December 13th

Hospital 365
Please Subscribe to read the full chapter

The smaller of the two lecture theatres on the ground floor of the hospital is narrow but high, six rows of ten seats each rising above a low wooden platform and lectern. Jongdae climbs the shallow steps up to the third row, taking the seat nearest the central aisle so that he can get out easily. He tugs nervously at his tie as he glances around the room. It's not too tight, but it still feels like it's constricting his throat.

He judges the lecture theatre to be less than half-full, perhaps around 20 people interspersed through the tiered seats. Some of them are staff surgeons who have been randomly selected across the hospital disciplines, while the rest are junior residents, interns and medical students attending voluntarily for the educational aspect. A low murmur fills the room as the assembled doctors and students talk amongst themselves and wait for the chief of staff to arrive.

Jongdae has dressed more carefully than usual today, the tie paired with a fine cashmere sweater and pressed slacks instead of the open-collared shirts and jeans he prefers. He has run a handful of holding cream and a comb through his hair, lifting his bangs away from his forehead instead of letting them fall down in tousled waves the way they usually do. It makes him look a little more mature, or at least he hopes it does. He gets mistaken for a medical student often enough as it is, and today he doesn’t need any of his esteemed colleagues getting the impression that he’s too young and inexperienced to know what he’s talking about. When Ahreum had gotten the chance to glance at him between trying to get the kids to sit at the table, behave and eat their breakfast that morning, she had tilted her head and smiled.

“You look smart, love,” she’d told him. “What’s the occasion?”

Jongdae had mumbled something about attending a day conference and escaped before she could ask for details. He doesn’t want to lie to her, but he also doesn’t want to talk about this particular conference. She'd worry if she knew he had to speak publicly, and even more if she knew what he had to speak about, and he just doesn’t want to go there. Not with Ahreum, not with his family. He’s always promised himself that he would never bring work problems home, wouldn't let them see when he was stressed or anxious. He wants to always show them a smiling face and keep the darker sides of being a doctor away from them. So far, he thinks, he has succeeded.

Jongdae's usual way of getting through work problems and stress is to go and whine to Chanyeol or Baekhyun. His two best friends have always let him get whatever-it-is off his chest before things get too bad inside his head. They're usually great about teasing him out of it, helping him put things in perspective and bringing his spirits up and out of whatever state of anxiety he's stressed himself into. The problem is that lately, his support system is falling apart. Chanyeol has been so ill with measles that Jongdae wouldn’t dream of worrying him, and Baekhyun has gone so strangely distant and unfriendly lately that Jongdae just hasn’t felt comfortable bringing up his troubles. He's decided he'll just have to grow a spine and get though it on his own this time, but he hadn’t realised quite how hard keeping everything to himself would be.

The cause of today's particular stress arrived via email at the start of the week. The email had informed him that his most recent patient death, Min Jisook’s ectopic pregnancy, had been selected for this month's Morbidity and Mortality conference, and that as the surgeon in charge of the case, he would be required to present it for analysis and discussion.

Jongdae has never had a case selected for Morbidity and Mortality before. He’s attended a few over his career, mostly as an assistant when he was an intern and doing rotations in things like general surgery and cardiology where patient deaths are more common, and a couple of times as one of the randomly-selected staff surgeons who are supposed to discuss the presented cases. The idea of the monthly conferences is to analyse unexpected or unusual patient deaths, go over the decisions made at each step in the patient’s care, and identify any errors that may be able to be prevented in future. It’s not intended to point fingers or assign blame to the doctor in charge of the case, but it’s almost inevitable that that’s how it feels. Jongdae has always felt a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. He was relieved that it was unlikely he’d ever be in the firing line, given that unexpected patient deaths in obstetrics and gynaecology are so rare.

At least, rare until now. Jongdae’s three deaths in the past three months have already skewed his department's statistics. His chief is not happy with him at all. He probably should be thankful that only one of his cases has been selected.

He has one hand in the pocket of his white coat, fiddling mindlessly with the USB stick he saved his slideshow onto. Nerves are crawling up and down his limbs, jumping sickeningly in his stomach. He's glad he escaped the house before Ahreum had a chance to make him eat breakfast. He's always had trouble with public speaking in general, and today it's going to be worse than usual; he will have to relive Min Jisook’s death all over again and defend the decisions he made to a room full of mostly much older and more experienced doctors. It is not going to be easy.

