Chapter 99

Thunk.

Director Choi Jo-eun and Chief Secretary Hong Jae-hoon threw a few documents down onto the desk.

Naturally, for Han Yoo-rim, who had brought those documents, it was absolute misery.

So he lowered his head and braced himself for a scolding.

“Sigh.”

But what he heard was not a scolding, just a sigh.

It was a sigh that clearly sounded exhausted and defeated.

“Director, I think we just have to accept this.”

Chief Secretary Hong Jae-hoon tapped the documents on the desk and looked at Director Choi Jo-eun.

Director Choi looked like he wanted to rip the documents up right then.

But he didn’t actually touch them.

Instead, he spoke in a voice full of irritation.

“Who the hell are the idiots applying to that department?”

Director Choi skimmed over the papers Han Yoo-rim had just brought.

They were the standard documents each department submitted every year.

‘These are the specialists who applied this year, please hire them.’

The reason this happened every year was simple and brutal.

Unlike full professors, specialists with titles like fellow, clinical instructor, or assistant professor were essentially one-year contract employees.

So, really, the director and chief secretary had no reason to be this annoyed, and Han Yoo-rim didn’t need to be so nervous either.

If these had been applications from another department—

“This… Anesthesiology specialist Park Gyeongwon. He did undergrad at Hanguk University, and both internship and residency at our hospital… He applied.”

The chief secretary read through one application with a puzzled look.

His grades were excellent.

His reputation was even better.

He got an A as an intern.

With credentials like this, he was guaranteed a spot as a fellow in Anesthesiology.

His age was a slight concern, but he’d finished his military service.

“Isn’t the Anesthesiology department overflowing these days? Why didn’t he go there?”

Director Choi asked the chief secretary while leaving Han Yoo-rim standing like a mannequin.

It was incredibly rude to do that to a department head and direct junior, but once you were out of favor, there was no helping it.

Office politics in university hospitals were on a whole different level.

“I asked him indirectly, and he said he thinks he’ll learn more in the Severe Trauma Center…”

The chief secretary seemed to have decided to just treat Han Yoo-rim like a prop and carried on the conversation.

The empty chairs next to them made the scene look even more hollow.

‘These damn bastards.’

Han Yoo-rim swallowed curses as he listened to the two of them talk about him while he stood there, head bowed.

Sometimes, he wondered if he was wrong to support Kang-hyuk.

But he also truly felt it was the right thing to do.

‘A doctor’s job is to save lives.’

The satisfaction of saving seriously injured patients alongside Kang-hyuk.

It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in a long time, one that didn’t fade easily.

No matter what, he now felt that this department must not be shut down.

So he could endure a bit of humiliation.

“We really can’t reject this one…”

Director Choi threw Park Gyeongwon’s application for Trauma Surgery back onto the desk.

Rejecting a candidate with credentials like that would cause endless trouble.

Especially with all the attention on Trauma Surgery and the Severe Trauma Center.

‘I heard Pediatrics and Thoracic Surgery have been openly defending Baek Kang-hyuk…’

Maybe it was because they were in similar situations.

He’d heard them say during meals that Baek Kang-hyuk was a true doctor, and that their department should never be eliminated.

The really annoying thing was that young residents were easily agreeing with them.

You could dismiss residents as just four-year contract workers, but the world had changed.

It was no longer so easy to ignore them.

“Next is Lee Kang-haeng. He’s from Yonsei.”

“Yonsei? Oh, general surgery, right? Wasn’t he a military doctor?”

“Yes. He helped Professor Baek transport a patient by boat during the recent Baengnyeongdo dispatch.”

“Hmm…”

He must have been deeply impressed by Kang-hyuk’s skill at that time.

‘Ridiculous…’

Director Choi had even received a call from the Yonsei University Hospital surgery department about it.

‘What the hell did you do to lure away one of our best workers?’

He wanted to yell, ‘If it were up to me, I wouldn’t send anyone to Baek Kang-hyuk,’ but he couldn’t.

A director couldn’t show his true feelings in front of others.

‘All it did was make my life harder.’

Just because they were from different schools or hospitals didn’t mean they were always rivals.

In fact, cooperation was much more beneficial.

These days, multi-center research was becoming the norm.

