The Spring Conference? (1)
And so, utterly exhausted, I began my day shift. Well, today is peaceful enough. As of 10:14 AM, only four nightmare patients have passed through the emergency room during my shift. Very manageable.
Nightmare Patient Number One arrived at 7:00 AM sharp. A middle-aged man whose throat had been scratchy since last night. After searching the internet, he convinced himself it was early-stage laryngeal cancer and threw a thirty-minute tantrum, demanding an immediate consultation with an ENT professor and a neck CT scan.
Nightmare Patient Number Two rolled in at 8:30 AM. An elderly woman who thought she had sprained her ankle. Her X-rays showed the bones were perfectly fine. When I explained that she had likely just stretched a ligament, she started foaming at the mouth, shrieking about how a wet-behind-the-ears punk dared to diagnose her ankle, and demanded we summon the chief of orthopedic surgery immediately.
9:10 AM. Nightmare Patient Number Three. A man in his forties who argued for twenty minutes that since he didn't have time for a regular checkup, we should let him register for a comprehensive health screening through the emergency room.
And finally, Nightmare Patient Number Four, who has been screaming at the administration desk for the past twenty minutes, demanding to know why an emergency care fee was tacked onto his bill for a simple cold. Yes. Extremely manageable and peaceful.
I buried my face in the mounting pile of charts. Just then, Lee Min-jae nudged me.
"Ah, yes, sunbae. What's up?" I offered him my warmest, most polite second-year resident smile.
"Uh, Professor Cheon wants to see you."
"Huh? Why?"
"How should I know? Just go." Min-jae shrugged.
...What was with that cryptic look on his face? He was definitely holding back a smirk. A chill ran down my spine as I stood up.
Is it a disciplinary committee? No, wait. I haven't done anything to get disciplined for, have I? All kinds of worst-case scenarios flashed through my mind.
Don't tell me they're dragging me onto the Doctor Helicopter already? Or did Baek Eun-seo tattle on me because I gave her a half-hearted answer to her question yesterday? No, surely not. I trudged down the hallway and knocked on Professor Cheon's door.
Inside, Professor Cheon Eun-jeong was staring intently at a tablet PC.
"Yes, Professor. You wanted to see me?"
"Ah, yes. Hyeon-jae." Professor Cheon looked up. A terrifyingly bright, innocent smile was plastered across her face.
"Are you ready?"
"...Ready for what?" Alarm bells rang in my head. This pattern felt dangerously familiar. A deeply unpleasant memory was trying to resurface. Ready? Ready for what? Did she mean back-to-back night shifts? Or was there a department dinner tonight?
Oblivious to my internal panic, Professor Cheon spun the tablet screen toward me. A colorful poster adorned with various logos filled the display.
"Ready for the Spring Conference, of course!"
"Excuse me?"
"Remember last year? That sore throat myocardial infarction case? How was your poster session experience? It was great, wasn't it!"
...Well, was it? I recalled the nightmare of last autumn. Dragged all the way to Seoul in a suit for the first time in my life, acting as an avatar for the Cardiology Ghost to publicly execute a resident from another hospital, getting cornered by professors from the nation's top hospitals to receive their business cards, and then having to make crazy late-night phone calls because of those very cards.
Was it great? I did get some praise, I suppose. Time to put on the corporate face. I flipped the switch of my inner K-slave.
"Ahaha... Of course! It was absolutely wonderful, Professor! It was an incredibly educational and rewarding experience!" Summoning every ounce of my acting skills, I put on the most deeply moved expression I could muster.
"Right, right!" Professor Cheon nodded with immense satisfaction, clearly thrilled by my reaction. "Anyway, now that you're a second-year, you have to attend the Spring Conference too, don't you think?"
"I... suppose so?" My response sounded more like a question, but Professor Cheon took it as enthusiastic agreement.
"So, are you ready?"
...I had completely forgotten the conference was even happening. The Spring Conference. March. I had only just shed my first-year tag, and with new recruits like Baek Eun-seo and Park Seong-jeong coming in to shoulder the burden, I thought I could finally catch my breath. Why does this hell never end? Spring? In spring, you're supposed to look at cherry blossoms, not attend academic conferences. But I couldn't say that out loud. I could only offer an awkward laugh in front of my beaming professor.
Instead of a cherry blossom ending, I was staring down the gates of hell. But what choice did I have? When a professor commands, a slave—no, a second-year resident—must obey. That is my destiny. I had somehow survived last autumn, hadn't I? Back then, I had mobilized all the ghosts from the gallery to pull off the miracle of writing an abstract in thirty minutes. I would survive this time too. Channeling all my resignation, I replied with as much forced positivity as possible.
"Haha... Then, what should I prepare for the poster session—" Before I could even finish my sentence, Professor Cheon cut me off.
"Huh? Poster?" Professor Cheon burst into laughter as if I had said something hilarious. "No, no. What do you mean, poster? You already did that as a first-year."
