Surviving as a Rogue Hospital Director - Chapter 21

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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 21.
The day before Jin Ha’s surgery. Beom Joon found his way to her hospital room.
She had readily agreed to the filming and was using a private room to avoid inconveniencing other patients, and Seong Hyeok was already inside.
Upon spotting Beom Joon, Seong Hyeok stood and greeted him.
Accustomed to hierarchical relationships, he moved behind Beom Joon to reorder himself—a gesture to position the hospital director foremost in the patient’s line of sight.
“Just stay.”
Beom Joon raised his palm and signaled him to sit. How long would he even be here? Seong Hyeok’s concern held little weight for him.
“Here we are already—tomorrow’s come. How are you feeling?”
Beom Joon turned instead to inquire after his patient, Jin Ha.
“I’m fine. The professor told me not to worry unnecessarily. So I’ve been eating well and sleeping well. Though I’m fasting now, of course.”
At Beom Joon’s words, Jin Ha gestured toward Seong Hyeok with her chin, speaking playfully—her eyes glinting with affection despite the teasing tilt of her gaze.
“That’s what he meant about managing my condition properly.”
Seong Hyeok protested, but observing their expressions, Beom Joon harbored no misunderstanding. Jin Ha in particular had brightened considerably from days before.
She’d even pulled out a personal camera mid-filming, calling it a vlog. She wanted to remember this moment herself.
A positive sign. She who had lived only for today was now contemplating a distant future.
“You know what? I really don’t think I’d regret it, even if something went wrong with the surgery. I feel like I’ve done everything I could.”
With a composed expression, Jin Ha spoke matter-of-factly. She felt no shame in the struggle she’d waged to survive.
Having given her all until the moment of surgery, she seemed—just as she’d said—free of regret.
“The surgery will go well.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.”
Seong Hyeok reacted sharply, and Jin Ha added that she wasn’t giving up. Beom Joon watched the two of them converse with quiet contentment.
“Oh! And the tteokbokki was delicious. You made it, didn’t you, Director?”
“Tteokbokki? You actually ate that?”
At Jin Ha’s words, Seong Hyeok’s brow furrowed.
“Don’t worry. It was nutritionally perfect.”
“How…?”
At Beom Joon’s puzzled remark, Seong Hyeok muttered something, and Jin Ha giggled, bringing her index finger to her lips.
“Hehe, it’s a secret.”
Beom Joon sensed their bond had deepened. Proper therapeutic rapport had formed while maintaining appropriate distance.
It was entirely different from how Seong Hyeok had mechanically managed Jin Ha during his time on Doctor X.
Yet compared to them, Beom Joon found himself retreating slightly.
Now that he’d become hospital director, Beom Joon suddenly grasped what it meant to hear things like “What brings you here?” or “Thank you for your concern.”
A distance had formed that couldn’t be bridged—a distinct difference from when he’d seen patients directly as a primary physician.
Beom Joon observed Seong Hyeok, clumsy yet devoted to his patient, and Jin Ha, gracefully receiving that devotion.
‘I must have been like that once.’
And he placed himself in Seong Hyeok’s position.
When he’d first become a professor in his younger days,
he’d met patients’ eyes and shared the weight of their suffering.
Now, having shed the burden of direct care upon becoming director, he recognized how precious those hours spent beside patients had been.
From medical student to professor.
He’d once thought he’d merely endured those years reluctantly,
‘but it was all something I wanted to do.’
He hadn’t known it then. Yet the sense of purpose accumulated through watching over patients had sustained him all this while.
* * *
“Director… where were you yesterday again?”
The next day, Jae Gyeong appeared outside the Director’s Office.
“I had some business to attend to.”
At Jae Gyeong’s words, Beom Joon replied casually.
In truth, because Jae Gyeong managed his schedule, there was no business Beom Joon attended that he didn’t know about. The fact that he was now asking about the director’s movements meant he was about to nag him.
