Requested by: sheelalim

Pairing: Meanie (Wonwoo x Mingyu)

Author: Castor (from TheTwins)

Started: 02/22/17

Finished: 02/23/17

Request:

"meanie angst! any plot is fine but maybe hospital!au? Thanks!!"

Thank You

Wonwoo’s fingers ghosted over the velvet petals of the roses that had been delivered to the hospital that morning. They were vibrant against the dull whites and greys of the rooms in which Wonwoo worked now, but in a week or so, the beautiful reds would fade as the petals wilted. The flowers would lose their vitality, in the same way that their sender had lost his.

Wonwoo remembers the day he met the man a year and a half ago. He had been taking his five-minute break after assisting with an extensive surgery. As he leaned against the wall outside the surgery room, a man in a wheelchair wheeled up beside him.

“Is something the matter?”

He turned to the man, remembering to smile.

The man beamed back, the warm glow of his smile spreading to light up his entire face. “Nope. Just glad to hear it was a success.”

“And if I may ask, who are you?” asked Wonwoo.

The man chuckled lightly and held out his hand for Wonwoo to shake. “My bad, the receptionist told me you would be here. I’m Mingyu, one of your new patients.”

Turned out Mingyu had some sort of cancer or other deadly disease, possibly terminal. But somehow he became the brightest spot in a blur of grey for Wonwoo. Every morning when Wonwoo arrived at work, shoulders tense and mouth still bitter from the left-over taste of bad coffee, Mingyu would roll up or call out from his bed to greet him, with the same bright smile on his face.

“How was the coffee?”

“Was the surgery a success?”

“Did you see the flowers blooming on the tree outside?”

They would exchange small talk in the few moments Wonwoo had with Mingyu, as he performed the routine check-ups. Despite that, Wonwoo learned a lot about his new patient. He learned that Mingyu had no family, that he worked as a barista and was an apprentice at a barbershop, that his favorite hair color was bright orange, that he wanted to adopt a dog, and more.

He had found himself drawn back to this man and his bright smile over and over. After a successful operation, he’d find himself being congratulated by Mingyu, with a soft joke: “When’s it my turn?”

“Soon,” Wonwoo would tell him with a hopeful yellow note attached to his patient records. But soon never came. A month later, Mingyu was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit.

The nurse in charge notified Wonwoo with a brief text message: “Please see the ICU. Mr. Kim has encountered some difficulties and has been transferred there temporarily.”

Forgoing his morning coffee, Wonwoo threw on his scrubs and rushed to the car. As the red and orange lights of the cars in front of him blurred in the rain, he tapped his fingers impatiently against the wheel. Could it have been a high fever? A blood issue? Had he collapsed? Could he breath?

When he reached the ICU, Wonwoo barely glanced at the nurses in the hall, only hurriedly asking for Mingyu’s location and then leaving immediately. “Fell from his wheelchair...panic attack...stabilized now…” He nodded absentmindedly at the doctor at the door before muttering an “excuse me” and heading in.

“Mingyu,” he gasped. The man had bandages wrapped around his head and arms and had been securely placed back in his wheelchair. Yet he was still smiling, sheepishly now, but it was there.

“You weren’t trying to leave your wheelchair on purpose, were you?” A hint of panic tinged Wonwoo’s usually calm voice.

“Of course not,” Mingyu laughed, his smile trying to reassure Wonwoo, “I just saw such a beautiful little bird and I wanted to say hello. Reminded me of you. Next thing I knew, I ended up here.”

“I see.” Wonwoo eyed the man suspiciously as he pulled out a stethoscope. There were no birds or any other animals in the hospital whatsoever and he doubted Mingyu meant a child. He scribbled down a note in his file before bringing the stethoscope to Mingyu’s chest. “Breathe in, breathe out. Good.”

It was an unusual case. Mingyu had been returned to normal hospitalization, but after another month of shared talks, he was readmitted to the ICU. This time it was a frog he saw hopping on the windowsill. The next time it was a girl singing on the roof. And the next was a dragon threatening the receptionist. Soon, he was seeing them everywhere. The whole hospital had transformed in his eyes into a world only he was privy to, and Wonwoo simply did not know what to do.

By the half year mark, they were keeping him on sedatives in a watched room, refusing to let him place himself in danger. By then, Wonwoo had largely been locked out of Mingyu’s life as other specialists took over, each claiming he or she knew the true cause for Mingyu’s delirium and physical duress. They thought Wonwoo was too invested in the patient, too emotional, quite unlike the unreadable surgeon he once was. But Wonwoo still tried to talk to them, interview them, seek out others who might hold a clue to Mingyu’s condition.

