So Min

I stood outside the glass window, watching the attentive nurse tending to Hyun Joong delicately. When she noticed the figure hovering beyond the window, she gave a slight nod and walked out of the room towards me.

I took in her features as she approached me. She was a chubby Chinese lady in her forties. When she smiled, a comforting twinkle sparkled warmly in her eyes.

“You must be So Min” she remarked in less than perfect English.

 Another stranger who knew my name….Since when had I became so transparent to everyone? Instead of being puzzled this time, I did the unthinkable.

I guffawed.

The eventful evening had been too much for me to handle. This had been the episode with the most dramatic turns in my life. For the first time, I felt as if I had lost control of my life and things happened too unexpectedly.

The nurse looked at me sympathetically and patted my shoulders lightly. “Poor child. So much had happened to you tonight. Come, let me apply something on your bruises.”

She led me away by her hand, from the ICU down a corridor. I blindly followed, reducing my laughter into succumbed giggles. She made a left turn to enter a tiny room with rows of lockers flushed to the wall. Instinctively, I tried to yank my hand from her hold at the sight of constraint spaces, fearing getting conned and caught again.

“Don’t worry, my dear. This is the nurses’ locker room. Please have a seat over there.” She tried to pacify. Obediently, I took my position on a sofa in the middle of the room while she disappeared behind one of the lockers and emerged shortly with a first aid box.

She squeezed some ointment from a tube onto her palm and propped herself comfortably beside me. “Slide down your shirt so that I could see your neck and shoulders.”  

At the thought of exposing part of my protected skin to her jerked me into a defensive mode. Sensing that I was eyeing her with distrust, she smiled comfortingly, “It’s ok, dear. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to put some medicine on you. See, I have a genuine nurse’s badge.”

Feeling stupid for being overly suspicious, I shrugged my shoulders and ed my shirt. How could she possibly harm me?  I was now in the hospital and out of peril. I winced in pain as the ointment stung my neck. Then, I remembered that those were the very places that the man had left his bite marks deep in my skin..the nauseating scene of their attempted surfaced in my memory again.

The stinging feeling was replaced with a warm sensation when the nurse massage a sweet smelling oil on my back, removing the lethargy and anxiousness bottled up during the ordeal. “I am applying lemon grass and lavender oil on you. This should relieve a bit.”

She continued to ease the oil into my soreness. Once done, she straightened my shirt and asked if I felt better. I nodded. Stretching my hands up and down, I realised I really felt much better after the rub.

Glancing at her with gratitude, I exhaled a soft ‘Thank you’

She flashed a warm smile. “It’s nothing compared to what you have been through. I’m glad that I could offer you some relief.” She packed the bottles back into the box and lifted her gaze at me momentarily. “For such tender age, you are such a strong lady. Your boyfriend must have seen this virtue in you…”

I flinched at her comment that needed to be corrected. Before I could rectify her misunderstanding, she continued, “..Deep in these old bones of mine, I could feel that he truly loves you a lot. He kept calling your name in the operating theatre.”

My eyes widened immediately after her last sentence. I must have heard her wrongly. “He..he called for me...?”  I stammered as I tried to validate the truth in her words.

 “Yes, he did.” She noticed the stunned look on my face and asked worriedly, “Are you ok? You look flushed.”

I shook my head, mumbling that I was ok and dashed out of the room quickly after thanking her for the second time. I rushed back to the ICU to put on the special protective attire that visitors need to don upon entrance.  

Biting back the tears b in my eyes, I set sight on the many tubes that stuffed his mouth and nostrils. Gone was the image of the cocky and super confident Hyun Joong. Laying on the bed with his face as pale as the colour of the bed sheet, he now looked so pathetic. He must be suffering now, even though he could not express it. It was my fault that he ended up here now. It was my stupidity for easily falling into the deception of those crooks and endangering both our lives.

After what happened today, I fully understood the fragility of a life. I had witnessed how easy it had been to bring a strong man down in a matter of seconds. And Hyun Joong had been brought down twice while saving me. Each time was like a knife pierced jaggedly through my heart. Now, I might have to witness the third time he struggled for his life, and maybe the last time. And maybe if he did not survive this final time, I was certain that my soul would die with him. I prayed hard that he could cheat Death again this time. 

The only thing that assured me that he was still breathing was the regular beeping sound of the heart rate monitor.

When I left the nurse just now, I told her that I was ok. In truth, I was not. My heart pounded vigorously when she told me that I was the one he remembered even in his unconsciousness.  

Why did I react in this way?

Everything that occurred today flooded back into my memory. How fearful was I for him when the men told me that something had happened to Hyun Joong, how desperately I wanted to rush to his side even though I knew it was dangerous, how my heart broke in so many ways at the thought of losing him and the kiss..the kiss that till now, I ridiculed myself for initiating without knowing why.

Gazing at Hyun Joong now breathing steadily into the respirator, I mindlessly touched his face and combed his hair with my fingers. I gasped in suprise and retracted my hand when I realised what I had done.

 This is not real..I should not be feeling this way.

Whatever I THOUGHT I felt for him, it was not REAL!

It must be the duress from the many happenings that pressured me to react like that!

It must be the guilt that I had for landing him in this condition!

It must be my gratitude towards him for saving my life!

Yes, that should be the logical reason for it...

I could not have fallen in love with him...