Boss, It's My First Time Being Your Resident - Chapter 44

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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 44. Practice Not Crying

“Ugh.”

Agang pressed down the surging nausea with all her might, gripping the edge of the sink with both hands as hard as she could.
The pale, bloodless tips of her fingers trembled.

Agang lifted her head and gazed blankly at her reflection in the mirror.

Flushed cheeks burning hot, wet eyes, reddened nose.
At the sight of her ruined complexion, Agang bit her lip.

Ha Tae-heon had said that crying at work was something only amateurs did……

Recalling the tender look Tae-heon had sent her moments before, Agang forced a small smile at her reflection in the mirror.

Burn Treatment was among the most fundamental basics of Plastic Surgery.

Especially for a first-year PS Resident, it was the kind of inescapable duty she simply had to pass through.
Yet why did her body insist on betraying her so honestly?

Whenever she caught the acrid, choking smell of soot seeping from every part of a burn patient’s body, a helpless despair would crash over her, as if her heart were sinking to the very bottom.

She’d applied Silvadine Ointment to the child’s wounds with feigned composure in front of Tae-heon, finished the Dressing as if nothing were wrong, but all the while, a corner of her chest was already charring black inside.

The moment she saw Kwami’s expression twisted in agony, her brother’s face overlapped with his.

The memory of that day she’d tried to forget replayed before her eyes like an old film, crackling and stuttering.

“Agang, we’re on a star train right now. We’re passing through the clouds. There’s quite a bit of fog, isn’t there?”

Her brother, holding her close in that hellish fire scene where scorching smoke had choked off her breath, insisting they were passing through clouds.

Her brother, who silently endured alone the anguish of shrapnel burning away half his face, gently keeping her eyes shut.

Agang felt her chest crushed beneath a heavy stone.

She leaned against the wall beside the sink for a moment, buried her face in her elbows, and tried to steady herself.

“Why do you want to be a doctor, brother?”
“I want people who’ve lost their faces like me to find their original faces again. Like magic.”
“Don’t worry! I’m going to study really hard and make you better!”

The bright gaze of her brother’s eyes, somehow luminous despite the twisted scar on his cheek, came back to her.
Even at his younger sister’s clumsy promise, he’d simply smiled warmly.

But when did it start?

A deep shadow began to settle over his once perfectly clear face.

A large burn scar remained on one side of his face.
Followed by multiple Reconstructive Surgeries.

Though he always said he was fine and smiled quietly, watching his complexion change day by day and the dark bruises he tried to hide, she could vaguely sense what he was enduring at school.

But miracles came without warning.
At some point, her brother’s face slowly began to come alive again.

Her brother, now in high school, said he’d found his first true friend.

She was grateful.
Over and over, silently, she thanked the man whose face and name she did not know.

For giving her brother hope to live again, for returning to him that precious smile he’d lost.

“One is for brother, one is for brother’s friend.”
“Oh! Did our Agang make these herself?”

She held out two red string bracelets, twisted strand by strand, to her brother.

“Brother, in Latvia, a red string bracelet is said to be like magic that brings health. When you tie it with this knot, luck can’t escape and it keeps both body and heart from hurting! My teacher told me so.”

Though clumsy in execution, she’d hoped the bracelet’s luck would reach her brother’s friend too.
The only light that had become life’s hope for her brother.

“I tied it tight, so now the luck is all yours! You got it!”

Agang laughed brightly and gripped her brother’s wrist tight.

Hoping that the warmth remaining at her fingertips, turned to luck, would touch and protect her brother’s friend who stood beside him.

Brother, I’ll do well.
I’ll do really well. Keep watching!

Agang was turning to leave, wiping her reddened eyes, when it happened.

A woman pushed open the restroom glass door with sharp clicking heels.
It was Cha Yu-ju.

“We keep running into each other, don’t we?”

Yu-ju stepped up beside Agang at the sink and spoke lightly.

