Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3: Episodes 7-8

by alathe

Prepare for blood, guts, and surgical complications, because we’ve got gunshot victims! This is a whole other magnitude of difficulty, but it’s nothing our heroes can’t handle. Besides, it’s about time our new Head of the Trauma Center got a taste of how things are done at Doldam. He may be set in his ways, but there’s a reason our favorite romantic doctor welcomed him in — and a couple of people are beginning to realize why…

EPISODES 7-8

There’s no rest for our Doldam doctors! Although, theoretically, it’s Woo-jin’s day off, he bumps into someone on his usual jog. The guy’s sporting a rucksack, a don’t-mess-with-me glare… and a gaping leg wound. Time to hit the hospital. Meanwhile, as a violent snowstorm brews, the Trauma Center gets an urgent call: there’s been an incident at the military base. Four wounded are ushered in by an ominous entourage of soldiers. Two of them have been shot. Woo-jin, conscious that they need all hands on deck, elects to stay — earning a glare from Dong-hwa for his workaholic ways. Still, what did he expect from a guy who spends his mornings doing cardio in the sleet?

For once, the disgustingly talented Dr. Cha is outside his comfort zone. As Nurse Oh grimly notes, gunshot wounds are different. Can he take the heat? Scoffing, Dr. Cha goes to skulk on the balcony. It’s not long before our resident trauma savant, Teacher Kim himself, is in the building! From his handy vantage point, Dr. Cha spots his old rival flexing his wrist in discomfort. Naturally, the only solution is to be super obnoxious about it. Pointedly stretching his own, healthy arm, he deigns to take on a gunshot patient. Perhaps, he smirks, it’s Teacher Kim who can’t keep up.

Amid the chaos, Ah-reum is horrified to find herself running the ER. Her crack team consists of Dong-hwa the war-gaming runaway, and Lee “suturing stresses me out” Sun-woong. Worse, there’s an emergency at hand: a patient with a leg swollen to twice its usual size. Flanking him are a bunch of leather-jacketed lowlifes, including a man named CHOI SEOK-GU (Kim Kyun-ha). He eyes Eun-tak with a shark-life smile. Remember me? he asks. We have unfinished business from ten years ago. Namely? That guy you killed. Won-young.

The normally deadpan Eun-tak looks ready to stick a scalpel in his eye. Soon, the tension snaps, and he’s swinging a fist at his old crony’s face. A timely intervention from our conflict resolution specialist Mr. Gu (he majored in being very, very large) stops violence in its tracks. Eun-tak storms away to angrily strip his shirt off in the locker room. There’s an unexpected scar atop those cut-glass back muscles…

With Eun-tak MIA, it’s up to a nervous Dong-hwa to assist Woo-jin in operating on one of the soldiers. It’s carnage. After just one incision, blood jets out like a water fountain. Our boys are soaked to the ankles. Still, it’s nothing gauze, determination, and some surprisingly deft stitch-work from Dong-hwa can’t mend! Our wayward intern repairs the intestinal membrane so well that Woo-jin is forced to give him a stoic, sort of constipated shoulder pat. How does it feel, he asks, to save a life?

Dong-hwa’s not the only newbie showing his mettle. Dr. Bae is determined that Sun-woong face his OR anxiety: he’ll be assisting with the swollen-leg patient. Sun-woong is worried for all the regular reasons, but also a secret one he confides in Dr. Bae. (He isn’t kind enough to do the same for the audience. Curses!) Whatever it is, it’s clearly no deal-breaker. We’re gifted with one of those feel-good medical moments this show truly rocks at. In the otherworldly dark of the OR, as blood vessels pulsate and leak, Dr. Bae talks our trainee through each intricate surgical step. A blood clot is plucked away. His hand doesn’t tremble once. You were meticulous, Dr. Bae assures him. Don’t worry — I won’t tell anyone what you said.

Elsewhere, Eun-jae preps another soldier for surgery. Having stuck a tube in his left hand side, she’s about to do the same for his right, to prevent subcutaneous emphysema — i.e. air underneath the skin. But her father is hovering over her shoulder, playing the stern schoolmaster. Inserting a tube on both sides is over-treatment, opines Dr. Cha. Rattled, Eun-jae caves to pressure.

