The Aftermath (2)
At first, there was a faint noise, followed by the musty smell of disinfectant.
"Ugh... ah..." With a groan, I forced my eyelids open. I had collapsed.
Right then, the curtain partitioning my bed was pulled back with a harsh, rattling shriek. And there stood Lee Min-jae, presenting himself with a theatrical *ta-da!* What on earth was up with his look? Instead of his white doctor's coat, he was wearing a stretched-out gray hoodie and sweatpants. His hair was a chaotic bird's nest.
What a complete mess, I thought. I looked down at myself. I had been changed into a patient gown, and an IV line was hooked up to my arm.
"Uh... Senior? Those clothes... did you clock out?" At my raspy voice, Lee Min-jae let out a deep sigh. He set the canned coffee he was holding onto the bedside table.
"Yeah, you little punk. I clocked out, alright," Min-jae said, dragging a chair over and collapsing into it beside my bed. "Do you even know what time it is? Look at the clock."
I turned my head to look at the clock on the wall. The hands pointed to ten o'clock at night.
"It's ten p.m.! Ten! It's been three hours since my shift ended, you jerk!"
"Ah..." I let out a dazed groan. Since I had collapsed around nine-thirty in the morning... I had been out cold for almost exactly twelve hours. The penalty for a thirty-minute Possession was twelve hours of muscle pain and exhaustion. But wait, why didn't they give me a discount? I hadn't even used half of the possession time this time.
"How's your body? Feeling any better?"
"Oh, uh... yes. I'm fine." That was a total lie, of course. My entire body still throbbed and ached as if I'd been beaten to a pulp. But I couldn't exactly whine about being sore in this situation.
"Right. You'd better be fine. What are you gonna do if you're not?" Min-jae let out a hollow laugh. "Seriously, you're a lunatic. Where in the world is there a mere second-year resident who has cracked open a patient's abdomen twice? And you're not even in general surgery! Earlier, Associate Professor Jeon Tae-jeong from Trauma Surgery dropped by to check on you. He just stared at you sleeping for about five minutes without saying a word, then left."
"Oh, did he..."
"Sigh..." Min-jae clutched his hair. He opened his mouth to say something, stopped, sighed again, and smacked his lips. "I... sigh... oh, damn it. I don't even have the energy to make a scene anymore." He looked truly, utterly exhausted.
"I don't know what the hell is going on with you, but... you did well. In terms of the result, at least. Looking at it strictly from that angle, you did a great job... No, wait... Sigh... Should I... praise you... or what..." Min-jae muttered to himself, pushing himself up from his chair to pace around the bed.
He glanced at me, stared at the wall, and finally stopped right in front of my bed. He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising high. Then, he opened his mouth.
"Yes! Hyeon-jae! I don't care anymore!" He grabbed my shoulders with a bone-crushing grip. "This! Right here! Is what an Emergency Medicine doctor looks like! Not those pencil-pushing, calculating, procedure-obsessed snobs! Throwing away your license and everything else just to save the person dying right in front of you! This absolute madness! This is the beating heart of Emergency Medicine! Do you get it, you punk?!"
As he shook me with manic passion, my unrecovered muscles screamed in agony. I could only nod with dead, soulless eyes. This guy never changes, seriously.
"The patient... what happened to the patient?" More than the muscle pain, I feared the consequences of the madness I had unleashed. Had everything I did ultimately been in vain?
"Ah, the patient?" Min-jae slapped his knee as if he had just remembered. "You should see that with your own eyes. Seeing is believing, after all." He grabbed a hospital laptop that had been shoved into a corner and slammed it down onto my bedside table. It was a pretty old model, judging by the loud whirring of its cooling fan. Even if it was ancient, it was still hospital property—couldn't he handle it with a bit more care? Classic Min-jae.
"Here," Min-jae said, pressing the power button. "Log into the EMR. Check the patient's next chapter for yourself."
"...Okay." I placed my hands on the keyboard. The familiar hospital logo appeared on the screen.
CUMC - EMR SYSTEM
I entered my ID and password and hit Enter. A complex list of patients and order windows filled the screen. I typed in the patient's registration number... and hit Enter. The chart opened. Swallowing hard, I began to scroll down.
Let's see. Reason for admission: TA (traffic accident). GCS was poor... blood pressure low... open pelvic fracture... Right, let's skip past all this. I already knew it. I quickly scanned down the emergency room records.
...So they did record it. Let's see. That's done. The surgery report... well, it would be full of things I didn't know anyway, so pass. The most important thing was the record after admission to the ICU. I clicked on the progress notes tab.
