Jessica stood in front of the camera flashes like a deer caught in the headlights. All terrible decisions she made in the past began whirling around in her mind, like she was in the exact position as before. The press is after the board of directors, the important people who have a say in this whole issue, and not because of the reason she thinks. Nobody spares a glance at the heiress of Jung Foundation at the moment.

“Dr Jung,” Dr Won gently pushes her away from the crowd of journalists shoving through the emergency department while they were being held back by male hospital staff. They moved to an isolated area and sat on an unoccupied gurney by the hallway.

“What’s happening?” she spoke after calming down.

“I guess the news about the baseball pitcher losing his arm had already reached national TV,”

Dr Won noticed Jessica’s uneasiness, “Hold on, unnie, I’ll get you some water,”

Taeyeon passed through the dark hallway, where the first-year resident is calming her nerves, to go to the front desk across the main entrance.

“I’m looking for a doctor Kim,” a courier was asking around the reception area, holding a fruit basket and a note.

“I’m Dr Kim,” Taeyeon raised her hand as she approached the delivery man.

“No, it says Dr Kim of Neurosurgery,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Wow,” she whispered in disbelief. That almost hurt her pride.

“I’m the only Dr Kim from Neuro,” she said in a ‘duh’ tone, slowly stepping forward to close the space between them, but a random doctor slid in front of her.

“Yes, sorry, that would be me,” she laughs with her eyes, taking the basket and signing on a phone.

“Have a good day, Ms Hyoyeon,” the courier bowed and left. Hyoyeon placed the basket on the reception desk while Taeyeon was still dumbfounded.

“Since when did a new Dr Kim from Neurosurgery happened?” asked Taeyeon in a half-joking manner.

“Since yesterday,” Hyoyeon held out her hand with a smile, “I’m Hyoyeon Kim, by the way,”

She accepted the handshake with a grin, “I’m Taeyeon Kim,”

“Hey, aren’t they a bit early for this?” wondered Hyoyeon. The ‘they’ being the press right outside their hospital like carnivores, famished for a story.

“You think? The rookies haven’t started rounds yet,”

She gasped, “I’m supposed to be teaching children today,”

“Well, good luck with that,” Taeyeon laughed as Hyoyeon shuffled to the Pit. She may not be the only “Fellow Dr Kim from Neuro” anymore, but she’s glad she doesn’t have to handle young doctors for a while. They remind her too much of herself back then and she had never liked being associated with her past.

“Thanks,”

Jessica took the cup of water and sipped on it a little, still feeling the leftover anxiety from her conversation with the gunshot victim she operated on, to the camera flashes giving her PTSD.

“Unnie,” Dr Won started, “I heard you performed an emergency valve repair,”

“I know, that was dumb of me,” Jessica groaned, curling up on the green hospital bed and hiding her face between her legs.

“Not at all! A lot of interns and residents idolize you now, including me,” she smiled.

Jessica, rarely having heard any genuine compliments from people with no selfish intention, hugged her senior suddenly. At the same time, her phone vibrated, signaling a text message.

“It’s time for rounds,” she said with a frown while reading the screen.

--

Tiffany made the decision to become the best dressed in the hospital, only wearing semi-formal attire. Her outfits were always picked out meticulously, which Taeyeon used to about. From middle school until today, Tiffany had never failed being the most fashionable person in the room. In spite of wearing expensive clothes, she’d always prioritize comfort. Above all.

Because at the end of the day, she’s a surgeon. She’d choose staying overnight to check on a patient than staying overnight outside a Hermes store for a limited edition handbag.

“Dr Young!” Sooyoung cheerfully greeted Tiffany, opening her arms wide for a hug. The blonde doctor embraced Sooyoung with much force than usual. The taller woman breathed in Tiffany’s scent which was surprisingly different.

Sooyoung and Tiffany had only been friends since the latter first took patients outside her practice. Unlike Taeyeon who have befriended most attendings in the institution since med school, a couple of months is sufficient enough for the two aforementioned surgeons to click instantly.

Which is why Sooyoung could distinguish Tiffany’s typical outfit and fragrance from an unusual one.

