“…What did you just say?”
Time stopped.
I slowly lifted my head.
‘I’m fucked.’
Sirens blared in my head.
This was on a completely different level from getting publicly humiliated by Nam Seunghyeon from Internal Medicine.
That had just been me getting ignored. This was insubordination—hurling profanity straight at a senior’s treatment.
My brain screamed as it scrambled for a solution.
It wasn’t like I could say, “I got pissed off because of the system window.”
An excuse.
An excuse.
I needed an excuse.
The most plausible, divinely inspired excuse possible.
In the span of one second, I ran tens of thousands of simulations.
And my survival instincts squeezed out the final answer.
I suddenly smacked myself in the head.
At my abrupt action, Senior Choi Sumin and the nurses around us widened their eyes.
“I was saying that to my stupid self, Doctor!”
“I failed to properly do even the most basic patient history—history taking (*History taking, medical history interview)—and nearly delayed the diagnosis! I was so utterly pathetic and fucking useless for missing even something that basic! I cursed at my own stupid self! I deserve to get my ass beaten!”
It was a divinely inspired performance that dragged up every last scrap of my soul.
A deranged act of hitting myself in the head, paired with an excuse that sounded logical but had a screw loose somewhere.
My senior looked down at me in silence.
I could feel the complicated thoughts turning in her head, as if she were thinking, ‘Is this bastard really insane, or is he putting on a show?’
After several seconds of silence, a deep sigh finally escaped her lips.
“Hoo.”
Her icy expression softened.
“Enough. Lift your head.”
I slowly straightened my back.
“That was originally something the triage (*Triage, patient classification) nurse should have done, but they missed it because they were busy. It’s not your fault, so don’t worry about it. And aren’t you pushing yourself too hard lately?”
I lived.
The tension drained from my whole body, and my legs trembled.
“No! I’m fine!”
“Enough. Since you made the patient’s diagnosis, you explain it to the patient and guardian.”
After saying that, my senior turned her head back to the monitor.
I bowed and headed over to the patient.
Bed B-17.
The patient looked bewildered by the sudden treatments.
“Sir, you must have been very startled. We’ve identified the exact cause of your pain.”
The patient’s eyes wavered anxiously.
“Do I have some serious disease?”
“It’s not a serious disease. However, you’ve contracted a very rare type of food poisoning. Have you heard of ciguatera?”
“Cigua… what?”
“To put it simply, you’ve been poisoned by a toxin found in tropical seas. It’s originally very rare, so it’s almost never seen in Korea, but you were a little unlucky. This toxin confuses our nerves a bit. That’s why strange symptoms appear, like cold things feeling hot.”
“Huh. Then what happens to me now?”
“Fortunately, we found the cause quickly… and treatment has already started. The IV fluid going into your body right now will help flush the toxin out. We’ve also given you something similar to a painkiller, so you should feel more comfortable soon.”
“If I hadn’t come to the hospital, I would’ve thought it was just an upset stomach and suffered through it until something terrible happened. Thank you, truly.”
After explaining a few more precautions to the patient, I returned to the station.
It felt like all the strength had drained out of my body.
I quietly opened the system window.
[LP Owned: 600]
‘Cut in half, but still 500 points.’
I opened the shop list and checked the possession skill once more.
[Price: 5,000 LP]
‘4,400 points to go.’
There was still a long way ahead.
***
After the ciguatera commotion ended, the B-17 patient stabilized and went through the admission procedures for the ward.
The emergency room quickly returned to normal.
A drunk causing a scene, the cries of a child whose head had been split open after falling, and the phone ringing endlessly.
After dealing with three or four more patients in that chaos, it was already nearing midnight.
I was sitting at the station to catch my breath for a moment when Senior Choi Sumin approached and lightly tapped my shoulder.
“Hyeonjae, good work. Go to the on-call room and at least get some sleep.”
“No, I’m fine. I’ll finish charting first and rest afterward.”
I forced myself to answer bravely and sat back down in front of the EMR.
The patient list filled the screen.
