“Dr. Jung,” Joonmyun announces to the operating room, “will make the incision.”

The first-year resident freezes like a deer caught in the headlights. The only part of Jung Kijoon’s face on show is a pair of wide, light brown eyes, but they’re more than expressive enough to show Joonmyun the flash of panic the 25-year-old feels at the sudden command. Joonmyun understands. He felt the same the first time he was told to actually cut a patient himself. Instead of having the nice, relaxing ride in the OR he’d expected, assisting a senior surgeon, being told exactly what to do, and basically being a glorified theatre nurse, something critical was suddenly in his hands, something that could cause a disaster if he made even the tiniest mistake. It’s every junior resident’s dream to operate on a patient - you just don’t feel like a real surgeon until you’ve picked up the scalpel and made the cut yourself - but when the moment actually comes, it’s terrifying. Joonmyun knows Kijoon is ready for this, though. He’s been assisting in cardiothoracic surgery for the past three months, and when Joonmyun had mentioned it to the attending surgeon this morning, Dr. Lee had agreed it was time Kijoon took the next step.

He nods encouragingly at the young resident. Kijoon visibly gathers himself and steps forward, swapping places with Joonmyun to take the lead surgeon’s position at the table. The patient is a 63-year-old man with lung cancer, and the surgery they will be performing today is a thoracotomy with wedge resection, cutting out the tumor in the left lung along with a wedge-shaped piece of the surrounding lung tissue.

He watches as Kijoon runs his fingers down the sternum and across to find the second intercostal space, then moves down across the ribs until he’s at the fifth intercostal space, where he palpates through the flesh to feel for the ribs. He takes a skin marker and draws a 6-inch purple line, indicating where he’ll make the incision. Joonmyun moves closer to check the position.

“Good,” he says. “Go ahead.”

Kijoon takes his place again and holds out a hand. “Scalpel."

The theatre nurse passes him the sharp tool. Kijoon holds it gingerly in his fingertips and moves it slowly towards the patient's side.

“Not like that.” Joonmyun stops him. “Don’t hold it like a pencil. Put it in your hand and grip it firmly.” He takes the scalpel from Kijoon and demonstrates, holding the scalpel deep in his palm, then passes it back.

Kijoon grips the scalpel properly, puts it against the patient’s skin, and hesitates. Joonmyun watches carefully. So does everyone else in the operating room - the anesthesiologist, the respiratory therapist, the intern on her cardiology rotation, the head theatre nurse and two assistant nurses, all interested to see how the first-year resident will handle his first live cut. Kijoon takes in a visible breath and draws the scalpel down the purple line. Six pairs of eyes look expectantly at what he’s done. There’s a short, loaded silence.

“Hmm,” Joonmyun says, fighting to keep the grin from spreading across his face. Kijoon has drawn a beautifully accurate line along the fifth intercostal space, as proven by the string of tiny, bubble-shaped beads of blood slowly rising up on the skin, but the cut is so shallow it’s barely even a scratch. He wants to laugh, but that wouldn't help the resident’s confidence at all. He remembers all too well how hard he’d taken every joke at his expense when he was new to surgery.

“Sorry,” says Kijoon. Joonmyun can sense the nurses and the intern all grinning behind their masks. He forces his voice to remain calm and not betray his own amusement.

“Well, go on,” he says. “Try again. Push on that thing and make a decent incision.”

Kijoon grips the scalpel, then realizes before Joonmyun has to tell him that he’s holding it like a pencil again and adjusts his grip. He brings the blade back up to the top of the incision line, pushes deep into the patient’s skin and draws it down. Everyone looks again. This time Kijoon has incised down to the subcutaneous tissue.

“Good,” Joonmyun says.

Kijoon leans forward again, but Joonmyun stops him. “Deep knife,” he reminds the resident. Although the patient’s skin has been scrubbed, the hair follicles may still contain traces of bacteria, so any scalpel used to cut the skin is considered contaminated. Once the incision is made, the “skin knife” is exchanged for the “deep knife”. When Kijoon puts the skin knife down and turns to the head nurse, she’s already holding the next scalpel ready.

The resident works his way down through layers of greasy yellow fat, and Joonmyun assists, using the suction to push aside the layers of fat and point the way. What would take him twenty seconds is taking the nervous resident ten minutes, but Joonmyun is patient. There’s only one way to get experience, and that’s by doing it. He’d far rather the kid was over-cautious than careless. Finally they get to the fascia between the ribs, and Joonmyun taps it with his suction.

“What’s this?”

“That’s the fascia overlying the external intercostal, Dr. Kim.”

“And beneath that are?”

“The internal and innermost intercostals.”

Joonmyun nods. He gently edges Kijoon over, takes the scalpel, and incises the fascia in one delicate . It’s time to get a move on with this surgery.

He’s about halfway through the lung resection when he hears the operating room door slide open. He doesn’t pay it much attention. People sometimes do come and go during surgery, and it’s his job to focus on the patient, not do crowd control, but the voice of the new arrival still filters through his focus.

“There’s a call for Dr. Kim. Apparently his wife is in labor.”

Now Joonmyun looks up.

