A Child with Heart Disease Becomes a Doctor

The national medical licensing exam runs for two winter days—the last gate after six hard years of medical school. It was early January, bitterly cold; every breath fogged under my nose. Our test site was a forty-year-old high school, and my seat—of course—was right by an unshaded window that let the cold pour in. Maybe the chill would keep me sharp. I wrapped my hands around a paper cup of black coffee and waited for the first session: “General Medicine,” eighty minutes of fundamentals.

At the chime, proctors stepped in, gave the usual instructions, and passed out test and answer sheets. We kept them face-down until the loudspeaker bell rang again—start. I flipped the booklet, took a long breath, and eased into the rhythm: read, decide, mark.

Ten minutes in, my lower abdomen raised a different kind of emergency. It felt exactly like leaving a highway rest stop the minute before your bus pulls out—then realizing you should’ve gone. The more I tried not to think about it, the worse it got. Coffee is a diuretic, January is unforgiving, and my brain kept chanting the one thing I didn’t want to think about.

I raised my hand. A proctor hustled over holding a fresh answer sheet—he assumed I needed a replacement. I asked if I could use the restroom. He blinked, then said no one leaves during a national exam. If I stepped out, I couldn’t come back; at best I could submit early and be escorted out. Those were the rules.

I looked at the clock. Not even halfway through the first hour. If I walked out now, I’d be walking into a year of do-overs.

So I stayed—and changed tactics. No circling back, no second-guessing. Read, decide, fill. I double-checked only two things at the end: my candidate number and the subject code so I wouldn’t earn a zero by clerical error. Then I raised my hand again and turned in the sheet—with more than thirty minutes still on the clock.

An assistant proctor shadowed me to the restroom—rules are rules—and then to the proctors’ room, a corner of the teachers’ lounge where a squat oil heater clicked and sighed. I thawed my hands and replayed every choice: the coffee, the light jacket, not going before the exam. Regret is cheap and endless. I traded it for a superstition I’d heard: the more you change answers, the more you get wrong. Maybe being forced to commit would help. And if I did fail? At least I’d have a story that didn’t start with “I just wasn’t prepared.”

Day two, I dressed like an onion—sweats under my pants, no coffee—and caused no drama. The exams ended without incident.

A week later, on results day, I closed my door and sat alone at my computer. People say nine out of ten pass—but that thought didn’t comfort me. I typed my info into the board’s website, hit Enter, kept my eyes closed long enough to hear my own pulse, then peeked through my lashes at the line on the screen:

“Congratulations on passing the National Medical Licensing Examination.”

It really said that. Which meant I really was a doctor.

I walked out to the living room. My father sat on the floor with the newspaper spread like a tarp. He didn’t know results were out.

“I… became a doctor today,” I said.

He didn’t stand or clap. He nodded once. “Good. Now live like one.”

After a beat he asked, “Doctor, judge, prosecutor—those jobs people admire. Know what they have in common?”

I waited.

“They exist because someone is in pain. Don’t ever forget that.”

I had forgotten, a little. Chasing scores will blur first principles. In one sentence, he brought them back.

There was one more person I needed to tell who I was—who I’d been all along. Professor Yoon first met me when I was an infant with a literally broken heart. He was a young pediatrician then; decades later, he was three years from retirement. Many adults with congenital heart disease stay with pediatrics for continuity, so my clinic hadn’t changed: same hallway disinfectant, same overloaded waiting area outside the exam room.

Privacy there was practical, not pristine. Several families sat together in one room while the doctor moved from child to child. No one complained. In a hospital that drew patients from every corner of the country, you didn’t nitpick seating charts. And there was a quiet solidarity in the room—parents recognized the look in one another’s eyes.

I took my usual chair. One child finished; another slid onto the stool. When my name was called, I greeted Professor Yoon and sat. The routine was the same as always: any problems? Lift your shirt. Cool diaphragm on a warm chest. A brief dictation to the resident tapping at the keyboard. Then to me: “Everything sounds fine. See you next time.” He turned back to the monitor to enter my prescription.

That was my moment. “Professor,” I said, “I passed. I’m a doctor now.”

He swiveled toward me, expression even. “Good,” he said. “Then work hard.”

Not “You’ve been through so much.” Not “Congratulations, patient.” For a breath or two, he spoke to me as a colleague. My throat tightened with gratitude.

Behind me, a boy wrestled with his sleeve while his mother zipped his jacket. Another family waited, tired and quiet. They heard us—because I wanted them to. I wanted them to know that someone who had come into this room in a striped hospital gown now stood in it wearing scrubs. Not a miracle. A path.

In the 1950s, coaches and scientists swore a human being couldn’t run a mile under four minutes; the body would break. Then, on a windy May day in 1954 at Oxford, a medical student named Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4. Once he broke the four-minute barrier, others followed—within weeks, then dozens within a couple of years. The barrier had always been, above all, a mental barrier.

That is what I wanted for those children—and for their parents. To see that congenital heart disease isn’t a hard limit on a life. You can put on a uniform, go to work, and be defined by what you give, not what you lack.

I can still see it: when I said I’d become a doctor, a few tired eyes brightened—hairline cracks racing across a wall that wasn’t stone at all, just fear.