‘61-year-old male patient. Presented around 19:00 today complaining of chest pain. Lost consciousness immediately after arrival and went into cardiac arrest. At 19:27, CPR initiated in the Emergency Medical Center resuscitation room. Epinephrine 1 mg administered a total of five times at three-to-five-minute intervals, but…’
My fingers felt heavy as they tapped the keyboard.
Ah, I’m tired…
Physical fatigue and mental exhaustion hit me all at once.
I let go of the mouse for a moment and leaned back against the chair.
What could the penalty for possession be…? Severe full-body muscle pain. Just how bad would that be?
And under what conditions does this Gallery appear for people?
How should I efficiently earn LP?
In the end, unable to overcome my curiosity, I accessed the [Dead Medical Scholars Gallery] again.
Should I just lurk and read more posts?
I was curious what these ghosts usually talked about for fun.
I clicked the popular posts tab. Then I read the title of the post at the very top, the one with the most comments.
Title: Anyone seen something rarer than me? Yeah?
Author: GangnamGreatDoctor
28-year-old male patient. Sudden crushing chest pain. Showed classic infarction findings, so we went straight into coronary angiography, but the coronary arteries were clean. Turned out to be Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (*Takotsubo cardiomyopathy) caused by extreme stress. Takotsubo in a young man. If any of you have personally diagnosed and treated a case rarer than mine, step forward.
It was a fairly interesting case.
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy usually appears mainly in postmenopausal women.
A case presenting in a young man with ECG findings perfectly identical to myocardial infarction really was rare.
The person using this ID had definitely been a doctor overflowing with pride while alive.
With an interested expression, I scrolled down and checked the comments.
Anon(14.52): Must’ve died when you were a fucking newbie, lol. What’s so rare about this that you’re strutting around? I’ve seen Takotsubo plenty of times.
BackInMyDay: Tsk tsk. Kids these days diagnose one thing like this and make it their lifelong bragging right.
As expected. It was full of provocation and insults from the start.
Communities were the same whether you were alive or dead.
When someone boasted, someone even more impressive would always appear to stand above them.
Sure enough, the final boss appeared in the very next comment.
GodOfTheScalpel: Tsk tsk. I’ve even operated on SCAD (*Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection) that occurred in a pregnant woman in her thirties. It was a case with an anomalous coronary artery origin on top of that. All the cardiology and thoracic surgery professors had gathered and were tearing their hair out, but I went in, put in four stents (*stent, a metal tube inserted into a blood vessel), and saved her.
Goosebumps rose on my skin.
Coronary artery dissection in a pregnant woman.
It was the kind of case that made my palms sweat just imagining it.
The heart could rupture, and the fetus would be in danger too—a worst-case scenario.
But he operated and saved her? Just what level had this guy called “GodOfTheScalpel” reached as a surgeon when he was alive?
For now, he became the first name on my possession list. What list, you ask? The one I just made.
It seemed there were quite a few people in this Gallery I needed to pay special attention to.
Because if I didn’t record anything, there might be a catastrophe where I had the points in an emergency but couldn’t use possession properly.
As I kept lurking, one comment among them stood out as having a distinctly different vibe.
HitByATruckGuy: I know a fuckton about trauma (*trauma, physical injury) patients hit by trucks. Because I died from it. Do you guys know what it feels like when your blood pressure drops from massive hemoperitoneum (*excessive bleeding inside the abdominal cavity) and your vision narrows like a tunnel? What about the feeling of a broken rib stabbing your lung, making blood foam reflux every time you breathe? Have you ever been hit by a truck? If you haven’t, don’t talk. It seriously fucking hurts.
“…”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
The first two ghosts had definitely been bragging about the rarest cases they had treated….
But this insane ghost using the nickname HitByATruckGuy was explaining how he’d left this world, high-fived the Grim Reaper, and strolled down the road to the underworld.
Come on, you people. Please grow up.
What are you going to do if you’re still like this even after dying?
Ha….
These bastards are still spouting this kind of shit even after they’re dead.