Chapter 39

Episode 39 Aftermath (1) (2)‌

I placed my hands on the keyboard. A blank word processor screen.

A blinking cursor.

When it actually came to writing the first words, my fingers wouldn't move.

My mind went blank.

In the end, with the feeling of grasping at a final lifeline, I knocked on the door of the [Dead Medic Gallery].

Subject: Ao, you fucking bastards, it looks like I'm about to get fired from the hospital, ughhhhhhhhhhh

Author: Korean Slave 1 (Male)

At my desperate scream, the gallery, which had been quiet, was instantly turned upside down.

ㅇㅇ (210.94): What??? Fired??

Operating Room Ghost 3 (Male): Fuck, that can't happen! Hey! Just a moment! Calm down!

Latte is Mine: You saved a person, so surely they won't fire you completely just for that. I guarantee it. However… your salary might be cut, or your training period could be extended. Maybe about a 3-month suspension?

Bone Nerd 88 (Male): No, you can't, Hell Slave!!!!! With those clumsy hands of yours, opening a private practice will absolutely never work out, so what are you going to do if you get kicked out of the university hospital!!!! Then who is going to look at my bone marrow slides!!!!!

The comfort was not comforting at all.

Especially that bone pervert bastard, he only thinks about himself until the very end.

Yes, we are in the same boat.

If I get fired from here, the only real-life sightseeing attraction for those ghosts will disappear too.

After that time passed, finally, the gallery opinion gathered into one.

‘For now, let's save the Hell Slave.’

And the worst collaboration, which no one had wanted, began.

That way, I started writing the statement of explanation while receiving help from the Mes of the God (Male).

I wrote the first sentence.

‘The patient was in a state of severe hypovolemic shock at the time of admission.’

And stopping for a moment, I threw a question to the Mes of the God (Male).

Korean Slave 1 (Male): So was that really the only way? Seriously? Could we really not have held out by pouring in IV fluids and pumping in blood until surgery arrived?

Mes of the God (Male): The patient was already in a shock state defined by ATLS (*Advanced Trauma Life Support). The blood pressure was unrecoverable. If you didn't block the source of the bleeding, the patient would have died of cardiac arrest within 10 minutes.

Ehh… ha… right.

Listening to that explanation, I transferred the contents dictated by the Mes of the God (Male) exactly into the statement of explanation.

‘…Therefore, I judged that it was impossible to maintain the patient's life solely through continuous IV fluid and blood transfusion therapy, and as the only means to directly check and control the source of bleeding, I decided to perform damage control through an emergency laparotomy.’

Oh. Look at the sentence. It sounds like a total expert.

I continued to throw questions.

Korean Slave 1 (Male): What about entering through a midline incision?

Mes of the God (Male): The best approach that can secure the fastest and widest field of view. Write it exactly like that.

Korean Slave 1 (Male): What about packing the four quadrants of the abdominal cavity?

Mes of the God (Male): A standard technique to find the bleeding site while simultaneously reducing the overall amount of bleeding. Write that exactly too. Because anyone looking at it will see it's textbook material.

The Q&A with the Mes of the God (Male) continued.

I filled in the blanks of the statement of explanation while writing down the comments.

Medically, the statement of explanation was becoming a flawless, perfect document.

However, the real problem starts now.

The realm that cannot be explained medically.

Korean Slave 1 (Male): …So how do I write about speaking informally to seniors and acting insolently to the professor?

At my question, the Mes of the God (Male) fell silent for a moment.

Mes of the God (Male): Fudge it over with something like, ‘Because I was focusing all my mind on the patient in shock, I did not properly perceive the surrounding situation.’

…Fudge it over? Is that an issue that can be solved by fudging it over?

Korean Slave 1 (Male): No, do you think that makes sense?

Mes of the God (Male): Then what are you going to say? You can't write, ‘The Dark Flame Dragon inside me awakened, and without realizing it, I became arrogant.’ Anyway, well, sorry. Be careful in the future.

Fuck.

He's right.

With a deep sigh, I added a line to the statement of explanation as instructed.

Next problem.

This is the real highlight.

Korean Slave 1 (Male): What about a 1st-year resident performing surgery with crazy hand skills? How do you explain this? I can't write that you entered my body and did it. The whole hospital knows I'm a dumbass who can't even catch an IV line, so how do I explain that I suddenly became the god of laparotomy?

At my desperate question, the Mes of the God (Male) once again put forth a clear solution.

Mes of the God (Male): …Fudge that over roughly too.

