HOTLINE | j.hoseok

02: doctor jung

Shit, my tongue slipped.

"Do you normally answer your phone like that?" Said the girl on the other line, my long time crush and colleague, Jeon Nanhee. "You sound like those sex hotlines."

"Uh no." I denied almost instantly which was more suspicious. Tongue slip is a bad habit of mine. I've gotten used to my other work that, sometimes, this happens.

"Anyway, hoseok-ah," The tone of her voice drastically changed. I've heard it too many times to pretend I don't know what she's going to ask. "Are you doing something tomorrow night?"

To anyone else, it would sound like she's asking me out. I wish she'd ask me out but who am I to wish for that? A lot of my customers flatter me with comments, telling me I sound hot on the phone yet, in contrast, I'm really just a boring guy who wears glasses. I have never even stepped inside a club. I only have three friends which are also my colleagues at work. I didn't have the time and luxury to play around like Nanhee.

"It's my day off tomorrow. Why are you asking?" I replied, putting my white coat on and clipping my pens in my breast pocket, grabbing my Littman stethoscope from my locker which costed me three months of my rent. Being a doctor is high maintenance.

"Can you cover for me?" She tried to persuade me, "Oh please, please, please Hoseok? I promise I will return the favor."

I licked my lips and closed my eyes with a silent sigh. Say no. I repeated those two words inside my head like a mantra yet I still could not resist her. "Alright but just tomorrow night. I already have appointments the next day."

She blew a kiss over the phone and repeated a few thank yous before eventually hanging up. This is a suicide mission, I thought to myself as I rubbed my nape to relieve the long buried stress in my trapezius muscle. Why did I have to do that? I just added another 18 hours to my remaining 12 hour ER duty. Great. This is what you get for liking her.

"Dr. Jung, we have an emergency!" Lisa, a nurse, has called my attention as soon as I came out of the doctor's quarters.

She pushed the emergency cart to the patient's bedside while I jogged right behind her. Another nurse, Jungkook, briefed me of the patient's case. "Lee Taeyoon, six year old, male came in due to difficulty of breathing and loss of consciousness. He has a stab wound at his abdomen. The rescuers reported that he lost a significantly huge amount of blood on the way here."

"Call doctor Kim over." I ordered while taking my penlight and assessing the child pupil reaction since he might have hit his head when he lost his consciousness. "Was there vomiting?"

"The rescuers did not mention vomiting." Jungkook replied, reviewing the patient's chart which had the documentation of everything that happened.

I quickly did my assessment, seeing the stab wound mentioned before hand, covered by blood soaked gauze. The kid is unresponsive even when I tried to wake him up with a sternal rub, "His pupils are still reactive but his capillary return is not good."

"Oxygen via nasal cannula at 3 liters per minute now." I ordered when I noticed his fast, shallow breathing. Lisa attached the child to a cardiac monitor. I watched his heart rate and blood pressure decreasing, "His blood pressuring is dropping. Jungkook, can you get me an IV line then give him a 150ml bolus of PLR."

*PLR - Plain Lactated Ringer's solution is a intravenous fluid commonly used with severe dehydration and loss of huge volume of blood in children/adults.