Time is Brain (1)
"Oh, right. Hyeon-jae."
"Yes?"
I turned around at the shout to find Clinical Assistant Professor Park Se-yeong standing there. Why was she calling me when I was just about to head home? Was she going to chew me out for some mistake I made? But as I looked closer, I saw her holding out a stack of papers. Was it my transfer order? Was I being sent to a branch hospital? Or was it disciplinary action for wasting too much time?
My wild imagination was cut short.
"Here. The family of that myocardial infarction patient who came in with a sore throat asked me to give this to you."
Looking closely, it appeared to be a printout of a post from the hospital's online compliment board. It was a long, heartfelt letter of gratitude written by the patient's family.
...He safely received treatment and is now in a stable condition after being hospitalized...
...Thank you for not dismissing it as a simple cold, for paying close attention, and for saving his life.
As I read through the lines, a warm swell of emotion rose in my chest. A message of gratitude, and a life reclaimed.
...Studying hard really does pay off. Let's do this, Han Hyeon-jae.
A bright smile found its way onto my face as I finished packing up to leave.
The moment I stepped out of the hospital doors after my shift, the tension drained from my body, leaving my legs trembling. With a heavy sigh, I trudged toward the bus stop. The thank-you letter had lifted my spirits, but it did nothing to alleviate my physical exhaustion. The only saving grace was that the bus arrived almost immediately.
Sweet.
It was only after I boarded the bus and squeezed into a corner seat smelling faintly of damp upholstery that a brief sense of liberation washed over me. Outside the window, the world drifted by in peaceful tranquility.
I opened the blue window in my mind—my sole outlet for communication and venting. Ending a shift just didn't feel right without checking in on these crazy ghosts. I decided to throw out a new question. It wasn't for an exam or anything serious. I was just... curious. I wanted to know what kind of bizarre, bait-and-switch cases these deceased experts had encountered during their own lifetimes.
My post was a self-deprecating plea for solidarity. However, to the ghosts, it seemed to be a topic far more thrilling than any academic medical debate. The moment my post went live, the gallery erupted into a storytelling festival. Among them, a meticulously organized informational post stood out, quickly climbing to the top of the board.
Beneath that post, countless ghosts began sharing their own blood-soaked experiences in the comments.
Reading their comments sent a shiver down my spine. The bench press incident was child's play. Real disasters always arrived wearing ordinary faces. I scrolled further down.
I carved these cautionary tales into the deepest recesses of my brain. Finally, I wrote another post in the gallery.
As if they had been waiting for my prompt, the ghosts immediately began sharing all kinds of bizarre stories.
I see. I'd better keep these in mind.
Right at that moment, I felt a cold, sharp gaze from beside me. Turning my head, I saw a young woman sitting in the adjacent seat, staring at me with intense wariness. When our eyes met, she flinched and slid as far away from me as the seat allowed.
What's her deal?
I cleared my throat and adjusted my posture. In doing so, my eyes inadvertently drifted to the screen of the phone in her hand. She was texting a friend. And there, in the newly sent yellow speech bubble, I saw it.
My brain ground to a halt.
Slowly, I turned my head back to look out the window. Reflected in the glass was a man who looked exactly like Patient A, fresh out of a locked psychiatric ward. On top of that, he was a lunatic who smirked while staring into thin air. It was a flawless diagnosis.
...That's not what's happening here...
I could only repeat the most desperate, sorrowful excuse in my head, knowing she would never hear it.
The woman practically fled the bus at the very next stop. In the empty seat she left behind, only a bitter self-loathing remained, making me wonder if I really was losing my mind.
Well, to anyone else, I must have looked completely insane. Chuckling to myself while staring into empty space, then muttering with a dead-serious expression. I could already picture her telling her friends the story of the 'bus psycho' she met today.
After the bus had traveled for about ten minutes, I forced the gallery out of my mind and stared blankly at the street. That was when it happened.
Because my head was turned slightly to the right, the seats behind me were partially in my field of view. An elderly woman sitting by the window in the row behind me, who had been nodding off, suddenly had her head snap sideways in an unnatural jerk.
The movement was so bizarre that my eyes naturally locked onto her. One corner of her mouth was drooping heavily, and saliva began to pool and spill from her slack lips.
At first, I thought she was simply in a deep sleep from sheer exhaustion. But then, the middle-aged woman sitting next to her gently shook her shoulder with a worried expression.
"Excuse me, are you alright? You must be very tired."
The elderly woman barely managed to flutter her eyes open. But her response pierced through the ambient noise of the bus, striking my ears like a dagger.
"Ugh... I'm... I'm fine..."
Her speech was slurred and distorted. Every single word was mangled and slipped out as if her tongue were paralyzed.
An ominous feeling began to creep over me.
Facial droop. Dysarthria.
The thought flashed through my mind: Is it a stroke?
Two of the four most fundamental symptoms of a stroke were unfolding right before my eyes in real-time. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to move. What if I was wrong? The memory from just a few hours ago held me back. The disastrous combination of a bench press and mala xiangguo. My overreaction, and the massive embarrassment that followed.
What if she was just incredibly exhausted, or her dentures were loose, causing her speech to slip? If I stepped forward again, shouting, "I'm a doctor! This woman is having a stroke!" only for it to be nothing, what then? Everyone on this bus would look at me the same way that girl had—like a lunatic.
I turned my head away, pretending to look out the window. Behind me, the middle-aged woman, unable to hide her concern, kept questioning the elderly woman.
"Are you sure you're okay? Your complexion is terrible. Are you in pain anywhere?"
"Ugh... my head... a bit..."
Her response was still heavily slurred. Her drooping mouth showed no signs of returning to normal.
Ah, damn it.
I squeezed my eyes shut. The voices of the ghosts, their relentless nagging, echoed in my mind.
'Patients don't present like textbooks. Always assume the worst.'
'A single minor symptom you ignore can decide the rest of a patient's life.'
When it came to brain diseases, time was brain. With every minute and second that passed, brain cells died permanently. Even at this very moment while I hesitated, a blood vessel in her brain might be blocked or ruptured, causing irreversible damage.
My embarrassment versus a person's life. The scale had already tipped entirely to one side.
Ultimately, I turned around. Standing up from my seat, I stepped toward the row behind me. The middle-aged woman looked up at me with wary eyes.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, and showed her my hospital ID card.
"Hello, ma'am. I'm an emergency medicine physician..."
My voice didn't tremble. I looked the elderly woman straight in the eyes and spoke.
"Would you mind doing exactly what I say, just once?"