Last Saturday

ch.13

Minji does go back to the hospital, unwillingly going past the speed limit from how she was so worried.

The first thing she sees as she opens the door to Hanni's hospital room were three doctors, two nurses, and her whole family surrounding her bed. They all turned their heads to the sound of Minji opening the door, all of them looking distraught.
"What's...going on?" She awkwardly closes the door behind her, feeling small from the amount of eyes staring at her.
"Her lungs are getting filled up way faster than before. She needs this operation as soon as possible, the ventilator won't keep her going." One of the doctors answered as calmly as he
could.
Minji swallows deeply, turning to look at Hanni's current state. There were machines surrounding her and she saw an unbelievable amount of tubes connected to each other.
When she looks down at her face, she sees guilt, sadness, helplessness, tiredness, possibly every negative emotion was flashing into her eyes.
The doctors cue their leave, with the nurses following, leaving everyone inside the room to decide. Everyone turns to Hanni again, and Minji comforts her, the poor patient was more stressed out than everyone else.
With a tube down her throat, she was unable to speak, though Minji didn't need to ask more, knowing how Hanni was already feeling from the lone tear streaming down her cheek.
Hanni's father gently wipes it off with the hem of his sleeve.
"Um...close your eyes. Open them if it's a yes, otherwise keep them shut if it's a no."
Minji quietly says, and Hanni follows.
"Are you still through, like what you told us before?" She hesitantly asks, and waits. Hanni opens her eyes, immediately looking at her, and Minji wears a bittersweet smile, cupping her cheek.
"We'll always be with you."

They're eating on a folding table Minji had set up earlier in the room. It was two in the morning, Hanni woke up and said was hungry, hence why Minji bought food from the
hospital's cafeteria in the main hall.

They would usually eat in comfortable silence, but the air was much more tense this time. It was as if the two were holding themselves from saying something, but there was Hanni, who obviously could not stand such a thing, choosing to talk, herself.
"About what you said that night..." She begins, effectively making Minji's head look up while eating her rice bowl.
The older one quickly swallows her food to talk, "What did I say?"
"When you said I was forcing myself to live..."
Minji slowly puts her chopsticks down, "Hm...I'm sorry about tha-"
"No, no. You were right. You were correct about me putting others before myself. You weren't wrong when you said I lied about wanting to do the operation. You know me too well...but-"
She finds Minji's hands holding her own from across the table.
"My love, you don't have to explain yourself. This is your choi-"
Hanni interrupts her again. "No!" She quickly reassures when Minji was startled, "I'm sorry. It's- it's different now. I've really, really thought deeply about it. I even told this to my parents."
"What do you mean?"
"Minji I-, I want to do this surgery. I know it's all of a sudden but I've been thinking about it for weeks. I may be tired and it made me think that I wanted to end it all but I don't want to. I lay in that hospital bed every single day, wondering how everything would change if I was gone and I hate it so much. I'm still 23, I have so much more to do, I have so many friends to have fun with, I have tons of ideas to show to the world, I have a loving family that I want to spend my days with and I want you to be in it, Minji. I want to be with you everyday, to bond with my family, to open an exhibit, to teach art- I just want to live..."
For the first time in months, Minji sees the sparkle and hope in Hanni's eyes again.
"I've been rejecting the idea of this surgery because I'm scared. I'm afraid of mishaps, I doubt everything too much, and I didn't want something like my last surgery to happen again, but now it's nothing. I don't care about the low chances of this being successful. All I care about is that I'm brave enough to face this, and if I die..." Hanni pauses, her expression changing.
"Hanni..." Minji holds her hands tighter.
"And if I die," She shakily inhales "...at least- at least I died knowing that I tried, that I made an effort, that this illness didn't stop me from facing my fear." Hanni begins to cry, and Minji quickly stands up from her seat to kneel next to Hanni and embrace her.
"Minji-" She hiccups.
"I'm here, you can let it out." Minji rubs her palm up and down Hanni's back to comfort her.
"I don't want to go yet..." She crumbles in her arms, gripping
onto Minji tightly.

_________

It's the same hallway. The path leading to her operation room. She doesn't know if she should call it a highway to heaven, hell, or both.
It was much more silent this time, considering how she couldn't speak, and how everyone was too stressed to talk, even the surgeons and nurses.
Hanni stares at every single person above her. Her brother, her father, her mother, her Minji, too busy pushing her bed to the room. She unintentionally grips her mother's hand in her hold a little too firmly due to nervousness, causing a domino effect of everyone
looking down at her. Ironically, the silence was too noisy for her. The murmurs of the hospital staff, the spinning wheels of her bed, and her medical monitor beeping was too much for her to handle.
"Why? Are you okay?" Her mother worriedly asks.
It was like their eyes were seeing right through her, and she suddenly felt a little guilty. So she instinctively does something out of the blue, her brain orders her to move without her control.
Hanni slightly raises her arm and does a finger heart in the air.
Everyone is dumbfounded.
Her mother sighs, chuckling, "You still lift us up during hard times, you really are my daughter." She ruffles Hanni's bangs.
Minji sees Hanni's eye smile after a long time, and her heart melts again.
The family stops right at the entrance of the operating rooms, with the doctors and Hanni finally entering the area. Her assigned surgeon leaves himself behind to talk to everyone.
"Please remember that this surgery can end in both ways, and if it ever succeeds, it only extends her life by a few years. Thank you for trusting me and my team." He gives everyone a short embrace before entering the operating room himself.
Minji notices Hanni's mother restless, so she holds her hand to calm her down.
"Do you think she can get through this?" Ms. Pham looks into her eyes, Minji's never seen her so unsure before.
She doesn't answer and only smiles, letting Hanni's mother cry into her chest as the others stare at them in worry.

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