Hyun-woo
The white coat felt heavier than it should.
It wasn't the fabric. It wasn't the weight of the stethoscope draped around my neck, nor the textbooks in my bag, nor the endless notes stuffed into my pockets. It was the weight of expectation—of knowing that every waking moment was supposed to be in service of something greater.
Except I didn't feel great. I didn't feel anything.
It was the weight of knowing I had nothing left to even lose.
The alarm started screaming at 5:30 AM. It clawed through the silence like nails on bone, a shrill, unrelenting demand to keep moving, keep studying, keep existing. My hand found the clock, slamming down on the snooze button. The ringing stopped, but the silence wasn't better.
I lay there. I didn't move. My body registered the sound, but my brain lagged behind, trapped somewhere in the fog between exhaustion and obligation. The ceiling above me was the same dull off-white, cracked in places, a single flickering light overhead casting shadows that didn't belong here. I had stared at this ceiling too many times.
Five more minutes. Maybe Ten.
I should get up.
The thoughts came in sequences, broken yet relentless. I should get up. I should shower. I should eat. I should review my notes. I should exist.
But "should" was a dead thing. It had been dead for a long time.
Instead, I stared.
The sheets beneath me were stiff with overuse, the dorm mattress pressing against my back like a reminder of how little comfort existed in this life. My desk was a graveyard of unfinished notes, ink bleeding into the pages where my pen had dragged from exhaustion. The highlighter marks were erratic, some pages aggressively dissected, others barely touched. The smell of stale coffee lingered in the air—yesterday's, or maybe the day before that. I couldn't remember if I had poured it out. Probably not.
A knock on the door.
"Bro, you up?"
My roommate, Vincent. His voice was groggy but alive. Mine wouldn't be. I forced my throat to work. "Yeah."
I didn't sound awake. I barely sounded human. But it was enough. His footsteps faded down the hallway, leaving me alone again.
I forced myself to sit up. My muscles ached, not from exertion but from sheer neglect. My body was running on caffeine fumes and some vague promise that I would take care of it "eventually." I didn't remember the last time I got a full night's sleep. Maybe first year. Maybe never.
Dragging myself up felt like peeling away from gravity itself. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feet pressing into the cold, tile floor. A few steps, and I was at the sink.
The mirror above my sink didn't lie.
Dark circles, skin that looked as if it had forgotten the warmth of the sun, my lips cracked from dehydration. I touched my face, half-expecting it to not feel real. The reflection mimicked my movements, but it didn't feel like me. Just some hollow thing wearing my skin. My hair was a mess, my shirt wrinkled from sleeping in it. I rubbed my face, but the exhaustion didn't fade.
I turned on the faucet. Cold water ran over my hands, pooling in my palms before I splashed it over my face. The shock of it was brief, gone as quickly as it came. I gripped the edge of the sink and exhaled.
Classes. Rounds. Studying. Exams. Survival.
Everything blurred together into one endless, inescapable cycle.
With a mechanical motion, I picked up my toothbrush.
Routine. That was all I had now. A cycle of waking up, forcing myself through the motions, pushing my body past its limits, collapsing, then doing it all over again.
I spat into the sink.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this wasn't normal. Knew that I wasn't supposed to feel like a walking corpse before even becoming a doctor. But there wasn't time to care.
There was never time.
I threw on my white coat. The fabric sat on my shoulders like an accusation, a reminder of the dream I had once wanted so badly. It smelled like the hospital—antiseptic, bleach, something metallic underneath it all. It should have felt like armor. Instead, it felt like a shroud.
I stepped out into the hallway.
The lights were dim, flickering slightly, casting long, skeletal shadows on the walls. The air was thick with the same exhaustion that clung to all of us. Some doors were already open, their occupants awake and studying, their faces buried in books, drowning in the same hopeless ocean as me. Others were still closed, but I knew the people inside weren't sleeping.
Nobody slept here.
Not really.
As I walked, the weight of the day settled over me like an inevitability.
Another lecture. Another round of pretending I could still function. Another twelve hours of existing just enough to keep going.
I didn't know how much longer I could do this.
But stopping wasn't an option.
It never had been.
---
The world moved, and I moved with it, but I wasn't really there.
I sat in the lecture hall, surrounded by bodies hunched over their notes, eyes scanning pages with mechanical precision. The professor's voice droned on, a distant hum against the white noise of my own thoughts.
