The One-Star Theme Park
At Lee Min-jae's words, the child's father was momentarily struck speechless.
"Y-you son of a bitch...!" Just as he spat out another curse and tried to lunge at Lee Min-jae—
"Sir." The police officers flanking him blocked his path and held him back. "Unless you want an assault charge added to your record, I suggest you come with us."
And just like that, the ugly commotion drew to a close.
"You hack bastards! Do you have any idea who I am?! I'm not letting this go! I'll make sure you regret this for the rest of your lives!"
His pathetic, unsightly display became a spectacle for everyone in the emergency room. Finally, the parents were dragged out through the ER's sliding glass doors by the police officers.
And then, Lee Min-jae did something incredibly bizarre.
He followed them all the way to the entrance, waving his hand with the elegant, sweeping flourish of a ground crew member sending off a departing airplane. It was an exquisitely petty piece of teabagging.
That absolute lunatic... He's not just any ordinary crazy person. He's a high-class psycho. I knew there was something off about him.
While the two parents practically vibrated with rage, utterly triggered and spewing venom, Lee Min-jae merely waved with a bright, innocent smile. He was a certified madman.
The police car drove off, and the automatic doors slid shut. As if the chaotic uproar had never happened, the ER quickly returned to its usual rhythm.
But I couldn't shake the memory of what had just transpired. It felt as though my brain had suffered a massive overload.
First, witnessing the child abuse had triggered the system overload. Then, the parents' hysterical tantrum pushed it further. Finally, Lee Min-jae's even more unhinged counter-tantrum had caused my brain to shut down completely.
As I stood there, completely dazed with a half-vacant expression, a familiar shadow fell over me.
Lee Min-jae. The resident nutjob of our ER. He looked at me staring blankly into space and tossed out a casual remark.
"What are you doing? Back to work."
With those words, my brain's power switch flipped back on.
"Ah, y-yes, sir!" I snapped out of it and hurriedly made my way toward the nurse's station.
The moment we arrived, a nurse rushed over to us.
"Doctor! We gave the pediatric patient in Bed C-3 an antipyretic, but their fever still won't drop below thirty-nine degrees. What should we do?"
Ah. The lovely, grueling reality of a pediatric ER shift. I didn't know whether to be glad or miserable that the work never, ever stopped.
I sat huddled in a corner of the station, staring blankly at the blinking cursor on the monitor. About ten minutes passed like that.
Thud. A cold can of coffee was casually dropped onto my desk.
I looked up to see Lee Min-jae standing there with his hands shoved into his pockets, leaning slightly as he looked down at me.
"Ah, thank you."
"Don't mention it. I'm just giving back the one I couldn't give you earlier."
Ah, the can of coffee that had been slammed onto the floor. He hadn't forgotten and had gone out to buy another one.
"Haha, still, thank you. I'll enjoy it."
"Hmph." Lee Min-jae pulled up a chair next to mine and slumped into it.
"Did that abused kid get admitted to the ward smoothly? Check the EMR."
"Ah, yes. Just a moment." I moved the mouse to bring up the screen.
Next to the child's name, a new location was listed instead of the Pediatric ER.
"Yes, they've been successfully admitted to Ward 72 of the Children's Hospital."
"Hmm, okay. Perfect." Lee Min-jae nodded in satisfaction.
He leaned deep into his chair, stretching his arms high above his head.
"By the way."
"Yes?"
"Did I look pretty cool back there?"
...Excuse me? I doubted my own ears. What did he just say?
"No, I mean, didn't I look totally badass? Standing right in front of that bastard of a father. Huh? It was epic, right? Like, practically a movie protagonist. Ah..."
How should I respond? Yes, Professor, you looked like a champion of justice? Or Honestly, you overdid it so much I was embarrassed for you? The former was flattery, and the latter was professional suicide.
I went with the safest, most efficient response I had mastered over my year of slavery as a 1st-Year Resident.
"Yes. You did look somewhat cool."
Somewhat. I put as much emphasis on that word as possible. It was my final shred of pride.
But Lee Min-jae seemed to have completely filtered out the word "somewhat."
"Haha! Right?! I knew it! When I shoved the screen right in that bastard's face and asked him if he knew what it was! Wasn't that basically a legendary scene straight out of a noir film? Like, 'Even if I'm going, a cigarette is fine, right?' That kind of vibe! Don't you think?"
Not even close, sir. I swallowed the words I couldn't dare say out loud along with a gulp of canned coffee.
Lee Min-jae spent the next while marveling at his own heroic exploits, analyzing them, and basking in pure self-indulgence.
