“...... and most importantly, the positive Beck’s triad confirmed the cardiac tamponade diagnosis.” Jimin wrapped up her case presentation.

Beck’s triad is a collection of three medical signs associated with acute cardiac tamponade which are hypotension (low blood pressure), jugular venous distention (swelling of neck vein) and muffled heart sound. As she expected, the next day she was summoned by the discipline committee to justify her pericardiocentesis procedure last night. It’s a procedure to remove fluid that has built up in the pericardium*. Basically, the procedure is almost the same as removing the excess air from the lungs but only at different location.

*Pericardium = the sac around the heart. peri (around), cardio (heart)

After an hour of being attacked, the hearing ended and she was dismissed. Of course she’s not in favour, as this is not the first time she acted that way. The hospital is full of bitter persons, especially those old hags who think they’re better in knowledges, procedures and experiences. Though their knowledges are old and outdated. In medicine, we have to always be up to date with new knowledge as there’re always latest new findings, latest new treatments for a certain diseases. That’s why when doing researches, the reference should be maximum 5 years and above. When a young doctor prescribed medicine as per latest treatment recommendation, this is when those old hags butthurt. They can’t accept the fact that those young doctors knew something that they didn’t know, hence rejected them and keep continuing the old treatment regimen. But, not all of them are like that. There’s also the old seniors who adapt well and accepting the young doctors’ knowledge. She differentiate them as old hags vs the great great seniors.

“Great job, Yu seonsaeng.” The director complimented her.

“I’m just doing my job as an ED doctor, director.”

“I’m really sorry. I have to follow majority votes.” The director sincerely apologised.

Jimin smile faintly. She knows the decision is not in her favour but, being transferred to physio is just too much. Everyone knows how jobless physiotherapy department is. They hardly receive patients, roughly about 4-5 patients per week. This is not good for her skills and experiences. She always attracted to emergency medicine though she too doesn’t know why. Many doctors avoid the ‘busy’ department such as internal medicine, emergency, paediatrics and obstetrics and gynaecology and prefer the ‘calm’ department such as ophthalmology, dermatovenorology or physiotherapy.

“What?!! No way!!”

“Let’s make petition for seonsaeng-nim!!”

“I always hate the old hags. When they will retire?”

“We need more doctors like Yu seonsaeng here!!”

“Sunbae, I’m sorry. Because of me.....”

Even her colleagues find it hard to accept the decision, imagine being in her shoes. Even so, she doesn’t want them to make a fuss about that. She’s afraid of what kind of punishment awaits them. Just the thought is more than enough. But what she can’t believe is, just a month in the new department, she’s assigned as a sport doctor for athletes of Korea Badminton Association. Since it requires her to work outside the comfy office and unfixed work time (depends on the KBA’s training and tournament schedule), the old hag—chief of her department said that this job suits her the most as she is young, energetic and most importantly, single. As if single people don’t have commitments. Single people too have their own family, can be siblings, parents or whoever they are. Is time only considered for those who have spouse and children? Is single people’s time is not theirs? And what make her furious is that it starts effectively tomorrow— last minute decisions. The place she will start working is 30 minutes by car, 45 minutes by bus, compared to only 5 minutes’ walk from her house to the hospital. How can she look for a house to rent in just less than 24hours?

“Good morning, everyone.” She greeted the athletes.

“Morning, seonsaeng-nim.” Several people replied.

“FASTER SEONSAENG-NIM, WE’RE GONNA RUN IN 5 MINUTES.” One of the athletes shouted from the middle of the huge hall.

“OKAY!! YOU GUYS START FIRST. I’LL CATCH UP LATER.” She went to change into workout clothes.

A week has passed and to be honest it’s not that bad. She’s currently assigned as a sport doctor for under 23 (U23) KBA’s badminton athletes. She thought the team will be big like a football team but there’s only 5 players— 1 men’s single, pair of men and women’s double. All of them are friendly too. She didn’t feel any discrimination being the only one who isn’t an athlete. They even offered her to join them rather than sitting up doing nothing. She didn’t have any hard time following up their training schedule, even though she works an hour longer than when she’s in hospital. The training goes every day except Sunday from 8 a.m to 5 p.m (9 hours) compared to hospital (8 hours) but, it’s much better because she there’s no evening or night shift and most importantly, there’s no on-call. Though sometimes she miss the chaos when new patients come to ED but for now, she likes it here.

“Do you guys…… have interview…… or something like conference….. today? Huff—” Jimin sat down. She can’t run anymore.

“WHAT YOU SAY? CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

“DO YOU GUYS—” she pauses “—NEVERMIND!”. She can’t breathe properly now and screaming will make it worse.

“OKAYYY” They shouted as energetic as ever.

As warming up, athletes will jog around the hall first. Basic thing for athlete, rare thing for Jimin. Plus, the hall is too huge— in her opinion. A badminton court is 13.4 meters long and 6.1 meters wide, now imagine how big the building is when there are 4 courts inside it. And they have to jog for 20 rounds? She’s the late to start but the first to stop and she barely did 3 rounds though. The audacity she got when she say she’ll catch them up later, what a joke. She’s even worse than the coach who she assumes maybe in his 50s.

“What are you trying to say, seonsaeng-nim?” The coach joined her.

“I was asking if there’s interviews or something today?”

“Interviews? For what? With whom?”

“Hahaha I don’t know. Why you’re asking me back?” She laughe