Korean Slave 1 (Male): That's the most important part, you ghost bastard!!!!!!

Mes of the God (Male): Then what are you going to do? You can't write, ‘I was actually a hidden genius surgical fanatic, but I have been hiding my skills for the sake of humility all this time.’ Just write something like, ‘With the sole determination to save the patient, I performed a technique that I usually only practiced through image training, exercising superhuman concentration.’ There is no way to give a logical explanation in the first place.

I was frustrated once again by those words.

Yes. There is no way to give a logical explanation.

Because something that doesn't make sense actually happened.

In the end, following that advice which wasn't really advice, I had to package the secret of my wondrous hand skills with a fantasy novel-like sentence: ‘superhuman concentration and image training.’

Will there actually be anyone who believes this?

Meanwhile, Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) was sitting on a chair at the station, pressing his temples hard while holding his head.

He couldn't take his eyes off the empty bed number 2 in the Resusc.

He could not believe that what had happened there just a moment ago was reality.

His brain was refusing to process the information.

Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) desperately retraced the past hour. Everything was misaligned.

First, Han Hyeonjae (Male) is crazy.

This is a clear fact. Suddenly getting fish eyes, he spat out informal words right to the faces of his seniors. This isn't just a stress response or a temporary state of shock. Clearly, a serious problem has arisen in his mind.

Second, that crazy bastard put a knife to a patient's body.

A 1st-year resident in Emergency Medicine. The very same Han Hyeonjae (Male) who couldn't even catch an IV line properly and made more bruises on patients' forearms than on his own, who didn't have a lick of technical skill, picked up a scalpel and split a person's stomach.

Up to this point, it should have just ended as a horrible medical accident, that is to say, an unprecedented attempted murder case committed by a out-of-his-mind resident.

However.

Third, that crazy bastard saved the patient.

A dying patient. A patient who had set foot on the threshold of death due to excessive bleeding.

Fourth, he saved him through surgery, at that.

It wasn't a botched cutting. In the eyes of Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) himself, no, even in the eyes of Kang Hyun-joon (Male), who is a general surgery professor, it was a swift and accurate damage control surgery close to perfection.

Fifth, the place where that surgery happened was not an operating room equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, but the emergency room Resusc exposed to all sorts of contamination.

Sixth, the person who performed it was not a surgeon with decades of experience, but an EM doctor.

Seventh, and the most nonsensical fact.

The one who accomplished all of that was a mere resident who was barely about to shed his 1st-year tag, let alone being a specialist.

Does this make any sense?

Each proposition could exist individually.

A crazy 1st-year resident.

A doctor who saved a patient.

Treatment in the emergency room.

But all these propositions happened simultaneously within a single person named Han Hyeonjae (Male).

It is a logical contradiction.

A collapse of causality.

Sung-hoon Yoo's (Male) brain stopped thinking. Reason could no longer handle this incident.

Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) called out to Nam Joo-hyun (Male), who was sitting in the seat next to him, staring into the void with an equally soul-less expression.

"Hey, Joo-hyun."

"…Yes, Teacher."

"This…."

Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) couldn't bring himself to continue and just moved his lips.

"Do you think this makes sense?"

"Yes? What does?"

Nam Joo-hyun (Male) asked back with unfocused eyes.

"Hyeonjae."

At those two syllables of the name, Nam Joo-hyun (Male) furrowed his brow as if trying to think of something for a moment, but soon shook his head.

"Ah… I don't know?"

Seeing that reaction, Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) became certain that his thoughts were not wrong.

Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) leaned his body toward Nam Joo-hyun (Male) and lowered his voice.

"No, seriously. Isn't he possessed by something?"

"…Yes?"

"Think about it. That hand movement. That informal talk. This can't be explained by something like an awakening or an explosion of potential."

Sung-hoon Yoo's (Male) voice was becoming increasingly filled with certainty.

In front of a phenomenon that could not be explained by reason, he was reaching the most irrational conclusion.

"Is there any famous shaman place near our hospital? Shouldn't we at least do an exorcism ritual?"

At that serious question, instead of an answer, Nam Joo-hyun (Male) only stared at Sung-hoon Yoo (Male) with a gaze that said, 'Why are our 4th-year EMs all like this…'.

I stared blankly down at the statement of explanation I had just finished.

Emergency_Medicine_Han_Hyeonjae_Statement_of_Explanation_FinalFinal.docs

Who on earth would believe this kind of bullshit?

With a deep sigh, I closed the laptop.

Whatever happens, happens.