“If you need something, just have me do it. Please stay in the Director’s Office.”
“What are you talking about? The hospital isn’t under terror threat—why shouldn’t I walk around?”
Younger and more striking than most professors, Beom Joon failed to recognize that his mere appearance was attention-grabbing.
Or that whenever the hospital director appeared, everyone tensed.
“If you suddenly appear, it makes the staff uncomfortable.”
Beom Joon started to push back, then stopped. Each time he created a situation, Jae Gyeong was the one who cleaned up after him. The Organ Transplant Center employee’s mother had ultimately been transferred back through Jae Gyeong’s efforts.
“If you insist, then take me with you. Just call, and I’ll come right away.”
“Fine, fine. I hear you.”
At Beom Joon’s half-hearted response, Jae Gyeong cried out.
“Ugh, Director!”
With his administrative skills improving, his paperwork time had shrunk considerably, and he now channeled that energy into managing Beom Joon’s schedule.
He was endearing and exasperating all at once. He grumbled while tidying up after Beom Joon faithfully.
Leaving Jae Gyeong outside, Beom Joon logged into the HIS in the Director’s Office, monitoring Jin Ha’s surgery.
The surgical record had only the patient’s entry time into the Operating Room, with blank fields for everything else. It meant the surgery was still underway.
‘Why am I shaking like this?’
A chill ran down Beom Joon’s spine as he trembled.
The surgery would succeed anyway, by narrative necessity. Even if Beom Joon’s interference altered the surrounding context, he’d had no hand in Seong Hyeok’s procedure itself.
Yet thinking of Jin Ha lying on the operating table and of Seong Hyeok, his heart tightened despite knowing the outcome.
‘Do it well. Come back safe.’
Five hours—a long operation. He closed his eyes, recalling Seong Hyeok’s surgical scenes from Doctor X.
Having passed the baton to Seong Hyeok, he could finally rest. Ugh, everything aches.
He set an alarm and closed his eyes briefly.
* * *
To transplant an organ, one must sever and reconnect the organ and its surrounding vessels.
The critical point here is the blood vessels. For an organ to function, it must be connected to the vessels that sustain it—non-negotiable.
But the heart, whose function is to pump blood throughout the entire body, has far more complex vascular entanglement than other organs.
“Body temperature twenty-eight degrees, SpO2 ninety-eight percent, blood pressure stable.”
The anesthesiologist reported the patient’s status into the air. The medical team didn’t make eye contact with one another—their gazes fixed solely on the patient’s heart.
Through countless precise manipulations, Jin Ha’s damaged heart—worn from suffering—lay exposed to air. Seong Hyeok lifted a vascular clamp and clamped the large vein connected to the heart, shutting off further blood flow.
— Wheeee, wheeee.
— Thump… thump… thump…
Silence filled the Operating Room. Only the rhythmic pulse from the CPB (Cardiopulmonary Bypass Machine)
*
and the low vibration from the Suction Device seemed to speak of instruments giving their all.
*A device that temporarily replaces the function of the heart and lungs during surgery.
“Disconnecting the heart. Clamp the Superior Vena Cava and Pulmonary Veins.”
At Seong Hyeok’s command, Min Ho used the Suction Device beside him to clear surrounding blood, establishing his visual field.
Below his glasses, Seong Hyeok’s eyes held no tremor. He calculated every moment, made his judgments, and issued orders swiftly.
“Clamp on, blood flow occlusion confirmed.”
Seong Hyeok began excision sequentially from the Aorta connected to the left ventricle. The Pulmonary Artery from the right ventricle, the Superior Vena Cava returning to the right atrium, and the Pulmonary Veins returning to the left atrium.
Then, one by one, he severed the delicate thread-like Coronary Arteries—precious vessels that had tirelessly delivered sustenance for the heart to function.
“Phew.”
Holding his breath in concentration, he exhaled deeply only once all excisions were complete.
