006

Saving Lives, Saving Heart
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The first week of being Yixing's roommate is nothing much to say due to their hectic schedule. The two of them are almost never at home, and only use the apartment as a stopover to spend the night for several hours before they go back to the hospital when it's still dark out there. The cardio rotation enters the third week and it's getting busier as the days go by, she doesn't know why. The patient comes and goes with the variety of coronary disease, some are having mild treatment while others stay longer in the hospital for further treatment, and even undergoing some surgeries. Yeonhee and Yixing are mostly covering Sehun's work in taking after the floor patients and doing some consult at the ER while he's performing surgeries with the attending or some senior residents in the OR.

Yeonhee sees Yixing is getting immersed with the specialty and shows his high interest in it. For the last two weeks, he eagerly learned from everyone, paying close attention every time they performing some procedures. Yeonhee often sees Yixing taking the time to read some patients' charts and look into the details of their disease while reading references from journals in hospital library, or books in the interns' locker or on-call room. He followed Sehun around and never complained despite the senior's cold treatment.

Yeonhee didn't realize this before because Yixing never said anything about it at all, but lately she began to feel that Sehun was deliberately telling Yixing to do trivial things that didn't really need to be done, or even do nurses' job like checking the patient's vital every n-hours and writing them orderly in one blank paper or their chart for additional information. Or when Sehun told him to memorize all the 640 skeletal muscles within the typical human body in 24-hours just because Yixing couldn't answer his question during the morning rounds.

She realizes that Sehun is not as nice as he used to be before she moves in with Yixing, and it's getting disturbing. Yeonhee really wants to protest, and even tells Yixing not to listen to Sehun because he just plays around with him but Yixing casually brushes her off, saying that Sehun's challenge just boosts his desire to learn more and he actually feels happier about it. She really can't understand that guy sometimes. He has too much kindness that she thinks if someone stabs him she's sure that he'll just smile and says that everyone makes mistake, it's too much to take, but at the same time, she respects his tenacity in proving himself to everyone.

Amidst the hectic weeks nearing the end of the year, Yeonhee finally gets her first 36-hour shift schedule that week, and she's excited. Her first twelve hours go smoothly. She starts checking on her first patient at 4:45 am. Vital signs and physical exam findings are stable; all the patient's laboratory data is within normal limits. She writes down a quick note in the chart and off to see the next patient, and after she sees everyone on the floor, she joins Yixing to round with Sehun to come up with each patient's daily plan. She helps Yixing put all the orders into the computer system, discusses the plans with the nurses, and then heads off to the operating room for a full day of case learning, watching Sehun having a redo sternotomy patient with poor cardiac function who needs two valves replaced, several arteries bypassed, and has an aneurysm in the aortic arch involving the vessels to the brain. It takes him 9 hours to finish the surgery, and when it's done, it's already time to start her night shift.

It's her first time being the intern on call, which means she will be covering not only her primary service patients in cardiovascular and thoracic rotation but also all the surgical floor patients. Floor patients, for the most part, thankfully are generally stable, otherwise, they'd be in the intensive care unit. However, as the only surgical intern at night, she will be covering the cardio surgery along with trauma surgery, general surgery, and even transplant surgery—she only hoped that there won't be a case where she has to deal with harvesting someone's organ today because though she has an idea what to do, she's never done this before. More to that, she doesn't like the idea to deal with the death at her first night shift, it's just not a good omen for her, personally. In addition, as the intern, they staff the 24 hour ER and help the senior residents to "run" any new trauma patients that may come in during the evening or early morning hours. And so the night begins...

Her first page goes off right after she gets dinner. She deliberately eats early just in case if tonight will be busy, she orders some Chinese food and has them with the nurses. She calls back to the ER once she reads the message, and a nurse tells her about this new patient who is being admitted for a potential liver transplant the following morning (she almost curses at it, knowing that it's what she scares of. Now she hopes that she doesn't have to do any emergency procedure with the patient). She runs downstairs to see him, and gets a history from the liver guy, does a physical examination, writes the note, then gets all the pre-liver transplant orders in after consulting this with Jongdae on the phone.

Fortunately, none is particularly urgent with the transplant guy. She immediately admits him as the new in-patient and goes to the nurse station to see the trauma nurses. Kyungsoo is on-call tonight, she only finds out that the guy is actually a certified trauma nurse when she thought that he is one of the floors registered nurse of the ward floor. Apparently, the first time they met he was substituting another nurse, who turns out to be Sejeong's famous cousin who was on labor leave. Kyungsoo wants a prescription renewed for pain medication, and an order for an abdominal X-ray to verify feeding tube placement, so she quickly places the orders.

When she's about to head back to the resident lounge, she's notified that another trauma is coming by ambulance in ten minutes. She throws on some gloves just in time for the new trauma to arrive. Luckily this one is not so severe. It's a thirty-year-old man who fell off his motorcycle after a few hours of beer-drinking with some of his buddies. She places an order for a few X-rays and finds a fracture, so she calls the orthopedics resident to come and check him out and see if he needs surgery. She let him do the rest after that.

Another page comes from the ER again half an hour later when she's writing some order notes from the day-shift. She gets a request for field treatment, and this just gets her confused for a moment. Field treatment is not supposed to be her duty, and she's wondering why she has to do the job when they have Emergency Medical Technician service in the country.

"Haven't you heard? The Fire Department went on strike early this morning." Kyungsoo tells her when she asks about it on the ambulance.

"Um, still don't get it why we're here instead of the EMT?" she asks back to have more elaboration.

