Chapter 25

Episode 25 TIME IS BRAIN (3) (1)

“Oh, right. Hyunjae.”

“Yes?”

At the shout calling me, I turned my head to see Fellow Park Se-young (Male) standing there.

I was just trying to leave work, so why was he calling me?

Don't tell me he's going to chew me out because I did something weird?

No, looking closer, I saw that he was trying to hand over a bunch of papers from his hand.

Could it be my Appointment Letter? Is he sending me to some branch hospital?

Or Disciplinary Action? Because I wasted too much time?

However, my Delusion ended right there.

“This, the Family of the Myocardial Infarction patient who visited earlier for a Sore Throat asked to deliver it to you.”

Looking closely, it seemed like a post had been uploaded to something like the hospital’s 'Let's Praise' Bulletin Board.

The content was a long Letter of Gratitude left behind by the patient's family.

「… That way, he received treatment safely and is in a Stable Condition after Hospitalization…」

「…Thank you for not viewing it as a simple Cold, for showing interest, and for saving his life.」

As I read down one by one, I felt something touching came rushing in from deep inside my heart.

A greeting of gratitude and a person who found their life back.

…

There is absolutely nothing bad about studying a lot.

Let's do this, Han Hyeonjae (Male).

I was able to prepare to leave work with a gentle smile.

The moment the shift ended and I stepped out of the hospital gates, the tension in my entire body loosened and my legs shook.

I let out a sigh and walked listlessly toward the bus stop like that. Although my mood had improved thanks to the compliment letter, the fatigue did not get any better.

The only fortunate thing was that the bus arrived right away.

Oh yeah.

Only after boarding the bus and stuffing my body into a corner seat that smelled musty did a short sense of liberation come rushing in.

The world outside the window was flowing by so peacefully.

I opened the blue window inside my head, which was my only communication channel and outlet.

The wrapping up of a shift is, as expected, best done together with the crazy ghost bastards.

I decided to toss a new question.

It wasn't a particularly grand test or question.

I was just… curious. What kind of other strange things, similar to mine, these dead experts had experienced during their lifetimes.

Title: So, do you guys have no other experiences like this?

Author: Korean Slave 1 (Male)

Aside from the thing where you thought it was a heart disease but it turned out to be Muscle Pain, what else have you been fished by? Unpack some of the greatest fishing stories of your Doctor's Life. I can't be the only idiot here.

My post was a self-deprecating piece of trash text begging for a kind of camaraderie.

However, to the ghosts, it seemed to be a topic more interesting than any medical discussion.

As soon as my post went up, a story party opened in the gallery.

Among them, a systematically organized information post that uniquely stood out was uploaded as a popular post.

Title: [Information] A complete summary of the mimic bastards that will ruin you if you miss them in the Emergency Room.txt

Author: Latte is Mine

I clicked on that post as if possessed.

Aortic dissection (* Aorta dissection)

Mimicking diseases: Myocardial Infarction, lumbar disc, abdominal pain, Stroke, and even fainting.

Characteristics: Tearing pain is the classic, but there are also a damn lot of cases where they come in just saying it hurts a bit. The blood pressure difference between the left and right arms is important, but in more than half of the cases, there is no difference. In one word, a parentless disease.

Underneath that post, the tearful experiences of countless ghosts started to be attached as comments.

Mes of the God (Male): Aortic dissection is the most fucking awful. When I was a resident, there was an old man who came in just saying his back hurt. The Orthopedic Clinic sent him back with only painkillers saying it was a disc, but the next morning, DOA (* Dead on Arrival). When they did an autopsy, the abdominal Aorta dissection had burst. The Orthopedic Clinic doctor's office was turned upside down that day.

Operating Room Ghost 3 (Male): For us, a man in his 20s was carried in because he fainted, and we just thought it was a Vasovagal syncope (* vasovagal syncope, the most common type of fainting). But when we took a CT, the ascending aorta was completely torn from beginning to end. We raised him straight to the operating room from that spot, but….

Reading their comments, I felt a chill run down my spine.

The bench press was cute.

The real disaster comes visiting with an ordinary face.

I scrolled down.

PE (* Pulmonary Embolism)

Mimicking diseases: Simple breathing difficulty, anxiety attack, pleurisy, Myocardial Infarction.

Characteristics: They come saying they are out of breath, but in the majority of cases, the Oxygen saturation is perfectly fine. The EKG is also mostly normal. D-dimer is damn ambiguous. If the heart beats fast for no reason, you must suspect it unconditionally.

ㅇㅇ (118.235): Don't miss PE. There are a damn lot of cases where a patient who came saying they were a bit out of breath, but was ignored because the oxygen saturation was okay, stood up to go to the bathroom, walked, and arrested just like that. Unexplained Tachycardia (* a condition where the heart rate is abnormally fast) must be suspected unconditionally.

I engraved those experiences into the deepest part of my brain.

Finally, I wrote a new post in the gallery.

Title: What are some other unique cases currently trending in the gallery?

Author: Korean Slave 1 (Male)

At my question, the ghosts started to unpack all sorts of bizarre stories as if they had been waiting.

