Recap "Ghost Doctor" Ep 5-6

Although it isn’t explicitly stated, we can infer that his ability to see spirits is tied to the drowning of his father, who tragically passed away while rescuing Seung-tak after he fell out of their paddle boat. While the details are vague, it’s worth noting that young Seung-tak wasn’t wearing a life jacket when he fell into the water, but sometime later, when he’s floating alone and calling for his father, he’s wearing his father’s oversized life jacket.

There’s a lot to unpack from that backstory, but as of right now we can only make an educated guess on how it has impacted his character and his career as a doctor. Clearly, it has affected his bedside manner with patients, which has always been one of his strengths as a doctor. This was never more apparent than this week, when his patient was waking up following his surgery and Seung-tak assured the man that his young daughter and wife were safe.

Less obvious is how the accident triggered Seung-tak’s sixth sense and whether seeing ghosts has contributed to his poor technical performance in the operating room. I can’t imagine it would be easy performing a surgery if your patient’s ghost was hovering nearby, begging you to save them — but that wouldn’t explain his awkwardness with his recovering patients who are awake.

Years of practice ignoring ghosts, however, does explain why Seung-tak was able to freeze out Young-min so well, and now that the secret is out, the gloves have come off. Young-min ditches any remaining pretense of being a mature, level-headed doctor whose seniority and reputation command respect, and Seung-tak drops the honorifics and stoops to a new level of petty when he refuses to reveal where he’s hidden Mandu, Young-min’s sugar glider. (Whew! He’s safe!)

The two men duke it out in a verbal sparring match that Seung-tak ultimately wins when he delivers the zinger, “At least I can talk, unlike someone who can’t even open his eyes.” Ouch! Young-min may not have a body, but he definitely felt that burn.

He retaliates by withholding medical knowledge and abstaining from taking over Seung-tak’s body. After seeing him perform the recent surgery, his peers and superiors expect more from him, but they’re confused when the surgical genius is unable to answer basic questions or perform menial bedside tasks. Young-min just sits back and watches him squirm.

As if the pressure from Seung-tak’s fellow doctors wasn’t bad enough, Seung-won releases a statement to the press about the hospital’s newest rising surgeon, and now all eyes are on Seung-tak. Seung-won figures it’s only a matter of time before Seung-tak makes a mistake, and he wants to set up Seung-tak to take a long, hard fall.

Among the other items on Seung-won’s agenda for hospital domination is his courtship of Se-jin…because every evil villain has to have an unreciprocated, undying love for the hero’s leading lady. Instantly smitten with Se-jin when he first saw her as an intern, Seung-won’s heart turned as black as his suits when he saw her cozying up to Young-min. If this was the Harry Potter universe, Seung-won would be Snape. Wait… that would make Seung-tak “the boy who lived” and… Okay, this a rabbit whole I do not need to be going down.

Anyway, now that Young-min is in a coma, Seung-won thinks he has a legitimate chance of getting the girl. He just needs to keep the whole attempted murder of her father hush-hush. No big deal. Except it’s a huge deal to Se-jin, who’s smart enough to know Seung-won is a big fat liar. Determined to find out the truth, she sneaks into Young-min’s office to steal his tablet, thinking she might be able to use it to access her father’s medical files. Instead, she sees the texts Young-min received the night of the accident. Texts that were supposedly from her.

The events leading up to the accident start falling into place. Seung-won’s plan was to lure Young-min out of the hospital with texts from Se-jin, and while Young-min was away from his patient, Jae-won — blindly trusting Tae-hyun’s instructions — would administer the overdose of Heparin. The plan went awry when Jae-won asked Seung-tak to cover for him.

Young-min was also an unintended casualty of Seung-won’s plan — not that Seung-won cares. The motorcyclist who was following Young-min was only supposed to create a minor fender bender and delay Young-min from returning to the hospital. Unfortunately, the motorcyclist had a pre-existing medical condition that caused him to black out, triggering a larger-than-intended accident.

Since then, the coma ghost of the motorcyclist has been creepily lurking in the hospital corners, just out of Young-min’s sight. Despite his dark aura, the motorcyclist is actually extremely apologetic, and his main concern is for his younger sister. He begs Young-min and Seung-tak for their assistance, promising to reveal the truth if he wakes up.

Realizing that he is a witness that they want to keep alive, Young-min and Seung-tak decide his best chance of survival is as Se-jin’s patient. In exchange for taking care of the motorcyclist, Seung-tak helps Se-jin sneak into her father’s hospital room, where she confirms that he is still unconscious.

By this point, Young-min and Seung-tak have begrudgingly agreed to set aside their differences and work together to bring down Seung-won, but not without establishing some ground rules first. Seung-tak can’t have people — namely his cousin — thinking he’s talking to himself or going crazy, as it could jeopardize his ability to pass his boards. He also — for obvious reasons — doesn’t want the other ghosts to know that he can see them.

Young-min agrees to the rules. He also promises to assist Seung-tak, who legitimately aspires to be a doctor who can save people with his surgeries —specifically the surgery for OH SEUNG-JOO (Lee Chun-moo). Prior to his accident, Young-min was scheduled to perform Seung-joo’s complex and expensive surgery, but Young-min’s coma has left the hospital’s staff without a doctor skilled enough to perform it.

Seung-tak, who already has a soft spot for children, is moved by the boy’s story and tries to convince Tae-hyun to perform the surgery with him — and coma ghost Young-min — as his second. Tae-hyun initially hesitates, knowing he isn’t skilled enough, but when he discovers that Seung-won isn’t going to give him the professorship he was promised as part of their deal, he realizes he has to make a name for himself or crash and burn while trying.

The surgery is scheduled. Seung-tak scrubs in, but Se-jin has the worst timing ever and moves Young-min’s body for an MRI. His boundary radius shifts, and he’s blocked from entering the operating room. While Seung-tak stalls for time by lowering his hands below his waistline, which contaminates his hands and necessitates that he scrub back in, Young-min has Tess move his body closer to the operating room.

Young-min — always one for the dramatic, especially when it comes to his wardrobe — arrives completely scrubbed in and wearing surgical magnifying loupes even though he will be borrowing Seung-tak’s body for the surgery. They exchange their top secret handshake, and Young-min (as Seung-tak) relieves a floundering Tae-hyun of his position as lead surgeon. So not only will Tae-hyun not get a promotion, he also just got upstaged by a resident. Ouch.

Following the surgery, Young-min and Seung-tak laugh happily — although it sounds boarderline maniacal — and bond over their shared success. But at the same time, Se-jin receives some bad news from her colleague in the United States: Young-min only has a month left to live.

This news will not come as a surprise to Young-min, though, as he’d previously indicated that he was aware of his pending expiration date. He’s a doctor, and even though neurology isn’t his area of expertise, he has enough general knowledge to understand that he isn’t likely to wake up from his coma. If he’s going to die, though, he’s going to do it on his terms, and I’m eager to see him take Snape — I mean, Seung-won — down with him!