Once they parted, she asked, “Meeting a VIP patient today?”

“No, just you,” she coolly replied.

“Ha-ha, that’s funny,” Sooyoung playfully rolled her eyes, not buying her answer. Her watch beeped for the scheduled board meeting.

“Busy?”

“Morning meetings,” she said with disgust, as if the word ‘meetings’ repulsed her.

“Oh, okay!” Tiffany chirped and Sooyoung looked at her weirdly.

Dr Choi waved goodbye and the blonde woman faked talking to a nurse behind the reception desk. “See you soon,” she called out.

Jessica went to the emergency department where Hyoyeon was refreshing herself with vending machine coffee and reading a patient record. She walked up to her.

“Dr Kim?”

“Good morning, Dr Jung,” Hyoyeon greeted with a teethy grin.

I wish all attendings at this hospital are this nice, Jessica thought to herself.

“You’re on my service today, right?” clarified Dr Kim, giving her the medical charts.

“Yes,” she responded timidly and the surgical Fellow smiled at her bashfulness.

“Great! Let’s get you acquainted with our first patient,”

Sooyoung looked at her analog-digital watch for the nth time in the last twenty minutes. She sat (or technically slumped) on the spring cushioned leather chair as she observed the second hand of her watch move ever so slowly.

Their morning meetings usually start at a later time, but this one is said to be “hitting three birds with one stone”, to quote Sunny. Nothing has changed in their agenda; however, the only difference is that they’re finally meeting with a new investor. The rest are just random words combined in a certain order to create complex sentences where her mind can’t interpret at 8AM without caffeine. She realized being one of the higherups is the most draining thing than handling the trauma center.

Dr Choi’s thoughts were elsewhere in the past twenty minutes, blocking out important details that she was supposed to hear like who the mysterious shareholder is.

Her phone dinged for a Twitter notification, almost startling her.

Tiffany Young replied to your Tweet: “@hotsootuff I’m here to save you, babe!”

Sooyoung tapped on the push notification, with her phone under the conference table, as she had forgotten what the original Tweet was.

“Help me out of this meeting plz.. I need my vanilla latte ㅜㅜ”

“What does this mean…” she muttered to herself.

As if on cue, the door opened and stepped in a familiar pair of Nike sneakers and white slacks—It was no other than her best friend, Dr Young, and she brought coffee! Like an angel in white, she has come to rescue her.

Sooyoung gaped at the sight of her friend, Tiffany smiled with her eyes in response as she began introducing herself at the table like a Kpop idol, and giving them coffee afterwards.

6PM struck and Taeyeon was in her lab, working on a new research. As she does every week.

For years, the purpose of continuing her work had vanished in time. She always has to remind herself that her endeavors are ultimately for people who need it, not out of spite. Taeyeon is known to hold a grudge for a long time, she knows blowing this out of proportion would take a toll on not only to her mental health, but also to her potential patients and volunteers.

Taeyeon grunts in frustration at the paper on the table. It’s filled with doodles of puppies and cats and at the center of the page, a very complicated data set written in blue fine point. If she had listened to her statistics professor back in university, she wouldn’t be having a staring contest with a badly drawn frequency graph. The only progress she made—in the thirty minutes she’d been sitting in the same position—was picking a playlist on her phone and DM-ing Tiffany about how they can surprise Sooyoung.

A sub-I, a med student acting as an intern, knocked on the door, ending Taeyeon’s suffering from interpreting data.

“Dr Kim, Dr Choi and Dr Lee are asking for you,” the med student said, peeking through the door.

“Are they at the cafeteria?”

Taeyeon stood up from the stool and half-heartedly cleaned up her cluttered desk.

“They’re at imaging,”

--

The elevator dinged for the radiology floor and she stepped out, looking for the CT room.

“Woah,” blurted out Taeyeon when she first saw the monitors. “What are we looking at?”

“MVC, but we found fetal pleural effusion,” Sunny replied with a disappointed sigh.

These upsetting surprises come with being a surgeon. You enter the hospital for a trauma consultation and leave with a tumor. It’s one of those things where it’s better off knowing, at least for the patient.