He looks up as the chief of staff enters and walks briskly to the lectern. Dr. Oh Yohan is a tall, distinguished nephrologist with swept-back silver hair and a craggy face. He greets the assembled doctors and students and taps the laptop set up on the lectern to project the agenda onto the screen behind him. Three cases will be covered at today’s conference, and Dr. Kim Jongdae, Obstetric Surgeon and Gynaecologist, is to present first.

Jongdae stands up, walks down the couple of tiers to the front of the lecture room and steps up onto the slightly raised platform. He slips his USB into the laptop and concentrates on the screen as he pulls up his slideshow, trying not to notice how quiet it is, trying not to think about how many people are watching him, trying to ignore his stomach twisting itself into knots. He has listed all the information he needs in bullet points on the slides, so there is no reason to worry that he will forget something important, but rationality isn’t helping his nerves.

His confidence has taken such a blow over these cases. When he went through them afterwards, he never found anything he could have done better, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything. It's impossible to know absolutely everything, even when you specialise. He's afraid there will be something he missed, or some error of judgement he made. He's afraid that his patient’s lives could have been saved if a more experienced, more skilled surgeon than him had treated them. He's afraid that he is negligent, or incompetent, or both, and he just never realised it before.

He opens his mouth to start his presentation, but his throat has gone so tight that not a single sound comes out. A wave of stress and extreme embarrassment washes over him. He coughs and swallows, trying to get his throat to relax enough to let him speak. He fixes his gaze on the first slide on the laptop screen rather than out at the audience, trying to pretend they’re not there. It’s impossible. Even directing all his focus at the screen, he can still sense the pressure of all their eyes, watching him sweat.

He coughs one more time and tries again to speak, and this time, to his immense relief, his voice works. He keeps his eyes fixed on the laptop screen and begins to read out his points mechanically.

“A 22-year-old female was brought to the emergency department after collapsing at home. She had suffered acute abdominal pain for several hours and on presentation to the ED was found to be haemodynamically unstable.” He is careful not to mention Min Jisook’s name, as patient confidentiality still applies. “According to the patient’s boyfriend there was no known pregnancy and she was experiencing menstrual bleeding. Considering the patient’s age, gender and symptoms, the ED team ordered a pregnancy test and an acute ob-gyn consult. Pregnancy was confirmed and I diagnosed a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, a medical emergency in need of immediate surgical treatment.”

He continues to explain every step he had taken, why he had declined waiting for a CT scan, how on exploratory surgery he had discovered the ruptured ovary and why he had decided to remove it. His throat is still so tight it's physically painful to speak, and he has to stop talking and cough several times when his voice gives out. He wishes he had thought to bring water.

He tries to keep his face calm, but he knows by the shifting atmosphere in the room that the other doctors can tell he’s struggling. Some are sending him encouraging or sympathetic looks. Others seem uncomfortable, or scornful, or impatient. His stress becomes so acute that he starts to feel light-headed. He puts one hand surreptitiously on the lectern to try and hold everything steady.

He explains how Jisook arrested, and the steps he went through in his attempt to resuscitate her. His voice gets slowly quieter and quieter until it eventually fades out completely. The room goes distant as the desperation he'd felt in the OR comes back to him. He'd stopped the bleed. He'd fixed her. He just had to get her heart started...

“Dr. Kim?”

He comes back with a jerk. The chief of staff is watching him, an inscrutable expression on his craggy face. With a flash of sheer panic, Jongdae realises he’s just completely blanked out in front of the whole room.

Where was he? He looks back at the screen, finds his place, and resumes describing the resuscitation. He has to take an over-long pauses between every sentence to inhale and exhale shakily, but eventually, finally, he makes it through. By then his whole body is trembling. He clasps his hands together in front of him, praying that nobody can tell.

Chief Oh keeps him standing there while he leads the discussion. First they discuss whether Jongdae should have ordered a CT scan. There’s a half-hearted argument between a couple of the staff surgeons about whether the delay in waiting for a CT scan would have been counteracted by Jongdae being able to go directly to the ruptured ovary, but this line of thought is abandoned when the radiologist present joins in. He points out that the time needed for the patient transport and preparation, the CT scan itself, and the radiologist's reading of the images adds up to longer than it had taken Jongdae to find the rupture via surgical exploration.

