Six forty-five in the morning. The Oncology Department had been awake for a long time—or, more accurately, it had never slept.
The first light of day had not yet finished spilling through the glass panes at the end of the hallway, but the hospital had already settled into its familiar rhythm. Medication carts rolled steadily over the tiled floor. Patient-room doors opened and closed. Nurses stood before the monitoring board, matching each name to the chart in their hands.
A few patients’ family members took the opportunity to head down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Some returned with two containers of steaming porridge, while others carried only a hastily bought cup of coffee. No one looked like they had time to take it easy.
Five students stood outside the duty room, each hugging a notebook. Quân yawned until his eyes watered, and Khánh glanced over.
“What time did you go to bed last night? Why are you yawning like a busted tire?”
“Two.”
“Playing video games?”
“Reading the clinical practice guidelines.”
Khánh stared at him in silence for a few seconds.
“Damn, who possessed you?”
Before Quân could even protest, a voice rang out behind them.
“Hey, you guys.”
All five turned around at once. Nurse Thu Hà stood there with a stack of charts in her hands. Quân immediately straightened, and the whole group greeted her in unison.
“Good morning, ma’am.”
Thu Hà smiled, checked her watch, and turned to the group.
“Shift report’s about to start. Let’s go.”
The five quickly straightened their name tags and followed one after another.
The report room was not as crowded this morning as it had been yesterday. Not every doctor in the department was present. Some had gone down to the patient rooms early, while others were on duty in the day chemotherapy unit. Only those required to attend were in the room. The students were seated in the last row. No one spoke loudly.
Tú Linh opened her notebook, the pen resting neatly between her fingers. She was no longer trying to write down everything as she had on her first day. After a day of observation, she had understood one very simple thing. If she kept trying to copy down every single word, all that would remain in her head in the end would be a page packed with writing.
She began filtering what she recorded: an unfamiliar term, a medication, the way a doctor asked questions. A detail in a test result she still did not know how to read.
At the head of the table, Associate Professor Thái Minh Hùng had just finished reviewing a stack of charts. He did not stay long. The phone beside him vibrated for the second time. He glanced at the screen and said,
“I have to go upstairs to the board of directors.”
The doctors who had been discussing cases immediately stopped. He turned to the woman seated on his right.
“Thanh An, take over the rest.”
Đinh Thanh An looked up.
“Yes, sir.”
“Send me the list of cases that need multidisciplinary consultation.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thái Minh Hùng nodded and closed the chart.
“I’ll go ahead.”
He stood without another word. The door closed behind the department head, and the room’s atmosphere immediately returned to its usual working rhythm.
Thanh An pulled the stack of charts toward herself.
“Next case.”
Tú Linh looked up.
For one brief moment, her eyes met Thanh An’s. Then the woman lowered her head over the medical record again. There was nothing special about it, just a very short moment in the middle of a busy report.
The report ended a little after seven thirty, and everyone quickly stood up.
There was no break, nor did the doctors sit around to chat. The charts were gathered, the projector switched off. Phones began ringing again, and a nurse came in to call the doctor in charge of a case.
Another doctor called the laboratory as he walked.
Thanh An was the last person to leave the room. She hugged a stack of medical records and said to Nurse Thu Hà as she stepped through the door,
“Hà, could you check on Room 801 for me?”
“Yes.”
“If the patient still has a fever, let me know immediately.”
“Yes.”
She walked a few steps, then stopped.
“Oh, and the student group today…”
Thu Hà turned to her.
“Yes?”
“Have them make rounds with the residents first.”
Thanh An checked her watch.
“I have a meeting. I’ll go ahead.”
With that, she turned and walked away, while Tú Linh stood behind her. Tú Linh watched her retreating figure as a very strange feeling crept into her heart. It was not curiosity about the woman herself. It was more like…she was curious about how someone could live through an entire day at that kind of pace.
After the report, the students were assigned to the doctors in charge. Tú Linh, Quân, and Khánh followed a second-year resident physician on rounds. The morning began almost immediately. The door to the first patient room opened, revealing a middle-aged woman sitting against the headboard, her face still pale. The doctor pulled up a chair and patiently asked her each question.
