It was dark when I finally made it back to the hostel. The walk from the hospital felt twice as long as usual, each step requiring conscious effort. Murin and Akki were both at their desks when I entered, hunched over their textbooks in the dim lamplight. I collapsed on my bed without bothering to change out of my wrinkled, day-old clothes that probably smelled like hospital disinfectant.

  Akki rolled his chair over, studying me with the theatrical concern of someone who'd watched too many medical dramas. "You look worse than yesterday. What happened?"

  I stared at the ceiling, at the cracks in the paint that I'd memorized over two years of living here. "I... I donated two units of blood."

  Murin stood up abruptly. "You donated two units? Today? After a full day of clinicals? That's—" Murin stopped himself, visibly trying not to lecture me. "That's very noble and also incredibly stupid."

  "Yeah, the technician said the same thing." I closed my eyes. "But at least my blood works properly, even if I don't."

  Akki wheeled back to his desk and returned with a bottle of water and some glucose biscuits he kept stashed in his drawer. "Eat. Drink. Doctor's orders."

  I sat up slowly and accepted them, too tired to argue. The sweet biscuits tasted like cardboard, but I forced myself to chew and swallow. Murin watched me like he was monitoring a patient, probably calculating my fluid deficit and hemoglobin drop in his head. But they didn't push for more details, which I appreciated. But after a while, sitting in the quiet room with only the sound of Akki's pen scratching against paper, the silence became oppressive.

  I needed to think. Really think. About what I was doing, what the System meant, and whether I was approaching this all wrong.

  "I'm going to take a shower," I announced, standing carefully.

  "Don't use hot water," Murin called after me. "With your blood volume down."

  "I know, I know."

  The bathroom was empty, which was rare for this time of night. I stood under lukewarm water that was barely more than a drizzle and let it wash away the day's accumulated grime and humiliation.

  I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the cold tiles. What am I doing wrong? The System flickered to life, as it always did when I focused on medical thoughts.

  I ignored the notification. That wasn't what I needed right now. Dr. Bennett's words kept echoing in my head. You have information without wisdom. You're completely useless in practice.

  He was right. I thought about today's failures. After all I hadn't engaged my brain, hadn't examined further to figure out which diagnosis was more likely, and they didn't suppose to train your hands to maintain the right angle, the right pressure.

  I'd been using the System like a cheat sheet. Like it would just give me the right answers and make me look smart. But medicine wasn't a multiple-choice exam. So what do I do differently?

  The System provided no response. It only activated when I observed something medical, giving me data and context. It wasn't a conversational AI. It was more like... augmented reality overlaid on my vision. A reference tool, not a teacher. Which meant I needed to figure this out myself.

  I turned off the water and stood there dripping, thinking.

  The System could tell me what diseases might cause certain symptoms. But it couldn't tell me which one a specific patient actually had. That required clinical judgment—something built through experience, through seeing hundreds of patients, through learning to recognize patterns that couldn't be reduced to lists. And I had zero experience.

  Maybe that's the problem, I thought slowly. I've been expecting the System to replace experience. To skip the learning curve. But it can't. It can only provide information. What I do with that information is up to me.

  The realization felt obvious once I'd articulated it, but it changed everything. The System wasn't going to make me a good doctor. At best, it could help me learn faster but only if I actually engaged with what it showed me instead of passively accepting it.

  I needed to treat it less like an answer key and more like... a study guide. Or a consultant who provided information but expected me to interpret it. Okay, I thought. Starting tomorrow, I'm using this thing properly.

  But even as I thought it, another question surfaced—one I'd been avoiding. Why am I even doing this? Why do I want to be a doctor?

  I left the bathroom and returned to the room, climbing into bed. Under the blanket, in the dark, I let myself think about that question honestly. Why medicine?

  The easy answer: My parents want me to. They've sacrificed everything for my education. This is how I repay them. Make them proud. Give them something to show off.

  And that was true. Seeing my mother's face light up when she told neighbors about "my son the medical student"—that meant something. My father working overtime to pay tuition—that deserved to be honored.

  But if I was being honest... was that really why I'd chosen medicine? Or was it just the justification I'd learned to give?

  What about helping people? I thought. Isn't that why doctors exist? To serve, to heal, to reduce suffering?

  But again—that felt like something I was supposed to say. The right answer for interviews and family dinners. Did I actually feel it? Or was I just repeating what society expected doctors to believe?

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember when I'd actually decided to become a doctor. Not when I'd submitted my admission form or started studying for entrance exams, before that. What was the moment?

  FLASHBACK

  I was seventeen years old, standing outside the district administrative office, clutching an admission form with an empty box where I was supposed to write my chosen field of study. The paper was damp from my sweaty palms. I'd been holding it for over an hour, walking in circles around the building, unable to make a decision that would determine the rest of my life.

  Engineering, that's what my father suggested. "Stable career," he'd said. "Good salary. Respectable work." He was a civil engineer himself, had spent thirty years building roads and bridges. He knew the path, could guide me through it.

  Business, my uncle's recommendation. "The future is entrepreneurship," he'd insisted over dinner last week. "Doctors work for money. Businessmen make money work for them." He ran a small textile shop and drove a car that was nicer than anything my father could afford.

  My mother had just held my face in her hands and said, "Whatever makes you happy, son," which somehow felt like more pressure than any suggestion. Because I had no idea what would make me happy. I didn't even know who I was yet, let alone what I wanted to do for the next forty years.

  I checked my watch. 4:35 PM. Twenty-five minutes until the office closed. Twenty-five minutes to decide my entire future. Just pick something, I told myself. Engineering is safe. Write that down and submit it.