“My techs prefer not to have patients arresting in the CT scanner,” he says drily. Jongdae looks up at this, and belatedly realises that the doctor speaking is Kyungsoo. The radiologist sees him looking and sends him a smile. It’s not often that Kyungsoo smiles, and Jongdae feels a slight reassurance from it.

Dr. Bae, the anesthesiologist who had been present during the surgery, stands up next. She reminds them that on opening the abdomen the resident and intern had drained two and a half litres of semi-coagulated blood from the abdominal cavity, which in essence meant the patient had already lost too much blood to easily recover from before Jongdae even started the surgery. After that there are no more points raised, and Dr. Oh finally allows Jongdae to leave the stage.

Jongdae makes his way unsteadily back to his seat and sits down. His mouth is so dry it feels like he’s been trying to eat sand. He loosens his tie and closes his eyes, taking slow, controlled breaths in an attempt to relax his muscles and calm his clenching stomach. He barely hears the second presentation begin.

His thoughts drift to Min Jisook again. He’s kneeling on the OR table, leaning his whole body into the chest compressions. He’s looking at the monitor showing the wriggly v-fib rhythm, then the flat asystolic. He’s feeling her boyfriend’s fist slamming into his eye, knocking him to the floor. He’s hearing his furious words. You killed her. Unconsciously his fingers go to his face, drifting along his cheekbone where the last traces of faint yellow bruising linger. He almost wishes the bruise had lasted longer. He feels like he deserves it.

He sits quietly through the other two cases, the words of the other doctors filtering through without leaving much meaning behind. He should be relieved that nobody disagreed with his decisions or found anything wrong with what he did, that nobody has found a way to blame him for the death of his patient, but somehow, it doesn’t help. No matter how rationally he tries to talk himself through in his mind, the emotions are still there, refusing to let him explain them away. Whether he did right or wrong, his patients are still dead. He was the surgeon. The delicate porcelain of their lives were placed in his hands, and he dropped them.

The rustle and buzz as everyone starts to stand up and move towards the door, talking as they go, tells Jongdae the conference is over. He leans forward in his seat, elbows on knees, and rubs his hands over his face. The nerves and acute stress have receded by now, leaving him feeling utterly drained, and it’s only 10 am.

The sense of someone pausing nearby makes him take his hands from his face and look up. Kyungsoo is standing on the step beside his seat, staring down at him with his usual hooded gaze.

“Hi, Kyungsoo,” Jongdae says, making a valiant attempt at his usual smile. “How’s it going?”

Kyungsoo doesn’t answer. He just sits down in the seat across the narrow walkway and looks at Jongdae through his thick glasses. Jongdae tries to figure out what the radiologist is thinking, but just as he has decided to break the silence and ask, Kyungsoo finally speaks.

“Tough presentation, huh?”

Jongdae gives a small laugh. “Aren’t they all? Public speaking isn’t exactly my strong point.”

Kyungsoo just keeps watching him, and Jongdae gets the sudden impression that the small radiologist is seeing right through him, as clearly as his X-ray machines see through a patient's body.

“And, I guess, the case itself wasn’t the easiest thing to talk about,” he admits.

“It’s never easy losing people, is it?” Kyungsoo's voice is very calm, but the understanding in it touches Jongdae.

“No,” he says quietly. “It isn’t. That girl was so young. She didn’t even know she was pregnant. I can’t stop wondering if there was something more I could have done.”

“There were no errors in your process or decisions,” Kyungsoo says. His eyes flick up to meet Jongdae’s for a brief, rare second, then away again. “Sometimes just happens.”

Jongdae nods. “I know. I do know that, but…” he trails off, sighs. He doesn't know how to explain further. There’s not really anything more to explain. Kyungsoo is right. Sometimes just happens.

They sit in silence for a while, until Jongdae finally shakes his head and pulls himself together. He summons up a smile to send at Kyungsoo. “I'm okay, really. Thanks for listening.”

