A Surgeon Who Uses Martial Arts [EN]: Chapter 49

The Martial Surgeon – Chapter 49

Chapter 8: Emergency Medicine (11)

Crack.

The canned coffee crumpled in Seung-beom’s hand.

Seung-beom’s expression was as distorted as the crushed can.

Just thinking about Jun-hoo’s arrogant face made him feel unpleasant and tense.

‘How dare that intern from another department embarrass me in front of a patient?’

The unpleasantness grew into humiliation, and his body trembled.

Seung-beom threw the crushed can fiercely toward the trash can.

Thud!

The can hit the trash can and fell to the floor, but Seung-beom didn’t bother picking it up.

Looking back, his bad relationship with Jun-hoo started in medical school.

Jun-hoo had picked a fight with him when he was smoking in the bathroom.

Jun-hoo must have been the snitch who took pictures of the cadaver [a dead body used for medical training] and uploaded them to social media.

And today, Jun-hoo had embarrassed Seung-beom in front of a patient.

To Seung-beom, Jun-hoo was an obstacle and a saboteur in his life.

‘No matter how I think about it, this feels awful.’

Seung-beom rested his chin on his hand and pondered.

There were plenty of reasons why Seung-beom disliked Jun-hoo, but the core emotion was inferiority.

Seung-beom had grown up wanting for nothing.

His parents’ occupations were impressive: his mother was a university professor, and his father was the vice president of a university hospital.

In such a privileged environment, he’d managed to get into Shinwon University’s medical school, although he had to retake the entrance exam.

His grades in medical school were also in the top ranks.

Perhaps that’s why…

Seung-beom often felt that the world revolved around him.

The road ahead seemed smooth and paved with flowers.

However, since meeting Jun-hoo, a dark shadow had been cast over his life.

His handsome appearance.

His consideration for his peers and those around him.

His school grades and the recognition of professors.

Jun-hoo had taken away the things Seung-beom wanted.

What Seung-beom felt he rightfully deserved.

Seung-beom had to taste the bitterness of living in Jun-hoo’s shadow.

‘Why am I not getting recognized more than that guy with no background?’

Zzzzz.

The phone in his doctor’s coat vibrated.

“I’m going now.”

Before the other person could even state their business, Seung-beom said what he wanted and hung up.

Leaving the lounge and heading to the nurse’s station, the nurse who had called him glared at Seung-beom with a dissatisfied expression.

But that was it.

She couldn’t say anything harsh to Seung-beom.

Because Seung-beom’s father was the vice president of the hospital, she couldn’t easily cross him.

His father’s influence was so convenient.

“Why? Do you have something to say? If you do, tell me.”

Seung-beom deliberately provoked the nurse.

He wanted to shake off the inferiority he felt because of Jun-hoo and feel a sense of superiority.

“Ah… no. I was just going to ask you to do the dressing changes because they’re piling up.”

“Even interns are human; let’s take a breather.”

Seung-beom pulled the dressing cart and went around to the hospital rooms.

He performed dressing changes on patients who needed them (wound disinfection).

Then, he disinfected the patient who had undergone chest tube insertion due to pleural effusion [fluid buildup around the lungs] after surgery.

The patient he’d had a conflict with Jun-hoo about earlier.

The moment he saw the chest tube inserted into the patient’s chest…

Seung-beom recalled Jun-hoo confidently inserting the chest tube.

‘How could that bastard, who had only learned it from textbooks and never done it in practice, perform the chest tube insertion so perfectly?’

‘If I were in that situation, could I have succeeded in the intubation?’

Even Seung-beom wasn’t sure he could have done it that well.

Not on a cadaver.

Cutting the patient’s skin with a scalpel and inserting a trocar [a sharp, pointed surgical instrument] into the pleural cavity was something that only someone with a strong heart could do.

‘Damn it, I’m one step behind again.’

The unpleasantness he had barely suppressed resurfaced.

Whenever he looked at the patient, Jun-hoo came to mind, so Seung-beom quickly finished the dressing change.

Creak.

As he passed through the hospital ward hallway, he heard a sound from one of the rooms.

Seung-beom stopped and stood in front of the hospital room door.

Resident Jun-shik, in his first year, was attempting chest tube insertion on a patient under the guidance of a second-year resident.

“Don’t shake your hands; stay calm.”

“Yes.”

