1
# Chapter 1
A resident in the operating room spoke to Uijin.
“Professor, I’ll finish up here.”
“Alright. Good work.”
It wasn’t that Uijin was dumping the work on him. The resident needed to get some practice suturing skin, even if it was
only this much. It was an opportunity for him, as well as practice.
Leaving the rest to his junior, Uijin walked out of the operating room. The surgery he had performed was to create an
artificial anus, called a stoma, below the navel.
It wasn’t particularly difficult. That was why it hadn’t taken very long, either.
The patient, who was the same age as Uijin, had just had his rectum removed because of cancer, and a new anus had been
created in his abdomen. He had undergone chemotherapy for a long time, but it hadn’t produced enough results.
‘Was the combination of chemotherapy drugs not very good?’
The cancer had been discovered while it was progressing from the early stage to the intermediate stage. Since the tumor
wasn’t particularly large, Uijin had initially spoken optimistically.
‘I’ll do my best. The situation isn’t bad at the moment, so please don’t worry too much.’
Those words had given the patient motivation as well. He had promised to endure it and fight through it. And yet, now he
was lying on an operating table like this.
The cancer had grown much faster than expected. What on earth had happened? As though mocking Uijin’s judgment, the
cancer cells had continued to spread, and in the end, they had been too late by one step.
From now on, this patient would have to live receiving his stool through his abdomen until the day he died. If he lived
to be a hundred, it would be a truly bleak prospect.
Uijin remembered the patient’s face collapsing when he had struggled to bring up the subject of a stoma. Despite
enduring harsh chemotherapy and desperately holding on, the man had eventually shed tears.
‘If it were me, I would have reacted the same way.’
Still, Uijin had squeezed out words of comfort, telling him that at least he was alive.
After leaving the operating room, Uijin stripped off his surgical gown. The latex gloves and mask all felt cumbersome.
“Haa.”
He let out a deep sigh. It had already been twenty years since he became a doctor. No matter how much treatment he
performed, it was still difficult. He had never gotten used to the burden of knowing that another person’s life could go
one way or another depending on his judgment.
‘Where did things go wrong?’
Uijin had been good at studying when he was in high school, so naturally, his goal had been medical school. There was no
special reason. Everyone said it was good, so he thought it must be good for him too.
Everyone wanted to attend medical school, and getting into the medical school everyone wanted had been a great source of
pride for him. After all, there was even the saying that doctors were like gods.
So Uijin graduated from a prestigious medical school and joined one of the most renowned university hospitals.
The problem was that after filtering through all those stages, he himself ended up being filtered out. He had been
ranked first in his entire school throughout high school, but once he entered medical school, he became
middle-of-the-pack among the geniuses, and he had barely managed to cross the threshold into the hospital.
His glorious days had been brief. There had been a time when he stood at the very front, ahead of all his competitors.
He was ashamed of how much he had believed that position would last forever.
After arriving at his office, Uijin took a short break to read a novel. It was his only source of enjoyment these days.
Doctor X was a typical medical novel, but Uijin quickly became immersed in it as a way to escape reality.
*As if mocking the hospital director’s words that it would absolutely be impossible, Seonghyeok saved the patient as
though he possessed the hands of a god.*
The part Uijin was reading was an important moment in which the protagonist, Im Seonghyeok, displayed his skills.
Despite all kinds of unfavorable circumstances, he saved the patient with almost supernatural medical skills. It was a
predictable development, but Uijin felt refreshed every time he read it.
‘I should have become a doctor like this too.’
The respected Im Seonghyeok was more than enough for Uijin to live vicariously through. Even the hospital director who
had tormented the protagonist was ultimately unable to say anything in the face of his outstanding abilities.
‘Wow, what a joke. He was acting all high and mighty before.’
The hospital director was an insignificant character who kept making ridiculous excuses about having no money and being
short-staffed. It was a little pitiful that he was under pressure from the board of directors, but in the end, wasn’t it
his own fault for doing whatever he was told?
But in reality, Uijin was often ignored by the hospital director.
“Professor Jeong, there have been more gastrointestinal surgeries this time. How about you performing surgeries later in
the afternoon?”