The radiologist just shrugs, but that’s just Kyungsoo being Kyungsoo, and it makes Jongdae smile a little more genuinely. They go their separate ways, Kyungsoo disappearing back into the radiology department and Jongdae heading up to the ob-gyn floor, where a string of outpatients await him.

 

---

 

The old colonial building looks incongruous to Minseok, crammed as it is between two modern skyscrapers, with four lanes of traffic rushing past on the busy road. The oak-slab door creaks when he opens it, and he steps into a cold, tiled entrance hall with a ceiling several stories high. It smells of ancient polished wood and history, and Minseok feels strangely like he’s just walked into the late 19th century. This place probably hasn’t changed much since it was built, back when the country was still called Joseon. He walks down the long hallway, feet echoing on the tiles, glancing at the polished metal plates beside the doors that lead into the private practice suites operating out of this building. A periodontal surgery, a dermatology clinic, a family chiropractor. He stops when he reaches one that says GreenLine Psychology. Licensed professional counselors Wu Yifan, M.A. & Ryu Changwook, M.A. He reads the sign twice before twisting the gold doorknob and pushing it open.

The reception area is wood-paneled and carpeted in a deep shade of green. Dark leather couches form a waiting area with a mahogany table in the middle. It’s dim and cool, and Minseok wonders if they planned it that way; it’s certainly a calming environment compared to the bright lights and white walls he’s used to. A receptionist sits behind a high desk in the same dark mahogany and doesn’t look up from her computer as he enters. Minseok clears his throat, and she lifts her face to look at him through narrow glasses.

“I have an appointment with Wu Yifan,” he says. “Kim Minseok.”

Her long nails click away on the keyboard and what feels like forever goes by until she nods and points towards the couches.

“Take a seat. He’ll be with you in a moment.”

He sits on the nearest leather couch and tries to relax. The only sounds in the empty waiting room are the ticking from the wall clock and the rapid clacking of the receptionist typing behind the reception desk. It feels eerie. He looks around, trying to focus on something other than the fact that he’s here to see a therapist. He doesn’t really know what he has gotten himself into, just that Kyungsoo recommended Wu Yifan and if he doesn’t see a therapist Jangmi will try and take his girls from him. He’s not convinced he’ll get anything out of this, but he’s going to try regardless. He can’t lose Nayoung and Eunbi.

Ten minutes later a tall, broad-shoudered man steps out from the narrow hallway Minseok assumes leads to the clinic rooms. Sharp dark eyes under severe eyebrows scan the waiting area without expression. He looks intimidating, and Minseok finds himself hoping this is Ryu Changwook, not Wu Yifan. The idea of Kyungsoo playing computer games with this man seems surreal; the idea of him fainting at the sight of blood even more so.

“Kim Minseok?” The sharp eyes lock onto Minseok as he says his name. Minseok wipes suddenly clammy hands on his jeans as he stands up. The closer the man gets, the taller he seems.

“I’m Wu Yifan,” he says, and holds out a hand to shake.

Minseok forces himself to take the hand and shake it firmly. He won't be intimidated. There’s nothing wrong with being here. It’s not like he even really needs to be. He just needs to prove to Jangmi that he’s trying.

The room Yifan leads him into is decorated in the same style as the waiting area, all antique dark woods and black chairs. Minseok sits down in the chair Yifan gestures to and looks around. Next to the wall clock hangs a framed certificate from Seoul National University, awarding Wu Yifan his master’s degree in psychology. There’s a tall bookshelf filled with psychology texts, and Minseok sees more English and Chinese titles than Korean. Yifan sits down in the chair opposite him.

“Please call me Yifan, if that’s comfortable for you,” he says. “May I call you Minseok?”

“Minseok is fine,” Minseok says. “A colleague of mine recommended you - Do Kyungsoo?”

To Minseok's surprise, Yifan’s face lights up, breaking into a smile. He suddenly looks a lot less scary, and Minseok is relieved. Maybe Kyungsoo’s old gaming buddy is hiding in there after all. “Ah, Kyungsoo! I haven’t seen him in a long time,” he says. They talk briefly about how Minseok knows him and about the radiology and emergency departments at the hospital. When this topic comes to a natural close, Yifan gives Minseok a more direct look.

“So,” he says, and pauses.