I tried to listen. I really did.
But the words blurred together, slipping through the cracks in my brain like water through trembling fingers.
"The superior mesenteric artery supplies…"
I knew this. I had studied this. I had underlined it in red, highlighted it in yellow, written it on flashcards that now sat crumpled at the bottom of my bag.
But right now, in this moment, I couldn't remember a damn thing.
My hands were shaking. Not visibly. Not enough for anyone else to notice. But I could feel it, a faint tremor just beneath the surface. A quiet rebellion of a body stretched too thin.
I clenched my fists under the desk.
It didn't help.
The lights overhead buzzed, flickering slightly, casting everything in a washed-out haze. My eyelids were heavy. Every few seconds, I blinked too long, my brain desperate to steal moments of rest where it could. I knew if I let myself close my eyes for just a second too long, I wouldn't open them again.
Someone near me was scribbling notes at a speed that made my stomach turn. Their pen scraped against the paper with brutal efficiency, underlining, circling, absorbing knowledge the way I was supposed to.
I was falling behind.
I was always falling behind.
I forced myself to pick up my pen. It felt foreign in my grip, my fingers stiff, my joints aching. I pressed it to the page, willing my hand to move.
It didn't.
Move. Write something. Anything.
Nothing came. My brain was a hollowed-out cavity, an abandoned house filled with echoes of things I used to know.
Someone's phone vibrated. Someone coughed. Someone exhaled too loudly. It all felt too sharp, too intrusive, like the world was pressing in on me from all sides.
I needed to get out of here.
I couldn't.
The professor kept talking. My peers kept writing. The clock kept moving forward, dragging me with it.
I wasn't even here.
I was nowhere.
Somehow, I made it through the lecture. I didn't remember the walk to the library, but I must have taken it, because now I was sitting at a table, staring at an open textbook, my vision blurring over the words.
Outside, the sky was gray, the kind of dull overcast that made it impossible to tell what time it was. Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed like dying insects, casting long shadows over the tables, over the students hunched over their notes, over me.
I ran a hand down my face, pressing my fingers into my eyes until I saw static.
Keep going. Keep moving. Keep pretending.
I flipped a page. I didn't read it. My fingers clenched the edge of the book, holding onto it like it was the only thing tethering me to reality.
I needed caffeine.
I needed sleep.
I needed something I couldn't name.
My chest felt tight, a dull pressure sitting heavy beneath my ribs. I pressed a hand over my sternum, as if I could physically hold myself together. The air felt thin, not enough oxygen in the room, not enough space in my lungs.
Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.
It didn't help.
I stared at my notes, at the shaky, uneven handwriting scrawled across the pages. I had written these at some point. I had understood them once.
Now, they looked like a stranger's words.
I closed the book.
The library was too quiet, too still, too full of people pretending they weren't breaking under the weight of it all.
I needed to get out.
So I did.
I wandered. Not anywhere specific, just through the campus, past the buildings I had stopped seeing, past the people I had stopped knowing. My legs moved, but I felt nothing beneath my feet.
It was cold. I didn't have a jacket. I didn't care.
At some point, I ended up in the common area near the dorms, where a vending machine hummed in the corner, offering caffeine and things designed to keep people like me upright.
I fished out some coins from my pocket, fingers numb as I fed them into the machine. The coffee it dispensed was burnt, bitter, barely drinkable. I drank it anyway.
The heat burned down my throat, settling like lead in my stomach.
I didn't feel warmer.
I just felt awake enough to keep suffering.
The hours blurred.
Night crept in, swallowing the sky, painting the campus in shadows. The world quieted, but the weight in my chest didn't lift.
Back in my dorm, I stood in front of my desk, staring at the mountain of work I hadn't done. The textbooks, the notes, the reminders of everything I was failing to be.
My body begged for rest.
My brain refused.
So I sat. I picked up my pen. I turned a page.
And I kept going.
Because stopping wasn't an option.
It never had been.
---
The clock read 2:42 AM.
The numbers glowed faintly in the dark, an eerie reminder that I should be asleep. That everyone should be asleep.
But sleep was a luxury. One I hadn't been able to afford in years.