“Were you able to sleep last night?”
“Pretty well, doctor.”
“Are you in pain?”
“A little.”
“Where does it hurt?”
The conversation continued amid the smell of disinfectant and the steady beeping of the infusion pump. Tú Linh stood behind them, quietly observing how the doctor sat at the patient’s eye level, how he patiently waited for her to remember an answer even though the phone in his pocket had vibrated twice already. In a lecture hall, a case existed only on a few pages of paper. Here, every answer belonged to a real person. Someone in pain, someone afraid, and someone who was simply waiting for the doctor to say that everything would be all right. Tú Linh lowered her head, her pen moving slowly across the page.
At the third room, just as the resident was about to enter, a nurse came out from inside.
“Deputy department head.”
Tú Linh looked up. At the end of the hallway, Thanh An had just hung up her phone, a stack of charts still in her hand.
“Room 817 has new results.”
“Give them to me.”
Thanh An accepted the chart, flipped quickly through a few pages, and walked into the room. Without anyone having to tell them, the whole group followed. She stood beside the bed, her voice as calm as ever.
“How did you sleep last night?”
The patient answered. Thanh An asked a few more questions, neither too quickly nor too slowly. When the patient fell silent to think, she did not rush him, simply standing there and waiting. Then her eyes fell on the nearly untouched tray of porridge beside him. In an instant, she turned to the nurse.
“Recheck his vital signs.”
Thanh An bent over the chart and wrote in it.
“Wait for the test results before deciding what to do next. For now, don’t let the patient resume a regular diet.”
When she finished, she closed the chart and left the room. Quân watched her back and let out a low whistle.
“Damn…that’s what you get when someone knows their stuff. She looked at the porridge once and knew right away. If it were me, I’d only see half a pan of food.”
Khánh nodded admiringly.
“That’s intense.”
Tú Linh did not answer. She lowered her head over her notebook. The tip of her pen paused for a moment before writing one short line: Don’t miss a detail.
By late morning, Thanh An had nearly disappeared from the group’s sight. Sometimes she was in a patient room, sometimes she appeared in the chemotherapy unit, and at other times they would see her carrying a stack of charts toward the administrative office. Work kept coming at her, one phone call followed by another consultation. And yet, without realizing when it had started, Tú Linh began recognizing her from far away. The moment a white coat appeared at the end of the hallway, she knew who it was. Once, their eyes happened to meet. Tú Linh immediately lowered her gaze, and by the time she looked up, Thanh An was gone. She thought she was being awfully strange. Clearly, nothing was going on, yet her eyes kept unconsciously chasing that woman’s retreating figure.
In the afternoon, the students were assigned to the day chemotherapy unit. It was quieter here than elsewhere, sunlight filtering through the curtains and falling in pale streaks across the tiled floor. A few patients were receiving infusions, while their family members sat quietly beside them, watching each drop fall. Tú Linh was standing beside a nurse, observing and taking notes, when an elderly woman sitting nearby suddenly called out to her.
“Are you a student, dear?”
Tú Linh turned around with a smile.
“Yes?”
“Studying to be a doctor?”
“Yes.”
The old woman smiled kindly.
“Then study hard. I have a grandchild about your age.”
Tú Linh smiled too.
“Yes.”
“Study hard and come cure me someday, okay, dear?”
Tú Linh froze. It was such a lighthearted thing to say, yet for some reason, she did not know how to respond. Only after a moment did she manage a small smile.
“Yes…I’ll do my best.”
Right behind her, footsteps suddenly stopped. Thanh An had just entered the chemotherapy unit. She was bending over to look at a chart when she heard those words. Her eyes instinctively turned toward the young student. Tú Linh had no idea she was being watched; she remained bowed over, listening to the old woman talk. Thanh An stood there for a few seconds, then looked away and continued working.
It was just an ordinary sentence.
But for some reason, among the hundreds of things she heard every day, those words stayed in her mind a little longer.
Near six in the evening, the students finished their workday. Quân took off his name tag and complained,
“Holy crap, it’s only our first day, but I feel like I’ve been working here for three months.”
Khánh burst out laughing.