During a well-earned break, he had even flown to the Stanford Medical Center to talk to a specialist in neurology. “What are you expecting? A miracle?” The women had scoffed at him. “I had a patient like that once. Seemed to have schizophrenia as well as physical ailments. We could never pin it down to one source. Either you send him into a coma and see if you can find anything else or ask about physician-assisted-suicide while he can still think.”

Wonwoo coldly thanked her and left on the first plane back. He would never do that to Mingyu. Looking out at the bleak darkness of night from his seat on the plane, Wonwoo slowly clenched and unclenched his fist, leaving shallow red marks in his skin. He hated being helpless, and what’s more, he hated being helpless in front of Mingyu.

But that’s how he ended up on the last day -helpless. The call came at three in the morning. The doctor had said it was urgent. But when Wonwoo got there, he could tell it was already too late. Gritting his teeth at all the tubes and tools the various specialists had left behind, he ordered the nurses out of the room.

“Mingyu.” He shook the man lightly. “Mingyu, it’s me, Wonwoo.”

“Nick? I haven’t seen you since eighth grade. How’s it been?”

“No, Mingyu,” Wonwoo gently propped him up against his pillows to face him. “I’m Wonwoo. Your doctor.” The last word left a bitter taste in his mouth. Could he really call himself that?

“I have a doctor? I thought you were James. Aren’t you James?” An unfamiliar expression contorted Mingyu’s face into a frown. “Where’s Thomas then?”

Wonwoo gulped as Mingyu’s hand latched on to his arm, the soft brown irises looking into his own, pleading. He placed his hand over Mingyu’s. “I’m Thomas. Nick and James are right here, behind me. We’re back in school again.”

The smile returned to Mingyu’s face as his eyes clouded over. “You’re right. Mrs. Williams is going to get mad at us for being late again. But it’s alright. She only keeps Mingyu in detention. Where is he anyways?”

“He’s coming. Mingyu will be here soon.” Wonwoo found himself blinking suddenly as if there was an eyelash in his eye, but that couldn’t be.

“That’s good. There’s something of his I have.” The man’s grin grew wider as he coughed suddenly. “It’s- it’s a note for someone. You’ll give it to Mingyu when you see him, won’t you, James?”

Wonwoo nodded silently as Mingyu’s cough got worse. There was blood, he realized suddenly. He connected the IV again, but it had no effect. “Mingyu. Mingyu!” Wonwoo grabbed the defibrillator just as Mingyu flatlined, the haunting tone echoing in his head. One, two, three. He tried again. One, two, three. Still nothing.

As the murmur outside got louder, he shook his head slowly at the nurses outside. Don’t come in. Tears streaking down his cheeks to mix with the blood on his hands, Wonwoo placed his hands under the small of Mingyu’s back, tilting his torso up and leaning in to whisper softly in one last resort, his voice breaking at the end, “Mingyu? Didn’t you say there was a note I have to give you? Where is it?”

As the murmur outside turned into recognizable voices, Wonwoo dried the tears on his cheek and lowered Mingyu’s body to the bed. Facial features unreadable once more, Wonwoo was about to let the nurses in when he saw a flash of yellow. With a soft thud, Mingyu’s arm fell to his side lifelessly. Loosely trapped in his grasp was a yellow piece of paper.

Gently prying the paper from the cold hands, Wonwoo forced down the desperation to read the message as he breezed past the incoming nurses and their cries of shock. Instead, he made it all the way to his office before he fumbled with the lock behind him and slid down, back against the door, tears gathering at his eyes.

Slowly un-crumpling the paper in his fist, he read:

“Dear Wonwoo,

Thank you.”

He let the paper fall to his lap as he stared off into a numbing nothingness. Mingyu had remembered him. Even in the worst and final days of his delirium, he had been able to write the note and hold on to it. Sometimes, Wonwoo would wonder about what would have happened had Mingyu lived. Mingyu would have adopted a dog, Wonwoo was sure. He would have probably continued at his jobs and dyed his hair like in the pictures he was fond of showing the nurses. They would have kept contact as Mingyu had promised they would. They could have been friends...

A sharp prick from a thorn brought Wonwoo back to the present. With a bittersweet smile, he looked down at the roses in his hand. It had been a year. Mingyu had insisted on paying for the annual bouquets ahead of time while he was still lucid. “For my favorite doctor to remember me by,” he had said, the same goofy grin lighting up his face. Not that Wonwoo would need the roses to remember him. But the bouquets did arrive, year after year, and Wonwoo was sure to keep them, year after year, in the same vase in his office until they wilted onto his papers.

From time to time, his colleagues would see the roses when they were in his office and smile sadly. After all, every nurse and doctor had patients they still thought about, patients whose friends and family they still see on the anniversary of their deaths, patient who they wondered if they could have done more for. For Wonwoo, Mingyu was that patient, and more.