Remember My Name

2 - Drunken Musings

"Whiskey. Neat." Bin sat on one of the bar stools, and when the bartender put down his drink in the bar, he gulped it down straight.

"Rough night?" Bin's bestfriend, Dr. So Ji Sub, had been in the bar waiting for him since earlier. He took Bin's glass and asked the bartender to refill it.

"Surgery?" he asked. Bin rarely calls him out for a night of drinking, considering they're both always tired after their shifts in the respective hospitals. So when he texted him earlier, he came running into the bar.

"Nope." Bin gulped from his refilled glass.

"Woman?"

"Yep." His friend turned to him. This is a new one, he thought. Bin has given up dating maaaaany years ago. So when he's now drinking because of a woman, his best friend immediately becomes proud of him.

"Your date stood you up?"

"Nope."

"Then what is it?" Bin asked the bartender to refill his drink again. The bartender looked at him in surprise, as if thinking, 'damn, who hurt this man?'

"She's back." Bin said as he rested his head on the bar, still holding the glass of whiskey in his hand, "She's back, man."

"Who's back?"

"Yejin." Ji Sub stopped in his tracks, and Bin gulped everything in his glass once again.

"Excuse me," his bestfriend called to the bartender, "Just give us that bottle of whiskey,"

-

"What do you mean she's back?"

"She's back. She came to the hospital today."

"As a patient?" Ji Sub asked.

"No, man. She's the new Pediatrics Head in Seoul Medical," To say Ji Sub is shocked with what his best friend said is the understatement of the year. He also gulped a full glass of whiskey, trying to process what Bin just said.

Bin, Yejin, Ji-Sub, and Ji-Sub's wife were not only classmates at the university. They were good friends. 

"So what happened earlier?" Ji Sub asked. They were only in the bar for 15 minutes, and Bin is already in his 5th glass.

Drowning himself in whiskey must've been proven ineffective. He's drowning himself in alcohol to numb himself, but how come he feels the pain more and more as he does? How did it happen that the more he drinks, the more he feels the pain in his chest like it was yesterday?

"She acted as if nothing happened," Bin said, gripping the glass tightly that for a minute there the bartender was afraid he would break it, "Hell, she even told the chief that we were classmates in the university."

Bin and Ji Sub sat in silence, drinking their whiskeys in their attempt to drown their thoughts.

"So what's your plan, man?"

"I don't know. I don't think she wants anything to do with me," Bin rested his head on his palms, unable to answer and unable to think what he would do next, "I didn't even hear a single apology from her..."

"Aren't you going to ask her? Don't you want an explanation for everything?"

"What for? What's done is done." He grabbed the bottle of whiskey from his friend, pouring the alcohol in his glass until it was filled and it overflowed. He drank all of it without stopping. Dr. So knew that his friend's alcohol tolerance is high, but he'll sure be drunk once everything he drank starts kicking in.

"I'm not even gonna stop you from drinking all that, man" he said, drinking some of his own, "If I'm in your position, I'll be on the next flight out of here."