My desk was a battlefield of open textbooks, half-empty coffee cups, and crumpled notes. A highlighter lay uncapped, dried out from neglect. The lamp above flickered, casting erratic shadows that stretched across the dorm walls, making the room feel smaller.
I was supposed to be studying. Reviewing. Memorizing.
Instead, I was just sitting there.
My pen rested against an open notebook, its tip smudging ink where a sentence had started and never been finished.
I blinked. My vision swam. The words on the page made no sense, shifting and melting together like ink bleeding in water.
How long had I been staring at this? An hour? Two?
I pressed the heel of my palm against my eye sockets, willing the headache to subside. It didn't. The pressure behind my skull had become a constant companion, a dull, throbbing reminder that my body was running on empty.
I forced myself to refocus.
"Aortic dissection. Type A involves the ascending aorta. Type B involves the descending aorta. Sudden onset chest pain. Ripping, tearing sensation. Pulse deficits."
I knew these words. I had seen them a hundred times, repeated them like a prayer before every exam, scribbled them in the margins of my notes until my hands ached.
But they didn't feel real.
Nothing felt real.
The room was silent, the kind of silence that wasn't peaceful but suffocating. Even the hum of the heater had stopped, leaving behind only the faint ringing in my ears.
I exhaled. My breath felt too loud in the stillness.
Outside my window, the campus was dead. No movement. No life. Just the dim glow of streetlights casting long, lonely shadows on the pavement below. Somewhere in the distance, I heard a car pass by, the engine fading into nothing.
2:46 AM.
I wasn't going to sleep. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
I reached for my coffee. It had gone cold hours ago, the surface stained with the faint residue of milk. I took a sip anyway. It tasted awful, bitter and burnt, but at least it gave my hands something to do.
I had to keep going.
If I stopped, I would crash.
And I didn't know if I would be able to get back up.
3:30 AM.
A distant sound.
Footsteps.
They echoed faintly through the dorm hallway, hesitant, slow. Someone else was awake. Someone else was suffering.
For a moment, I thought about opening the door. Looking out. Seeing if whoever was walking past felt as hollow as I did.
I didn't.
It didn't matter.
Nothing did.
I turned another page, stared at another diagram. I wasn't absorbing anything. My mind was a locked door, and no matter how many times I tried to force information inside, it all just… slid away.
I gritted my teeth, pressing my pen harder against the page. My knuckles turned white. The ink bled through.
I should be able to do this.
I had worked too hard to fall apart now.
I had sacrificed too much.
But the words wouldn't stay.
I pressed my palms against my temples. My pulse throbbed beneath my fingertips.
Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out.
Still, the pressure remained.
I needed to leave.
4:02 AM.
The common area was dimly lit, the vending machines casting a sterile glow against the tiled floors. The couches were empty, the tables littered with abandoned papers, coffee cups, and the occasional open laptop left unattended.
I stood in front of the vending machine, staring blankly at the options.
Energy drinks. Coffee. Sugary snacks pretending to be food.
None of it looked appealing, but I fished some coins out of my pocket anyway, feeding them into the slot with sluggish movements. The machine whirred, and a coffee can dropped into the tray below.
I cracked it open. The first sip was sharp, acidic, settling like poison in my stomach.
I swallowed anyway.
At the far end of the room, someone had left a white coat draped over the back of a chair. A book lay open on the table beside it, pages covered in cramped handwriting. Another student, probably. Someone just as tired, just as lost.
For a fleeting second, I wondered if they were coming back.
Or if they had left, unable to take it anymore.
I sat down on one of the couches, letting my body sink into the worn-out cushions. The vending machine hummed behind me, a dull, mechanical sound that filled the silence.
I sipped my drink. I stared at the ceiling.
The exhaustion wasn't just physical. It was something deeper. Something that lived inside my bones, my blood, my brain.
I wasn't sure if it would ever leave.
4:37 AM.
I should go back. Try to study. Try to force my brain to function.
But instead, I just sat there, staring at nothing, waiting for the sun to rise on another day I wasn't sure I could survive.
---
The sun rose, but I barely noticed.
I was back at my desk, where I had been for hours—days—months. The sky outside bled from black to gray, but the room stayed the same. Stale air, dim lighting, the scent of old coffee and ink-stained paper.
My head ached. A dull, pulsing pressure like a weight pressing down from the inside. My body was stiff, muscles protesting from too many hours spent hunched over textbooks, eyes burning from the glow of my desk lamp.
