‘Look at those brain wrinkles that look like the gills inside a codfish soup. How do those wrinkles record and recall all the information in the world. The more I look, the more mysterious an organ it is.’
Choi Moo-gyeol thought that while looking at the patient’s brain.
Professor Yoo Seong-ho, who had been carefully scanning the third-year main course students to see if anyone had become interested in neurosurgery after seeing a living brain.
His radar caught Choi Moo-gyeol’s peculiar gaze.
Yoo Seong-ho, who had been observing Choi Moo-gyeol intently, asked him.
“How does it feel to see a living person’s brain rather than a cadaver’s?”
“It is beautiful.”
At Choi Moo-gyeol’s answer, the medical students were momentarily shaken.
‘What?’
‘Is that an appropriate expression?’
Even the first assistant, the second assistant, and the nurses each glanced once at Choi Moo-gyeol’s face.
‘There’s someone giving a curious answer.’
However.
“Ho, beautiful……?”
To Yoo Seong-ho, that kind of answer from Choi Moo-gyeol was interesting.
“……The brain is pretty. Hm. I think you’re the first student among the trainees to give that kind of answer. What do you mean by it?”
“In this hemispherical space, the important things that make a human human are contained, aren’t they. So I said it was beautiful.”
“Makes a human human?”
Yoo Seong-ho felt this student was even more interesting.
“Good, then what are the important things that constitute a human?”
“Cognitive ability, judgment, spatial sense, memory, thinking ability, and…….”
“And?”
“Emotion and the ability to empathize with others…… Something like that, I suppose.”
The last answer was precisely the very thing that was lacking in Choi Moo-gyeol himself.
“That’s right.”
Professor Yoo Seong-ho began to enjoy the conversation with Choi Moo-gyeol. Somehow this guy seemed to have quite a large interest in neurosurgery.
‘Is he someone who will become my disciple?’
He spoke excitedly to the medical students.
“You all, they say Shin Myung-jin from cardiothoracic surgery seduces you every day by showing you the heart, right? Saying the heart is the organ containing the pulse of life or whatever.”
“Th-that’s what happened…….”
Several medical students nodded.
“But no matter how grandly that guy talks, the heart is merely a blood pump.”
“A b-blood pump……!”
The heart, downgraded from the organ of life to a blood pump.
At Yoo Seong-ho’s unexpected ‘diss’ remark, the medical students could not quite nod.
“But look at this brain. This is mystery itself.”
Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s sales time.
Yoo Seong-ho’s fervent desire to absolutely win over that new recruit was blazing in both his eyes.
Making such a fuss over just one new recruit?
One person can cover the neurosurgery operating room for 24 hours, and in crisis situations, for 48 hours.
How can one person not matter.
Yoo Seong-ho poured out his heated speech.
“Inside those squirming wrinkles, people’s memories, thoughts, even instincts are all contained. How precious is memory these days? The organ that has memory plus a CPU added to it is exactly this brain.”
“And our neurosurgery is the department that treats that precious organ. A human whose brain is broken is no different from everything being broken. Neurosurgery makes such humans able to live as humans again. How great a thing is that?”
‘A broken human. Am I a broken human.’
While Choi Moo-gyeol was repeating that inwardly, Yoo Seong-ho pointed to the patient’s chest area and said.
“Of course! The heart here is also a truly important organ.”
Having thus laid down the indulgence for his remark about cardiothoracic surgery.
“But even if the heart fails, an artificial heart can replace it as much as needed. Think about it! Having an artificial heart does not change that person’s identity. But what if an artificial brain is attached?! Could you really call that the same person as before?”
He threw out a powerful topic.
“So this thing called the brain is truly an irreplaceable human organ. Think about it! Your memories, the memories with your parents, the love with your lover—how would you replace such things? Unless you copy and transmit all the data, if the brain dies, even the identity that is you comes to an end!”
Even if it was a sales pitch, it was sufficiently relatable. Several medical students nodded.
Of course, nodding did not mean they would apply for neurosurgery.
“Now, is that all? The organs throughout your body—breathing, making the heart beat, regulating blood pressure, moving and enabling the limbs to function—all of these things are handled by this soft, tender pink tissue. At this level, can’t we say the brain is a person’s everything, the person themselves?”
Rather than going to ‘cardiothoracic surgery,’ come to ‘neurosurgery.’
It was Professor Yoo Seong-ho’s long-standing habit to say at such length that we do more meaningful treatment.
Especially during neurosurgery PK practice, the habit became even worse.
Professor Yoo Seong-ho added.
“Anyway, in today’s world, the guys who go into vital departments are all lunatics.”
“Hm?”
‘Even though you yourself are a vital department professor?’
‘After cardiothoracic surgery, are you dissing all vital departments?’
At the professor’s intense remark, the medical students stirred.
