The Doctor With a Diagnosis System

CHAPTER 3: Stripped of Rank

"Hand over your badge."

The massive spike of adrenaline that had kept me standing suddenly evaporated, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache deep in my bones. I looked down at my hands. The dark blood of the eight-year-old boy I had just saved was already drying, turning into stiff, brown flakes against my pale skin and the cuticles of my nails. My fingers were trembling so violently I could barely ball them into fists.

Dr. Kang Min-Jae stood perfectly still in the harsh fluorescent light of the trauma bay. His hand remained outstretched, his palm facing up. He didn't blink. He didn't even glance at the boy resting safely on the bed, breathing evenly because I had driven a needle into his chest. Kang only looked at me. To him, I wasn't a doctor who had just saved a life. I was a liability. A flaw in his perfect, ordered, hierarchical hospital.

I reached up to my collar. My fingers were slick with sweat and blood, making it difficult to pinch the cheap plastic clip of my ID badge. With a dull snap, it came free. I hesitated for a fraction of a second, feeling the smooth plastic edge, before I placed it into Kang's immaculately clean palm. 

It left a faint, rusty smear of red on his skin. He didn't flinch. He just wiped it off against the side of his pristine white coat without a second thought. 

"You are suspended pending a full disciplinary review," Kang said. His voice was flat, carrying the absolute authority of a judge handing down an execution order. "Clear out your locker immediately. If I see you on the hospital floor after tonight, I will have security arrest you for trespassing."

He turned his back on me and walked out of the bay. 

I stood there in the deafening hum of the ER. No one came to my defense. Dr. Rim was already at the charting station, aggressively typing out the report to claim the successful chest decompression under his own name. Nurse Jo gave me a fleeting, agonizing look of pity before she turned her back to adjust the boy's IV line. The hierarchy demanded silence, and they all obeyed.

I walked out of Trauma Bay 4, my sneakers squeaking faintly on the linoleum. Through the glass doors, the boy's mother, Seol Mee, was sobbing into the arms of a police officer, thanking God her baby was alive. She didn't look at me as I passed. She didn't know I was the one who broke every rule in the book to keep her son breathing. I was just another faceless intern blending into the sterile white walls. 

The walk to the staff locker room felt like wading through wet cement. My body was shutting down. Seventy-two hours awake. The exhaustion wasn't just mental anymore; it was a physical weight pressing down on my lungs, making every breath shallow and painful. 

The locker room smelled of old sneakers, stale coffee, and cheap aerosol deodorant. The harsh, flickering neon tube above my row of lockers buzzed like an angry hornet. I peeled off my bloody scrub top, throwing it violently into the biohazard bin. 

I caught my reflection in the dented metal mirror taped to the inside of my locker door. I looked like a corpse that had been dragged out of a river. The bags under my eyes were bruised a sickly purple. My skin was an unhealthy, waxy gray. 

I pulled on my worn gray hoodie and a pair of faded jeans. I shoved my stethoscope into my duffel bag and zipped it shut with a harsh, tearing sound. 

I'm free, I told myself. I was going to quit anyway. This is what I wanted.

But as I lifted the bag, I felt a strange, phantom heat in my right hand. It wasn't a cramp. It was a low, steady hum, like a tuning fork vibrating directly against my bones. 

[Reward Granted: Surgical Precision +1]

The memory of the glowing blue text flashed in my mind. I stared at my right hand, flexing my fingers. The joints felt oddly nimble, loose, and perfectly aligned. The exhaustion that plagued the rest of my body completely vanished when it came to my grip. It was terrifying. The System wasn't a hallucination born of sleep deprivation. It was real. It had integrated with my nervous system, rewriting my physical limits.

I slammed the locker shut, the metallic bang echoing in the empty room. I needed to leave. I needed to get on the subway, go to my cramped apartment, and sleep until the world made sense again. 

I avoided the main elevators to stay out of Kang's sight, opting for the rear exit corridor that ran past the step-down observation wards. The lights were dimmer here, the hustle of the ER replaced by the quiet, steady beeping of distant monitors and the squeak of nurses' shoes. 

My stomach let out a hollow, painful growl. I hadn't eaten a solid meal in two days. I spotted a glowing vending machine at the end of the hall and dug a few crumpled bills out of my pocket. As I fed the money into the slot, a sound caught my attention.

Through the glass wall of Observation Room 3, I heard a low, wet groan. It was the distinct sound of a human being trying to suppress sheer agony. 

I turned my head. A middle-aged man was curled onto his side on the narrow hospital bed, his knees pulled up toward his chest. His face was slick with a heavy, greasy sheen of sweat. He was clutching the center of his chest, his knuckles completely white from the force of his grip. 

Standing next to the bed, looking entirely bored, was Dr. Si Jae. He was a fourth-year internal medicine resident notorious for clocking out early and pawning his paperwork onto the interns. Right now, he was scrolling through his smartphone, the blue light reflecting off his glasses. He barely spared a glance at the man writhing in the bed.