I merely nodded with soulless eyes, throwing in occasional, empty reactions like "Ah..." "Yes..." and "That's amazing..."
Maybe this hospital is actually a giant kindergarten. And my role is the babysitter humoring the most high-maintenance toddler in the class.
No matter how I looked at it, this place did not feel like a facility belonging to an institution of higher education. Was it just my imagination?
A peaceful 6:00 AM arrived. The end of a hellish night shift was finally in sight.
The crying of children that had echoed throughout the night had died down, and the nurses at the station were nodding off, their exhausted faces unable to fight the overwhelming drowsiness.
I, too, sat in my chair like an empty shell of a human, staring mindlessly at the monitor's screensaver.
Hmm, maybe I should contemplate the history of screensavers. Did they have screensavers in the 1990s, or not? How do screensavers differ by operating system?
Just then, the ER's automatic doors slid open quietly. A young-looking male student walked in with a tearful face, carefully cradling his left arm with his right, shuffling his feet.
"Excuse... excuse me..." At his quiet voice, the nurse dozing at the desk snapped awake, her head jerking up.
I dragged my heavy body out of the chair and approached the student.
"...Hey there. Where does it hurt, and what happened? How did you get here?" My voice was thick with sleep.
"At home..."
"At home?"
"I was watching an anime and waving a lightstick..."
...
"Excuse me?"
"Suddenly, there was a loud pop in my shoulder, and now I can't move my arm..."
I was temporarily lost for words. Anime. Lightstick. Shoulder. So, he was watching anime and waving a lightstick. Okay, I could understand that part. I had a few friends like that, after all—I used to be in the anime club myself. But what? He dislocated his shoulder?
I checked the student's name on the EMR and gave a few simple instructions.
"...Um, Jin Se-hyun. Let's have you sit on that bed over there first. When they call your name, go to the imaging room. We'll need to take an X-ray to know for sure."
I led the student to an empty bed. Lee Min-jae, who happened to be passing by, didn't miss this intriguing case and strolled over.
"What's the deal?"
"Ah, he's a fourteen-year-old student. Apparently, he dislocated his shoulder waving a lightstick while watching anime at home."
At my explanation, an utterly dumbfounded expression washed over Lee Min-jae's face, as if saying, What in the world?
A moment later, the X-ray popped up. On the screen, a textbook anterior dislocation was clearly visible, with the head of the humerus slipped downward out of the glenoid cavity of the scapula.
"Yep, definitely dislocated," Lee Min-jae said.
"We should perform a reduction, right?"
"Of course. Do it yourself. Even as an R1, you need to do a lot of these to get better."
And so, the final mission of the night—though I couldn't be sure if it would really be the last—was handed to me.
I took the student to the treatment room. The entire time he sat on the bed, he stared at my hands with terror-filled eyes.
"Alright, Se-hyun. I'm going to pop your shoulder back into place now. It might hurt a bit, but if you tense up, it'll hurt even more. So try your best to relax. Okay?"
"Y-yes..."
I carefully took hold of his left arm. I attempted to rotate it slightly outward for the first step of the reduction. At that exact moment—
"Aaaaargh! Seriously! It really hurts! Wait, please, seriously!"
I let go.
"Se-hyun?"
"Yes..."
"I haven't even touched you yet."
"Ah... Okay. I'm ready. For real this time."
"Alright, let's give you a shot to relax your muscles first. That'll make it hurt less."
I picked up a syringe containing painkillers and a muscle relaxant. Then, I wiped his upper arm with an alcohol swab.
"Aaaaaaaaargh! It stings! Wait! It hurts!"
"..."
Holding the syringe, I stared at him.
"Se-hyun. The needle hasn't even touched your skin."
After a brief struggle, I finally managed to administer the injection. I waited for his muscles to relax sufficiently.
Once enough time had passed, I took hold of his arm again. This time, Lee Min-jae stood beside us, stabilizing the opposite shoulder.
"Alright, take a deep breath. One, two, three!"
The moment I slowly rotated the arm outward and lifted it upward—
Thunk!
A dull yet satisfying pop echoed. A short groan escaped the student's lips. It was the wonderful sound of a dislocated bone sliding back into its proper socket.
I gently tested the movement of his arm. Unlike before, it moved smoothly.
"Oh... Oh? It doesn't hurt!"
The student, who had been screaming bloody murder just moments ago, beamed with relief.
"Alright, keep it in a sling and make sure not to overexert yourself for a few days. Got it? And try not to cheer so violently in the future."
Well, he's at that passionate age. I patted his shoulder and sent him on his way.
"Be careful from now on."
And with that, the long, grueling night shift finally came to an end.