2
# Chapter 2
When Uijin opened his eyes again, he was in a hospital.
Relief washed over him first. Uijin slowly swallowed and tried moving his hands and feet.
‘Oh, I can move them. Modern medicine really is something. Looks like I made it to the hospital safely.’
Relieved, he let out a deep breath. Or at least, he tried to. But air was being pushed in through a ventilator, interfering with his breathing.
His breathing rhythm did not match the ventilator’s cycle of pushing air in and drawing it back out.
Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep.
The machine’s alarm suddenly began blaring like crazy, and a nurse arrived.
“Oh? You’re awake? J-just a moment.”
She looked at Uijin as though she had seen a ghost, then immediately made a phone call.
“Doctor, this is the SICU, surgical intensive care unit. Patient number 22. He’s regained consciousness. Yes, Director. He’s fighting the ventilator pretty badly right now. What should we do?”
While the nurse was notifying the attending physician, Uijin bit down on the tube in his mouth. This had to be an e-tube used for intubation. It had been inserted all the way into his airway and connected to the ventilator.
He wanted nothing more than to pull it out, but there was a balloon at the end of the tube. It was used to secure the tube tightly inside the airway.
As time passed, Uijin found it increasingly difficult to breathe. It wasn’t just in his head. His oxygen saturation was rapidly dropping as well.
As the SPO2 on the monitor fell below 90, the number changed from blue to green.
Just then, something appeared through the narrow gap of Uijin’s squinting eyes. At the same time, the remaining time continued to decrease.
[Warning: Respiratory distress detected. Death will occur within 6 minutes without intervention. Time remaining: 5:59]
“Uh, uh, just a moment.”
The doctor who had just arrived hurriedly removed the tube, and the words that had appeared for only a moment disappeared again.
What was that? Had he just hallucinated it?
The nurse was still staring at Uijin with her eyes wide open like a frightened rabbit. After steadying his breathing, Uijin belatedly noticed the unfamiliar logo on the nurse’s uniform.
‘That’s not our hospital.’
KNUH. Korea National University Hospital.
It was a common-sounding name, but there was no real hospital by that name. Instead, it appeared fairly often in various novels.
A strange feeling came over Uijin. He pretended that he couldn’t speak and merely moved his lips.
“…”
Voice abnormalities were a common aftereffect of intubation.
“Ah! As you probably know, your voice will return soon. So please don’t worry too much.”
The nurse spoke after seeing Uijin moving his lips.
Fortunately, it seemed to have worked.
After that, the attending physician asked him several questions and conducted some tests. Uijin had a pretty good idea of what he was doing.
Glasgow Coma Scale, GCS. It was used to assess a patient’s level of consciousness and determine whether they had properly regained consciousness.
The GCS was broadly divided into eye-opening response, verbal response, and motor response.
Since he was spontaneously opening his eyes, that gave him the full 4 points for eye-opening response.
“Could you raise your arm for me? Ah, yes. That’s enough. Thank you.”
When he raised his arm according to the instructions, he received the full 6 points for motor response.
And verbal response could not be measured.
‘Phew. Good thing I pretended I couldn’t speak.’
He had almost ended up looking like an idiot who couldn’t answer when asked what season it was. If that had happened, they would have considered him to have an impaired level of consciousness.
Unlike the relieved Uijin, the doctor and nurse treated him extremely cautiously. They seemed to keep sneaking glances at him, though perhaps that was just his imagination.
While Uijin was looking around the hospital, a man wearing a visitor’s gown over a black suit entered the intensive care unit.
From the entrance, he shouted in an incredibly loud voice.
“Director!”
‘Ouch, my ears. Did he leave his visitor manners at home?’
The man, of course, had no way of knowing what Uijin was thinking and came closer.
Standing right beside him, the man’s eyes were red despite his imposing build.
‘But didn’t he just call me Director?’
The man immediately cleared up Uijin’s suspicion. He roughly wiped away the tears running down his face with one hand and spoke.
