Chapter 1
Everyone is interested in their own success and fame. They like having a lot of money in their wallet, their name known to the world, and people bowing their heads before them. This is an immutable truth.
You know this if you’ve ever seen the comment sections explode when a protagonist in a novel gives away their money or helps others while being falsely accused, right? Anyway, that’s how the world works.
However, if I say this, someone is bound to answer like this:
― No way~! There are people who aren't like that, you know~?
Hmm... In my opinion, no such person exists. If they do, they're either completely insane or someone who tried to adopt a saintly persona and is now wringing their hands, thinking, "Ah, crap... people actually think I'm a saint? How do I get out of this?"
The point is this:
"This world is full of pretense and hypocrisy."
There isn't a single person who claims they don't need money who doesn't actually want it, and even those who claim they want to serve humanity end up wanting to work where the pay is high.
Of course, I’m no different.
"I’m planning to go into Derma (Dermatology) or PS (Plastic Surgery)."
Dermatology. Plastic Surgery.
Specialties that are relatively comfortable and pay well. I’ve been working hard to major in these fields to achieve the goal of "having lots of money while no one knows who I am."
"Rea~lly? Why are you planning to go there?"
"Oh, I’ve been interested in this field from the start. I want to become the best in this area and help people suffering from skin diseases."
Of course, that’s a lie.
Because if I said, "I’m going there because they pay well!", I’d get cursed at.
"Haha... It’s strange how people are only interested in specialties that pay well."
An intern colleague said this to me, mixing in a bit of a jab.
'Isn't that obvious?'
Even middle and high school students who dream of being doctors all say, "I want to be someone who helps sick people," but they just want a high-paying job and that’s the only excuse they can come up with. I’m the same.
We all know it, so why act like that?
"Anyway, then you have to get an A-Grade Internship for sure, right?"
"Obviously."
I answered my intern colleague without hesitation.
"Medical School GPA 1st grade (top 9%), National Licensing Exam 1st grade (top 9% nationwide). Now, all that’s left is the intern score."
The scores that go into determining your residency specialty after the internship ends are your medical school GPA, your national licensing exam score, and your intern score. And two of those are already near perfect.
If I just get a good intern score, I can choose to go into Dermatology or Plastic Surgery. Heh, choice is the privilege of the strong, after all.
"For the next year, I’m going to work hard and definitely get an A in my intern score."
On the first day of my internship, I made that bold resolution.
However, that resolution didn't last very long.
Ding.
☆Intern Work Request Notification☆
A78/07/01/Kim Ah-young/44652154/GS/Spinal tapping requested.
***
As soon as it hit 7 AM, the start of my shift, dozens of work requests flooded in via text message. Every single one looked difficult at a glance.
'Are they crazy? How am I supposed to do all this?'
Well, I had expected it.
Still.
'No, no, that's not it.'
The moment an intern questions a superior's instructions, it’s a shortcut to a C-Grade Internship, not an A-Grade. To get an A, I had to complete these tasks perfectly without a word of complaint.
'Stop overthinking and just work hard.'
Looking at the text message, I headed straight to the ward that had requested the intern task.
"Hello, I'm the GS (General Surgery) intern."
"Ah, yes."
When I went to the station and spoke to the nurse, she gave a quick nod.
"You're here for the spinal tapping, right? It's prepared over there. You can take it."
The nurse pointed her finger at a cart in the corner of the station and went back to focusing on her work.
"...?"
With a bewildered expression, I pulled the cart to the patient's room. Then, I stopped in front of the room and stood there blankly for a moment.
'A spinal tapping for my first call? I haven't even learned how to do it, let alone done it before?'
They were telling me to perform a procedure I hadn't even been taught how to do.
And it was a procedure where you had to pierce between the patient's vertebrae and insert a needle all the way to the spinal cord...!
'Isn't this a dangerous procedure that could cause paraplegia if done wrong?'
With a trembling heart, I first sent a text message to the first-year resident senior.
[Senior, I just got a call for a spinal tapping, but I've never done one before. Could you teach me just once?]
As soon as I sent it, a reply came back.
[What's there to teach? Just do it.]
Just do it?
Are they out of their minds?
[It's all on YouTube.]
[My first call as an intern was a thoracentesis.]
A thoracentesis is a procedure where you insert a tube into the chest cavity.
It’s a dangerous procedure that can cause a pneumothorax and lead to respiratory distress if done incorrectly.
[But I just watched YouTube and did it alone.]
[I somehow managed to do it while watching the video, but I still don't know if I did it right.]
They really are crazy.
Is it right to do a procedure on a patient for the first time while watching YouTube?
As I was dumbfounded, the senior sent me a link.
[(YouTube link)]
[This channel has almost everything.]
I immediately clicked the YouTube link and entered the channel.
And I immediately played a random video.
The video that came up was:
[Welcome to my medical school.]
It was a video of an Indian person with a thick accent performing surgery or suturing on an actual patient.
'Haha...'
They say if you don't know something, the solution is in a YouTube video made by an Indian person?
That saying held true in the medical field as well.
'Sigh...'
After reviewing the anatomy theory as much as possible along with the YouTube video, I performed the procedure.
***
A few days after living a hectic intern life.
On one of my few days off, I was lying in my studio apartment, looking at my smartphone.
"Hmm... The video itself is good, but..."
Since the first day, I had been searching for all sorts of videos on intern procedures.
There were so many types of videos.
The official materials filmed in the US or UK were based on fairly academic data and were of good quality.
However, perhaps due to legal issues, there were no videos of actual patients, and most explained things using models.
'It doesn't help much if they only show it with models.'
It was subtly different from a real person, and there were almost no practical "tips," just textbook content.