Later, working alongside Teacher Kim, all is going smoothly in the OR. But suddenly, Dr. Nam snaps towards the monitor in shock: the patient’s blood pressure is plummeting. Peeling back the covers in horror, Eun-jae sees swelling all the way up to his face. Yup: subcutaneous emphysema. Her old anxiety takes the wheel; noise recedes, and she blurts out that this is her fault. She’s killed him. Teacher Kim snaps at her to hold it together — she hasn’t killed anyone yet! But a new, unanticipated disaster has struck: they’re out of blood packs. Due to the snowstorm, there’s wall to wall traffic, and their blood truck is stuck in the thick of it.

Some are born great. Some sneak out for a quick chicken burger, and have greatness thrust upon them. Because, yes, our favorite walking malpractice suit, Dr. Yang, is caught in his car… right next to the blood van! Better still, as he grabs a heavy bag, a strong hand lands on his shoulder. Turns out Director Park, on his way back from an important presentation, also got caught in the jam. The two rush towards Doldam: Director Park, sprinting like he’s made of steel; Dr. Yang, flapping like he’s made of cellophane and excuses. When they finally arrive, Dr. Yang collapses. Director Park stays cool, nodding graciously at the staff — only to flop to the floor twice as hard. Even super-surgeons run out of batteries sometimes!

When the blood comes in, Teacher Kim is administering frantic CPR. He yells at Eun-jae to cut into the patient’s chest: the only option is a heart massage. Wide-eyed and hyperventilating, Eun-jae wraps her hand around the patient’s heart. But as it flails for rhythm, it’s clear they’re losing him. Teacher Kim takes over, and Eun-jae grabs for the electric paddles; between them, they’re able to shock the heart back into action. Crisis averted.

We return to Eun-tak, who has his own emergency. Flanked by his gang, Seok-gu holds up his phone and gloats: he has footage of Eun-tak threatening him. That decade of hard work Eun-tak put into his career? In five minutes, it can be destroyed — along with Doldam Hospital. But things don’t have to get nasty. Not if Eun-tak smuggles Seok-gu narcotics from the hospital. Later, Eun-tak’s gaze flicks to the medical cabinet. It’s tempting.

Doldam faces a larger, more lethal crisis. The incident at the military base was the work of a single man, JEON (Woo Ji-hyun). Fired from the army for illegal gambling, he launched an attack as revenge. Horrified, Manager Jang realizes that the shooter matches the description of the patient Woo-jin discovered. Also… he’s missing. To compound matters, the soldiers at the Trauma Center admit that the shooter is still armed and seriously dangerous. Appalled, Teacher Kim begins to coordinate an evacuation.

Gun in hand, Jeon stalks the ER, searching for the soldiers he failed to kill. He finds Dong-hwa sitting with his patient. Face to face with a would-be murderer, Dong-hwa whimpers. Time to run! To add indignity to injury, he slips mid-retreat. But as he scrambles off the floor, he’s assaulted by a flash of memory: blood splashing his feet. Woo-jin congratulating him on saving a life. Shakily, he hoists himself upright — and refuses to leave his patient’s side. Meanwhile, in the doorway, Woo-jin and Seok-gu converge on the shooter.

Gunshots ring across the hospital. Woo-jin is in the corridor, a pistol held to his head. With a surgeon’s calm, he informs Jeon that with his leg wound left untreated, he’s risking sepsis. In a haze of fury and pain, Jeon slumps to the floor. How is Woo-jin meant to understand what he faced? As a doctor, he’s had every success handed to him. Jaw set, Woo-jin informs him that he’s picked the wrong scapegoat. His family died in a murder-suicide, for crying out loud! Sure, the world’s unfair — but that’s no excuse for a bloodthirsty rampage. As Jeon aims the gun at him in desperation, Woo-jin’s phone buzzes. It’s Eun-jae. Woo-jin moves to take it. I’m sorry, he says, but I want to live.

As Teacher Kim sprints down the hallway, Woo-jin steps out to meet him. Soldiers rush past them to apprehend a still-very-much-alive Jeon. Teacher Kim pulls him into a hug — then fondly berates him. Why would he throw himself into danger like that? Woo-jin may have stopped a shooter through sheer force of moral fiber, but it would take a saint not to point out the hypocrisy of that. Soon, a terrified Eun-jae has caught up, and in a rush of relief, begins lecturing Woo-jin for not answering his phone.