“You have no idea how long we’ve been waiting. The hospital is in complete chaos right now. Director.”
Uijin couldn’t recklessly react to the bizarre situation and merely blinked.
Just then, an unknown message appeared before his eyes. It looked similar to the one from before.
[Talent discovered.]
Was it referring to this man?
Looking around, it seemed that Uijin was the only one who could see the message.
[Searching talent information.]
After a few seconds of loading, detailed information about the man appeared.
[Name: Kim Jaekyung / Position: Chief of the Secretariat]
Schedule Management: ■■■□□
Administrative Support: ■■■□□
Internal Communication: ■■■■□
External Relations: ■■□□□
* Growth Potential: Minimal
* Favorability: 10
[A prime example of “He’s a good kid.” Because he does exactly as he is told, you must explain things in detail for him to carry out his work.]
[*His favorability has reached max, so he will never betray you.]
‘What the hell is this?’
Uijin rolled his eyes as he examined the information.
When the silence continued, the nurse appeared and greeted the chief of staff.
“Oh, you’re here? But the Director can’t speak right now.”
Come to think of it, information like this hadn’t appeared for this nurse. Nor had it appeared for the attending physician who had checked Uijin’s consciousness earlier.
“Why can’t he…! Does that mean he’ll never be able to speak again?”
After the nurse briefly explained the situation, the man called the chief of staff gradually calmed down. Then he sat beside Uijin’s head and explained the situation in detail.
He said that Uijin had been involved in a traffic accident on his way home from work several days ago and had remained unconscious ever since.
“You were unconscious for three whole days. Just waking up is nothing short of a miracle.”
As Uijin listened to him, he touched his face with his hand. It felt unfamiliar. This definitely wasn’t his original body.
“They said yesterday that there was very little chance you would wake up, but how…”
The chief of staff trailed off as though his throat had suddenly tightened. That was when Uijin noticed the patient bracelet around his wrist.
Choi Beomjun / 37 years old / Surgical Intensive Care Unit - 22
His eyes widened on their own when he saw the name.
Could it be?
This unusual name definitely belonged to the hospital director from Doctor X, the novel he had been reading just before the accident.
---
Uijin had no idea how he had been discharged from the hospital. After spending an entire day and half lying in bed, he left the hospital.
The chief of staff kindly supported him all the way to the director’s office.
“Oh dear, you shouldn’t overexert yourself yet.”
Thanks to the chief of staff’s loud voice, everyone’s attention was drawn to them wherever they went. Each time, Uijin was greeted.
“Good morning, Director.”
“Oh, Director. You’ve woken up.”
“I hope you recover quickly.”
Everyone who saw him lowered their heads, showing him the top of their heads as though they were afraid of him.
Uijin rubbed his ear.
No matter how many times he heard it, that title still didn’t sound familiar.
‘Of all things, why did I have to become the hospital director? If I had to become someone, I wish they had made me the protagonist.’
He grumbled inwardly. He had spent the entire time lying in the hospital thinking about how this had happened.
Had I originally died? How did I even end up inside Doctor X? He couldn’t understand the reason at all. Everything felt hopeless, as though it were hidden behind a fog.
Choi Beomjun, the hospital director of Korea National University Hospital in Doctor X.
Still, one thing he had learned so far was that there weren’t many talents around him. Unlike the chief of staff, he couldn’t see everyone’s information.
Then, the status window he had seen earlier appeared again.
[Main Quest: Recruit a Talent]
Register one talent who will stand on Director Choi Beomjun’s side.
Target: Employee of Korea National University Hospital
* Reward: Survival Probability +3%
* Failure: Death
Death?
He wiped his eyes and looked again, thinking he might have misunderstood, but it was still there.
Did they think staying alive or dying was some simple matter?
It was completely absurd.
He stood in front of a mirror. A cold-blooded man with an incredibly sharp appearance stood before him.
Black hair that looked as though it had been dyed. Beside deeply set, exotic-looking eyes were a high nose and jawline so sharp they looked capable of cutting through something. His cold gaze was an added bonus.
