I Let Myself Want You

37 ● Jesper ● 10.05.2023

May 10th, 2023

Jesper, New York

I was called into emergency surgery first thing in the morning. A patient was brought to the ER, bleeding internally pretty badly after some accident. I figured his condition must have been quite serious, because when I got to the OR, I already saw someone from general surgery and neurosurgery. Be it a coincidence or not, Malcolm was the neurosurgeon called in.

It's only been a week, but Malcolm already took over Yohan's place as the head of neurosurgery, which was also followed by taking over Yohan's surgeries. All of them. Yohan was basically left with no OR time, he was just doing his work as the chief, and for some reason, he was busier than ever. I figured that he must have had a lot of paperwork concerning Malcolm's arrival to Presbyterian, but still, he definitely worked too much. He even came to the hospital on his day off. I guess Roger was truly right, the chief was always on call, not necessarily medically.

The surgery took much longer than I expected, and everyone was on edge. Turns out I managed to do everything I could on my part, and it seemed like Malcolm also stopped the bleeding, but it looked like the patient was bleeding out literally everywhere, and just when I thought that I had everything under control, more blood appeared and the patient simply died.

I left in anger, going to the scrub room to scrub out, not wanting to call it. I've been having some troubles doing that, ever since Minseok's death, when doctor Barnes yelled at me to call it and left. It might have been weird and childish, but since then, I was the one to leave the OR and tell someone else to call it. I was sick of people dying all the time, I've lost ten patients just this month.

"That was some surgery," I heard someone's voice. It was Malcolm, coming to clean himself as well. "It was a pleasure working by your side, doctor Harris. You truly are incredible. You're a genius, just like me. And a loner. We're quite alike, if you think about it, maybe that's why Yohan likes us so much. Maybe he has a type," he said, chuckling to himself a little, getting out of the disposable gown that was full of blood, but not as much as mine.

I looked at him with a deep frown, wondering if he was fucking serious right now. "The patient died, doctor Reed," I pointed out sternly. "I wouldn't actually say that we're fucking geniuses, since we couldn't save him," I added, huffing in annoyance. And that comment about Yohan? What the fuck? What the actual fuck?

"You know, being a surgeon doesn't make you God, Jesper," Malcolm said, with a softer voice now. Gone was all that arrogance of his. "You can't save everyone. I know you may want to, but you can't," he added with a sad voice. "I heard about Minseok, I see you're still struggling with that."

"I'm not struggling with anything!" I exclaimed in anger, and then when he raised his eyebrows at me in amusement, I calmed down and nodded. "Okay. Maybe. How would you feel? If you operated on someone who was like a father to you, and you failed?" I asked curiously.

"Considering I operated on my own father, and I actually fucked up, then I'd say I'd feel pretty gutted," Malcolm spoke, which surprised me a little. I certainly didn't expect something like that. "Minseok was bleeding internally too much, there was nothing you could do. And when it comes to my dad's surgery? I was determined to do it on my own, I wouldn't let anyone else do it. And I was too emotional, obviously. And I fucked up. I was cutting out his tumor and I cut out a little too much of, well, everything. And he bled out, thanks to me. And died, by my hand," he explained.

Shit. "But why did you operate on your father in the first place? It's not like we even can. How did you go around it?" I asked, knowing damn well that it was against the law.

"My mother owns the hospital I worked in," he shrugged like it was nothing. "And she basically begged me to do it, because she trusted me, and no one else. And thanks to that surgery, we haven't really been on speaking terms for over a year," he added. "As I said, you can't save everyone, so don't beat yourself up over the patients you can't help. If you do that, then you're going to have a nervous breakdown if someone actually dies by your mistake.

Shit times two. Well, I guess he won when it came to operating on people we cared about. And just when I wanted to ask more about it, some nurse came into the scrub room. "Doctor Reed, your patient's scans are up," she said, holding said scans in her hands tightly, like her life depended on it.

"Oh thank you, Katie, I appreciate you taking my patient to get his scans," he said, smiling at the woman politely. "Can you show me what's on them?" He asked, looking at his soaped hands. The nurse came over and put the scans directly in front of the light. "Good. Great. It doesn't seem like it grew at all. That's great. Please tell the patient I'll come see him in ten minutes," he just added, looking at the nurse, and she only nodded and left.

"What was on the scans?" I asked curiously.

"I have a patient with quite a big meningioma, I was afraid it would grow, but thankfully, it hasn't," he said, letting out a breath of relief. "I'm really scared about it though," he looked at me with a serious expression on his face, with sad eyes. "It doesn't seem too scary, but those kind of tumors are the worst. Maybe it's not growing now, but I predict that it's going to, pretty soon."

I frowned at him, not understanding. I thought every tumor could be removed, mostly. "Can't you operate? Meningiomas aren't that aggressive, right?" I said.

He shook his head right away. "The patient hasn't decided yet, but I can see that he doesn't want the surgery. I told him that radiation isn't going to do shit, but he doesn't listen. On top of that, he doesn't want to tell anyone about this tumor, and he's pretty stubborn," he said, huffing in annoyance.

We were interrupted yet again by someone entering the scrub room, and this time it was Jisoo. "Jesper, it seems that the new patient after cardiopulmonary bypass is having some complications with the spinal cord, I need you to come take a look at the scans and call for a neuro-" She started talking quite fast, and when she finally noticed who was in the room with me, her mood suddenly changed. "Malcolm. Great to see you. Come, you'll be of need for once in your life," she said, opening the door, motioning for us to follow her. I just told her that we'll need another two minutes to finish scrubbing off, and we'll both be right there.

"Oh, and Jesper?" Malcolm spoke, before he left. "You don't have to worry about Yohan. I don't know if you noticed, but I kind of have a history with his sister, so-" He said, shrugging, and then after sending me one last sympathetic smile, he left after Jisoo.