I had stopped checking the time. It didn't matter. The hours blurred together, bleeding into each other like ink on damp paper. The only real markers of time were the shifts in my exhaustion—the brief bursts of forced wakefulness after caffeine, the inevitable crashes that followed, the way my mind wavered between sharp panic and numb detachment.
I couldn't keep doing this.
I kept doing it anyway.
7:15 AM.
The dorm shower was too cold. Or maybe my skin was too thin.
I stood under the water, my hands braced against the tiled wall, my breath fogging the air in front of me. My shoulders ached. My fingers were stiff. I felt hollow, like my body was nothing but a shell that barely contained me.
I closed my eyes.
For a moment, I let myself imagine falling asleep right here, letting the water drown out the sound of my own thoughts.
But that wasn't an option.
I turned off the shower, gripping the sink for balance as I dried my face with a threadbare towel.
The mirror was fogged over. I wiped a hand across it.
I almost wished I hadn't.
The face that was again staring back at me was barely mine.
Dark circles swallowed what little life was left in my eyes. My skin was pale. My lips were cracked, my hair a mess of damp strands sticking to my forehead.
I looked like a ghost of myself.
Maybe I was.
I didn't have time to think about it.
I pulled on my white coat.
The weight settled over my shoulders.
I left the dorm.
8:00 AM.
Lecture.
Another sterile classroom. Another professor droning on about something I should care about.
The words hit my ears but didn't stick. I scribbled notes anyway, muscle memory taking over where my brain refused to function.
Around me, everyone looked the same. Hollow eyes, stiff postures, hands clutching pens like lifelines. A row of coffee cups lined the desks. No one spoke. No one breathed too loudly. We were all just trying to stay conscious.
At some point, the professor asked a question.
Someone answered.
It wasn't me.
My stomach twisted, a sharp spike of guilt mixed with something worse—something that felt like failure.
I should have known the answer. I did know it. Somewhere in the depths of my exhausted mind, it was there, buried under layers of fatigue and self-doubt.
But when it mattered, my mouth stayed shut.
My grip on my pen tightened.
I turned back to my notes.
Kept writing.
Kept pretending.
12:30 PM.
Lunch break.
Or, more accurately, another cup of coffee and a handful of whatever snack I could shove into my mouth without thinking.
I sat in the cafeteria, surrounded by noise but hearing none of it. Students talked in hushed voices, their words blending into a low hum of stress and exhaustion. Some were laughing, forced and brittle, like they were trying to convince themselves they still remembered how. Others sat in silence, heads bowed over textbooks, food untouched on their trays.
I didn't talk to anyone.
I just sat there, staring at my notes, flipping pages I wouldn't remember.
The coffee tasted like burnt desperation.
I drank it anyway.
2:45 PM.
Dissection lab.
The smell hit first—formaldehyde, antiseptic, something metallic underneath it all. It clung to the air, to my clothes, to the back of my throat.
The cadaver lay on the table, skin pulled back, organs exposed like an open book.
I should have felt something.
Fascination. Discomfort. Respect.
Instead, I felt nothing.
My gloved hands moved automatically, retracting tissue, identifying structures, reciting their names in a voice that didn't feel like mine. The heart lay in its cavity, still and silent. The lungs, collapsed like forgotten balloons. The intestines coiled in place, eerily delicate.
Once, this had been a person.
Now, it was just a lesson.
I stared at the cadaver's face—covered, but still there. The shape of a nose. The hint of lips. The hollow space where eyes used to be.
I wondered who they had been.
I wondered if they had been exhausted too.
I wondered if they had ever felt like they were drowning.
I looked away.
Kept working.
Kept moving.
7:00 PM.
Back at my desk.
I was supposed to be studying, but I wasn't.
I was just… sitting there.
Staring at the wall.
The lamp flickered. The vending machine coffee next to me had gone cold. My textbooks lay open, but the words didn't register.
I pressed my hands to my face. My skin felt thin, my pulse weak beneath my fingertips.
I had been running on empty for so long, I wasn't sure what full felt like anymore.
My brain whispered things I didn't want to hear.
You're not good enough. You're falling behind. You're never going to make it.
I clenched my jaw, gripping my pen so tight my knuckles turned white.
I had to keep going.
Stopping wasn't an option.
It never had been.