And most importantly, to compete with the rapidly growing Chilseong Hospital group, they needed Yonsei.

So Director Choi had to force himself to promise golf and dinner.

“Should we reject this one?”

Maybe it was because of the lingering resentment from that incident, but Director Choi ground his fingernail into Lee Kang-haeng’s application.

The chief secretary looked troubled.

“Uh… About that…”

“What?”

“The Ministry of Education recommended that when recruiting faculty, Hanguk University must adhere to the outside university quota. It’s not an official order, but the hospital’s education department got a call. If we reject a candidate from another university, we have to provide a valid reason.”

“Those bastards. They interfere in everything, and now they’re messing with personnel, too?”

“Uh…”

Chief Secretary Hong Jae-hoon wanted to say, ‘If it bothers you so much, go say it yourself,’ but bit his tongue.

Director Choi picked up on that in a flash, having developed the instincts of a seasoned politician.

“So this one gets accepted, too.”

“Yes. Next is nursing staff.”

Chief Secretary Hong opened another document.

They’d wanted to hire eight nurses, but only one applied.

So nursing recruitment had been a total failure.

Director Choi’s expression brightened a little at that.

“So that monster wasn’t able to persuade the nurses, at least.”

“Yes. You’ll accept this one, right?”

Chief Secretary Hong smirked, recalling the high turnover among first-year nurses.

The work of a university hospital nurse was much tougher than most imagined.

Especially in the ICU or ER, survival rates barely hit 10%.

Even aside from the deadly atmosphere where not a single mistake was tolerated, arguments with patients and their families were a constant ordeal.

Plus, in Korea, people treated nurses far worse than they did doctors.

“Fine. Let’s see how long she lasts.”

“Then, for now, these three are added…”

“Yeah. Maybe it’s because they’re young, but I guess they have to find out the hard way.”

Director Choi muttered, thinking of the on-call schedule that came out every month.

No department in a university hospital had it easy, but Trauma Surgery and the Severe Trauma Center were especially brutal.

Every time he saw the schedule, he worried someone would die.

‘Yeah… Running things to the point of death is too dangerous.’

The board hated losses and accidents equally.

They wanted everything to run on minimal staff, but any mishap and they’d be outraged—a double standard.

So Director Choi rationalized things this way and finally managed to stamp the approvals with a lighter heart.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

If these had been applications from any other department, he would have stamped them without a second thought.

But these ones were stamped with difficulty.

‘Whew.’

Han Yoo-rim sighed in relief.

“Here, take them.”

“Yes, Director. Thank you.”

He grabbed the documents and hurried out of the director’s office.

It was a place he’d been in and out of constantly not long ago.

Now, just entering made it hard to breathe.

‘Narrow-minded bastards.’

He secretly flipped them off as he left.

Tap tap tap.

Only after Han Yoo-rim’s footsteps faded did Chief Secretary Hong turn back to the director.

He looked much more sly than when he’d been troubled earlier.

Director Choi’s expression wasn’t much different.

“So, did you find out anything?”

Chief Secretary Hong shook his head.

Whatever kind of person he was, there was no trace of his overseas activities.

Even using his contacts among the police, he got nothing.

“No. There’s almost nothing about his activities overseas.”

“So what is it?”

“It doesn’t look like he was officially part of Doctors Without Borders.”

“Not a member? The papers said he was.”

“It seems he worked more as a consulting physician you could call in for cases no one else could handle, not a regular member.”

Chief Secretary Hong didn’t mention the praise he’d heard from Doctors Without Borders.

‘He never took any pay, so his nickname was ‘the Violent Angel’…’

Violent Angel.

Here, too, he was called a ‘thug who saves lives,’ so it was a fitting nickname.

Director Choi looked displeased as he saw Chief Secretary Hong momentarily lost in thought.

“Is that all? Isn’t there any dirt?”

If you want to get rid of someone, you need a scandal, not a good story.

He found himself wondering what the chief secretary actually did all day.

“Sorry, not yet… But I have thought of a way to stir things up.”

“Hmm. Really? Let’s hear it.”

Director Choi did his best to hide his eagerness.

Chief Secretary Hong spoke up, swallowing the shame brought by his remaining conscience.

“That guy rides helicopters a lot, doesn’t he?”