你輸You Lose

By: Anonymous submission

Campaign: Anything and Everything

#literature #bestmemoir #soon

*Disclaimer: Some details may be made up by MEEEEE, so some of the information may be a little

bit wrong, but basically that’s what I’ve heard from Soon

‘Tonight”

I never say the word “quiet.” Not in a hospital. Not even now. In Malaysia we had an unspoken rule

during night shifts. Do not tempt chaos. My Taiwanese friends said doctors here avoid eating

pineapple or mango because in Taiwanese the words sound like “prosperous” and “busy.” In my

emergency room in Kuala Lumpur it was one word we avoided. If someone said, “It’s quiet tonight,”

we would glare at them. Then the doors would swing open and a flood of patients would roll in like a

surprise tornado in Florida. “Don’t say it,” my senior would mutter, tapping the desk like it was a

lucky charm. “Not tonight.”

I grew up in Malaysia speaking three languages and eating food that felt like a world map. Nasi lemak

wrapped in banana leaves. Roti canai on a metal table still wet from rain. Malaysia taught me how to

stay calm, how to respect people, and how to watch before speaking. Later I lived in Indonesia and

Taiwan, but my habits started in Malaysia. People imagine a special moment when someone suddenly

knows they want to be a doctor. That never happened for me. I just wanted my job to mean

something. If I was going to spend my life working, I wanted it to matter. Medicine seemed like the

clearest way to help people.

Emergency medicine caught my attention because it felt like the front line. The ER is the first door to

every problem, the broken wrist, the broken heart, the fever that is harmless, the one that isn’t. “Why

emergency medicine?” my cousin once asked. “Because when a life is slipping away, you can actually

feel the rope in your hands,” I said. “You feel the pull.”

Indonesia gave me one of my clearest memories. I was an intern in a small clinic. A mother was

giving birth, gripping the rail of the bed. I helped her breathe and tried to stay calm. When the baby

arrived, the sound filled the room, sharp and alive. The mother looked at me and said, “Doctor, I want

to name him after you.” I laughed. “My name is Chinese,” I told her. “It doesn’t fit your language.”

“Then one character,” she said. “Just one.” Maybe she did, maybe not. But I never forgot that.

ER work is not all miracles. Sometimes it is just pain and exhaustion. CPR is not like TV, it is messy

and hard. Ribs crack, time disappears, and you lose track of how long you have been pushing. The

book says to stop after a certain number of minutes, but books are not in the room. The family is. One

night I pressed on a patient’s chest and heard it, the sharp crack of ribs breaking. The patient’s mother

was praying in the hallway. I kept going and then stopped. The monitor line turned flat. A younger

doctor asked, “How did you know when to stop?” “I didn’t,” I said. “I just had to choose.”

People think the hardest decision I made was switching careers. It wasn’t. The hardest part was giving

up being a doctor. Studying medicine feels like walking through a long tunnel, you fight so hard to

reach the light, and once you do, you never think about leaving. After years of exams and rotations,

being a doctor becomes your identity. Walking away felt like taking off my own skin. I thought about

working with medical devices or aesthetic medicine. But I knew myself. I’m not good at selling things

or pretending to care about numbers more than people. Teaching had always been there in the

background. In university I tutored friends. As a doctor I gave health talks in villages. It was a small

part of the job, but it gave me more joy than the rest combined.

So I joined an IB school in Malaysia. I had no idea what IB really meant at first. I learned inside the

system and realized I liked it. It was not about memorizing, it was about thinking. A few years later a

school in Taiwan reached out. They were building an IB program from zero and needed people who

could help. I said yes. The first day I stood in front of students instead of a hospital bed, I felt strange.

In the ER you cannot plan anything. In school you have to plan everything. “Teacher,” one of my

students asked, “why do we need to learn about cell membranes?” “Because a membrane is like a

gate,” I told her. “It decides what comes in and what goes out. You have that power too.”

I use my medical background whenever I can. When we learn about the heart, I tell them how my

hands still remember the rhythm of CPR. When we talk about enzymes, I explain how fever changes

everything inside you. When we discuss the nervous system, I tell them what panic attacks look like

on a monitor and how a calm voice can sometimes do more than a drug. Students listen more when it

feels real. “Is it true you can’t say ‘quiet’ in hospitals?” one asked. “Try it on exam day,” I said. “Say

‘This test is easy,’ and see what happens.”

Teaching has its own emergencies. Students crying over grades. Parents worried about the future.

When that happens I remember what the ER taught me, control what you can, be honest, and let

silence help. Parents want answers. Students want hope. My job is not to fix everything. It is to guide

them through the chaos.

Helping start the IB program taught me something else. Schools need resuscitation sometimes. You

make plans, train teachers, meet deadlines, and then something random happens. A policy changes. A

typhoon hits. A classroom floods. My ER habit returns. Stabilize first, fix the cause later.

At lunch students sometimes ask, “Do you miss being a doctor?” “I miss the urgency,” I say. “The

feeling that seconds matter. But I do not miss the unpredictability.” “So teaching is easier?” “Not

really,” I tell them. “It is just different. In both jobs, people need you.”

When students ask for advice about careers, I don’t say “follow your passion.” Passions change. I tell

them to understand themselves. Ask if you prefer structure or surprise, teamwork or independence.

You can love something deeply and still not fit into it. Medicine gave me meaning, but teaching gave

me balance.

One afternoon a student stayed after class. “My parents want me to be a doctor,” she said. “But

hospitals make me nervous.” “You’re not weak for knowing that,” I told her. “You’re smart. Go visit

one. Listen to yourself. If your shoulders relax in one place and tense in another, you already know

your answer.” “So it’s not about choosing what sounds important?” “No,” I said. “It’s about choosing

what you can carry for years without losing who you are.”

During school festivals the smell of grilled sausages fills the campus. Students run around laughing,

trading stickers, spilling soda. I look at them and think about the ER rule. In teaching there is a new

one. Never underestimate slow progress. Sometimes you help someone simply by showing up again

and again until they believe they can keep going. My colleagues still tease me. “Say it,” they joke,

holding up a pineapple candy. “Say it’s quiet today.” I shake my head. “Not tonight.”

After they leave, I plan my next lesson. I pick a case from my old ER days and turn it into a question.

What does this lab value mean? Why does this treatment work? How can systems fail, and how do we

rebuild them? I go to class and do what I came to do. I make science real, I make it human, and I let

students find their own gates to open. Meaning didn’t vanish when I left the hospital. It just changed

form. In the ER meaning was a pulse under my hands. In the classroom it is a raised hand in the back

row, a student who finally understands. I still show up for people. They still count on me. The room is

different. The work is the same.