↱ECHO↲ ⇾seongjoong⇽

第八

Hospitals are a strange place; you can find both birth and loss in one place, surrounded by stark white walls and a strong antiseptic smell.

But perhaps the strangest paradox is the area between life and death— those struggling to hold on when their bodies desperately want to give up.

If Hongjoong had given in to the social anxiety that had plagued him all throughout the later half of high school, then he would've never stepped foot inside another hospital, but losing Seongie had pretty much forced him to grow up.

With her passing came the need to honor her somehow, to make himself useful to others like her.

So Hongjoong had chosen a life built around hospitals; around clinical tests and the sterile equipment; around syringes, catheters, bedpans, and saline bags.

Medical school hadn't been easy; he saw way too many patients like Seongie.

He saw way too many of those same patients die no matter what he or any of the medical staff could do.

He saw miraculous recoveries and unexpected declines in health.

He saw it all and somehow he began to dissociate the part of him that cared for strangers from the part of him that cared for Seongie.

One Hongjoong was professional and direct and the other was nothing more than human, feeling every torrid emotion that ever warped that beautiful face.

Watching Seonghwa be placed on a gurney and wheeled off had brought with it a new realization, one that Hongjoong is apt to deny.

He feels very much human in this moment.

He feels..... upset at the thought of losing Seonghwa and he's sure it has everything to do with the fact that his patient resembles his first love.

When he saw Seonghwa lying on the bathroom floor, he recalled every time Seongie had gotten up from her chair too fast and she fell to her knees.

He saw her lying on the worn carpet of her bedroom because she was too weak to crawl into bed.

He saw her trying to catch her breath after they had made love, insisting she was fine, only to watch her shudder from lack of air moments later.

Hongjoong saw a lot of things when he looked at Seonghwa and the stress of the last hour had only brought this fact to light.

So what does he do now?

He knows that he should quit.

It's the logical thing to do.

It's not right to continue to care for a patient that he feels emotionally connected to on such a volatile level.

Normal affection— as is the case with Wooyoung being a caretaker— was fine, but Hongjoong felt something when he looked at his patient and that something was a deep longing for a person who he could never see again.

Seonghwa was not Seongie.

He keeps telling himself that.