"In that sense, the ones filmed by Indian people do have a differentiating factor..."
Most of the Indian videos showed them poking and prodding actual patients with a thick accent to the point where you’d wonder if it was okay to do that, so the sense of reality was certainly alive.
However, they were subtly different from the US or UK materials, and since they barely explained the theoretical basis, the reliability was a bit low.
'Above all...'
Even if they were helpful, they were ultimately videos watched on a smartphone.
The fine details were lost on a small screen, and since I only watched the videos briefly before performing the procedure, it was difficult to deal with unexpected situations that arose during the actual procedure.
And above all, I didn't even know if what I was doing now was correct.
"Sigh... I just wish someone would stick by my side and teach me."
Of course, in a busy university hospital environment like this, one-on-one teaching couldn't exist.
No, not just in university hospitals, but in most workplaces, there isn't really an environment where they teach a newcomer one-on-one.
That’s only possible in novels.
'I wish I could live my life as a doctor with an AI chip embedded in my brain.'
I’d be confident I could do well then.
Really.
Well, even if that were the case, I have no intention of becoming an internist.
"Sigh..."
I let out a small sigh and threw my smartphone onto the bed.
"A-Grade Internship... Can I get it?"
As I was muttering that, I heard something hitting the front door of my studio apartment.
Thump.
And immediately, the doorbell rang.
Ding-dong.
'...?'
With a question in my mind, I headed straight to the front door and opened it.
There was a delivery box placed in front of the door.
'What is this?'
I wondered if it had been delivered to the wrong place, so I checked the recipient, but my name, [Lee Kang-woo], was written clearly on it.
'I don't remember ordering anything...'
I muttered and brought the delivery box inside.
As soon as I retrieved the delivery box, the phone rang.
Ring-ring.
The caller was... [Fucking Bastard].
It was the man whose name was written on the line above mine in the exam prep notes.
Why would someone I never usually contact call me suddenly?
With that thought, I answered the phone.
"Yeah, why? What is it?"
"Hey, you... what's with that attitude when your Hyeong-nim is calling to check on you?"
As expected, it was a response worthy of the name "Fucking Bastard."
I let out a small sigh, and the man from the line above my notes opened his mouth.
"It's nothing else, I sent you a delivery a while ago, but I forgot about it."
Don't forget things like that.
"It should have arrived by now, hasn't it come yet?"
"I think it just came."
I answered, looking at the delivery box with my name on it.
"Oh, you can have that. It's a gift from this Hyeong-nim."
"What is it?"
I answered and immediately tore open the delivery box.
What I saw was a pair of transparent-looking glasses.
"I don't wear glasses."
Had this guy not even known that his younger brother didn't wear glasses?
I might have to change his name from [Fucking Bastard] to [Super Fucking Bastard].
As I was thinking that, the man from the line above my notes spoke up.
"No, those aren't just glasses."
"Then what are they?"
"Those are smart glasses. They're a prototype made by our research department at Aseong Electronics this time."
The man from the line above my notes was someone working as a researcher at Aseong Electronics.
It seemed this product had come from the research department he was affiliated with.
"Simply put, think of it as a smartphone in the form of glasses. Anything you can do with a smartphone, you can do with that."
"Oh."
Has South Korea's technological prowess already advanced this far?
Perhaps I shouldn't be working as a doctor right now.
"Hyeong-nim, but... why are you giving this to me?"
He was definitely not the type of person to give me something for free.
However, the answer that came from Hyeong-nim was surprisingly straightforward.
"Why do you think? Just try it out and give me some user feedback."
A simple request.
This is a sweet deal.
"That's not hard."
"Yeah, use it for a bit and let me know what you think later."
Having said that, Hyeong-nim hung up, as if his business was done.
A conversation between brothers, wrapped up in five minutes.
That was just how efficient our relationship was.
‘Well then, shall I give it a try?’
I picked up the smart glasses with a grin and put them on immediately.
Since it was a prototype, there were no manuals or anything—just the glasses themselves—but as a real man, I never read manuals anyway, so that wasn't a problem.
‘Whoa, this is a whole new world...’
As soon as I put the glasses on, a display like a computer screen unfolded before my eyes.
Even though they were small glasses, because they were worn over the eyes, the display looked massive.
‘The resolution is better than most large-screen TVs!’
Yet, when I looked in the mirror, there was no display visible in front of my eyes from the outside.
It’s only visible to me.
Well, it would be an invasion of privacy if everyone else could see what I was looking at.
‘Anyway, awesome.’
I smiled, flopped onto the bed, and stared at the large-screen display.
Then, I immediately opened an internet browser.
‘There’s something I’ve always wanted to do once I got a display like this.’
I connected to YouTube right away.
And I started typing into the search bar. The device allowed for input using only my gaze, not my fingers.
"Hmm... First, let's look for intern clinical skills videos... Ah..."
I made a mistake while struggling to input the search terms.
[xkqmd]
A combination of letters with no meaning.
Since it was my first time using such a device, I fumbled with the input method and made a typo.
"Tsk... Typing on this is a bit uncomfortable."
I realized I would need to get used to it.
Just as I was about to press the back button to return to the previous screen,
[xkqmd_lecture]
I saw a YouTube channel with the exact same name as the characters I had typed.
‘What is this? Lecture?’
Curiosity piqued, I clicked on the YouTube channel instead of the back button and entered.
==============================
[Lia]
General Surgeon, MD, PhD
in Johns Hopkins Hospital
Academic lectures and case-based discussions in surgery and clinical medicine.
!!!!!!! Content may be incomplete !!!!!!!
==============================
A simple introduction.
And right above the introduction, a small line of text caught my eye.
@liamedics [Subscribers : 0]
The end.
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