“We still have to come back tomorrow.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“What are you complaining about? Linh and I still have the night duty shift,” Mai said miserably.
The whole group laughed. Tú Linh sat down in the chair beside the window and opened the notebook that was more filled than it had been yesterday. Unfamiliar terms, questions she needed to look up again, and things she had observed in each patient room crowded the pages. Near the bottom, she added another line:
A good doctor isn’t the person who talks the most. It’s the person who sees what everyone else overlooks.
She looked at the words for a few seconds, then closed the notebook. Her first day was over. At least, that was what she thought.
That night.
Nearly one in the morning, and the Oncology Department sank into a different kind of silence. The hurried footsteps of the day were gone. Only the steady beeping of monitors drifted from the closed patient rooms, along with the quiet hum of the air-conditioning and the hallway lights stretching into a long band across the tiled floor.
Tú Linh and Phạm Ngọc Mai were given permission by the nurse to rest temporarily in the student duty room. Mai had slumped forward onto the desk at some point. Tú Linh was still awake, sitting beneath the yellow light and slowly rereading the notes she had taken that day.
A very soft sound came from the hallway. Click… Tú Linh looked up.
The door to Room 817 was ajar.
She frowned. She still remembered the patient inside. The man had barely spoken all day. That afternoon, when the doctor asked if he was in pain, he had only shaken his head. But before everyone left, he had stared out the window for a long time. A sense of unease slowly rose in her chest.
Tú Linh stood up. She looked around carefully, then called out,
“Sir?”
There was no answer.
Tú Linh turned around.
“Mai.”
Mai immediately lifted her head.
“Huh? Is it morning already?”
“Come here.”
The two looked at each other. Without another word, Mai immediately ran to call the nurse.
Only a few minutes later, the quiet hallway descended into chaos. Calls for help rang out one after another, emergency carts rolled rapidly over the tiled floor, and nurses exchanged urgent words with the doctor on duty. Tú Linh pressed herself to one side, both hands ice-cold. This was the first time she had witnessed anything like this. She was afraid, but she did not run. Nor did she step inside and get in the way of the people doing their jobs. She simply stood there, watching the patient-room door close in front of her.
A while later, Nurse Thu Hà came out. She removed her mask and let out a long breath.
“Good thing you caught it early.”
Tú Linh looked at her.
“Is he…?”
“The doctors are handling it.”
Thu Hà placed a hand on her shoulder.
“You did the right thing.”
Tú Linh said nothing. She only nodded.
That night, she barely slept. The next morning—
Seven fifteen. The report room had already settled into its familiar working rhythm. Thanh An entered a few minutes later than usual, a stack of charts in her hands. She set them on the table and pulled out her chair.
“How is Room 817 doing after last night?”
The doctor who had been on duty immediately gave his report.
“The patient used a fruit knife to cut his wrist because he thought there was no point in treating the disease if he couldn’t be cured. He’s stable now and under further observation.”
Thanh An nodded and opened the chart. But only a few seconds later, she asked,
“Who discovered it first last night?”
The doctor on duty glanced at Thu Hà.
“The nurse said it was a student.”
Thanh An looked up.
“A student?”
“Yes.”
“Trần Tú Linh.”
The pen in Thanh An’s hand stopped for only a moment. She remembered the student who had stood at the end of the patient room yesterday, carefully recording every small detail.
“How did she handle it?”
“She noticed something was wrong and took the initiative to observe, then called the nurse first.”
Thanh An was silent for a few seconds, then nodded.
“Good.”
“Please contact the patient’s family. I want to speak with them myself.”
She lowered her head and continued reviewing the chart. No one in the room noticed that, for the first time, Thanh An remembered the name Trần Tú Linh not because of the name tag on her white coat, but because of something she had done—something very small. Yet in a hospital, sometimes those small things were exactly what could save a life.
“By the way, where are the students?”
Thu Hà looked up toward the duty room.
“They’re still in there, doctor.”
“They haven’t gone home? They’re off today.”
“Maybe they wanted to stay and see how things turned out.”
