Mrs. Byun pushed him back into the hallway. She looks at Chanyeol as if she’s sorry for something. “Chanyeol…” she begins, “Do you want to sit first?” He doesn’t answer, instead, he falls to the seats which line the white walls. He can smell the constant and uniform disinfectant in the air that most hospitals seem to possess. Mrs. Byun seats herself beside him, before unravelling the basics of what had happened. She puts a reassuring hand on the small of Chanyeol’s upper back when she finishes. “He’ll remember, he will… but we shouldn’t pressure him into remembering things that he obviously can’t,” Mrs. Byun tells him with a soft voice. Chanyeol’s hands continually clench and unclench in his lap, he watches how his skin stretches over his knuckles, the skin on the back of his palm contrastingly light against the dark denim of his jeans. A monotonous what the hell registers in his head, his inner voice saying it again and again and again until semantic satiation takes it place. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t want to understand.

“Okay?” Mrs. Byun says when Chanyeol doesn’t answer. She gives him a squeeze before she tells him that Baekhyun’s doctor will be visiting in awhile to check up on Baekhyun, and that he’s more than welcome to ask him of Baekhyun’s condition. Chanyeol notices the dark circles under her eyes: she hasn’t probably wrapped her head around it too. He gives her a hug and whispers “The important thing is that he’s alive,” because it is.

The doctor arrived after 15 minutes. Chanyeol ambushed him when he just got out of Baekhyun’s room, done with the daily check-up. “The first thing that you need to know is that amnesia has two kinds,” the doctor says when Chanyeol closes the door to his office. They relocated here for a more quiet setting uninterrupted by the sounds of hospital doors closing, elevators dinging, and wheels underneath stretchers screeching.

“Baekhyun’s case is retrograde amnesia, meaning he can’t recall some memories before the onset of the condition, unlike anterograde amnesia, which doesn’t allow the affected to create new ones because of damage to the hippocampus. This is because the result of the collision between Baekhyun’s head and the windshield of his car was so intense, it resulted to cranial trauma that in turn, affected neurons and synapses that stored long-term memory. But amazingly, we can classify his condition as that of moderate — there was no intercranial hemorrhage or internal bleeding that occurred for him, there was only swelling that happened after the impact between the brain and the skull; think of it as a cranial bruise. According to administered tests, Baekhyun seems to have lost his memory five years prior to the accident; so if he’s 25 years old right now,” “— he only remembers up to when he was 20 years old?” Chanyeol finishes for the doctor in a question. “Yes,” is the answer that affirms Chanyeol’s suspicions eating him up.

Baekhyun wasn’t joking when he asked. Chanyeol is surprised at how Baekhyun’s question sounded offensively superficial. The impression it makes on him is shallow, like Chanyeol was only someone from Baekhyun’s list of acquaintances who just decided to drop by to visit him while he was in the hospital. Chanyeol was more than a mere acquaintance; Chanyeol was more than a best friend. Was. Because general knowledge of Baekhyun’s newly acquired memory status tells him that he’s no more than a fresh face. After all, they’ve only met when Baekhyun was 22; so in that case, they’ve only met a few minutes before with a “Baekhyun,” and a “Yes, I’m Baekhyun. You are?”

“This is because newer memories are stored in neurons and synapses that aren’t as strong as those who store old memories. A ‘memory’ is strengthened by years of recapturing, of retrieving, and of reliving past events. Baekhyun has lost some of his episodic memory, which are experiences or autobiographical events. Semantic memory, which is general knowledge, and procedural memory, which is his skills and habits, aren’t affected,” the doctor explains, even pointing at a diagram of the cranial structure. “So technically, the commercialized portrayal of amnesia, wherein the character affected asks ‘Who am I? Who are you people?’ is wrong. The person affected must know himself and his relatives. The only medically correct question that they inject in movies is ‘Why am I here?’ that can be directly implied as retrograde amnesia,” he even adds. A beat passes between them. “Will he ever recall or reclaim his memory?” is the question that flows out of Chanyeol’s lips. Will he remember me? is the question that it implies.

“He may reclaim some of it by the help of others ‘jogging’ his memory by divulging him in denotative articles to speed his ability to recall. However, he may not recall the memories closest to the accident as they are the newest, with relatively weak neurons and synapses storing them. We’ll give a heads up on when Baekhyun is somehow mentally capable to accept reminders and to comprehend those significant articles that you might present to him. Baekhyun’s case is quite rare, son. He’s lucky because he skipped the usual comatose and vegetative state of traumatic brain injury victims; he’s skipped to the minimally conscious state, whereas he was already able to recognize and even react to visual and sound stimuli, to respond to simple commands and questions, to show emotion. He’s showing incessant improvement over the shortest period of time. Today, at his fifth day, he almost functions as a normal human being if not for him being restrained by the confines of his room and the dextrose connected to him. He also seems to have come to terms with his condition. Let’s say that he’s typically conscious like before," the doctors says, completely upbeat, obviously proud at Baekhyun's improvements. Chanyeol nods robotically.

“Let’s assume that Baekhyun maintains his rate of improvement over the days, then it's safe to say that it’s quite possible that his recovery time be half of the usual six months. We may release him by three, but that’s by saying that Baekhyun come in for weekly check ups and tests for the following three months. You see, the recovery time for patients with traumatic brain injury span from six months to two years.” the doctor said, his clasped hands under his chin. He must’ve noticed Chanyeol’s morose disposition. He pats him by the shoulder and gives it a fatherly squeeze, mimicking the action made by Mrs. Byun. “He’ll remember you, one way or another.”

Chanyeol bows in gratitude before he leaves the doctor’s office; as he does so, he reminds himself that the important thing is that Baekhyun is alive. He makes his way back to the seat directly outside Room 04. He’s tired. He can’t comprehend it all in one day. Baekhyun’s memories of the last five years, including the memories of him in the latter three, are erased, replaced by an empty void, by a missing jigsaw piece, by a blaring plothole, by a blank page. That must’ve been Chanyeol’s worth — nothing. He catches Mrs. Byun on her way to the hospital cafeteria, and he bids her a good-bye and a “You’ve worked hard” before he leaves.

It’s amazing of how much change in Chanyeol an hour brings. It was only awhile ago that he was bursting through these hospital doors, and now he was pushing them open dejectedly. It was only awhile ago that he rushed to reach this exact hospital, and now he just... he wanted to leave.

Chanyeol is tired. The weight of the sky is resting on his shoulders as he plops down on his bed in his unit. He’s tired. He’s just… he doesn’t know. Sapped, is the word he thinks, he’s sapped of everything. He stares at his ceiling, and the details of it soothes him unconventionally. Here is the same ceiling that Baekhyun and he used to revel at, counting the hairline fractures, during the early mornings when he wakes up with Baekhyun beside him in this exact same bed. But Baekhyun doesn’t remember, he doesn’t even know.

The grenade in Chanyeol’s hand goes off. There is collateral damage, the imaginary shards permeate through him, going straight to his heart. It should’ve been scorching and painful, but Chanyeol is numb. It was like he experienced a pseudo-heartbreak. It should’ve been loud at most, flailing limbs and plangent crying, but Chanyeol is quiet. He doesn't feel anything, he doesn't want to feel anything. It's like he's made out of Play-Doh, all mushy and malleable; someone could punch him and he wouldn't feel anything at all, they could punch him all they want and he wouldn't do anything about it. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn't succumb to his fatigue, instead, he counts the cracks in his ceiling, alone in the dark.