“In a world where a laser click earns tens of millions of won a month, taking on the risk of medical lawsuits, and applying for a vital department where the surgery time is the longest and the surgery itself is the toughest. If that’s not a lunatic, what is?”
“…….”
The reality of medical school, heard directly from the lips of a vital department professor, felt all the more brutal.
“The one thing I want to say to such lunatics is this.”
He paused for a moment and said.
“If you’re going to be crazy anyway, be crazy about this complex and profound organ, the brain, rather than the heart, which is nothing but a simple blood pump.”
Professor Yoo Seong-ho spoke with a grin beneath his mask.
“I can assert one thing. The brain is a far more high-dimensional and interesting organ than the heart.”
Among the observing medical students, only Choi Moo-gyeol’s eyes were shining.
* * *
The medical student period of two years of pre-med and four years of main course all ended.
Choi Moo-gyeol, who passed the medical licensing exam with the highest score.
When his medical license came out, his family was once again deeply moved.
They were the parents who had worried back when he had brain surgery in elementary school, ‘Wouldn’t it be difficult for him to live as one normal human being?’
What if he developed a violent tendency like Phineas Gage, or what if he became like a serial killer from an American drama?
Contrary to such worries, the Choi Moo-gyeol of reality had grown so well without any problems for over ten years since then.
Except for the fact that he had extremely few friends, and could not share or empathize with emotions with others.
Rather, he had grown better than anyone.
Not only had he grown without problems, but now he had even received an official medical license and become a bona fide doctor.
“What do you want to do now?”
His father asked that.
From here, he could begin working as a general practitioner (GP), or he could choose a specialty and work as an intern while acquiring the qualification of a specialist.
To his family, who were curious about Choi Moo-gyeol’s future path, Choi Moo-gyeol answered like this.
“I don’t want to stop at being a general practitioner and immediately become a pay doctor or open a clinic. I want to go all the way to becoming a specialist so I can dig deeper into medicine.”
“Yes, we will support whatever choice you make.”
Following his father’s words, his mother asked.
“At which hospital will you do your internship?”
“Hankook University Hospital.”
“Is it easy to become an intern there? It’s the best hospital.”
Hankook University Hospital is one of the hospitals popular among interns because of its good infrastructure and many skilled professors.
Being popular means it is that much harder to be selected as an intern.
But Choi Moo-gyeol, a Hankook University Hospital graduate with good grades, would not fail.
“I’ll definitely get in.”
* * *
May.
Two months after the hospital’s internship began.
In the Hankook University Hospital professors’ cafeteria, almost all seats were filled within ten minutes of lunchtime starting.
Unlike the general cafeteria used by patients and guardians, the noise was not loud.
The professors were eating with their white gowns taken off and hung on the backs of their chairs.
Conversation topics drifting through the cafeteria along with the meal.
The surgery from the morning.
An incident that occurred in the ward.
The mistakes of the residents.
Even preparation for next month’s academic conference presentation and the schedule for paper review.
The professors exchanged all sorts of stories while eating lunch in a short time.
At the long table by the window, professors from internal medicine, surgery, emergency medicine, anesthesiology, and neurosurgery happened to be sitting mixed together.
Though different departments, professors often sit side by side and eat together. Because it is only in this place, where the boundaries of each department blur, that the hospital’s most honest stories can circulate.
Professor Lee Kyung-min of gastroenterology said while ladling soybean paste soup.
“This year’s interns seem overall better than last year’s.”
Professor Kim Tae-sik of orthopedics across from him snorted.
“It’s only been two months. You have to roll interns for at least three or four months to know. At first, everyone is full of motivation and their eyes are sparkling.”
“If they go to orthopedics, their sparkling eyes die quickly too.”
At Professor Seo Jin-ah of emergency medicine’s words, laughter burst out from here and there at the table.
Kim Tae-sik put down his chopsticks as if feeling wronged.
“Our orthopedics has done nothing wrong. It’s just that their eyes die after feeling the reality of the medical world to the bone.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
Professor Yoon Jong-cheol of anesthesiology and pain medicine said calmly while deboning a mackerel.
Kim Tae-sik made a few rebuttals, but they did not work.
At that moment.
Professor Lee Kyung-min said.
“By the way, there’s an intern named Choi Moo-gyeol, right? How is he?”
Several hands that had been moving chopsticks stopped at the same time.
At the name, some nodded, and some pricked up their ears.
He was only a beginner intern (a slang term referring to a novice intern who has just been appointed and is just beginning to learn work in the ward. Conversely, an intern nearing the end of their term is called a late intern), and yet professors knew his name?
It was not a common thing.
Seo Jin-ah spoke first.
“That friend was in our emergency medicine department.”
“How was he?”
“He’s strange.”
“Strange? How?”