Her eyes sparkled. For some reason, that look in her eyes seemed twice as dangerous as when she had ordered me to submit a poster last autumn. "An oral presentation!"
"Huh?" A sound resembling the stupidest voice crack in the world escaped my lips.
An oral presentation? If a poster session was a one-year prison sentence where you just stood awkwardly by a wall for an hour or two, an oral presentation was a life sentence. You had to stand alone on a massive, dimly lit stage with hundreds of professors and doctors staring only at you, hold a microphone, and speak for ten minutes. And was that the end of it? No. You then had to endure a five-minute barrage of Q&A completely defenseless. It was the absolute worst academic torture a resident could experience.
"You have to do an oral presentation! You're a second-year now."
"Professor, I'm still just a junior resident. How could I possibly dare to..."
"Oh, don't worry about that. A second-year is the perfect time." Professor Cheon began swiping through her tablet, excitedly searching for a topic. She looked as carefree as someone picking out ingredients for dinner at a grocery store.
"Hmm... REBOA... Since it hasn't been that long, organizing the data might be a bit difficult... Ah!" Professor Cheon's finger stopped. "Why don't you present the case where you sliced open that patient's abdomen during your first year?"
"What? No... I, uh..." I choked, coughing as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. Sliced open an abdomen? Well, technically, it wasn't me but that crazy bastard, the God of the Scalpel, who did it. But was she really talking about that legendary stunt I pulled in the ER resuscitation room last year?
"What's wrong?" Professor Cheon looked at me, seemingly baffled by my hesitation.
"No, Professor. Please, wait a moment." I fired up every single circuit in my brain to avert this disaster. An excuse. I needed a perfect, logical excuse that a professor couldn't possibly argue with.
"Professor, I've been thinking about this."
"Yes?"
"If I present this, even if it's an emergency medicine conference, things are going to get incredibly messy..."
"Hmm?" Professor Cheon tilted her head, her expression asking what could possibly be the problem.
"I mean, I cut open a patient's abdomen. In the emergency room. As a first-year resident."
"Right."
"Even if it was for damage control, doing that in the ER, and as a first-year..."
"Yes."
"If I present this, won't the general surgery department absolutely despise me?"
Yes, this was it. The ultimate logic. 'A resident from your department dared to encroach upon the sacred domain of general surgery.' This could easily blow up into a matter of pride between departments and hospitals. There was no need to needlessly provoke general surgery in this hospital ecosystem. At my defense, Professor Cheon rested her chin on her hand, falling into deep thought.
She's taking the bait! Please! Let it work!
"Oh... That's a very reasonable analysis."
Yes! I cheered inwardly.
"Yes! Exactly! If I present this for no good reason, it'll only sour our relationship with general surgery... So I should just quietly do a poster—" Just as a relieved smile was about to bloom on my face...
"Hmm..." Professor Cheon smacked her lips. "That's a shame. Professor Kang Hyeon-jun from trauma surgery actually loved it."
"...What?" Another stupid sound slipped out of my mouth. What? Professor Kang? The trauma surgery professor? The very guy who had personally witnessed me—well, the God of the Scalpel—perform that emergency laparotomy when I was a first-year. Why on earth would those prideful surgeons actually like this?
"Professor... His expression back then was terrifying, though..."
"On the outside, maybe. But he contacted me privately later and was full of praise, saying that first-year resident had incredible guts and that your basic procedural skills were rock-solid. Even Vice President Yoon Tae-ryong laughed when he heard about it."
...Thank you, God of the Scalpel? My excuse was completely blocked. I made one final, desperate struggle.
"Even so, isn't it a bit too heavy of a topic for a mere second-year resident to present..."
"Hmm, is it?" Professor Cheon pretended to ponder for a moment, then looked at me with a devilish grin. "Then how about you slice open a few more abdomens so we can do a retrospective study with three or four cases..."
"What?" My face went completely pale. What on earth was this crazy professor saying...
"Haha! I'm kidding, I'm kidding!" Professor Cheon slapped my shoulder, laughing heartily. "Of course that should never happen. It's not like you're crazy enough to slice open another abdomen."
Professor Cheon was laughing, but I couldn't bring myself to join in.
"..." Silence. I couldn't bring myself to answer. How can I be so sure I won't do it again? After all, I already held the button in my hand—the one I bought for 5,000 LP that could summon the devil at any moment. Ah, right. My points. I'll have to check them later.
As my silence stretched on, Professor Cheon's laughter gradually died down. "Hyeon-jae?" Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you so quiet?"
Only then did I snap out of it and force the corners of my mouth upward. "Haha... Y-yes, of course. Why on earth would I do something so crazy again?"
"I should hope so." Professor Cheon still looked slightly suspicious, but she didn't press any further. I thought to myself: I don't know. Will there really never be a time in the future when I have to cut someone open again? I honestly don't know.