My head was complicated.

I wanted to forget for a moment.

Without any thought, I accessed the [Dead Medic Gallery] again.

I scrolled down and found the traces of the scream I had left behind.

And underneath that post, I discovered that a new festival was opening in a completely unexpected direction.

Taking my incident as an opportunity, the ghosts were each sharing their own disciplinary action stories that they had buried in their hearts.

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Subject: [Story] Hearing that the Hell Slave is going to the disciplinary committee reminds me of my old story, so I'll share it.

Author: ㅇㅇ (118.235)

There was a time on a medical helicopter when I couldn't wait for it to land, so I jumped from a height of 1.5 meters.

Below, a multiple trauma patient was dying from excessive bleeding, and the helicopter was fumbling around due to strong winds.

The pilot and the EMT were freaking out and trying to stop me, but I just jumped.

Thanks to that, the patient was saved, but later when I returned to the hospital, a disciplinary committee was held saying it was a violation of aviation law or whatever, and I had to write a letter of apology, and it was a total shitshow ㅋㅋㅋ

I burst into a hollow laugh.

Operating Room Ghost 3 (Male): A crazy real man ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ So was your ankle okay?

ㄴ ㅇㅇ (118.235): ㅇㅇ It was perfectly fine. Are you disregarding someone from the special forces?

Latte is Mine: Hmm, I think it's right to receive disciplinary action for that.

ㄴ ㅇㅇ (118.235): This old-school, rigid bastard is really something.

Starting with that post, all sorts of legendary heroic stories, or just the eccentric stories of crazy bastards, began to pour out.

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Subject: My reason for disciplinary action was 'assault.'

Author: Emergency Room Fighter

There was a crazy guy wielding a knife in the emergency room.

He was a guardian, and he was causing a riot, asking why they weren't looking at his father quicker.

The security guards were fumbling around, and the police said they would arrive in 5 minutes.

I couldn't just watch any longer.

I decided to use the fastest and most effective sedation therapy on that guy.

ㅇㅇ (118.235): Ketamine?

ㄴ Emergency Room Fighter: I put him to sleep by turning his jaw with a right straight punch. He passed out in one shot. Later, they sued saying it was excessive suppression or whatever, and the hospital held a disciplinary committee because I caused a violent incident. But that day, all the other patient guardians who were in the emergency room took my side, so in the end, it ended with a light disciplinary action. That crazy guy was arrested. I still think that was the best treatment.

Reading that post, without realizing it, I clenched my fist tight.

This guy is definitely a crazy bastard.

The next post was a bit more academic.

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Subject: I almost received disciplinary action for attempted murder.

Author: Cardiology Ghost

When I was a 1st-year fellow, a massive PE (*Pulmonary Embolism) patient was brought in, and his blood pressure was dropping, and he was right on the verge of cardiac arrest.

In those days, for such a patient, there was absolutely no answer other than scraping out the blood clot through surgery.

But they said an operating room would only open up 2 hours later. The patient looked like he would die within 30 minutes.

So I attempted the tPA (*thrombolytic agent) administration that I had just seen in a paper.

Back then, using it for pulmonary embolism wasn't allowed, you know? On the grounds that it could kill the patient through systemic bleeding?

Sure enough, our section chief ran over, grabbed me by the collar, and screamed, asking if I intended to kill the patient.

I just said screw it and pushed forward. ㅇㅇ.

And 30 minutes later, the patient's oxygen saturation rose, and his blood pressure returned.

He came back to life like a miracle.

Of course, a disciplinary committee was held for that matter, so my salary was docked for half a year, and I was chewed out like a dog.

But in the end, it was listed in the standard guidelines, right? ㅎㅎ My only sin was being too far ahead of my time.

Starting with those posts, the gallery was filled with all sorts of bizarre disciplinary action stories.

Reading down those stories one by one, without realizing it, I burst into laughter.

They were crazy bastards who broke the rules and crossed boundaries in their own eras and in their own ways.

I became not so terribly afraid of the disciplinary committee.

Of course, it was still scary, shitty, and something I wanted to avoid.

But at least I wasn't trembling in fear like before, thinking that my doctor's life would be ruined.

Rather, I even felt a strange sense of belonging.

I guess I am now adding my own three-letter name to the lineage of those legendary crazy bastards.

As 'the guy who ripped open a patient's stomach in the emergency room.'

…Even so, since I didn't do this directly myself, is it a bit weak?

With a smirk, I closed the laptop where the statement of explanation was saved.