Tenma's defining moment came when he faced an impossible choice at Eisler Memorial. A Turkish man arrived for surgery, but when a famous opera singer was brought in afterward, hospital politics demanded Tenma abandon his first patient to operate on the celebrity instead. The Turkish man died on the table. The opera singer lived.
That single decision haunted Tenma and fundamentally changed him. He realized he'd made the wrong call—not medically, but morally. From that point on, he rejected the pursuit of prestige and status in medicine. He committed himself to what he believed a doctor should actually do: save lives based on need, not on how famous or important someone was. It's the principle that shaped the rest of his career.
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