“Oh, yes…… hello.”
“You speak French quite fluently, I noticed. How long would you need to study to get that good?”

In the mirror, Yu-ju’s composed gaze lingered intently on Agang’s reddened eyes.
Agang hid her confusion and gave a vague answer.

“……Oh, I just do a little everyday conversation.”
“Your accent sounds native.”
“I lived there for a while when I was younger.”
“How old were you?”

Yu-ju snapped her lip balm cap shut with a click and turned to stare directly at Agang.

Their eyes met in the empty air.

Ha Tae-heon’s girlfriend was strikingly beautiful—the kind that stirred an inexplicable, unsettling feeling.

At the sense of breathlessness that came over her, Agang quickly turned and yanked a few tissues from the dispenser on the wall.

“Oh, I’m not prying or anything. My little nephew’s looking into studying abroad in France. I was just curious.”
“Just a few years, until before high school.”
“I see. By the way, would you mind if I borrowed a comb?”
“A comb?”
“Your hair’s a mess. People will laugh at you. Go comb it.”

Yu-ju swept an assessing gaze up and down Agang’s tangled hair, then pulled a comb from her bag with an elegant gesture. It was a limited-edition luxury comb studded densely with pearl logos on the handle.

“Thanks for the advice, but I’m more concerned about checking on the patients than doing my hair. If you’ll excuse me.”

As if she couldn’t care less about such grooming, Agang turned and fled the restroom, leaving the enigmatic smile lingering at the corners of Yu-ju’s lips behind her.

Sigh.
A bitter laugh escaped between Agang’s teeth.

She felt ashamed at how childishly she’d sparred back.
It was as if she’d shown her deepest, most hidden flaw to the one person she least wanted to reveal it to.

Agang trudged down the Hospital Corridor of the Trauma Ward.

She’d deliberately gone to a restroom far away in a distant section of the ward so no one would see her crying.

Perhaps that had been the fatal mistake.

It happened in an instant.

“Aaah!”

With a metallic clang, Agang’s body crashed to the floor.

An overwhelming force struck her from behind with devastating impact.

Like being struck by lightning from a clear sky, her vision flashed white and spun.
She couldn’t even properly scream.

For a while, Agang lay face-down on the cold floor, gasping and groaning, unable to catch her breath.

“Patient! Stop! Let go!”

Sturdy male nurses rushed over and began subduing the rampaging patient, brandishing the metal IV Pole.

“Oh no! Are you okay, doctor?”

The nurses grabbed Agang’s arms and carefully pulled her to her feet, still in her prone position.

Agang forced her blurring vision to focus, struggling to hold onto consciousness.

“Hey! Have you lost your mind? Are you trying to stay unconscious? Didn’t I tell you never to remove the Restraint on a Delirium patient!”

A head nurse, her face deathly pale, rounded on a young nurse trembling like an aspen in the corner of the corridor.

The harsh scolding froze the air in the hallway.

“The patient said it was so uncomfortable having his hands tied, so I just removed it for a moment……”
“Are you insane? If the patient falls out of bed and you get sued, you’re the one paying for it, aren’t you? Get sued and you’ll have every last bit of your soul stripped bare before you learn your lesson!”
“I’ll be more careful, ma’am. I’m sorry……”

Under the head nurse’s biting rebuke, tears finally began to fall from the young nurse’s eyes.

The shoulders of the bowed nurse trembled.

“What are you crying about? Did you think this was your parents’ bedroom? If you’re going to cry, do it in front of your parents! If you’re going to be this pathetic, you should quit right now.”
“……I’m sorry.”
“Go call the attending doctor right now and get a sedative order.”

In the tense atmosphere, Agang didn’t even dare to whimper about the pain.

If she’d opened her mouth, the head nurse would certainly have come down even harder on the young nurse.

Perhaps sensing this, the young nurse quickly wiped her tears with the back of her hand and kept apologizing to Agang, bowing repeatedly.

Her fingertips curled nervously.

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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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