  I started walking toward the entrance, forcing myself to make a decision. Any decision. I'd write down engineering, submit the form, and figure out the rest later. That's what most people did anyway, picked something practical and learned to live with it.

  That's when I heard the shouting. It came from down the street, near the market area—multiple voices raised in alarm and confusion. A crowd was forming rapidly, people abandoning their shopping and errands to cluster around something on the ground.

  I should have ignored it but human nature doesn't work that way. When you see people running toward something instead of away from it, curiosity overrides everything else.

  I walked closer, then jogged, then found myself pushing through the growing crowd until I could see what everyone was staring at. An old man lay on the ground beside a garbage dump, his body convulsing violently.

  It was the kind of seizure that looked wrong even to someone with zero medical knowledge. His entire body was rigid, back arched, arms bent at unnatural angles. His head snapped back repeatedly against the concrete with thud sounds. Foam collected at the corners of his mouth, mixed with blood from where he'd bitten his tongue. His eyes had rolled back, showing only whites.

  And he just kept seizing. The convulsions went on and on, his body jerking like it was being electrocuted, while thirty-some people stood in a circle and watched.

  "Someone call an ambulance!" a woman shouted, her voice high with panic.

  "Already did!" a shop owner called back. "They said twenty minutes, maybe longer! There's traffic!"

  "Twenty minutes?" another voice said, horrified. "He could die in twenty minutes!"

  "What do we do? Should we hold him down?"

  "I don't know! Is that dangerous?"

  "My cousin had seizures—I think you're supposed to put something in their mouth so they don't bite their tongue?"

  "No, that's wrong! You'll break their teeth!"

  "Then what? What are we supposed to do?"

  Nobody knew. Thirty people, and not one of us had any idea how to help. I stood at the edge of the crowd, watching this man suffer. Part of me wanted to do something—anything. But what? Hold him? Move him? Leave him alone? Every option felt equally likely to either help or kill him.

  Someone had the presence of mind to put a folded jacket under the old man's head, at least preventing him from bashing his skull directly on concrete. That seemed helpful. Beyond that, we were all useless.

  The seizure continued. Thirty seconds. A minute. How long was too long? When did a seizure become life-threatening? I had no idea. None of us did.

  Everyone looked the same: helpless, scared, guilty for not knowing what to do, angry that knowing wasn't automatic.

  I checked my watch. 4:42 PM. Eighteen minutes until the office closed. I should go, I thought. I can't help him.

  But my feet didn't move. Because something about this felt fundamentally wrong. The fact that thirty educated, capable adults were standing in a circle doing nothing while a man potentially died, that failure felt collective and shameful.

  The man's convulsions were slowing or maybe I was imagining it. Was that good or bad? Was his brain being damaged right now from lack of oxygen? Would he wake up a different person, if he woke up at all?

  If I were a doctor, I thought suddenly, I would know what to do right now. I wouldn't just stand here.

  The thought came suddenly. Not a noble thought about helping humanity or serving the sick but just a simple, selfish wish: I want to know. I want to understand. I want to be useful instead of useless.

  4:50 PM. Ten minutes.

  The sound of sirens finally cut through the market noise, distant but approaching. The crowd collectively relaxed, reassured that someone who knew what to do was coming. We could stop being responsible now. The professionals would handle it.

  The ambulance navigated slowly through the crowded market street, people clearing a path. Two paramedics jumped out, and suddenly there was purpose and competence where there had only been helplessness. Checking vitals. Positioning him properly. Asking quick, relevant questions to the crowd—How long? Any injury? Does anyone know him?

  Within ninety seconds, they had him on a stretcher with an oxygen mask over his face. Within two minutes, they were loading him into the ambulance. The crowd began to disperse, the drama over, everyone returning to their interrupted errands.

  I stood there for a moment longer, watching the ambulance pull away, lights flashing but no siren which I would later learn meant the patient was stable enough not to require emergency speed.

  4:52 PM. Eight minutes.

  I turned and sprinted toward the administrative office. I burst through the doors, breathing hard, and rushed to the submission desk. The clerk was literally putting on her bag, clearly ready to leave the moment the clock struck five.

  "Last minute submission?" she asked with barely concealed annoyance, holding out her hand.

  I looked down at my form. At the empty box that had paralyzed me for over an hour. The old man's face flashed in my mind. If I were a doctor, I would have known what to do.

  I didn't want to be a doctor because it was noble. I didn't want to serve humanity in some abstract, altruistic way. I wanted to be the person in the crowd who didn't stand there uselessly, who actually knew how to help, who could make a difference between life and death with knowledge and skill. I wanted to understand how we worked and how we broke and how to fix us.

  And yes, I wanted my parents to be proud. I wanted to give them something to show off, to make their sacrifices worthwhile. But beneath that, deeper than that, was something more selfish and more honest:

  I never want to feel that helpless again.

  My pen moved almost by itself, checking the box before I could second-guess.

  Medicine.

  The clerk took the form, stamped it with mechanical efficiency, and filed it away in a folder that would determine my next seven years. "Good luck," she said without looking up. "You'll need it. Medicine is hell."

  PRESENT

  Yeah, It is. Now I know, I thought.

  But now the System had given me an advantage. So tomorrow, I thought, I stop expecting the System to make me competent. I use it to learn faster, but I accept that learning means failing alot. And that's okay. I just needed to do the work.

  I rolled over and closed my eyes and fell asleep thinking about the old man from seven years ago, wondering if he'd survived. Hoping that someday, I'd be skilled enough that people wouldn't have to wonder that about my patients.

  The notification faded into darkness.

  Cultivation ? Progression ? Multiple Lead Characters

  by Tequilama