Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 42

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 42. What I Don’t Want Found Out

The message to Ha Tae-heon was sent at 11 p.m.

He’d been with her until dawn, so did he meet Cha Yu-ju before that?
Or had they seen each other again in the hours after they’d parted ways?

Ju A-gang found it pathetic—counting on her fingers, tallying hours, over a woman’s casual mention that it had only been a few hours since she and Ha Tae-heon had separated.

She tried fanning her burning face with her hand, but the heat wouldn’t cool, no matter how she flapped.

Ju A-gang pulled her phone from her pocket and opened a search engine.

The moment she typed in “Cha Yu-ju,” her screen flooded with bright profile photos and images, as if waiting for this very search.

[Cha Yu-ju, Announcer
172 cm, 48 kg
Education: B.A. in Orchestral Performance from Korean University (Graduated Summa Cum Laude) / M.A. from the same university’s Graduate School of Broadcasting and Information
Career: SBC 9 o’clock News, SBC Weekly Issues
Awards: SBC Broadcasting Entertainment Award Special Recognition, Miss Korea Runner-up]

Was she his girlfriend?

Why had she assumed all along that Ha Tae-heon wouldn’t have a girlfriend?

A thirty-two-year-old man with that face who didn’t have a girlfriend—that would be the suspicious thing, the strange thing.

If he was actually single, it would mean he preferred men or something was fundamentally wrong with him.

“Sigh…”

A small breath escaped her.

But wait—if he had a girlfriend, shouldn’t he not be doing that?

Common sense: you don’t embrace a woman you’ve just met.
Not even in an emergency before someone’s cardiac arrest.

No. In a life-or-death situation, you can’t help it.
Holding her to save her life was separate from whether he had a girlfriend or not.

Whether Ha Tae-heon had a girlfriend or not wasn’t her business anyway. She’d wanted distance—this was actually good.

Ju A-gang frowned and kicked at the innocent floor with the tip of her shoe.

Her mood had been odd all morning.

Her body ached from not sleeping all night, her mind foggy, and yet every nerve kept straining toward those two. She couldn’t understand why.

“But still!”

In the end, she couldn’t hold it in—the words tumbled out loud.

If you have a girlfriend, at least give me a heads-up first!

After talking about building up thirty million won’s worth of connection!

This vague, undefined relationship—neither a fling nor anything at all.
Was that “connection” just collegial affection between a senior and junior?

Though she wasn’t a multiple personality disorder patient, two versions of Ju A-gang argued fiercely inside her head.

The silhouette of a perfect couple, bantering in comfortable familiarity, drifting apart—it kept flickering in her vision like an afterimage.

She retied the disheveled hair that Cha Yu-ju had mentioned and trudged into the trauma center.

The air in the trauma center felt unusual today.

A peculiar atmosphere of quiet stillness.
Like the calm before a storm.

That’s when it happened.

“Professor Ma! We have a call coming in!”

The brief quiet shattered as a nurse’s urgent voice echoed through the trauma center.

“Burn victims incoming! Eight patients! ETA three minutes!”
“What? Eight? Why send them here instead of the Burn Center!”
“They’re not simple burns—these patients also have fall injuries!”

The nurse set down the receiver and hastily answered Professor Ma’s demand.

Burn patients were usually transferred to the regional Burn Center, but cases with accompanying trauma like fractures were classified as trauma cases.

Multidisciplinary consultation was required.

“Good grief! Tae-heon brought a mountain of Foleys this morning! I said patients would pour in today, didn’t I!”

Professor Ma grumbled as he roughly retied his mask that had been dangling under his chin.

“What’s their status?”

Ha Tae-heon appeared and draped his stethoscope around his neck as he asked the nurse, his voice calm and cool as always.

“One patient went into Arrest and regained consciousness after CPR. The other seven show Multiple Fractures.”
“Eun-do, call anesthesia. Get General Surgery, Chest Surgery, and Orthopedic Surgery on it—all of them. Kim, get the CT suite open for us.”

The trauma center transformed into chaos in seconds.

But Ju A-gang no longer panicked.
Though hardly a seasoned veteran, her mental resilience had hardened somewhat in the interim.

Ju A-gang steadied her breath and mentally rehearsed the status of the incoming patients.

Today, she wanted to do her part properly.
If such a chance came.

She looked up at Ha Tae-heon, who was busily setting up medical equipment.

Their eyes met in the tense, charged air between them.

“Either get out of the way or lend a hand—stop hovering.”

Ha Tae-heon passed by her and quickly moved toward the entrance.

Ju A-gang doubted her ears for a moment.

Lend a hand?

He was finally letting her join the scene!

Life bloomed across Ju A-gang’s face. Her heart pounded.

“I want to help! Please let me help!”
“You have burn care experience?”
“Yes! I did a lot of Dressing during my internship!”

Then sirens wailed loudly beyond the entrance doors.
Multiple ambulances pulled up in a line at the front of Sein University Trauma Center simultaneously.

Soon paramedics rushed in, pushing stretchers with urgent haste.

……

In an instant, every staff member’s expression at the entrance turned to stone.
Ju A-gang’s footsteps froze.

A second stretched like ten minutes in the silence.

Eight small children—all with different skin tones.
They whimpered, muttering words no one could understand.

“You didn’t mention they were foreign pediatric patients!”

Professor Ma’s voice boomed. An unexpected variable.

“A fire broke out at the East African Migrant Center next door. A gas burner exploded!”

A paramedic, soot thick on his face, breathed out the words in a rush.

“Twelve patients with simple burns were transferred to the Burn Center, but the eight children who jumped from the second floor have trauma as well, so they came here to us. As you can see, this child has an Open Fracture in the leg, and……”

“I’ll take this one. The rest are yours, Tae-heon.”

Professor Ma vanished with staff members, urgently pushing a stretcher into Resuscitation Room 1.

“Doctor Ha Tae-heon, we’re here as well!”

After assigning the pediatric patients to the incoming medical team, Ha Tae-heon stood before the most critical child—a girl with severe burns, struggling to breathe.

“Kim, secure IV lines both sides and give one ampule of Tramadol, then start antibiotics first. Ju A-gang, prepare Silvadene Dressing.”
“Yes!”

The moment Ha Tae-heon’s order came down, Ju A-gang sprinted toward the treatment table.

***

The resuscitation room reeked of acrid smoke.

The child lying on the bed, covered in third-degree burns, was a pitiful sight.

Beyond the glass door, the child’s mother sat crumpled, weeping in a daze.

She looked barely past twenty.

The woman’s coiled hair adorned with colorful traditional ornaments made her African heritage obvious even from a distance.

Ha Tae-heon quietly called the child’s mother to one side of the corridor.

“Ma’am, your child needs an Escharotomy right away.”

Ju A-gang swallowed hard, watching over them while trying to calm her own anxious heart.

Escharotomy—a surgical incision to relieve pressure.
Essentially, making an incision through hardened burn tissue to reduce the constricting pressure.

She’d never encountered a severe burn case requiring such a procedure before.

Facing a textbook case in real life, on such a small child, made Ju A-gang feel as if her insides were burning.

“Your child has third-degree burns across the chest. The scar tissue is constricting continuously, compressing the chest and making breathing difficult. We need your consent.”

Even as Ha Tae-heon’s urgent explanation continued, the woman—struggling with Korean—crossed her arms in an X in the air, her eyes wide with terror.

“No! No!”

When Ha Tae-heon explained in English and the woman still responded with an incomprehensible foreign language, his brow furrowed.

In a trauma center where every second mattered, a language barrier with a guardian was a major obstacle.

“No! No! Never!”

The woman was unyielding.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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