As Teacher Kim nods, encouraging her to yell harder, Woo-jin is struck by just how much he loves these moody, irascible perfectionists. There’s no reason not to say it out loud to Eun-jae: I love you. As she gapes, he walks away grinning. Where would he be without Eun-jae or Teacher Kim to guide him? Perhaps, he muses, I can be that kind of person for someone. He stops Dong-hwa by the vending machine. Mentor regards student, and smiles. Trust in his eyes, Dong-hwa sweetly intones: … can you buy me an orange juice? The expensive kind, with bits? (Okay, fine. It’s a work in progress.)

Eun-jae has a reckoning with her own problematic mentor. In typical Dr. Cha-ish fashion, he won’t admit guilt for her surgical debacle. That patient, he tells Eun-jae, was an exception. It wasn’t his mistake, per se. Luckily, Eun-jae can decipher awkward Cha-speak. Every trauma case is an exception, she says, smiling. No treatment is excessive. You didn’t miss anything. I did. The forces of emotional repression are strong, so Dr. Cha waits until she leaves to say what he’s thinking: You’re brilliant, Eun-jae.

Meanwhile, Seok-gu has sustained injuries from scuffling with the shooter. Eun-tak grits his teeth and treats him, steadfastly refusing him narcotics. Do you know what death is like? he asks Seok-gu. When Won-young was dying, he carried him on his back. He felt him stiffen into a corpse. No matter how much Seok-gu tries to rattle him — he can’t touch him. As he holds Seok-gu at bay, the police burst in, to arrest Seok-gu as a drug offender.

Later, Eun-tak confesses to Ah-reum that Won-young was his best friend. After falling in with Seok-gu, Won-young did terrible things; when he died, Eun-tak himself was led astray. Eventually, he wound up in a car accident. After being brought to Doldam, he began to clean up his act. Does this disappoint Ah-reum? Ah-reum regards him, thoughtfully. As a teenager, she was no saint — she once stole money from her mother. Is he disappointed in her? If he likes who she is now, there’s no past he can’t understand.

Later, Nurse Oh corners Teacher Kim. In the quiet of his office, she reflects on what she’d seen in surgery. He’d been slow. His wrist had clearly been troubling him. She’s got an inkling why he brought Dr. Cha in. Tell me honestly, she says. How far has your condition progressed? Teacher Kim looks at her — and sighs.

Later, however, he chuckles, hearing his doctors eat together next door. Sun-woong and Dong-hwa toast to their first successful surgeries. The others celebrate another chaotic day conquered. Dr. Yang celebrates another chaotic day avoiding patients. And Teacher Kim looks up as Manager Jang rushes in with an urgent letter. It’s Assemblywoman Ko. She’s pressing charges for the death of her son.

Folks, I love/am awash with emotion about how the MS (un)reveal crept up on us. It was flagged in the first episode of the season. By the laws of narrative motion, Teacher Kim’s condition worsening shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, in the same way Teacher Kim has refused to talk about it, and most of his staff have refused to think about it, I bet I wasn’t the only one hoping nothing was wrong. Nurse Oh hasn’t been getting a lot of spotlight this season — perhaps because of Jin Kyung’s other acting commitments — but that scene with Teacher Kim was quiet and perfect. Of course she’d be the one to trust with this conversation.

There’s been a lot of exploration of alter egos this week, with Seok-gu and Jeon acting as foils to Eun-tak and Woo-jin respectively. Both depict the worst version of what each character might have become, were it not for Doldam. Between our boys, only Woo-jin was able to look Jeon, his distorted mirror image, in the eye; it was more wince-worthy to see Seok-gu effectively arrested for being an addict. Sure, he was implied to have done worse, but it didn’t sit right with me, especially in a series about rehabilitation and change. Still, what I love about this season is how Teacher Kim has committed to meeting his own alter-ego, Dr. Cha, halfway. This has been a week about our characters confronting difficult truths — here’s hoping they can face their challenges head on next time!

 
RELATED POSTS

• Premiere Watch: Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3
• Chaos abounds in Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3
• Familiar faces in Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3 character posters
• Returning to Doldam in Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3
• News bites: April 6, 2023
• News bites: April 1, 2023
• News bites: March 19, 2023
• News bites: March 11, 2023
• News bites: February 25, 2023
• Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 2: Episodes 1-2 (Review)