Looking at the triple-white eyes in the mirror gave him goosebumps. No matter how much it was his own face, his appearance was simply wrong from the start.
No wonder the doctors trembled whenever he merely threatened them.
But even without considering his intimidating appearance, Choi Beomjun naturally had plenty of enemies.
Bullying and threatening doctors was an everyday occurrence, and he had never been afraid of making enemies. The more pressure he put on them, the more the hospital’s revenue increased.
He was eventually killed by the vice director, bringing Part 1 to an end.
Beomjun, who was easy to manipulate and exploit, was murdered by the vice director who was in charge of management. It was so that Im Seonghyeok could be elevated to the position of the next hospital director as his reputation grew.
The board of directors, which remained silent about the vice director’s plan, was also in on it.
‘They disguised cardiac arrest as death from overwork.’
A chill ran down his spine.
The fear of death that he had felt just before losing consciousness in the traffic accident seized him once again.
This time, he really would die. He would disappear from the world without a trace.
‘That can’t happen.’
Beomjun clenched his molars tightly.
The vice director would betray him somewhere along the way, so he could make the first move before that happened. Or he could build enough power that the board of directors would no longer be able to manipulate him.
“First, I need to figure out exactly when this is.”
Beomjun sank into thought as he ran through various scenarios.
If there was one thing he could confidently claim was exceptional about himself, it was his memory. Besides, he had just finished reading the novel, so he remembered it particularly well.
When Beomjun smiled, his cheekbones curved upward and his face crinkled. The smile was completely at odds with his cold gaze.
---
In the director’s office, Beomjun leaned back against the chair and sat at an angle.
He had been trying to figure out exactly where they were in Doctor X, but it turned out he didn’t need to.
A man had barged into the director’s office first thing in the morning.
“How many times do I have to tell you!”
It was Im Seonghyeok.
The original protagonist of Doctor X.
Seonghyeok was already worked up that early in the morning, shouting at Beomjun.
‘His voice is ridiculously loud. Even a passing dog would know what he’s saying.’
Now he understood why rumors about Seonghyeok’s actions spread through the hospital so quickly in Doctor X.
Still, thanks to him coming personally, Beomjun was able to check his talent information.
[Name: Im Seonghyeok / Position: Professor of Thoracic Surgery]
History Taking: ■■□□□
Examination: ■■■□□
Diagnosis: ■■■■■
Treatment: ■■■■■
Follow-up: ■■■■□
* Growth Potential: Sufficient
* Favorability: 5
[An intelligent and diligent personality. His standards for achievement are extremely high. Be careful, as he charges headfirst into both those above and below him.]
His diagnostic and treatment abilities were already at MAX, and he even had room for growth.
As expected of the protagonist.
His history-taking ability was somewhat lower, but that was understandable for a doctor who was exceptionally good at diagnosis. It was probably faster for him to make his own judgment than to listen to the patient’s story.
[Register as a talent? Yes/No]
Beomjun tried pressing the talent registration button, but another status window appeared instead.
[Warning: Registration unavailable due to low favorability.]
Beomjun’s eyebrows twitched.
Tsk.
The click of his tongue made a sharp sound.
Meanwhile, Seonghyeok’s voice had continued to grow louder.
“This is a surgery that absolutely has to be performed! Every minute counts. I’m telling you, it needs to be done at least within this week.”
The “surgery that absolutely had to be performed” that he was talking about was heart surgery on a pediatric patient.
The child would need repeated surgeries as they grew, in order to accommodate the increasing size of their body.
‘This is the beginning of Doctor X.’
Beomjun nodded as he thought.
Now he knew exactly when they were.
It was the early part of the novel, when Im Seonghyeok began clashing with the hospital director over surgery for a newborn patient.
Beomjun once again remembered the main quest.
[Main Quest: Recruit a Talent]
* Failure: Death
To survive, he needed to register a talent as soon as possible.
If possible, he wanted that talent to be Im Seonghyeok.