The Birth of a Legend
I hate the evening shift commute the most. The clock pointed to 6:55 PM. Stepping out of the taxi, I looked up at the familiar, exhausting hospital building.
Yeah, nice to see you, ER. I'm back. Son of a...
I arrived right on time. Five minutes before my shift. Perfect time management. No need to show up too early and look overeager, and no reason to get glared at for being late. Just the right amount of buffer. I adjusted my tie and forced the corners of my mouth upward. Well, I was going to change into scrubs anyway. Social mode: ON. I equipped my most honest, slave-like smile.
Whirrr— The automatic doors slid open, and the familiar scent of antiseptic washed over me. It was that chaotic hour when the exhausted faces of the day shift leaving met the hollow eyes of the night shift arriving. I couldn't exactly greet them with, Hope your evening is as shitty as mine... so I shouted in the brightest, most cheerful voice I could muster, "Good evening, everyone! Keep up the great work!"
A few nurses sitting at the station nodded in my direction. Just then, my peer Jo Suyeon, who was packing up after finishing her handoff, spotted me. Her face was puffy and drained of life. "Oh, Hyeon-jae. Good evening." There was absolutely no soul in Suyeon's voice.
"Yeah, good job. Now get the hell out of this hospital."
"I'm already on my way, you bastard." Suyeon slung her bag over her shoulder and began rapidly rattling off her handoff notes.
"The main patient I'm handing over to you is the grandma in Bed 6, Zone B. She's an 82-year-old female, came from a nursing home. Apparently, she's been lethargic and unable to tolerate oral intake since yesterday. Her vitals are still stable, but she has a mild fever of 37.8°C and shows signs of mild dehydration, so we started her on IV fluids. Routine labs and a urinalysis were ordered, but the results aren't back yet. Check them as soon as they're up. You'll need to rule out a UTI or aspiration pneumonia. Nothing else out of the ordinary."
"Okay. Got it." I nodded, committing Suyeon's words to memory. With our brief, dry handoff complete, Suyeon left the ER without a single backward glance. I watched her retreating back with pure envy as she walked toward freedom.
I slumped into my seat. The cheap, familiar chair let out a loud creak. The board chairman just upgraded his car to a German brand recently. The least he could do is replace these damn chairs.
Beside me, Baek Eunseo—who must have clocked in ridiculously early—already had her computer on and was staring intently at the screen. Why does she always clock in thirty minutes early? Is it passion? Too much passion just burns you out.
I decided to mind my own business, sat down in front of my computer, and logged into the EMR system. The cold glow of the screen stabbed at my eyes. Cheap hospital office monitors don't even have blue light filters. I began flipping through charts, preparing myself to face the new batch of patients who would undoubtedly torture me throughout the night.
I opened the chart for the grandma in Bed B-6 and scanned her nursing notes and past medical history.
A classic geriatric medical history. There wasn't much I could do until the lab results came back.
I returned to the main screen and slowly scrolled through the list of other patients currently in the ER. Colds, abdominal pain, simple lacerations... It was relatively peaceful so far. Hmm.
Still no sign of the lab results for the grandma in Bed B-6. Flipping through other patients' charts didn't reveal anything noteworthy either. I was offering up a futile prayer that things would stay this quiet until my shift ended when—
"...Excuse me, Seonbae-nim." A small, cautious voice drifted over from beside me. I turned my head to find the first-year resident, Baek Eunseo, looking at me with an anxious expression.
Uh, what is it? A first-year calling out to me specifically. In times like this, it usually falls into one of two categories. First: they bring a ridiculously difficult case and ask, "Seonbae-nim, what is this?" to test me. Second: they made a massive blunder and say, "Seonbae-nim, I'm screwed," trying to drag me down as an accomplice. Both are terrible options. Ah, damn it. I feel uneasy.
I remembered when I was a first-year last year. All sorts of interns and peers would hunt me down at all hours to bombard me with questions. 'Seonbae-nim, please look at this EKG.' 'Seonbae-nim, this patient has abdominal pain, could it be appendicitis?' 'Seonbae-nim, I just gave the patient the wrong medication, what do I do?' 'Seonbae-nim, should I confess my love to her?' If you think one of those sentences sounds out of place, it's just your imagination.
I had to act as a human UpToDate database and a troubleshooter cleaning up everyone's messes. Of course, I wasn't using my own brain, but borrowing the minds of the ghosts from the gallery. Was it time for me to resume that role after all this time? I answered, making sure to sound as tired and annoyed as humanly possible. "Yeah, what is it?"
"Well, Seonbae-nim. It's just that, during the last day shift..." Eunseo fidgeted with her fingers, seemingly finding it hard to start.
"How... how did you do that?"
"Huh? What do you mean?" The last day shift? What did I even do? Oh, right, that was the day I performed a REBOA on my very first patient, got hit with penalty muscle aches at the end, and passed out before being carried away. What did I do? Nothing. I just slept like a log.
"In the resuscitation room... when you did that balloon occlusion!" Eunseo's eyes sparkled with awe. "Where did you learn how to do that? I saw it once briefly during my internship, but it's my first time seeing a resident perform it..."
