The Rules Behind the Scenes
The faint smell of disinfectant alcohol lingered in the corridor of General Surgery Ward 4. Baek Ijun quietly closed the sliding door of Room 11 and stepped out. It was his morning routine to screen the patients’ conditions before rounds.
He returned to the station desk and logged into the EMR. As his fingers moved across the keyboard, Baek Ijun’s gaze drifted past the monitor toward the corridor. The steady rhythm of heels striking linoleum echoed at regular intervals. It was Park Misuk, the veteran head nurse of Ward 4.
Her approach to commanding her domain differed completely from the managers of other wards. Baek Ijun had first detected the subtle distinction on his third day as a resident. She never remained seated in the padded chair at the main desk. While typing, he tracked her path with his eyes.
She stopped before the dressing cart stationed in one corner of the corridor. Without a word, Park Misuk slid the forceps container two centimeters inward. The adjustment was minute yet precise enough to prevent a rushing first-year nurse’s sleeve from catching and toppling it. She moved on.
This time her gaze flicked through the half-open door of Room 7. Without entering, she pushed the auxiliary mattress the patient’s guardian had left in the hallway flush against the wall. The entire ward was being tuned like a single living organism. She walked, observed, and inspected without pause. The exact angle of open sliding doors, the alignment of dressing carts, the wasted segments in junior nurses’ routes; nothing escaped her.
From Baek Ijun’s internal calculations, Park Misuk completed a flawless circuit of the entire ward no fewer than five times a day.
“Observing again, I see.”
Nurse Jeong Dain had approached without a sound. She set down a stack of charts and whispered.
“Hard not to notice when the pattern stands out so clearly.”
“Unique, isn’t it?” Dain glanced down the corridor and gave a small, warm smile. “It’s our head nurse’s personal style of ward management.”
“She seems to make a full round at least five times daily.” Baek Ijun answered calmly, clicking the mouse.
“You observed correctly.”
“As one rises in rank, don’t most people issue orders from the desk?”
“She only feels satisfied once she’s walked the actual atmosphere herself.”
Baek Ijun lifted his eyes from the screen and turned to her. “How long has she held overall charge of this ward?”
“This year marks her twelfth.”
“Twelve years.”
“She has stood in that exact position, unshaken, since the day I started as a new nurse.”
Baek Ijun fell silent. Twelve years. She would know the precise number of tiles in the corridor, every wasted segment of a junior nurse’s route, the personalities of the doctors, the shifting conditions of the patients, even the invisible density of the air that wrapped the ward. All of it would exist inside her as a flawless database.
Ten o’clock sharp. Having finished her morning circuit, Park Misuk approached the station desk.
“Doctor Baek Ijun.”
He stopped working and rose to his feet.
“Yes, Head Nurse.”
Her deep, cool gaze settled on him. It carried no authoritarian sweep from head to toe. It was simply a dry verification of the variable before her.
“Have you received the report on Patient Kim Young-tae in Room 11’s breakfast intake?”
Without hesitation Baek Ijun answered, “He finished exactly half a bowl of the rice porridge.”
“Any gastrointestinal abnormalities?”
“No post-meal vomiting or nausea.”
“Did you confirm bowel sounds directly?”
“Yes. Auscultation shows they have returned to normal.”
Park Misuk gave the faintest nod. “Current pain scale?”
“He reported three points at seven this morning.”
“Will an additional analgesic be necessary?”
“No. The existing regimen is sufficient to control it.”
Her questions did not stop at biological data. “Then how is the son-guardian’s condition?”
The scowling face of the man who had raised his voice over surgery costs a few days earlier flashed through Baek Ijun’s mind. This was not a query about medical numbers but about human emotion. He drew one short, steadying breath.
“Surface conflict has subsided since the social services meeting.”
“What do you mean by surface?”
“He is currently following hospital instructions without complaint.”
“Do you believe he has accepted it internally as well?”
Baek Ijun met her eyes directly. “That is an area I cannot confirm.”
A microscopic shift occurred in Park Misuk’s expression.
“Whether the guardian’s true feelings stem from resignation over the hospitalization costs or relief at the surgical outcome cannot be recorded in any chart,” Baek Ijun finished calmly.
A faint line curved at the corner of her mouth. “Correct.”
She set the approval documents she carried on the desk. “Accurately acknowledging what one does not know. That is the safest attitude a physician responsible for a ward can possess.”
Only those who recognized uncontrollable domains deserved to handle real data. With that brief exchange she had measured the boundary of Baek Ijun’s limits. Without another word she turned and shifted her attention to the next chart.
Baek Ijun sat down again and placed his hands on the keyboard.
At two in the afternoon the air density of the once-peaceful Ward 4 suddenly warped. Baek Ijun, emerging from the treatment room after dressing a pressure-ulcer patient, lifted his head. The tension differed entirely from the usual clamor of an incoming ambulance. Corridor noise vanished as though sucked into vacuum; nurses’ footsteps grew markedly sparse. Speed had not increased. Instead every superfluous motion had been stripped away, leaving only extreme, honed tension.