Thanh An said nothing. Her eyes lingered on the duty-room door for a few seconds before she turned and walked toward it. The door was half closed, and the light inside cast a pale streak across the hallway floor. Through the glass, she saw that Phạm Ngọc Mai had slumped forward onto the desk at some point. Quân and Khánh sat in the corner, tapping on their phones, while Trang was putting away the materials. Only Tú Linh was still awake. Her notebook lay open in front of her, the pen between her fingers, but it had not moved for a very long time.
Thanh An lightly knocked on the door.
“You guys haven’t gone home yet?”
Tú Linh looked up with a start.
“We…I mean, we were planning to stay a little longer.”
“Why stay?”
Tú Linh fell silent. She did not know how to answer. She wanted to say she was worried about the patient, but everything she could do had been done long ago. She wanted to say she still was not at ease, but even she knew she was only looking for a reason not to leave this place.
Thanh An looked at her for a few seconds, then glanced at Mai, who was asleep over the desk.
“You’re students.”
Her voice was calm, neither harsh nor gentle.
“You still have class tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“An internship doesn’t mean skipping school. When it’s time for your internship, you intern. When you have class, you go to class.”
Tú Linh nodded softly.
Thanh An stepped into the room, picked up the notebook in front of her, closed it, and set it neatly to one side.
“The doctor on duty and the nurses handled the case. Your part ended when you noticed something was wrong and reported it.”
Tú Linh pressed her lips together.
“But I want to…”
Thanh An looked at her.
With just one glance, the unfinished sentence stopped on its own.
“No buts.”
She turned toward Mai.
“Wake her up.”
Tú Linh walked over and gently shook her friend’s shoulder.
“Mai. Wake up.”
Mai sleepily raised her head.
“Huh…are we done?”
“Go home and sleep.”
When Mai saw Thanh An standing beside her, she immediately became much more alert.
“Yes.”
Thanh An said nothing more. She stood outside the door and waited while the two gathered their things. Once the whole group had assembled, she spoke.
“Quân, Khánh, Trang.”
“Yes?”
“You three are going home too.”
Quân stared at her in confusion.
“But we weren’t on the duty shift…”
“If you’re not on duty, you have even less reason to stay.”
The three immediately fell silent.
Thanh An looked at the five students in front of her. Every one of them was tired, but none was willing to admit it. She let out a quiet breath, her voice still even, as though she were giving the most ordinary instruction in the world.
“You still have to go to school tomorrow. Come back to the hospital after class according to the schedule. Don’t think that staying here longer means you’ll learn more.”
She paused for a beat.
“When you’re tired, your ability to observe decreases. In a hospital, that’s the dangerous part.”
No one said a word.
After a while, Quân said quietly,
“Yes, ma’am. We understand.”
Thanh An nodded.
“Go home and sleep.”
Only two words. She turned and left the duty room. Her white coat quickly blended into the lights at the far end of the hallway, with no intention of turning back to check whether the kids had left.
Mai slung her bag over her shoulder, yawning as she watched her go.
“She’s seriously intense.”
Khánh laughed.
“But she’s right.”
Quân added,
“Then let’s grab something to eat before heading back to the dorm.”
Trang looked at Linh and linked arms with her.
“Come on, my hero. Let’s go, sweetheart. We’re way too tired.”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Tú Linh did not join the conversation. She bent down to pick up her notebook, but before closing it, her eyes happened to stop on the line she had just begun writing.
She crossed it out with her pen.
A moment later, a new line appeared on the page.
“Some people show they care by not letting you stay.”
Tú Linh stared at the words for a long time.
Then she closed the notebook.
Out in the hallway, Thanh An’s footsteps had faded into the distance. Tú Linh did not know how many charts, phone calls, and patients the woman still had to deal with before she was allowed to rest. She only knew that, on a night when she herself had not even had time to understand what had happened, the first person to think of telling her to go home and sleep had been Thanh An.
The five students left the department one after another.
The elevator doors closed.
Inside, Tú Linh looked through the gap between the doors one last time.
At the end of the hallway, Thanh An was still standing at the nurses’ station, head bent over a medical chart. She still had not gone home, and perhaps, for that woman, the hospital had never really had a concept of clocking out.