By “later in the afternoon,” he meant that by the time Uijin finished his surgeries, it would be dawn. Apparently, the
recently appointed professor was acquainted with the hospital director, and it seemed the director was determined to
support him.
Since everyone in the hospital had to share a limited number of operating rooms, Uijin inevitably ended up lower on the
priority list.
“Of course. I’m fine with it. Please do whatever is convenient for you.”
Still, he made an effort to stay on the hospital director’s good side.
“Right, right. And you. I noticed the CRS colorectal surgery numbers dropped this time. Don’t forget to fill the
required number of surgeries next month.”
It meant that Uijin was supposed to recommend surgeries that didn’t necessarily need to be performed. Surgery was the
hospital’s biggest source of revenue. It was an absurd demand, but Uijin lowered his head. He even added the hollow
response expected of him.
“Yes, understood.”
A professor was ultimately still an employee of the hospital. He couldn’t avoid worrying about what his superior
thought. Especially since Uijin didn’t have a single reliable connection to back him up. Unfortunately, he wasn’t
extraordinarily talented as a doctor, either.
That was why Uijin had chosen a stable medical specialty that wasn’t quite as fiercely competitive. Colorectal surgery
sometimes required him to deal with unpleasant situations, but it still had steady prospects.
That was because endoscopy was mandatory as part of the national health screening program. Everyone over forty had to
undergo it once every two years, so there was guaranteed demand.
‘I need to quit soon.’
In fact, he was preparing to open his own clinic. From the beginning, he had intended to complete his training at the
university hospital and leave as soon as possible.
Of course, he would lose the prestige of being a medical school professor as he was now, but he didn’t care. The only
problem was that he still hadn’t gotten his wife’s permission.
She had initially told him to just hold out until the children graduated from high school. Then she changed it to
staying until they graduated from college. Now she was saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if the children’s father were a
medical school professor when they get married?”
‘She really never considers what I think.’
But there was no reason to feel hurt.
What she had wanted was not Uijin himself, but a “doctor husband.” It would be even more ridiculous to look for love in
a marriage arranged through introductions.
Uijin had also simply chosen the most efficient option, and this marriage had been the best choice for both of them.
And so, Uijin, who had become nothing more than a machine for making money, dragged himself to the hospital day after
day. Occasionally, he would look through Doctor X like this.
---
His head had been throbbing since morning. The reason was that the hospital director had summoned Uijin and was spouting
nonsense at him.
“Now isn’t the time to be making stomas. You should be doing something bigger instead of little things like that. Huh?
If you see cancer, you have to tell them to cut it out no matter what!”
The colorectal surgery department he was in charge of ranked last in performance among the general surgery departments.
Gastrointestinal surgery was first, hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery was second, and transplant and vascular surgery
was third. Last month, breast surgery had been third. Transplant and vascular surgery had been fighting for last place,
but apparently they had brought in a lot of dialysis patients this month.
Uijin, who considered surgery a last resort, could never have good performance figures. Even if he forced a smile for
the hospital director, he didn’t perform unnecessary surgeries just to fill a quota.
Surgery wasn’t about upgrading the body’s functions. It was simply about preserving the previous functions as much as
possible.
And the scars left by surgery didn’t remain only on the surface of the skin. Even if someone looked exactly the same
from the outside, what was inside would never be the same as before.
“Chemotherapy alone isn’t going to solve everything. You understand what I’m saying, Professor Jeong?”
The hospital director spoke as though he had forgotten the days when he himself had been a low-ranking doctor, as though
he had never been a doctor at all.
Uijin saw the hospital director from Doctor X overlapping with the man standing before him. Although unlike the hospital
director in Doctor X, who prevented the protagonist from performing surgery, this one was recommending surgeries that
didn’t need to be done.
People at both extremes exhausted Uijin in their own ways.
‘Why are hospital directors always so desperate to eat doctors alive?’
But Uijin lifted the corners of his mouth despite what he was thinking. This was all part of working life.
“Of course, Director. If there’s a suitable patient, I’ll persuade them.”
“Will persuasion be enough? If a professor tells them to do it, they’ll do it. I’m telling you to be forceful!! Huh? Be
forceful!”
Even after Uijin said he understood, the director only raised his voice further. Uijin responded with a broad smile.
