
Ijun chewed his rice, lost in thought for a moment.
'It's rare for Dohyeon to suggest going outside first. It means I'm appearing strange to the people around me. This is the right time for external ventilation to restore system stability.'
"Alright. I'll contact you after I finish the evening orders."
At nine o'clock that night, cold air swirled around the old convenience store near the hospital's rear entrance. There were three low concrete steps beside the store's front door. Dohyeon was sitting on the bottom step, opening two cans of coffee. Ijun walked over and sat down beside him. Dohyeon casually handed him one of the cans.
Ijun checked the label on the can he'd received. It was a brutally sweet sugar coffee with a yellow background. Although Ijun normally never touched sugary drinks, he held the can without a word. Dohyeon took a deep swig from his own can and stared out at the dark hospital parking lot.
"How old was that kid yesterday, exactly?"
"Seven years old. His name was Park Ji-ho."
"You even remembered the name."
Dohyeon wrapped both hands around his can and gazed forward. The parking lot streetlights flickered faintly in the night breeze.
"Something similar happened to me during my intern year. I was covering the neurosurgery ward when we had an eight-year-old brain tumor patient. The surgery went perfectly, textbook perfect, but for some reason he wouldn't recover. He held on for over three months before he passed."
Dohyeon took another sip and smiled bitterly.
"That was the first real fear I felt when I started this job as a doctor. It's different with adult patients. Kids... their eyes alone go beyond the range of calculation. They don't scream that it hurts like adults do. They just endure it with those clear eyes, and it burns you up inside."
Ijun listened to Dohyeon's words in silence. The word 'fear' had lodged itself in his mind. After a long period of silence, Ijun finally spoke.
"I was scared yesterday too."
Dohyeon turned to look at him.
"Not because I was afraid my diagnosis might be wrong. I was terrified that the child was in too much pain, and that if I was even one second late in catching it while that small boy was clenching his eyes shut and enduring, something irreversible might happen. That scared me to death."
Dohyeon listened to Ijun's confession, then turned his gaze forward again.
"That's normal, hyung. Unless you're a machine that just cuts open patients' bellies, those are emotions you should naturally feel."
"I know that in my head. But feeling it is a completely different domain."
Ijun took a sip of the canned coffee. The intense sweetness that stung his tongue slid down his throat. It was brutally sweet, but Ijun swallowed it without frowning.
"It's medically proven that sweet flavors suppress the brain's stress response. It seems this stimulus is necessary right now."
Dohyeon nodded. He offered no more words of comfort. The two sat side by side on the steps, watching the flickering lights in the parking lot. In the distance, the wail of an ambulance siren rose from the emergency room side before fading away.
After a while, Dohyeon let out a small laugh and changed the mood.
"Hey, hyung. You do realize that's sugar coffee you're drinking, right?"
"I've already opened it. Considering the opportunity cost, it's more rational to just drink it."
"But you never even look at anything with sugar in it normally. You must really be out of it."
Ijun looked down at the coffee can.
"It's not strange. I simply made the most appropriate choice for this moment."
Dohyeon finished his can and stood up.
"Hyung, if another seven-year-old with abdominal pain comes in tomorrow, you'll be scared again. That probably won't ever change for the rest of your life."
Ijun looked up at him. Dohyeon grinned and added,
"But in the end, you caught it for that kid yesterday. That's what matters. That's all a doctor can do."
Dohyeon waved as he walked into the convenience store.
"I'm crashing from low blood sugar, so I'm gonna grab some snacks. What do you want?"
"Anything's fine. Just pick something that won't interfere with the system."
"You always say 'anything.' Don't you know that's the hardest order of all?"
Ijun sat alone on the steps, savoring the quiet of the parking lot.
'Tomorrow I will be scared again. But that fear will become the most sensitive sensor that keeps me from missing a patient's signal.'
He finished the rest of the coffee. It was still sweet, but the taste no longer felt so unfamiliar.
The next morning at six o'clock, the sound of cart wheels echoed through the corridors of Ward 4 once again. Ijun's stride and pace had returned precisely to the normal values from before yesterday. The 2-second delay had been perfectly restored.
Ijun did not consciously note that he was faster than yesterday. He simply walked the hallway in silence, mentally mapping out the next patient's vascular route.
Jeong Dain, standing at the station, watched his retreating figure. She said nothing and didn't offer him a cup of coffee. She simply watched his calm trajectory with eyes mixed with relief, then opened her own work chart.
The system had begun operating stably once more.