Kim Ji-won's Dr. X Bows 90 Degrees for a Team, and Only Three Doctors Answer

Kim Ji-won's Gye Su-jeong bowed a full 90 degrees before a room of professors, said "We need a team. Please," and not one of them stepped forward. That was the low point of episode 9 of SBS's Friday-Saturday drama Dr. X: The Age of White Mafia, which aired on the 6th, and it set up the most satisfying reversal of the series so far.

The case at the center is an 8-year-old pediatric cancer patient, Lee Hyun-ah (Lee Chae-yu), who has been discharged from the main hospital after doctors gave up on surgery. Su-jeong proposes something that has never been attempted there: removing all six abdominal organs from the body, cutting out the tumor, and transplanting the organs back. The procedure is called an ex vivo multi-organ tumor resection with autotransplantation.

A conference that goes nowhere

Director Bu Seung-kwon (Son Hyun-joo) tells Su-jeong to persuade the other professors at a conference. It quickly becomes clear he isn't on her side. Bae Heung-gon (Lee Sung-wook) speaks for the old guard, calling it a surgery nobody has ever done that will fail, and Bu insists that an unprecedented operation needs formal approval.

She bows anyway. The doctors leave.

The allies who stay

Cho Won-jin (Lee Jin-hee) is the first to say what the room won't. He calls the others cowardly and says people willing to take responsibility deserve support, not an empty seat. Then he tells Su-jeong to go ahead: he will open an operating room, and they can practice solo surgery and prepare properly. His line to her, "I never give up," lands because it comes after a room full of people did exactly that.

Su-jeong submits her resignation to Jang Hee-sook (Lee Jung-eun), who had tried to talk her out of the operation to the end. She then performs the emergency surgery with Won-jin and Park Tae-kyung (Kim Woo-seok). Three pairs of hands are nowhere near enough for the job, and the pressure shows.

Across the hospital, Do Yun-sik (Kim Young-min) is sitting in a strike vote, glancing at the clock and wondering how far Su-jeong has gotten. He eventually leaves the vote and joins the operation. Still short-handed, he barks for someone, anyone, to be brought in.

Jang Hee-sook's entrance

The person who opens the door is Hee-sook herself. "I'm Jang Hee-sook, from general surgery," she says. Su-jeong, visibly moved, introduces her as "my teacher." It is a quiet, well-timed beat, and it reframes their earlier scenes, including an opening flashback to Su-jeong's medical school graduation, which she skipped, and Hee-sook and Yang Eung-gu (Choi Duk-moon) gently teasing her about it.

Bu's suspicions

Before the surgery, Bu had spoken openly about suspecting Su-jeong of being Dr. X, a doctor who takes on dangerous cases with no established technique. He asked Hee-sook directly whether Su-jeong is Dr. X. Hee-sook's reply was that if a doctor who puts patients first, never leaves their side, finishes every assigned operation and never fails is Dr. X, then Su-jeong qualifies.

When Bu threatened to dig into Su-jeong's background, Hee-sook turned the pressure back on him. She noted that he has glaucoma and asked why he hadn't performed a certain patient's surgery himself, then observed that his vision isn't narrowing at the edges but failing from the center. Bu had no answer.

Whether the surgery succeeds is left for the remaining episodes. What episode 9 makes clear is that Su-jeong no longer fights alone.