At the edge of his vision two figures appeared walking down the corridor. One was Park Misuk. Half a step ahead of her strode an unfamiliar middle-aged man. Instead of a physician’s white coat he wore a perfectly tailored dark suit. Baek Ijun’s gaze locked onto the golden hospital badge on the man’s left lapel.
ARCHIVE — [WARNING] TAB ACTIVATED
Target: Vice President Oh Seong-jae
‘Vice President Oh Seong-jae.’ The core figure who held the hospital’s administrative power and authority had appeared in Ward 4.
Baek Ijun studied Park Misuk’s gait. The firm rhythm with which she usually ruled the ward was absent. Her stride had been subtly, forcibly matched to Oh Seong-jae’s pace. Even within her own territory she was compelled to follow another’s rhythm. The power differential was unmistakable, and Baek Ijun did not miss the faint dissonance.
Stopping before the station desk, Oh Seong-jae issued orders while staring straight ahead, voice indifferent.
“Report current inpatient status for Ward 4.”
Park Misuk answered in a dry, precise tone. “Twenty-three patients are hospitalized.”
“Bed occupancy rate?”
“Ninety-two percent.”
Oh Seong-jae’s sharp gaze slowly swept the station interior: the neat alignment of chart racks, the monitor screens, the nurses holding their breath.
“How many post-operative handovers from surgery this month?”
“Seventeen cases to date.”
“Proportion of long-term inpatients?”
“Three patients have stayed longer than two weeks.”
“Turnover is falling.” Oh Seong-jae’s voice remained flat. “How many beds can be cleared by next week?”
“We anticipate roughly two patients ready for discharge after observation.”
His head stopped, turning toward Baek Ijun standing in the corner. Baek Ijun met the gaze without flinching.
“The new resident assigned to surgery?”
“First-year resident Doctor Baek Ijun, placed this month.”
Baek Ijun offered a slight, polite bow. Oh Seong-jae regarded him for one emotionless second with the mechanical stare of someone inspecting a potentially useful component. Then he looked away and turned back to Park Misuk.
“Upload the data before next week’s bed-adjustment meeting.”
“Understood.”
“Compile occupancy rates and profitability metrics thoroughly and forward them to the director’s office.”
“They will be ready within the deadline.”
Oh Seong-jae turned and strode down the corridor. Park Misuk followed silently behind him. As Baek Ijun watched their receding figures, the red flash reappeared at the edge of his vision. The Archive’s Warning tab pulsed with urgent intensity. His breath caught.
Until now every alert had concerned only patients’ biological errors or procedural mistakes. Yet the warning was not directed at any hospital room. It flashed madly toward the far end of the corridor where Oh Seong-jae had vanished. Baek Ijun reflexively tried to open the tab. It refused to respond. As though the system had forcibly blocked access, the crimson light dissolved into empty air.
He remained motionless. A warning triggered not by a life in danger but by a figure of power. Did it mean the vast organization of the hospital itself harbored a fatal illness?
Baek Ijun erased the lingering afterimage and hardened his expression.
Eight o’clock in the evening. Having completed handover to the night-shift nurses, Park Misuk was preparing to leave. Baek Ijun, tidying the station desk, called to her in a calm voice.
“Head Nurse.”
Her steps halted as she gathered her bag.
“The visitor this afternoon—was that Vice President Oh Seong-jae?”
She turned and studied him. “As you observed.”
“Does the vice president often conduct personal rounds of frontline wards?”
Her eyes sank deeper, weighing the question like a precise scale. She was measuring exactly how far this bold first-year resident’s intent reached.
“It happens from time to time.”
“What is the usual purpose?”
“He intervenes when physical resources—bed management, staffing allocation—are entangled in conflict.”
“It appears closely tied to the bed-adjustment meeting you mentioned.”
Park Misuk looked down at him quietly. “In a university hospital, beds are the most powerful resource.” Her low, distinct voice carried absolute clarity. “Deciding which department and which patients receive how many beds ultimately translates into numbers, and those numbers are the surest indicator that shifts the hospital’s landscape of power.”
Baek Ijun absorbed the cold logic without resistance: discussing profitability and authority with patients’ lives as collateral. He etched the reality into memory.
Park Misuk adjusted her bag strap and stepped closer. “Doctor Baek Ijun.”
“Yes.”
“If you wish to survive long within this enormous organization called a university hospital, remember this.” Her voice sank beneath the faint ambient noise. “Do not attempt to see only what lies immediately before your eyes.”
She left the weight of her advice hanging in the air and walked out of the station. Baek Ijun stared for a long time at the empty corridor where she had disappeared.
A pointed warning not to see only the obvious. Vice President Oh Seong-jae’s sudden appearance, the bed-adjustment meeting, the word profitability. All of it was linking into a single invisible current.
Baek Ijun asked no further questions and sought no immediate answers. He simply sorted the day’s collected variables with cool precision and stored them safely in the depths of his mind. There was no need to force the equation. The moment the structure of this aged, colossal hospital generated a problem, the data saved today would connect on their own and prove the result.
The fluorescent lights on the station ceiling flickered with a faint frictional buzz. Baek Ijun silently lifted the stack of charts for tomorrow’s scheduled surgical patients once more. The long night of duty still stretched ahead. It was time to prepare for the next variable that would approach in silence.