That Night in the Trauma Center

Residency was a treadmill: the same motions, the same duties, again and again. And yet that monotony made the years pass quickly. Perhaps it was precisely because time rushed forward that I managed to endure. The grind carried its own addictive pull. No matter how exhausted you became, watching a patient improve and finally walk out of the hospital gave you enough strength to dive back in.

By my final year of residency, I had become chief resident. Chiefs managed the other residents: dividing work, setting call schedules, smoothing inevitable complaints. Every organization has thankless tasks, and in a surgical department the most senior resident took them on. Call duties thinned by that point—down from half the month as a first-year to no more than five nights. But the relief was only physical. Chiefs still arrived first each morning to review the night’s work and clean up any problems left behind. Fewer hours of sleep, perhaps, but heavier responsibilities.

That morning began no differently. I parked, grabbed a coffee, and walked toward the residents’ lounge. My watch showed just past 6:30. The hospital was silent but for interns shuffling like ghosts down the hall, bleary-eyed after night calls.

Inside the darkened lounge, I groped for the switch. As the lights flicked on, something shifted in the corner. A figure stirred on the cot—Second-year resident Choi, curled like a silkworm, still in his scrubs. I quickly shut the light again, pulled the fallen blanket up to his chest, and moved to the farthest computer so the monitor glow wouldn’t wake him. He must have been swamped to crash here instead of the call room.

When I logged in, one name on the patient list caught my eye:
“Yoon ○○, F/14, multiple trauma, discharged (deceased).”

A fourteen-year-old girl. No death is ever easy to accept, but this one pressed heavily on me. I opened her chart. She had been struck by a one-ton truck the night before and brought in unconscious. The trauma surgeon had been called, but her pelvic fractures had unleashed massive bleeding. Despite vasopressors, despite transfusions, her blood pressure collapsed. Cardiac arrest followed. For nearly an hour the team fought to bring her back, until her parents, through tears, asked us to stop. Fourteen years old, gone before she could even bloom.

Behind me, Choi rubbed his eyes and sat up. I apologized for waking him. He waved it off, voice thick with fatigue. “It was a busy night.” He hesitated, then came closer, clearly wrestling with something. Finally, he began to talk.

During his call, he had received a phone call from Dr. Jung, one of the attending trauma surgeons. Jung told him he was away in Busan but that a patient would soon arrive in the ER. Choi was to admit the patient under Jung’s name. Choi asked if another attending was available; after all, no resident should manage a fresh trauma case alone. The trauma center existed precisely so that attendings were on call 24/7, backed by dedicated ORs and ICUs. The government funded it heavily and the media celebrated it as a model of trauma care.

But Jung snapped back: stop asking questions, just do it. Then he hung up. Moments later, the ER called about the incoming patient—a teenage girl hit by a truck. Choi ran down. She was far worse off than he’d imagined. Within minutes her heart had stopped, and despite prolonged resuscitation, she died.

Jung eventually rushed back in the early morning hours. When told the girl was dead, he ordered Choi to delete the record and rewrote the chart himself, making it seem as though he had been there all along.

Choi dropped his head in shame as he finished. Did the parents know? I asked. He shook his head. They had been too distraught even to notice. I had no words. What had happened was unthinkable, intolerable.

By dawn the other residents had arrived, and the story spread quickly. They begged me, as chief, to take it to the department chair. Jung deserved discipline—if not formal punishment, then at least removal from resident supervision. I agreed, adding one more point: the parents must be told that their daughter had been treated without an attending present. All nodded in agreement—except Choi, who sat silent, guilt-ridden. I rested a hand on his shoulder. “You did everything you could. Don’t blame yourself.”

At eight o’clock, the attendings filed in for the morning meeting. The chair sat in the center, the hierarchy arranged neatly beside him. I gave my report of admissions and discharges. I included the girl’s death, but the chair betrayed no reaction; he did not yet know the truth. Jung, seated nearby, flicked his eyes back and forth, avoiding mine.

I decided not to raise it publicly. Not yet. I would speak to the chair alone. After rounds, I followed him from the last ward. “Professor, may I have a word? In private.” He agreed to see me in his office before outpatient clinic.

I rehearsed my words all the way there. Inside, I found him as he always was: small in stature, sharp in manner, infamous for volcanic outbursts in the OR. Residents joked about counting how many times he exploded in a single case. But he also had another side. He believed in teaching skills that would last a lifetime, urging us to observe and ask questions even when he didn’t need our help. He never said “you’re working hard,” but he’d quietly take a weary resident out for a meal, paying himself. He was, at his core, a teacher.

So I trusted him. I laid it all out: Jung had admitted a patient in absentia, the girl had died, he had altered the records, and the parents remained unaware. I asked for two things: that the parents be told the truth, and that Jung be barred from supervising residents. The chair’s brow furrowed.

This was not a man who shrank from responsibility. I had once seen him personally accept blame for an error that wasn’t his, telling prosecutors he alone had given the order. But now his silence stretched. I began to suspect why.

There were politics. The trauma center itself was contested ground. Some believed it essential to a public hospital’s mission. Others resented the resources it consumed. Conflict simmered since its inception. To reveal this scandal would hand ammunition to its opponents. And there was more: Jung was “aligned with the president.” The hospital’s director had been parachuted in by the government, and Jung was his man. Touching him would be perilous.

The chair closed his eyes, silent. On his desk was a photo of his family, smiling on vacation. He too had things to protect. But so did I. At last I pressed him: “Professor, imagine if you were her father. Wouldn’t you want to know?”

Still nothing. I added, “And please, keep Jung away from the residents.” That finally drew a response. He snapped: “Residents are doctors too! Why can’t a resident treat a patient?”

I pushed back hard. “That’s not what you taught us. Didn’t you nod when Professor Lee said trauma patients must be seen by trained trauma surgeons, not left to residents? Jung knew he couldn’t be there and admitted her anyway—for his own numbers. Then he falsified the chart. And now a girl is dead.”

My voice rose, but he raised his hand. “Enough. Go back. We’ll discuss this later.” He needed time, I realized. I bowed and left.

The residents were waiting anxiously. I told them I had spoken up, that I’d demanded Jung’s removal and truth for the parents. They looked relieved. “Now we wait for his decision,” I said.

By the afternoon conference, the air was taut. The chair sat darker-faced, Jung stone-lipped beside him. The residents sat stiff, eyes forward. The meeting passed in silence.

Afterward, I pressed the chair again. “Have you decided?”

“Let it go,” he said at last, avoiding my gaze.

I protested, but he cut me off with a shout: “Then do whatever you want!” And he stormed away, leaving me standing alone in the hallway, still hoping he might come back and say something different. He never did.