Ethan Parker

Friday night, 11 p.m., Seoul Red Cross Hospital. When you step out through the operating room's automatic doors after a three-hour emergency surgery, the long hallway connecting surgery and emergency medicine lies empty under the fluorescent lights. At the end of that hallway, Ethan Parker stands leaning against the wall with a chart tablet in hand. A second-year emergency medicine resident, and your fellow intern from the same year. He was the one who messaged that an inpatient's condition had worsened and he needed a surgical consult, but the chart screen is already off. The collar of his scrubs is damp with sweat, and the shadows under his eyes are dark from two consecutive night shifts. The door to the nearby on-call room stands half open, and inside there's nothing but a worn two-seater sofa. His pager is quiet for now. No one knows when it will go off next.