Chapter 1

While I was being escorted away by Medical Affairs, I was still trying to process what was happening.

I explained blankly. “I had an emergency patient brought just at that moment. His condition was critical. I reassigned that specialty drug to save them. Dr. Guzman’s surgery could’ve been completed perfectly well with the standard alternative.”

“Did you consult anyone first?”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to realize I had none.

The patient’s condition had been deteriorating by the minute. When I had raised the issue in the operating room, no one had objected, but no one had explicitly supported it either.

What I did not anticipate was that the new intern, June Wyck, would turn this incident into a weapon aiming at me.

The sudden buzzing of my phone pulled me out of my thoughts. June had posted an announcement in the department group chat.

[Attention, everyone. Effective immediately, all requests for specialty medications must be reviewed and approved by me before dispensing. Any medication issued without prior authorization will be denied. Let us all monitor one another and uphold the clinical standards of this department.]

I frowned.

June had been handpicked by our department chief, Tom Guzman, while she was still an undergraduate. He had called her exceptionally gifted and worth mentoring.

Since when did she start running the department on his behalf?

The younger doctors and residents in the group chat sided with June.

[Dr. Britton has always been rather extravagant with her prescriptions, to be honest.]

[Remember that batch of imported surgical supplies she ordered for a patient? They cost three times more than the domestic version. Even then, I thought it was unnecessary.]

[Also, every time she applies for specialty drugs, she only thinks about her patients. She never asks whether the rest of us need them too.]

My fingers trembled slightly as I read through the messages.

These were the people I had trained personally. I had mentored them through surgery after surgery. I had pulled countless all-nighters helping them with their case reports and patient notes.

Yet this was what I received in return.

A moment later, June tagged everyone in the chat again.

[From now on, every specialty medication request in the department will require both my review and approval. Every request must include a detailed justification. Any medication costing more than two thousand dollars requires an application submitted three days in advance.]

The responses beneath her announcement were overwhelmingly supportive.

I remembered last month’s department meeting.

Tom had said that the department’s drug expenditure ratio had exceeded the annual target and asked everyone to be more careful with their prescription.

I had suggested using the complimentary medication allotments available through my research programs to help cover treatment for some patients.

No one had said a word.

At that time, I thought that they were being considerate.

Only at this moment did I realize that they might have seen it as nothing more than me showing off.

I did oversee a lot of research projects, and that was because I was the only physician in the department capable of leading them independently.

Whenever the department secured a clinical trial, Tom specifically requested that I be in charge.

To everyone else, though, it looked like favoritism. Behind my back, they said that I was a “nobody playing at being somebody.”

However, they had forgotten something.

When Kenneth Grant was preparing for his board certification exam last year, half of his review materials were the key points I had compiled for him.

The year before that, when Connie Penn was up for promotion to attending physician, I spent three months working alongside her late into the night and revising her research paper from beginning to end.

Before that, when the department was struggling financially and could not even afford a new defibrillator, it was me who secured additional funding through a special grant administered by my grandfather’s foundation.

By the time the investigation ended, the sky had nearly gone dark.

There was nothing left for me to do except go home and wait for the final decision.

Just then, my phone vibrated again.

This time, the message was Tom.

[I heard about the issue with Medical Affairs. I’m leaving for a closed-door medical conference in Oakhaven. You won’t be able to reach me during that time. Handle this yourself.]

My fingers slowly tightened around the phone.

One of his doctors had been reported and placed under investigation. But his response was just to leave a message saying “handle this yourself” and walk away?

I wanted to type a reply. My fingers hovered above the screen, but I did not know what to say.

In the end, I sent only one word. [Okay.]