“So?” Minseok repeats blankly. The doctor/patient setting takes over and his brain automatically starts looking for signs of physical health in the man opposite him. It always bothered Jangmi when he did this, but he can’t just turn it off. It comes with being an emergency physician for so many years.

“What would you like help with?” Yifan breaks the silence. Minseok blinks, remembering that he is the patient in this scenario. It feels so wrong. He hates this. He looks towards the clock to see how much time he has left before he can go back to being the doctor, but there’s still at least 40 minutes left. Yifan just waits patiently for Minseok to answer.

“I don’t…” Minseok starts, and catches himself. He does need help, or at least Jangmi thinks he does. “According to my ex-wife I’m a workaholic.”

“Okay," Yifan says. "And do you agree with her?”

Minseok sighs. "Not really, no. I mean, I am an emergency physician, so naturally I work a lot, but I like working. I don't think it's a problem."

Yifan lifts a questioning eyebrow. Minseok can almost see the way his mind is breaking down Minseok’s words and looking for what hides behind them.

“If you don't think there's a problem with the amount of time you spend working, what made you decide to come and see me?”

“My ex-wife wants me to work less," Minseok says. "She says I need to be more present for our children. She told me to see a therapist and fix my issues, or she'll sue me for custody. I don't want to lose my daughters -” too, he chokes back the last word just in time, stopping with a jerk.

Yifan nods. “Alright, let's start there. Why did you and your ex-wife divorce?”

He’s probably expecting an answer revolving around work, Minseok thinks. A lot of doctors wind up with failed marriages, but in his case, his career had nothing to do with their divorce. He doesn't often get asked this question so directly, and the few times it has come up, he's just said we had differences we couldn't resolve. But that's not what Yifan wants. He needs to know the truth so he can help Minseok keep custody of his daughters.

As Minseok tries to figure out a way he can answer honestly but without letting the emotions that come with speaking the words aloud rise up from where they're safely locked away, a bead of cold sweat slowly makes its way out of his hairline and down his temple. He shivers. The air seems to go thick and heavy around him, and his eye twitches.

“There was...an accident,” he manages to say. His voice sounds weirdly distant. He feels strange. Disoriented. He can see Yifan's mouth forming words, but he can't hear them through the blood rushing in his ears. The box he keeps tightly shut and pushed to the darkest corner of his mind by working, working, always working and never letting himself think bursts open, and Minseok stops seeing the room around him. He stops seeing Yifan, stops hearing his blood rushing, stops feeling his heart pounding. Minseok stops being aware of the present at all.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table, a sea of papers and journals spread out in front of him. The blinds are open to let in the summer afternoon light, and a bright patch of sunlight falls onto the pages of the latest Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter
Like this story? Give it an Upvote!
Thank you!

Comments

You must be logged in to comment
Mistycal #1
Chapter 2: Daddy chen!
Mistycal #2
This looks so cool man like MEDICAL? And looks so well-planned ♡
Rshinichi
#3
Chapter 36: the last chapter is soooooooooooooooo sweet! my heart feels really warm! i wish this would go on forever and ever like 26 seasons or smthng 🤭
Rshinichi
#4
Chapter 35: Minseok watching the "family" go as he holds back his tears... That really shot a hole through my heart 😭
Rshinichi
#5
Chapter 34: Finallllyyy back after my exam break.
Tbh, whoever responsible for the "Doctorness" in this chapter (especially joonmyun's part) really deserves a dozen Grammys!
And OMGGG DR. KYUNGRI AND ZITAO!!!!! I still haven't recovered from the laughing fit!
Rshinichi
#6
Chapter 30: minseok's story really makes me cry... i dont particularly like Jangmi and the way she blames everything on him instead of understanding his feelings </3
ilovewattpad
#7
The series is kinda like Chicago Med TV series~~~
Rshinichi
#8
Chapter 27: jongin and jongdae are such a wholesome duo ! <3
Rshinichi
#9
Chapter 24: OMG THIS SHOULD BE PUPLISHED!!!!!
i know michan is truly an amazing writer but missminew!!!!!! now im gonna read all of missminew's stories like i read michan's !!!!
im still reading this and i am soooooooo hoooooooked!!!!
ilovewattpad
#10
I'll be saving this and printing it out to be placed in my physical library! I totally would recommend this to all EXO-Ls!!!