18 weeks of gestation, fluid in chest cavity, possible (undiagnosed) heart failure or pulmonary embolism, and blunt abdominal trauma from a motor vehicle accident that which the patient was first admitted for.

Taeyeon noticed the empty CT exam room and the missing radiologic technologist with them: they’re usually behind the monitors to show surgeons the images.

“I thought I’m here for a neuro consult?”

“No, the new Fellow is already on that,” Sooyoung said. “Anyway, the chief of surgery herself is holding a press conference today!”

“Why?”

“We’ve apprehended Dr Nam—”

“Sunny, ‘apprehended’ is a strong word,” Taeyeon noted, sticking her tongue out.

“Okay, we’ve captured Dr Nam…”

She nodded at the choice of words.

“And he agreed to go to trial. We’re finally settling this,” Sunny breathed out in relief, like the news had lifted the weight off her shoulders.

“Wait, have you seen Tiffany?”

“She’s probably giving herself a tour around her new office,” Sooyoung responded with a shrug.

Taeyeon was called by a resident in the ED and she left first, leaving the two surgeons to chat among themselves in the control room.

“Hey, I’m called for a consult?” Taeyeon asked one of the nurses. He pointed to a doctor with a chestnut-colored hair with her back turned.

As she was coming up to the resident, she turned around and they locked eyes for a split second. Taeyeon impulsively laughed to herself in a sarcastic, condescending manner when she recognized the face.

She watched as Jessica attempted to start an IV. She seemed to be having troubling finding the vein and there were a number of punctures on the arm. Minutes later, she succeeded and apologized to the patient before peeling off her gloves and walking away with her head down, feeling ashamed.

“I can’t believe we hired an incompetent doctor here,” the Fellow thought out loud. It was mostly to herself but Jessica heard every word she uttered.

She looked up in rage, instantly forgetting about her embarrassment. Jessica gripped the blue gloves tightly as she walked up to Taeyeon.

“Incompetent?” she repeated. Loathing and fury were seen in her eyes.

“Have you seen yourself insert an IV catheter?” Taeyeon scoffed. “You’re barely hanging on the program,”

Tighter, she grinds her teeth, hardly holding in the need to shout at a Fellow. Her nails were practically digging on her palm as the latex was close to being torn.

Jessica had always handled these arguments with elegance, now she just wants to downright pull out the arrogant senior’s hair regardless of her superiority. Her quivering eyes that’s locked onto Taeyeon’s calm ones—she finally remembers where she saw her before.

“I apologize if I’ve been so busy as a new director while juggling my personal life and medical career,” Jessica spat in a mocking tone, putting the big-headed senior back at her place. She just rolled her eyes.

“You think I’ll suddenly take pity on your ‘extravagant’ life?”

Taeyeon stepped forward. It’s something she does when things are about to escalate.

Oh, she guarantees that she will have the final say.

“I’m sorry if you think that I’m the type of mentor to turn a blind eye on your life-threatening mistakes!”

“I didn’t say that to you to feel bad about me,” Jessica’s voice softens. She sighs, Taeyeon had completely missed the point. If there was any.

“Just treat me as you would to a resident,” she adds.

“Am I doing a good job?” she responded sarcastically.

“Five years ago, you couldn’t even ask for a 10 blade without shaking like a leaf,” she snorted.

“That’s ancient history. It has nothing to do with this,”

“Exactly,” the corner of her lips quirked up in a smirk. She was now stepping closer to Taeyeon, giving her a taste of her own medicine. “People change. Five years is enough for me to correct my mistakes and for you to become this amazing surgeon—”

Jessica wanted this to end on a good note. The trauma center was suddenly packed and a doctor bumped into her shoulder, interrupting their argument.

“If you want to survive this program, never up to your superiors. You should keep your dignity,” was what she wanted to reply, but Jessica was called by an attending and she ran off. Taeyeon looked down on her dirt-covered sneakers, letting the last couple of minutes dawn on her. She didn’t notice Jessica’s lingering gaze before she fled to the emergency room, wondering if Dr Kim felt bad about her.