Chapter 1 — The White Coat Oath

The clock on the wall of the Emergency Department showed 2:20 a.m. when an ambulance siren rang outside the gate, breaking the rare silence of the night shift. Le Hai Yen, a second-year resident, was taking notes at the duty desk when she immediately stood up, pushing her chair back into the wall.

"Male patient, thirty-five years old, traffic accident, multiple injuries, blood pressure dropped to eighty over fifty!" The ambulance staff shouted loudly as the patient's stretcher was pushed through the door, blood soaking the thin blanket covering him.

Yen rushed forward immediately, both hands quickly checking the pulse, pupils, and gently pressing on the patient's abdomen, which was bulging abnormally. "The abdomen is hard, suspected internal bleeding. Call the Surgery department immediately, prepare the emergency operating room!"

At that moment, the door of the Emergency Department opened and another young doctor walked in - Vu Dang Khoa, a resident doctor in the Department of General Surgery, was called down for an urgent consultation. Tall, neat figure in a crisp white blouse even in the middle of the night, sharp eyes quickly scanning the patient's condition.

"Let me see the results of the abdominal ultrasound and chest X-ray first," Khoa said, his voice calm but decisive, his hands wearing gloves, preparing for another examination.

"There's no time to wait for a full imaging test," Yen replied immediately, without taking her hand off the patient's abdomen. "The clinical signs were obvious — hard abdomen, rapid drop in blood pressure, this was internal bleeding progressing. Every minute of delay was another minute of blood loss for the patient."

"I understand the time pressure," Khoa said, his voice still calm despite being somewhat firmer, "but sending the patient to the operating room without accurately determining the location of the injury can cause the surgery to take longer, or even miss other injuries. The standard procedure requires at least one quick bedside ultrasound."

"The standard procedure is written for cases that are not as critical as this," Yen growled, her eyes unable to hide her frustration. "Look at the patient's skin color, look at the blood pressure dropping every second. If you wait another fifteen minutes for the ultrasound, the patient may not be alive to go to the operating table."

The atmosphere in the emergency room was as tense as a piano string. Chief nurse Do Minh Thu, standing next to watch, glanced at both of them, not daring to intervene in the debate between the two doctors who were holding the patient's life in their hands.

In that tense moment, an old image suddenly flashed in Yen's mind - the image of her father lying on a fishing boat swaying in the night sea, blood reddening the net wrapped around the wound, while the whole family waited for an emergency boat from the mainland that took nearly two hours to arrive. At that time, Yen was only twelve years old, standing on the shore, helplessly watching the boat carrying her father away, not knowing it would be the last time she saw him awake. That memory, even though more than ten years had passed, was still the fire that drove every decision she made in life-or-death moments like this.

Khoa looked straight into Yen's eyes for a second, then bent down to quickly check the patient's abdomen with his own hands, feeling the hardness and distention. His face changed slightly when he realized the true severity.

"Okay," Khoa said, his voice decisive. "Go straight to the operating room. I will immediately contact the anesthesiologist and prepare the team."

Yen did not have time to respond, so she and the team pushed the patient's stretcher and rushed toward the elevator leading to the surgery area. Khoa followed closely behind, the phone pressed to his ear to make an emergency call to the surgical team.

Twenty minutes later, in the operating room, emergency surgery confirmed exactly what Yen predicted - the spleen ruptured causing massive internal bleeding. If there was even a few more minutes of delay, the consequences could have been irreversible. Dr. Dinh Xuan Phat, Head of the Department of Surgery, who directly performed the surgery with the team, handled it quickly, stopped the bleeding and sutured the damaged spleen with great precision.

Standing and observing through the glass of the waiting room for resident doctors, Khoa could not help but secretly admire the calmness and decisiveness of the teacher he had studied with for nearly two years. Dr. Phat was always the role model that the department strives for - not only good at his profession, but also dedicated, always taking the time to meticulously instruct each resident doctor, even in the midst of a busy and exhausting duty schedule. Dr. Phat was the one who taught Khoa that, in medicine, caution is never redundant, even though sometimes it can be a little slower than instinct.

But tonight, witnessing Yen's decisive, precise actions down to every second, Khoa couldn't help but wonder if the philosophy of absolute caution that he had always believed in was always the best choice.

After the surgery was successfully completed, the patient was transferred to the recovery room and his condition gradually stabilized. Yen stood outside the operating room, took off her gloves, a feeling of relief mixed with fatigue spread throughout her body after many hours of extreme stress.

Khoa walked out afterward, having just finished changing into his surgical outfit, his eyes found Yen standing alone in the empty hallway.

"Your decision is right," Khoa said, his voice much calmer than the tense moment in the emergency room. "If I had waited longer for an ultrasound, I think the consequences would have been different."

"Thank you for trusting me enough not to interfere," Yen replied, her voice still a bit stiff, not completely letting go of the tension of the previous argument. "But I also have to say frankly, if you insist on following the book's procedures in every situation, there will be times when it will cost you the patient's life."

"And if you keep acting on your instincts and ignoring safety procedures, there will be times when you have to pay the price of an unnecessary mistake," Khoa replied, not giving in at all. "We were just lucky that this time you were right."

The two looked at each other in tense silence for a moment, neither of them willing to give in to the other. This was clearly not a smooth start between the two young doctors, but behind that fierce collision, both implicitly recognized in the other a devotion to their profession that is not fake.

Minh Thu, who had just finished taking notes, passed by and saw that scene and couldn't help but smile slightly. "These two," she muttered to herself, "will definitely have a lot to talk about." She shook her head, wondering how long that tense atmosphere would last, or if this was just the prelude to something much more interesting about to happen between these two young doctors full of personality.

Yen turned around and left first, without saying another word, but in her heart she couldn't deny that the discussion just now had left an unforgettable impression on the meticulous and stubborn Surgery Department doctor no less than herself.

Khoa stood alone in the hallway, watching Yen's figure disappear around the corner. An indescribable curiosity also arose in his heart about the Emergency Doctor who had just dared to directly challenge his judgment right in front of the entire crew. Since childhood, Khoa had been accustomed to his every decision being scrutinized more closely than others - not because he was incompetent, but because the name "son of the Technical Director" always accompanies every step he took in this hospital. That's why Khoa always forces himself to be twice as careful, twice as meticulous, so that no one had an excuse to say that he was supported.

But today, for the first time in a long time, someone dared to refute him, not out of respect or caution about his family status, but simply because he believed in his own professional judgment. That, although annoying in the moment of argument, left Khoa with an implicit respect that he had not yet named.

The phone in Khoa's pocket vibrated, and there was a text message from his father - Associate Professor Vu Dinh Truong: "I heard that the recent emergency surgery was a success. You did very well." Khoa looked at that message for a while, not knowing whether to be happy about being recognized, or feel burdened by the invisible pressure that always comes with every compliment from the father who is the head of the hospital.

He put his phone in his pocket, turned and walked back to the on-call room, still lingering in his mind was the image of the steady, unflinching eyes of the female ER doctor who had argued fiercely with him just a few minutes ago - a start full of collisions, but perhaps, also the start of something Khoa had never anticipated.

The next morning, on the hospital's duty roster, a new notice was posted: from next week, the Emergency Department - General Surgery consultation program will be held periodically twice a week, to enhance coordination in handling multiple trauma cases. The list of resident doctors participating in the consultation is listed below, and there, the names of Le Hai Yen and Vu Dang Khoa stand next to each other, like an ironic arrangement of fate that neither of them could have foreseen.