"The Fire Department provides the ambulances, the drivers, the EMT’s and the paramedics for all emergency calls inside the city. Before they went out, the strikers sabotaged all but four ambulances. Each of those remaining is stationed at one of four hospitals. And since we have one, we’re responsible for all calls around the area. The Red Cross is providing us with qualified drivers, but they are not EMTs or paramedics, and they can do nothing to or for the patient except transportation. Hence we're here." he enlightens her. Yeonhee is wondering how she misses this important information, but then she realizes that she's been inside the OR view room the whole day watching Sehun's performing surgery. So this is why she has no idea about anything at all.

As she listens to Kyungsoo talking about some field procedure, she almost forgets that they're having a call with a head injury patient here. The rest of the flash trip is spent by thinking about some of the cases that she's ever seen when she got her clinical rotation back in med school. She doesn't have that much information because her last neurosurgery cases have been over two years ago and mainly about back pain. She rides in the swaying, wailing ambulance, frantically mining and re-mining her minimal archive on head trauma. The call is to one of the downtown housing residences, the driver drives over sidewalks and through several junctions until they find a small crowd of onlookers.

Kyungsoo helps her getting off from the ambulance before they rush to check on the patient.

Apparently two residents squabbled over rights to a particular clothesline of their residences, which ended when one hit the other with an empty soju bottle. The injury is just behind the left earlobe, barely a bruise—no laceration, no bleeding, no swelling. She suddenly feels a bit silly as she has been overworking her brain too much to worry about some concussion or contusion as she performs a neurologic exam. The patient is mildly intoxicated but otherwise, she's intact.

She prescribes her some soap and water to clean the bruise and to get rest, then tells her to go to the ER if she feels some unusual drowsiness, severe headache, blurred vision, and any other symptom she can remember on head trauma. She gives Kyungsoo the throat-slash “no transport” signal and is about to get back to the ambulance when this voice stops her from rushing back,

"Kim Yeonhee?"

She turns around to the source of the voice who calls out her name, and finds a girl of her age walking up to her with awe and surprised look on her face.

"You're Kim Yeonhee, aren't you?"

Yeonhee raises her eyebrows as she tries to recognize her at the same time.

"Oh, my God. Do you still remember me? I'm Lim Minhee, we went to the same school at Donggak junior high." the girl exclaims happily while holding both of her hands, "Oh my God, I can't believe it. We didn't believe Kim Woobin when he said he ran to you at a subway station last year, but he's right, wasn't he? It's really you! You're still alive! How are you? And you're a doctor now, of course, you are..."

Starting to feel the rush of inconvenience overwhelms her with the over-friendly greeting, Yeonhee pulls her hands back and steps backward defensively. And while still trying to be polite, she gives her another awkward smile,

"I'm sorry, you must mistake me with someone else. I never went to Donggak junior high. Take care of your aunt, stay safe." she says, and she doesn't wait for the girl's another confusing reaction, she bows her head lightly as a goodbye and catches Kyungsoo by the ambulance door to get back to the hospital.

"Your friend?" Kyungsoo asks once the ambulance hits the road.

"No." And seeing her shaking her head Kyungsoo only nods, and they don't speak anything at all to each other until they reach back the ER.

Yeonhee can't stop thinking about it even once she returns to the call room. She sits in front of the computer, staring blankly into the screen while the words of the girl she met repeats in her head. This is not the first time someone claims that they recognize her, as the girl mentioned, a man also said the same thing a year ago when she passed him at the subway station.

But the thing is, even though they call the correct name, what they said about her is not. Like when she said they graduated from Donggak junior high, the truth is, Yeonhee never went to junior high. She's been homeschooled since the elementary until she graduated high school, or at least, that's what they told her. There are so many things that people have fed her about her past, at first she asked a lot of questions to satisfy her curiosity, but as the days went by she realized that there are just more things that can't be answered just because she wants it.

She knows that maybe, the two people who claimed to be her old friends might indeed be her friends. But she has given up to find out more about her life because it never does her any good, so she just lets it slide now. As she sits in the room and retrospects what happened earlier, she just realized that the pager hasn't gone off for at least an hour, which is about as quiet as it's going to be later on. After finishing with catching up the patient's chart, she decides to study for another hour by reading some journals on cardiovascular disease. But when she doesn't feel like taking a bed even after it reaches 1 a.m, she logs on the youtube page when she decides to check on Yixing's youtube channel.

Some of the contents contain about his journal vlogs as med-school student. He videotaped his activities like when he's studying when or when he's preparing for the exam, also when he went to the library for group study or having activities in the lab. She finds that it has become a trend for the last two years to upload some of your activities on YouTube, but what makes Yixing look different compared to similar channels, she noticed, is his honesty in it.

He doesn't pretend to make himself look cool on the screen, but acts as he is instead. Acting like a child, laughing and being cheeky t

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miladee__
wow, thank you for the 100 upvotes! It really made my day! Please comment, upvote and recommend this story to your friends if you enjoy this story, I'll appreciate it sooo much! Love <3

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tonnettie
#1
Chapter 20: Re-reading is so fun! The magic for this story is so strong! You can never just get bored with it.
Athena66
#2
Chapter 20: Dearest each od your stories touches me and warmth me.Amazing since I am re reading all of it...Thank you very much for all the wonderful tales you shares here.❤
amelloo13
#3
Chapter 20: I LOVE IT!! thank you so much for the great stories, i love you
amelloo13
#4
Chapter 20: I LOVE IT!! thank you so much for the great stories, i love you
amelloo13
#5
Chapter 16: OH MY GOD (2)
amelloo13
#6
Chapter 14: OH MY GOD
aleezay #7
Hoping for the best gonna start it today
tonnettie
#8
Chapter 20: Lol I just finished re-reading this a few months back, and now I’m here again very desperate for Yixing fics.
tonnettie
#9
Chapter 20: I really love them! I just had to re-read this ❤️❤️
tonnettie
#10
Chapter 20: I really love them! I just had to re-read this ❤️❤️