Starting from the admission note written by the trauma surgery team, the screen filled with dense, hourly records. TICU admission V/S: BP 80/50... Exploratory laparotomy performed again... External fixation done as well...
"...The surgery took forever. It was almost eight hours."
"Yeah. It must've been brutal. It would've been a total bloodbath. If you hadn't set things up properly, they probably wouldn't have even been able to start the surgery before he died on the table," Min-jae chimed in from the side.
I kept reading down the records. ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) suspected, ventilator settings adjusted once. Pass, pass... I quickly skipped through all kinds of complex treatment records. Was this patient currently alive? Finally, I saw the most recent vitals and nursing notes.
V/S: BP 110/70, HR 90 bpm, SpO2 98%. "Oh..." A low gasp escaped my lips. The numbers on the monitor were proof of a miracle. I looked up and stared at Min-jae sitting beside me.
"...He's alive, for now."
Min-jae met my eyes and smirked. "Right? He's alive." He added a very realistic caveat. "Of course... this is just the beginning. For a major trauma patient like that, the real war starts after the surgery is over and they're moved to the ICU. Sepsis, DIC (Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation), multi-organ failure... all kinds of shitty complications are lined up waiting for him. He still has to fight through a hell of a storm to survive."
He paused for a moment and looked at me again. "But he's alive. He didn't die on the table. Thanks to a certain lunatic."
I couldn't take my eyes off the laptop screen, digesting the survival record of the patient I had just verified. He was alive. I turned to look at Min-jae, who was casually sipping his coffee next to my bed.
"Senior."
"Yeah?"
"So, what's going to happen to me?"
"You?" Min-jae asked back. His expression was hard to read. "Yes. What about me?"
Min-jae stared at the ceiling for a moment, lost in thought. A faint smile played at the corners of his mouth. "Well..." he began, speaking as casually as if he were talking about someone else. "Last year, even after you performed that crazy emergency laparotomy, the Residency Committee let you off with just a reprimand and a one-month pay cut. The patient survived back then, too. And this time, the outcome was good again. The patient is lying alive in the ICU, and they're even saying his prognosis is good thanks to you..."
At those words, a tiny sliver of hope bloomed in my chest. Right, maybe this time, somehow...
"Hmm... I don't know, though. You're probably screwed."
Excuse me? No, seriously, you build up all that hope just to pull the rug out now?
"Huh?" A dumbfounded sound escaped my mouth.
"Now, let's think about this carefully together." He leaned forward, looking me straight in the eye. "Last year, you were a green first-year resident. It was your first time causing trouble. We could somehow package it as, 'He was just overflowing with a burning passion to save the patient and made a mistake.'"
Um, I think your premise is wrong, Senior. First of all, isn't a first-year performing an emergency laparotomy way more insane than a second-year doing it? That's not something you can just write off as youthful bravado.
He paused, letting out a cold laugh. "You're a second-year resident now! This is the exact phase where residents get cocky because they've tasted a bit of the ER. On top of that, you already have a prior record of causing a massive incident last year and going before the Residency Committee. And now, you went and performed a REBOA in the ER Resuscitation Room, right in front of the Trauma Surgery professor! And it was basically you who volunteered to do it first!"
Well, his points were all true. But I really couldn't comprehend this guy's brain. Seriously, wasn't a first-year performing a laparotomy way crazier? Why on earth did he think this was worse? Maybe he had some sort of "first-time offenders get a pass" logic in his head.
"This isn't something that can be packaged as mere passion anymore. You're a lunatic. An incorrigible repeat offender. A ticking time bomb." Min-jae shook his head. "I don't think this will end with just the Residency Committee. You'll probably be referred to a formal Disciplinary Committee. Who knows if they'll revoke your residency qualification altogether."
Ugh, why does he keep scaring me? Stop making me anxious, man. Right then, Min-jae suddenly smacked me on the back.
"It's fine, it's fine!" Min-jae's voice had returned to its usual frivolous, boisterous tone. What do you mean it's fine? It hurts like hell.
"You save a patient, you get screwed over, and that's how a doctor grows! Am I right? What is life anyway? You've gotta get screwed over at least once!" Min-jae cackled.
"I'm screwed too, anyway! It's undeniable that you pulled off that crazy stunt under my tacit approval—hell, basically my complicity. I'll probably get dragged to the Disciplinary Committee right alongside you and get torn to shreds like a dog. We're in this together! What is life anyway? Enlisting together! Getting disciplined together! Bwahaha!"
"Uh... so we're screwed?"
"Yep," Min-jae replied with absolute clarity. "You and me both. Side by side, as a pair. We are completely, utterly screwed."