Following his lead, Min Ho, who’d been assisting beside him, briefly straightened his back.
Seong Hyeok blinked his dry eyes, gazing at the Operating Room wall. There, Jin Ha’s heart remained as a purple afterimage, seared by the harsh surgical light.
“How’s the CPB?”
“Operating at one hundred percent!”
The CPB, temporarily replacing the now-stilled heart, was circulating blood throughout Jin Ha’s body.
Now came the connection of the donor heart, followed by gradually reducing that support to test whether the new heart could sustain circulation.
At Min Ho’s immediate response, Seong Hyeok smiled with satisfaction. Obscured by his mask, nothing showed,
‘but he seems pleased.’
Min Ho had grown perceptive enough to read Seong Hyeok’s mood from his eyes alone. His synchronized rhythm during surgical assistance was equally refined.
“No need to delay. Let’s graft immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
Min Ho and all the medical staff in the Operating Room answered in unison.
“Where’s the donor heart? It should have arrived from Cheon Hee University Hospital.”
Seong Hyeok asked, observing Jin Ha’s chest cavity, now hollow beneath her ribs.
“What? A heart?”
Then, from the Operating Room entrance, a staff member spoke nonsense.
He wore street clothes rather than a sterile gown, and for some reason, Beom Joon found his face familiar.
“What are you talking about? You didn’t bring the brain-dead donor’s heart?”
Seong Hyeok raised his voice, but the staff member continued to feign ignorance.
“What do you mean me?”
“What… what do we do?”
Panicked at the sight of the staff member, Min Ho moved his hand wrong, and blood fountained from one of the severed arteries. The crimson stain spread across the ceiling, and the sterile green of the Operating Room suddenly lost its color.
It was then that Beom Joon studied the staff member’s face intently. He was certain he’d seen it somewhere.
“You… are you the responsible staff member?”
Seong Hyeok, composed throughout the surgery, trembled as he suppressed his anger.
“Our senior went on vacation?”
The reply came out strained, and Beom Joon identified the staff member. He was the scatter-brained new hire from the Organ Transplant Center.
‘Now I remember. That bastard…!’
The bumbling newcomer he’d seen at the Organ Transplant Center.
“We gave him VIP room privileges without requiring vacation time—what’s going on?!”
But Beom Joon failed to notice someone who shouldn’t be in this Operating Room.
He didn’t realize that his own presence here made no sense either.
— Beep-beep-beep
Hearing the alarm, Beom Joon’s eyes snapped open.
“Gasp, gasp.”
Having briefly dozed off only to suffer a nightmare, he was startled enough that sweat had soaked through his dress shirt, dampening his lower back.
“W-Director?”
Jae Gyeong stood nearby. The alarm had kept ringing in the Director’s Office, so he’d come in to check.
Beom Joon pressed his head with his hand. From the dream, all he could think about was the surgery.
“The surgery. How did the surgery go?”
“Patient Jin Ha? It seems to have gone well. They said she’s in the Recovery Room.”
Jae Gyeong answered his boss, whose eyes had glazed over and mind was half-absent. Since Beom Joon was so attentive to this patient, Jae Gyeong had already made inquiries.
“How long ago was that?”
“Um, let me see. I’d say about an hour.”
By that time, she should have left the Recovery Room. If there’d been no major issues immediately post-surgery, she’d have been transferred to the SICU; if not, she’d still be in Recovery.
Her location alone told him roughly how the surgery had gone.
Beom Joon searched for Jin Ha in the HIS.
— Jin Ha / Age 28 / SICU
*
-11
*Surgical Intensive Care Unit
“Yes! It ended well!!”
Beom Joon clenched his fist and thrust it downward in triumph. Jae Gyeong, understanding nothing, mirrored his superior’s gesture.
“Yes, yes?!! Yes!!”
As the two celebrated, Beom Joon’s phone rang.
— Ring, ring.
A familiar name lit the screen.
— Professor Seong Hyeok

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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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