“Hahaha, yes!! I’ll make sure to be very forceful.”
For a moment, he remembered the scene in Doctor X where Im Seonghyeok told the hospital director to stop talking
nonsense. It was something he could never dream of doing in reality.
Inside his head, Im Seonghyeok shouted at the director, and Uijin felt wonderfully relieved.
Even after the hospital director bombarded him with pointing fingers, nagging, criticism, and even personal attacks,
Uijin was finally able to leave the director’s office.
Apparently, the loud voices had carried outside as well, because when Uijin came out, the secretary sitting in front of
the director’s office rolled her eyes.
“Take care.”
He gave her a brief greeting and returned to his office. The moment he sat down, he opened Doctor X. It was the perfect
way to relieve his stress.
---
The Im Seonghyeok in the novel eventually became an incredibly skilled master physician.
Even the board of directors reluctantly appointed him as the next hospital director. In order to ensure that no evidence
remained of the previous director’s schemes against him, however, the former hospital director was murdered.
The first part ended with the protagonist, unaware that the position he was taking had been stained with blood, stepping
onto the stage for his inauguration ceremony.
“Ugh, what time is it?”
Time had flown by while he was reading the novel. Uijin finally put down his phone and stretched.
Uijin checked his phone. It was already close to midnight. Even though he hadn’t gone home, there hadn’t been a single
call from his family. He had worked overtime so often that perhaps they had simply grown used to it.
Phew.
After gathering his things, Uijin left the hospital and took a deep breath. It felt as though the cold air traveled all
the way down into his alveoli before leaving again.
Uijin waited for the crosswalk, then suddenly plopped down on the curb. Even though he had been sitting all day, for
some reason, he found it difficult to remain standing. His body wasn’t tired. His heart was.
The road at this hour was relatively empty. Every now and then, a motorcycle passed by.
Uijin stared blankly at a motorcycle speeding past with a deafening roar. It looked free, as though it wasn’t tied down
by anything.
Not long ago, he had carefully brought up the subject with his wife.
“I’m thinking of quitting the hospital. You remember how your mother said she’d set up a clinic for me when we got
married….”
He had casually tossed out the words as though they were about someone else, but his wife had been startled and
immediately cut him off.
“Why are you doing this now? We agreed you’d stay until the kids got married.”
He had never agreed to that. When had things changed into an agreement like that?
But Uijin wasn’t particularly disappointed. He hadn’t had much hope from the beginning.
The streetlight above his head flickered. It looked as though it might go out at any moment.
Without realizing it, Uijin opened and closed his eyes in time with the flickering light. As his gaze focused on the
bright light, everything around it turned white, as though there was nothing there.
And because he was looking straight above him, he failed to see a cargo vehicle and a truck colliding not far away.
KWAANG!!
By the time he turned his head at the deafening crash, it was already too late. The truck, thrown aside by the cargo
vehicle, was already right in front of him.
SKREEECH!
The truck’s emergency brakes screeched as its tires scraped against the road, producing a sound that felt like it would
tear his ears apart. Uijin was struck by the truck, sent flying through the air, and slammed into the ground.
“Ugh, ugh…”
His ribs and knee hurt as though they had been shattered, and he felt something running down the back of his head.
The cargo truck driver got out of his vehicle with trembling hands, while the truck driver, trapped against the airbag,
shouted.
“Uh… uh… a-are you, are you okay…?”
“Call 119 first! Right now!”
Uijin, lying on the ground, wiped away what was flowing from his head. It was bright crimson red. Fortunately, it was
blood. Perhaps he should be grateful that it wasn’t CSF, cerebrospinal fluid. At least he probably wouldn’t die within
the next few minutes.
But beyond that, his mind could no longer function properly. Uijin’s consciousness gradually faded, and he could no
longer hold on to it.
‘Am I really going to die like this? I want to live. I haven’t done a single thing for myself all this time!!’
He couldn’t die like this. It was too unfair.
With trembling hands, Uijin pulled his professor ID card from his pocket. If they took him to the hospital, there would
be information about him. It was close enough that he should be able to make it there within the golden hour. Please…
Clinging to that hope, Uijin closed his heavy eyes.
That was his last memory.