“What?” He turns to stare at the nurse standing in the doorway, fingers frozen in place, halfway inside the patient’s spread-open ribcage. “What did you say?”

“Your wife, Dr. Kim. Lee Yejin? She’s been admitted to the labor ward.”

Joonmyun’s mind has frozen along with his hands. He takes his fingers out of the patient’s chest and the head nurse takes his tool from him. The shock only lasts for a second. Then panic crashes into him like a 100-mile-an-hour train.

“What? WHAT? Yejin is in labor? Now? She can’t be. She’s not due till the end of December!” The words fall out of his mouth so fast they’re tripping over each other. “I - I’m not ready yet!”

He looks wildly around the operating room. The surgical team are all staring at him like he's lost his mind. It's probably an accurate assessment, Joonmyun thinks, trying to tamp down on his panic. He looks back down at his patient with the rib spreaders holding his chest open and his half-resectioned lung visible between the metal protractors and clamps. The head nurse is talking to the messenger, and her words only partly penetrate his panicked thoughts. Is something wrong? Why is Yejin in labor nearly 4 weeks early?

“Go call Dr. Lee,” the head nurse is telling the messenger. “Ask him if he’ll take over. Dr. Kim needs to go.”

Yes, yes, Joonmyun needs to go, but he can only go if Dr. Lee - the attending surgeon and Joonmyun’s senior - agrees to take over this partially completed surgery. There’s nobody else in the room capable of doing it, and even if Dr. Lee agrees, Joonmyun will have to stay here for at least another 15 minutes while Dr. Lee stops whatever he’s doing, gets down to the surgical suite, gets changed and scrubs in. He has to calm down, but it’s hard when his heart is hammering and his mind is going round in panicked circles. He’s terrified something bad has happened to make Yejin go into labor early, and he’s also terrified by the fact that Yejin is in labor and he’s not there with her. He has to be there. He’s been to all the classes with her, learned how to breathe and how to do the pain management techniques, promised her he’ll be by her side the whole time. He can’t let her go through this alone.

“She’ll be fine.” The head nurse is apparently reading his mind - or maybe his panic is obvious even to people who can’t read minds. “Babies don’t pop out instantly, you know. Dr. Lee will be here soon and then you can go.”

“Okay. Yes. You're right.” Joonmyun nods several times. He can do this. He can get a grip. He shoves the jabbering voice of panic to the back of his mind and ruthlessly forces himself to focus on finishing the section of the lung he’s on and getting it in a good place for the attending surgeon to take over.

It seems like a hundred years before Dr. Lee arrives, but it's actually only 20 minutes before the older man walks calmly in through the operating room doors. Joonmyun doesn’t even wait to give his senior a polite greeting before he’s babbling out the steps he’s taken and the part in the procedure he’s gotten to. He’s actually bobbing up and down on his toes with agitation by the time he rushes to a stop, staring wide-eyed up at his taller colleage. Dr. Lee’s eyes crinkle above his mask in an amused smile.

“Okay, Dr. Kim,” he says. “I got this. Off you go.”

Joonmyun doesn’t wait to be told twice. He bolts out of the operating room and into the scrubbing area, where he de-gowns so fast he actually rips the tough disposable fabric. He hurls gloves, cap and gown in the general direction of the trash can, doesn’t see if they actually make it in, frantically scrubs his hands and arms up to his elbows in yellow soap, kicking at the foot-controlled petals of the taps to wash it off. He pelts down the corridor and skids to a sliding stop at the elevators. The staff elevator is on the 13th floor and the public one is at sub-basement 2. Forget it. Joonmyun runs to the stairwell and bangs through the heavy fire door.

He flies down three levels of stairs and along the corridor to the labor ward, where he skids to a halt in front of the reception desk, the rubber Crocs he wears in surgery screeching on the vinyl floor. He hears a low, steady wail that builds and builds until it becomes an scream, then fades away again. The sound is so primal it sends shivers through him. Is it Yejin? It doesn’t sound like her, but he’s barely heard her even raise her voice before, let alone scream.

He spins around in a circle, still panting from his flat-out sprint to get here. There’s nobody at reception and he needs to be told where Yejin is. Thankfully the receptionist appears seconds later, a cup of steaming coffee in her hand. Joonmyun almost pounces on the reception desk, his body hitting the high wooden front with a thump he doesn't even feel. "Lee Yejin," he gasps. "Where's Lee Yejin?"

The receptionist sits down placidly and taps at her keyboard. Joonmyun jitters, forcing himself not to scream at her to hurry up. “Ah, here we are. Room 8. That’s straight ahead and to your -” she trails off as she looks up, finding she’s talking to empty air. Joonmyun is already gone.

He finds room 8. The door is closed and a large sign on it tells him to “please knock”. He knocks obediently, but can’t bear to wait for an answer before he’s pulling it open and staring inside. His eyes immediately find Yejin, lying on the bed with the back in a half-reclined position. She looks at him and smiles, and his hammering heart gives an immediate cry of gratitude to see her alert, calm, and looking as well as ever.