“If you’re nervous, take a deep breath.”

Seung-beom clicked his tongue at Jun-shik’s clumsy appearance visible through the window.

‘Ugh, that idiot.’

‘What a pathetic bastard.’

‘How did he try to screw over Jun-hoo with that skill?’

Seung-beom left the dressing cart in the treatment room and went up to the hospital rooftop to light a cigarette.

‘Seo Jun-hoo, things won’t always go your way.’

‘The world isn’t that easy.’

Seung-beom’s cigarette smoke, filled with curses, soared into the sky like the smoke of a priest.

* * *

‘Is someone talking about me?’

As Jun-hoo returned to the emergency room duty room, he fiddled with his ear.

The scenery outside the window he suddenly looked at was dark.

The hospital buildings were scattering bright light like lighthouses.

The cars passing on the road were like fireflies.

As he had felt before, the scenery of downtown Seoul was bleak.

All he could see were buildings, so he couldn’t feel the energy of life.

‘Is that why?’

Jun-hoo thought it would be nice to go hiking on his next day off.

After experiencing the Murim [a world of martial arts and cultivation], Jun-hoo liked the mountains.

Looking down at the city from the mountains, he could feel the humility that humans are also part of nature.

‘I got everything I wanted for now.’

Jun-hoo’s steps were light.

While taking care of the patient in the thoracic surgery department, Jun-hoo had completed the Internal Energy Angiography [a technique to visualize internal energy flow].

He was also able to land a heavy blow on Seung-beom.

That was an unexpected reward.

Whenever Jun-hoo saw Seung-beom, he often thought of Namgoong-so of the Namgoong family.

Both of them were the same in that they only did bad things with the power of their families behind them.

In the Murim, Jun-hoo punished Namgoong-so through a martial arts contest.

But the modern world was not the Murim.

You couldn’t subdue the opponent with simple power struggles or force.

Rather, it seemed like a more complex solution was needed, one that was political and connected to power.

Skill is important, but you can’t just develop your skills.

To realize justice, you have to gain power.

While drawing up a blueprint for the distant future, Jun-hoo arrived at the on-call room.

The on-call room was so cramped that it reminded him of a studio apartment.

Two bunk beds were placed on each side, left and right.

There was a desk by the window where he could study.

“Where have you been?”

Myung-hoon, the emergency medicine intern who was resting, asked Jun-hoo.

“Oh, just doing this and that. Did you have a good sauna?”

“Oh, it was so good. It felt like my body was melting. I wish you had gone with me.”

Myung-hoon said with a refreshed expression.

Jun-hoo sat on the opposite bed and sucked down three packs of red ginseng that he had bought earlier.

Was it because he had tested Internal Energy Angiography several times?

He felt like his dantian [energy center in the body] was empty.

“The emergency department is tough, but it’s nice to have days off. If I were an intern in another department, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this luxury.”

“That’s true. But what are you watching?”

“Netflix. There’s nothing better than Netflix to kill time while spacing out. Jun-hoo, you don’t watch Netflix, do you?”

“I don’t really find anything interesting.”

Jun-hoo shrugged his shoulders.

To Jun-hoo, the stories of reality were more dramatic and interesting than the dramas and movies on Netflix.

The patients he had faced and treated yesterday and today were like that.

Even Jun-hoo had experienced the Murim through the Butterfly Dream.

While chatting with Myung-hoon…

Jun-hoo slowly began to feel itchy.

It was a symptom that occurred when he had nothing to do.

In the Murim, and after experiencing the Murim, Jun-hoo had never wasted time.

Jun-hoo’s time was always an extension of honing his skills.

If he wasn’t doing something, Jun-hoo felt uneasy.

It was as if he was wasting time.

“Come to think of it, I didn’t hear your answer earlier.”

“What answer?”

“What did you do after your day off? Tell me specifically what you did.”

Myung-hoon asked, his eyes shining.

Since he couldn’t say Internal Energy Angiography out loud…

Jun-hoo said that he helped with thoracic surgery, leaving out only that fact.

“I heard the thoracic surgery department is very busy; you must have suffered a lot.”

“We grow as much as we suffer.”

“Jun-hoo, what does growth mean to you?”

Myung-hoon’s question was meaningful.

What should I say? It was a question that asked about the framework of his inner self.

So Jun-hoo couldn’t answer easily.