ㅇㅇ (Semi-fixed IP): There was a gentleman who came just saying his head hurt after drinking alcohol, but when we took a CT, a cerebral aneurysm had burst. Almost got fucked.

Take care of your mental health: There are cases where you really thought it was a mental illness but it turned out to be a brain tumor, and there are also cases where you thought it was a brain tumor but it was just a real mental illness. Life is a gacha. It's just random. There's no choice but to take a shot of everything.

ㅇㅇ (39.7): There is also a gentleman who got hit by a truck but walks in fine saying he is okay. He could pass out out of nowhere because of internal bleeding. Try pressing his abdomen hard once. Then he will collapse while screaming.

I see. I should engrave this well.

Just then.

I felt a very cold and sharp gaze from my side.

Turned my head, a young woman sitting in the next seat was staring at me with a look full of wariness.

When I made eye contact, the woman was startled and slithered her body away from me.

‘What is this? Why is she like that?’

I cleared my throat and straightened my posture.

And I inadvertently got to see the cellphone screen held in that woman's hand. She was exchanging messages with a friend.

And I ended up seeing it.

The yellow speech bubble that she had just typed.

[The person next to me is weird;; He's looking into the void by himself, laughing, and muttering, I think he just got discharged from a university hospital psychiatric department]

…

My brain stopped.

I slowly turned my head and looked out the window again. My appearance reflected in the car window was, no matter who looked at it, the wretched sight of Patient A who had just escaped from a closed ward.

Moreover, a crazy bastard who giggles while looking at the void.

It was perfect.

..It's not like that..

I could only repeat the most desperate and sad excuse in the world inside my heart, which wouldn't be heard by her.

The woman in the next seat hurriedly got off at the next stop.

In the empty seat left behind by that woman, only a bitter self-hatred remained, wondering if I really was a mental patient.

Yes, no matter who looked at it, I must have been a crazy bastard.

Chuckle to myself while looking at the void, and muttering with a serious expression.

I could vividly see that woman telling the story of the 'crazy bastard I met on the bus' to her friends.

Did the bus run for about 10 minutes in full swing?

I tried hard to erase the thoughts of the gallery and was looking at the street with empty eyes.

Just then.

Because my head was looking to the right, I could see the back seat to some extent, and the head of an old woman who was nodding off and dozing by the window in the seat behind me suddenly snapped to the side with a thump.

That movement was so unnatural that my gaze went toward that side without me realizing.

One corner of the old woman's mouth drooped down, and saliva started to drool from her powerlessly opened mouth.

At first, I thought she had just fallen into a deep sleep because she was too fatigued.

Soon, a middle-aged woman sitting in the next seat lightly shook the old woman's shoulder with a worried voice.

“Excuse me, are you okay? You must be very tired.”

Only then did the old woman faintly open her eyes.

However, the old woman's answer pierced through all the noise inside the bus and stuck into my ears like a dagger.

“Ugh… o… okay…”

Slurred and strange pronunciation.

Like a person whose tongue was paralyzed, each and every word came rolling out crushed.

I started to feel something ominous.

Facial paralysis.

Speech disorder.

Inside, the thought ‘Is it a stroke?’ brushed past.

Two out of the four most classic symptoms of a stroke were unfolding in real-time right before my eyes.

However, I could not move hastily.

No, what if it isn't?

The memory from just a few hours ago caught my ankle. The collaboration of the bench press and mara xiang guo. My fuss and the giant reality check resulting from it.

What if that old woman is just too tired, or if her pronunciation leaks because her dentures don't fit well?

If I step forward again, making a fuss saying ‘I am a doctor! This person has a stroke!’ and it turns out to be nothing?

Every person inside the bus will treat me like a mental patient, just like that woman earlier.

I turned my head and pretended to look out the window with effort.

From behind, the middle-aged woman in the next seat could not hide her worry and kept asking the old woman.

“Are you really sure you're okay? Your complexion looks so bad. Is there anywhere uncomfortable?”

“Ugh… my head… a biit….”

The old woman's answer was still slurred. The drooped corner of her mouth did not return to its place.

Ha, wait a minute.

I closed my eyes tightly.

The voices of the ghosts, that tedious nagging, brushed past my mind.

‘Patients do not come like a textbook. Always think of the worst.’

‘That minor symptom you ignored decides the remaining life of the patient.’

When it comes to brain diseases, time is no different from gold.

A stroke is a disease where brain cells permanently die off as each minute and second passes.

Even at this moment when I am hesitating here, blood vessels might be blocked or bursting somewhere in that old woman's brain, and irreversible damage might be progressing.

Embarrassment. And a person's life.

The scale had already tilted to one side.

So in the end, I turned my head back.

I stood up from my seat and headed toward the back seat. The middle-aged woman stared at me with a wary eye. I pulled out my wallet from my pocket. And I pulled out my employee ID from inside it to show her.

“Hello, ma'am. I am an emergency medicine doctor…”

My voice did not tremble.

I looked straight into the old woman's eyes and said,

“By any chance, could you do it just once as I tell you to?”