He crosses the room rapidly to stand at her bedside. She reaches out a hand and he takes it in both of his, trying to calm himself down. He’s fighting a losing battle there though, and they both know it. She smiles at him, that beautiful smile he loves so much, as clear and calm as ever.

“Are you okay?” Joonmyun asks her. He glances around for the nurse. “She’s okay, right? Why is it early? This - this is not supposed to happen yet!”

Yejin laughs as the nurse starts to reassure him. “We’re a little early, yes, but three and a half weeks is only on the borderline of preterm. There’s barely any extra risk of complications to the baby at this stage. Sometimes these things just happen.” The nurse shares a smile with Yejin. “Little Yejoon is eager to meet his mom and dad, that’s all.”

Joonmyun drops onto the chair at the side of the bed. He brings Yejin’s hand to his face and rests it against his forehead, closing his eyes.

“Darling,” Yejin says. Her voice is low and soothing. “You’re shaking. Don’t worry. I’m absolutely fine, I promise.”

“I was doing a lung resection,” he tells her. His voice is shaking too. It's the adrenaline flooding his system. “I got a shock, that's all... Dr. Lee took over for me, but I was scared something was wrong, or that I wouldn’t get here in time...”

“Is that why you’re in scrubs? I should have known.” Joonmyun opens his eyes and she wrinkles her nose at him. “Go and get changed.”

“No,” Joonmyun says, shaking his head. “I just got here! I’m not leaving now!” He glances around again. “Where’s Jongdae - I mean, Dr. Kim?” He amends for the sake of the nurse. His friend is supposed to deliver their baby. Even though there’s no indication that they’ll need the presence of a medical doctor rather than a midwife, and Yejin’s pregnancy has been perfect, Joonmyun still wants the highest possible level of care for his wife. Now that she’s gone into labor early, he’s glad he insisted. The nurse can say all she likes about the risks being not much higher for babies born three weeks early, but Joonmyun knows his medical literature. Over the past eight months he’s read hundreds of studies around childbirth, along with nearly a library’s worth of books on parenting, and he remembers every detail. There’s a 10% increase in the incidence of respiratory and cardiac illness in babies born earlier than 37 weeks, and there’s no way in hell Joonmyun is going to take any chances.

“He’s performing a C-section,” the nurse tells him. “He’ll be done in ten minutes.”

“Honestly, love,” Yejin tells him. “Go and change. I’m only at 7 centimeters, and the contractions are three minutes apart. You have time.”

“But,” Joonmyun protests, “but what if it just starts happening? I mean, you might just suddenly fully dilate and -” he makes an expansive gesture.

“Then I’ll hold him in until you get here.”

Joonmyun stares at her. “You can do that?”

Yejin smiles at him. “I’m the mom, aren’t I?”

Joonmyun tries to remember anything in the literature that says a mother can purposefully hold back her childbirth, but hasn’t come up with anything when Yejin’s fingers tighten around his. “Contraction,” she whispers when he looks at her. Her face tenses and her body tightens as she squeezes his hand. She doesn’t scream, just makes a small groaning noise in at the peak of the contraction, which fades away as her body relaxes. She pants a little, and he sees the beads of sweat on her temples as she sags against the bed.

That does it. Wild horses are not dragging Joonmyun out of this room, scrubs or no scrubs.

“Does it hurt a lot?” he asks anxiously.

“Only when the contraction is happening. It’s not bad between. Kind of like really bad cramps.”

“Do you want entonox?”

“I don’t think I need it, at least not yet.” Yejin nods to where the “laughing gas” tube is lying on the bed on her other side. “I’ll take it if it gets too bad.” She his hand. “Don’t look so worried, love. This is all supposed to happen.”

“How are you so calm?” Joonmyun asks shakily. “I should be the one comforting you.”

“You wouldn’t be my Joonmyun if you didn’t worry yourself to close to death about me,” she tells him fondly. Then her face changes a little - a listening look. “Do you hear that?”

Joonmyun listens. The screams he’d heard on his way in have ceased, and now he hears a different cry. A smile comes onto Yejin’s face.

“That’s a newborn,” she whispers. “Someone’s just had a baby.”

Joonmyun looks at the round shape of Yejin’s stomach, her belly button pressing out under the white sheet. His son is in there, and he’s on his way out. He still can’t take it in. Is he ever going to be ready for this? For being a father?

“This is so sudden,” he says. “I thought we’d have three more weeks to prepare.”

“I know," Yejin says. “I didn’t even wash the cot sheets yet.”

Joonmyun gives a gasp of laughter. Cot sheets? Anxiety is pouring every obstetric and neonatal emergency he’s ever come across through his mind, and she’s worried about cot sheets? She truly has nerves of steel. She should be the surgeon, not him. Though maybe teaching math to nine-year-olds takes stronger nerves than open heart surgery. Somehow it wouldn’t surprise him.

Yejin has another contraction, and again she makes no noise other than that low groaning in , though she nearly crushes Joonmyun’s fingers.

“Are you sure you want to hold my hand?" she asks when it's over. "I don’t want to be responsible for ending the career of a top cardiothoracic surgeon.”

“I know a guy in hand surgery if you do any damage,” Joonmyun says. Yejin giggles, then groans. "Oh Go