The Falling Petals...🌺

I-C-U....

At 1:45, forty-five minutes late due to bad weather, the plane landed. In fifteen minutes, I managed to collect my air-bag and was outside the airport. At a distance, amid the crowd in front of me, I saw Dong-in and Hyungnim(Mi-hee's husband) waving to me. I waved back and moved towards them. Meanwhile, I switched on my mobile and saw some missed calls from Dong-in.

"How are you?" Dong-in asked, shaking my hand.

"I am fine. How are you and any update on Dae's present condition?" I asked, with my fingers crossed.

He then gave me an update, with some medical terms that were new to me. But, somehow, they did not make me feel good. I then asked him if the overall situation was better than yesterday.

"Hmm..." Dong-in was trying to frame his next sentence. I understood the situation.

I then acknowledged Hyungnim's presence. This was the first time I was seeing him.

"This is our elder sister's husband," Dong-in introduced me.

"Hello," I said and shook his hand.

"I believe the flight got late," he said.

"Yes, because of this weather... they wanted us to enjoy the scenic beauty of Korea from up there," I pointed towards the sky with a smile, trying to make everyone a little relaxed. We got into a cab. The weather was quite chilly and I wanted to feel the cold so I took off my jacket. It took us more than an hour to reach hospital in Busan. The cab driver left us at the entrance and drove to the parking lot.

We went into the hospital and took the elevator to the 2nd floor. As I was getting closer to her, my fear was increasing and I started shaking a bit. I looked at the different faces in the elevator and their expressions which told their happy and sad stories. On the second floor, the elevator door opened.

Stepping out, I saw Pil-woo coming towards me. I hugged him. Before he could ask anything about my journey and me, I asked him about her condition.

"The doctors have updated me about her condition a few minutes back," Pushkar said, looking at all of us.

"What kind of update. Tell me?" I asked.

"She is still unconscious but her condition is a little better since morning, though she is not yet completely out of danger. They are planning to operate on her fractured jaw and thighs in a day or two. Apart from that there are some blood clots in some section of her brain, though they're not that critical and are likely to heal through medication."

That "little better" made us all feel a little better. Still, we were worried.

Though we knew that Pil-woo has told us everything the doctors had told him, we kept asking him more questions, hoping that at least something would be more positive.

Meanwhile, there was an announcement on that floor for all of us who were without ICU passes to go to the ground floor as the meeting time was over. Every evening, between 5:30 and 6:00, one or two people from the patients' families were allowed to visit. I looked back to see where this announcement came from.

There I saw a door with the letters 'ICU' engraved on it. Intensive Care Unit. The meaning of the acronym made me shiver. A raw fear passed through me. This was the first time in my life I was standing in front of an ICU door, thinking about the person on the other side and what she meant to me and my life.

"God, please," I said, staring at those bold letters,

I tried to look in from the little glass window embedded in that door:

"The path on the right side leads to her bed. Bed number 3," a person standing behind me said.

I looked back.

"This is Sungwon," Dong-in said and introduced us.

"Oh Dae used to talk about you."

yes, Dae and Sungwon were in the same college and he used to treat her like his own sister.

Amid our introductions, there was a second announcement bidding us to vacate the ICU floor. It was decided that Sungwon would stay back in the hospital that evening and we all would go home. At night, one of us would come back to replace Sungwon.