wonjin’s pov

[Personnel Notice] Dr. Gye Sujeong Reinstated to the Department of General Surgery

Effective immediately, Dr. Gye Sujeong will return to the Department of General Surgery due to current staffing needs. Please direct all related inquiries to the Office of Administration.

The email came in a little past five, just as I was closing out the anesthesia record from my last case. I was about to ignore it like I did most of the administration’s notices, until I saw Sujeong’s name in the subject line.

I opened it to see what the hospital had to say about it. Would there be any other information about her reinstatement? I scoffed at the screen. They dumped her to the ER over that psychopath Na Dae-il, and now that the department was short on hands again, they were dragging her back like nothing happened. Typical.

Politics ran through this hospital like blood through a vein, and anyone who refused to play along ended up exactly where she did. It was sickening to watch. Still, I had to admit she was gutsy for holding her ground. Or maybe she never even had to think about it. Maybe she just didn’t care. They could toss her from one department to another and she’d keep on working. As long as there were patients who needed treatment, Gye Sujeong will be fine.

I didn’t have the stomach for any of the hospital’s bullshit, but I’d learned a long time ago that going against the status quo only brought headaches. So I kept my mouth shut about the circus since the day I started here. I wasn’t paid to fix this hospital. I was paid to do my job and do it well.

I leaned back in my chair, raising my brows as I read the announcement again.

“Well,” I exhaled. “It’s about time she’s back.”

If I was being honest, I missed having her in the operating room. We’ve never been scheduled together since she was hired but for some reason, whenever a major operation was underway, something would go wrong, and she’d be the one called in to take over.

Like when Na Dae-il was scheduled for surgery to remove a tumor found in his liver for biopsy, his primary surgeon showed up smelling like alcohol. Obviously, I refused to let him in. He insisted he could do it—that it was a simple procedure, and he’d done it hundreds of times. He even had the audacity to say he could do it with his eyes closed, smirking at me when he said it. I took it straight to the director, who scolded me for causing a scene. Was that even important if I did? He said there was no one else who could do it, so what was he supposed to do?

I told him I knew someone who could. Gye Sujeong.

Or that time the former director collapsed in the middle of his own surgery, and every doctor in the room ran after him, leaving an eighty-year-old patient open on the table with only me, the nurses, and the intern Park Taegyong. Sujeong walked in and finished it.

Both times, she didn’t just walk into the operating room. She made an entrance. She was commanding, and everyone was suddenly on their toes, even me. Back then, hardly anyone knew who she was. And yet, the moment she stepped in, the atmosphere in the room shifted, instantly becoming steadier when she took the lead.

For someone who detested human interaction, she seemed like a completely different person once she’s in surgery.

She pretty much left me stunned every time. I worked under plenty of surgeons in this hospital. The ones who barked at nurses over nothing, arrogant and narcissistic ones, skilled doctors, but I’ve never seen anyone like her. Her speed and precision was unsettling to say the least. Everything she did was so meticulous that I would catch myself wondering if it was humanly possible to finish operations that fast without a single flaw.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. There was a lot of chatters about her since her first operation. Doctors were curious whether the rumors were true, and some wanted to hear it from her directly. A few even cornered her in the cafeteria, asking her to walk them through what she did, and she ignored every single one of them. She’d only stare at them long enough just to say, "I don’t socialize." **

Needless to say, it left a bad impression. She wasn’t chummy with anyone in the surgery department either. She was peculiar and reclusive—quite unique if you ask me. Doctors need other doctors to survive in this cutthroat environment, but Sujeong seemed very much capable of handling her business without anyone.