“Hmm… that I am more grown today than I was yesterday, and that I will be more grown tomorrow than I am today?”

“I knew it. That’s why you study so hard and never rest.”

Myung-hoon nodded and continued.

“What if…”

“Yeah.”

“How would you feel if you couldn’t get stronger in the future?”

Myung-hoon’s question struck Jun-hoo to the core.

‘I didn’t know Myung-hoon had this side to him when we worked together?’

Myung-hoon was like a therapist.

Jun-hoo had already forgotten his boredom and was immersed in the conversation with Myung-hoon.

He had a feeling.

That he could realize something important in this conversation.

“I’d probably be tormented because I have to keep getting stronger to protect and help the people around me.”

“You hate feeling powerless.”

“Powerlessness… maybe that’s really it.”

Looking back, Jun-hoo’s inner self had a deep-seated aversion to powerlessness.

When his father lost his life to the demonic Red Devil in the Murim…

Jun-hoo couldn’t do anything.

He could only hide behind a tree and watch helplessly.

It was the same even after he went to the Murim.

He had to watch helplessly as his colleagues who were carrying out missions died.

So, to protect the people around him, Jun-hoo had been training desperately.

That personality hardened, and in modern times, he aimed to become a surgeon.

He accumulated medical knowledge like crazy.

And he struggled to combine martial arts and medicine.

Jun-hoo was quite shocked to realize that powerlessness was at the root of his being.

“When you look at it, Jun-hoo, you’re a good enough person.”

“…….”

“So don’t push yourself too hard, and sometimes take a break and relax.”

“…….”

“Was this too nosy? Sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’m grateful. I realized something thanks to you.”

Jun-hoo felt that Myung-hoon’s words made perfect sense.

He often felt that he was driving himself too harshly.

In that sense, he decided to have a relaxing time for the rest of the day, not studying medicine.

‘First, should I find out more about Myung-hoon, who I work with?’

He was a medical school classmate, but Jun-hoo didn’t know Myung-hoon well.

Because the friends they hung out with were different.

“Myung-hoon, have you done MBTI [Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test]?”

“Ooh~ Jun-hoo, you know MBTI too?”

“I learned it today.”

Jun-hoo smiled and answered.

According to Jun-hoo’s analysis, the process of revealing and learning about each other’s personalities and preferences through MBTI was more beneficial than MBTI itself.

‘If I bring up MBTI, I’ll be able to understand Myung-hoon a little better.’

“I’m INFP.”

“If you’re INFP, were you a passionate mediator?”

“That’s right. That’s why I was being nosy with you.”

Myung-hoon replied with a smile.

As expected, as they talked about MBTI, Jun-hoo was able to understand Myung-hoon a little better.

He also understood why Myung-hoon had so much trouble with ABGA [Arterial Blood Gas Analysis] blood collection during the day.

Myung-hoon liked to help others, but he had difficulty asking others for help when he was having a hard time.

Because he had the idea that he was bothering other people.

“If you have any difficulties in the future, leave them to me. I’ll solve them instead of today’s consultation fee.”

“Then it’ll be hard for you too…”

“I need to help you so I don’t feel powerless. Did you forget our conversation just now?”

“…….”

“This is what you call a win-win.”

“Hoo~ Then I’ll ask you without being rude.”

The heartwarming conversation lasted for nearly an hour.

Myung-hoon, exhausted from working 24 hours, soon fell asleep.

Jun-hoo, who was full of energy, lay on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

He could have studied medicine.

But he decided to refrain from it today.

‘Ugh… but I’m so bored.’

Feeling frustrated, Jun-hoo accessed Netflix on his phone.

After signing up and paying, he looked for something to watch.

The content he found after searching for a long time was none other than martial arts.

Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber 2019.

Perhaps because he had experienced the Murim, he felt attached to martial arts dramas.

He wasn’t sure if he could enjoy watching it.

But the Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, which he watched with half doubt, was fun.

-A vessel must be empty to be useful. Only when a vessel is empty can it contain something.

-…….

-A full vessel cannot contain anything.

Jun-hoo was greatly enlightened after hearing the lines in the play.

‘Indeed, that was right.’

Thanks to not studying medicine today…

He was able to explore his inner self.

He was able to build a friendship with Myung-hoon.

He was able to look back on the good and bad memories of the Murim.

If you want to get something, you really have to empty your mind first.