VEXAS Syndrome (Conclusion)

An awkward silence settled over the ward after Professor Choi Yeong-jun departed. Only moments ago, the nurses had been stealing glances at me with gleeful anticipation, as if thinking, That bastard is about to get absolutely destroyed. Now, they stole glances with a mixture of awe and sheer disbelief.

What are you looking at, people? I saw you betting on whether I'd get shredded or not. I do have eyes, you know!

I could practically hear the whispers of the nurses and a few medical technicians from where I stood.

"Is he insane? He's not even in Internal Medicine. How does a first-year EM resident know about a rare rheumatologic disease?"

"He called a professor directly, and instead of getting chewed out, he got praised?"

Keep it down, guys. I can hear everything. I'm dying of embarrassment here, so please, just shut up.

I stared blankly down the end of the hallway. As the adrenaline drained from my body, my limbs felt heavy as lead, but my brain was firing with unprecedented clarity. A warm sensation rising from the depths of my chest now felt like it was heating the very blood in my veins.

Is this... passion?

"Well done."

What was it about those two simple words? Throughout my miserable residency so far, the only things I'd ever heard were: "You don't even know this?" "Get your head in the game!" "If you're going to do it like that, just quit."

Sure, there were occasional compliments, but considering the sheer frequency of mistakes a clueless first-year resident made, the disparity in feedback was only natural. Yet today, I had received genuine praise straight from a professor's mouth—along with the profound, heavy sense of accomplishment that I might have just saved a patient's life.

And the spark that started it all... was this crazy delusion floating in my head.

The Deceased Doctors Gallery.

Avoiding the lingering stares, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠quickly bid farewell to Kang Tae-jin and slipped into a quiet corner of the hallway. The moment I threw myself onto a chair, I closed my eyes and summoned that damn forum.

Gallery.

With a soft ping, the familiar, dingy blue interface materialized across my vision.

I needed to focus on this "Gallery" thing first. What on earth was it? I stared intently at the screen. Hmm, who are these users? And what is this interface? It was a crude design that looked straight out of the early 2000s, but it bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain forum I knew.

At least the interface was highly intuitive. A list of various sub-galleries lined the top of the screen.

They had categorized them quite neatly by specialty. I currently had the Deceased Doctors Gallery selected. It seemed to act as a sort of general, integrated bulletin board.

"Ha..."

A hollow laugh escaped my lips. Was this really just a delusion inside my head? A highly sophisticated hallucination conjured by my subconscious after my stress levels breached their critical limit? Lately, I'd been severely sleep-deprived and eating irregularly. It could very well be a psychotic symptom triggered by extreme burnout.

Should I get a psychiatric consultation?

Diagnosing myself like this felt absurd. What would I even say? "Doctor, I see an online community of dead doctors floating in the air." They'd shoot me up with sedatives and wheel me straight to the locked ward.

But... if this was truly a delusion, how could I explain VEXAS syndrome? Not even the tiniest corner of my memory, not even the absolute tail end of my forgetting curve, held the name "VEXAS syndrome." It was only after searching UpToDate that I learned it was a rare disease defined just a few years ago. The probability of me recalling that on my own was practically zero.

Then... is this gallery real? Does it actually exist?

Clutching my throbbing head, I began to lurk, scrolling through the list of recent posts.

...What the actual fuck?

I stared at the screen, completely speechless. The tone was that of a cheap, toxic online community riddled with profanity and slang, yet the caliber of the discussions rivaled a conference of active medical professors. They were exchanging cutting-edge knowledge and engaging in deep medical debates.

Hmm...

I rested my chin on my hand, sinking into deep thought. First of all, am I the only living person here? Judging by the nuance of the posts and comments, everyone was using phrases like "when I died" or "back when I was alive."

...At least, that seemed to be the case.

Wait, if that's true...

My heart sank with a heavy thud. With trembling hands—no, trembling thoughts—I navigated back to the post I had written. I scrolled down to check the comment section. Below the last comment I had seen, which read Looks like VEXAS, send out the tests, new replies had piled up.

Oh, shit. I'm screwed.

I felt the blood drain from my face, leaving me ice-cold. Cold sweat trickled down my spine. I had carelessly written the post from the perspective of a living person. Amidst these dead souls, I alone had used the present tense.

I was caught. My identity was blown. The fact that a living human was lurking in this crazy community of dead doctors had been completely exposed.

What would happen now? Would I be forcibly kicked out? Or would this delusion vanish without a trace? Just as all sorts of anxious thoughts raced through my head, the atmosphere in the comment section began to shift in a bizarre direction.

"..."

I couldn't believe my eyes. In an instant, their suspicion and wariness had transformed into wild excitement and cheers. Like travelers finding an oasis in a barren desert, these dead doctors were ecstatic over the appearance of a living one.

They weren't ostracizing me. On the contrary, they were craving me.

Standing alone in the empty duty room, I stared into the air and muttered,

"Well, isn't this a sweet deal?"