Ah, crap... That. The mess the Scalpel God left behind. I tried to act nonchalant while desperately racking my brain for the excuse the Scalpel God had fed to Lee Min-jae that day. Where did he say it was? Chungbuk? Chungnam? Ah, I can't remember. Whatever. Let's just keep it vague.
"Oh, that..." I cleared my throat and spun the lie as naturally as possible. "There was a trauma training program at another university hospital in Chungcheong Province a while back. I participated in it briefly and learned it there. I practiced it a few times on simulations."
"Wow... You learned it back then?" Why were her eyes so sparkly? She was looking at me with the pure, clear gaze of someone who had just met a hero from a biography. That look stabbed mercilessly at my conscience. Stop putting so much pressure on me, kid.
"Yeah. Well... I learned it then. I got lucky." I laughed awkwardly, trying to brush it off. I really wished she would just go away now. But the first-year's curiosity was only just beginning to catch fire.
"Then, then you haven't had any separate training or practice sessions since then?!" Her voice rose slightly. It was as if she was asking, 'Are you telling me you pulled off such a miraculous feat with just that single experience?!'
"...Yeah." I gave a brief reply. At my short answer, the sparkle in Eunseo's eyes intensified. Ah, crap. I think I stepped on a landmine. I muttered to myself. In the mind of this innocent junior, I had already become some legendary genius senior who successfully performed a REBOA in the ER with just a single training experience. I was screwed. How was I going to handle this misunderstanding later?
I forced my gaze back to the monitor to escape Eunseo's sparkling eyes. Please, just say 'I see' and go back to your seat. But Eunseo seemed to have absolutely no intention of doing so. It looked as if a massive Wikipedia page about me was already being written inside her head.
"Seonbae-nim." Eunseo called me again. Please stop calling me, I'm starting to get PTSD here.
"Then, by any chance, were you originally preparing for general surgery during your internship, only to switch to Emergency Medicine at the last minute?"
The question was fairly reasonable. The interest and skill in surgical procedures I had displayed weren't things you'd normally expect from an Emergency Medicine resident. Eunseo was undoubtedly imagining some tragic genius backstory where I harbored dreams of becoming a surgeon but had to pivot to EM for some reason, yet unable to let go of my passion, I continued to hone my surgical skills in secret.
Well, not at all. She was completely wrong. I was a man who had run solely toward EM ever since medical school. To be precise, I chose this path for the extremely simple and immature reason that EM looked the coolest. Surgery? Spending all day cooped up in an operating room, absorbing the wrath of the professors? Just the thought of it was horrifying. I might have thought surgery looked cool, but I had never once seriously considered becoming a surgeon. I mean, look at my hands. How could I ever go into surgery?
Should I tell her the truth? 'No, I just watched a drama and thought EM looked cool, so I came here.' Well, there was no need to lie about this too. I had already spun an endless web of lies regarding the REBOA. Adding another lie on top of that would be too risky. I decided to state the facts as plainly as possible.
"No, I barely thought about other departments during my internship. I wanted Emergency Medicine right from the start. Why?"
At my answer, Eunseo's eyes grew even sparklier. What the hell? Hadn't she already written an epic saga about me in her head? Why wasn't she disappointed? Instead of disappointment, pure admiration washed over her face.
"Wow..." Eunseo let out a soft gasp of admiration.
"Then... then, after coming to Emergency Medicine, you started teaching yourself surgical procedures just so you could better treat the trauma patients brought to the ER! And you've been doing this since your residency! That is truly amazing!"
...Huh? Wait a minute. Did I hear that right? I processed her words for a moment. So, Eunseo's interpretation was this: 'This person dreamed of Emergency Medicine from the start. But once he got here, he realized that to save trauma patients, an EM doctor also needs surgical skills. So, Han Hyeon-jae seonbae stayed behind alone during his off-hours while everyone else went home to rest, holding a scalpel, practicing sutures, and mastering laparotomy and REBOA through simulations. All with the sole determination to save patients!'
This was a far crazier misunderstanding than I had ever intended. Would it have been better to just say I was a former general surgery hopeful? All I had ever done was stitch up some pig skin to escape my reputation as a clumsy-handed resident. She was basically writing a biography of a saint here. How should I respond? Should I humbly deny it, saying, 'No, it's not quite like that...'? But admitting, 'Yes! I am exactly that kind of person!' would hurt my conscience too much.
I stood at a crossroads. And, as always, I chose the easiest and most comfortable path. Let's... just go with it confidently. If I act timid and hesitate here, she'll find it even weirder. I cleared my throat and put on a natural, slightly arrogant smile as I replied.
"Haha, well, I suppose you could look at it that way. In an emergency, there's no distinction between internal medicine and surgery. A doctor has to do whatever it takes."
At my flawless acting, pure reverence practically beamed from Eunseo's eyes. She clasped her hands together and looked at me with an incredibly earnest gaze.
"Seonbae-nim."
"Yeah?"
"Then, I'm really sorry to ask, but... could you please help me with something?"
...This flow. This look. This was an undeniable flag. Eunseo was undoubtedly about to ask me to teach her something, or propose we do something together. Something that I had absolutely no idea how to do. I was screwed.