"good morning, doctor bae," nurse son greets you on your way in, her ombre hair wavy as ever, handing you a chart for a patient. "sooyoung's got a kid with a broken clavicle in room 1 for you."

"good morning, nurse son, and thank you." you reply with your very own greeting before scanning the charts.

nurse son watches you study the chart attentively. "i've heard from sooyoung, by they way. what you did before? giving away your blood? it saved that kid's father."

"i was just doing what i thought was right." you smile, getting to the end of your patient's records. the kid's vitals seem to be fine, but you won't know if they need any further treatment or surgery without an x-ray of the broken clavicle.

"not everyone would do that, so thank you for backing up my partner."

you look up at nurse son with a raised eyebrow. "your partner?"

"i mean sooyoung. she's my girlfriend."

"oh," you say, thinking back on all the times you could see the two nurses together. they seem close but they were not exactly intimate. but then again you've never seen them outside of work. "i never noticed that you were dating..."

"well, we don't like to make a show of it. it's not like we kiss in the hallways for everyone to see," nurse son giggles happily. "but yes, we've been together for... half a year now, if i remember correctly."

"that's amazing. i hope everything goes well for the both of you."

"thank you," nurse son gives you a wide smile. "say, did something good happened to you?"

"whatever do you mean?"

"what you're doing right now. you never really stop to say hi back when i greet you or make small talk with me before. when we do exchange a few words, it's always just about work, you know."

"something good..." you drawl, looking all the way back to when you are at your lowest point and you thought of ending it all but someone forcibly tugs you back up to the land of the living and made sure you would survive against your own desire...

but perhaps that was a good thing.

"...maybe." you finishes after a short while of silence.

"doctor juhyun!" you hear a different voice pipes up, and hurrying towards you is none other than nurse son's other half, nurse sooyoung. "hi, good morning. here is your patient's x-ray. radiology just sent it over."

"thank you, sooyoung." you say with a small smile, looking the x-ray over.

"what's this? you're calling her by her first name? and she's calling you by your first name?" you hear nurse son whines loudly. oh, right, you're still referring to her by her family name. hopefully sooyoung can fix this.

to your surprise, sooyoung chortles loudly instead. "hah! she's still calling you by your family name? i already made friends with her, we're on first name basis and yet here you still are, you're such a loser."

nope, you think, sooyoung is definitely not fixing it, she is just casually making it worse, maybe she even enjoyed doing it all. you step up, mediating things before it could get any worse. "please, nurse son. you may call me juhyun as well."

"then stop calling me nurse son. it's just seungwan." seungwan sticks out her tongue towards sooyoung, presumably taunting her. in response, the taller nurse huffs, but otherwise remained fairly calm.

"that i can do," you smile a little, watching fondly as they trade glares. they seem like two women who love each other a lot, despite their obvious differences. "it looks like my patient's fracture is aligned, so i don't think they would need surgery."

"that's good news, recovery won't take long too," sooyoung comments, ignoring her pouting girlfriend for now. "time to get to work?"

"let's go," you say, nodding towards seungwan. "see you again, seungwan."

"break a leg, doc!"

you walk a bit further away from the nurse station where seungwan is, then spares a confused look at sooyoung who is walking beside you. "i don't think i'm supposed to be breaking my patient's leg, or anyone's for that matter? and my patient has a broken clavicle, not a..."

"she means for you to do well," sooyoung laughs heartily. "she always use cryptic words like that. i think she picks them up when she went to study overseas. they could be english idioms, but when she translates them directly to korean, none of them makes any sense."

"oh, i see... where did she get her education?"

"canada, i think? her sister got her degree in pharmacy there, too."

you hum, arriving at the room where your patient is waiting. you open the sliding door and slips in, with sooyoung following you closely behind you. you see your patient's parents first, so you quickly bow to them. "hello, mr and mrs choi, i assume? i'm doctor bae juhyun."

"yes, doctor." they stand up to greet you, bowing as well.

"may i ask what happened to your son?" you question, looking at the kid sitting on the bed, cradling his arm gingerly. he is no older than eight, you think.

"oh, well, he was just playing in the backyard when he tripped on his legs and fell," mrs choi answers, sighing. "i told him time and time again to be more careful when he plays."

"my father said to me that i'm a bit clumsy." the kid says with a nervous grin, fidgeting with his arm in the temporary sling as he looks at the tall man beside the bed.

mr choi is the one to speak this time. "you just need to watch where you're going."

you walk around the bed to study his vitals on the monitor again. there is no significant changes to them, which is a relief. "it's fine. your name is minjun, right?"

"yes, ma'am."

"so i've checked your x-ray, and you have a fractured collarbone," you tell the child, then turn to his parents, explaining his conditions further. "but his bone is aligned, so he won't be needing a surgery."

"do i get a cast?" he asks excitedly. "i want a cast."

you look at him, shaking your head a little. "no, sorry, all you get is a sling."

"aw..."

"is it okay if i take your pulse, minjun?"

"alright." he says, staying still as you move his collar a little to press your stethoscope on his chest.

"i'm just going to take a little peek in here and see what's going on, okay?" you say gently, when all of a sudden he jumps, his eyes rolling back, and he starts to tremble violently.

"oh my god, what's happening?" mrs choi gasps, watching her son shuddering on the bed.

"he's seizing!" you hold him down, looking at sooyoung who is on the other side of the bed with urgency. "give me one milligram of ativan."

"it's in!" sooyoung announces when she's done injecting the medication.

you turn to the parents next. "does he have epilepsy?"

"no." they quickly answer.

"any history of seizures?"

"no! just what is happening?"

minjun finally calms down under your hold, and you let go, breathing slightly heavy. "i'm not sure, but i don't think it's related to his clavicle. mr and mrs choi, with your permission, i'd like to run some tests and find out what's going on."

mr. choi gives you an urgent nod. "of course, please, do whatever you can."

----

"hi," she drops onto the seat next to you with a grin, still dressed in her tailored black suit. upon seeing your worn out state however, her grin is immediately gone. "whoa, there, are you okay?"

"hi, seulgi," you sigh, dropping your head on her shoulder. "it's just... i have a patient right now..."

"mhmm," you feel her shift a little to support you better. "it's not going too well, is it?"

"not at all. he had a seizure when i was trying to check his heartbeat," you blink your exhaustion away, still resting on her shoulder. "so i ran some tests to find out what went wrong... the test results just came back ten, no, twenty minutes ago, i think, i don't know, been out here a while... ct comes back negative, but the mri? it shows excessive demyelination."

"um, try to speak korean, maybe?"

"right, sorry. basically his nerves are damaged, and demylination impairs the conduction signals in the nerves, which explains his clumsiness, degeneration of motor skills and his sudden seizure..."

"okay..."

"i don't want to jump to conclusions, but... i'm afraid that kid has the krabbe disease."

"what is that?"

"a really rare and often fatal lysosomal storage disease which results in progressive damage to the nervous system," you say, feeling worse the more you get into the explanation. "given his current symptoms, he has anywhere between five to seven years before the progressively degenerative nature of the disease confines him to a bed and eventually... leave him in a vegetative state."

"that's terrible."

"yeah," you agree softly, before finally her presence registers in your mind. "wait, seulgi? what are you doing here?"

"i was in the area, so i thought i should drop by," she answers quickly, grinning. "you could say my... juhyun senses were tingling. like i just knew you're in trouble somehow."

you chuckle. "is that how you always turn up when i'm getting knocked out?"

"maybe so. it's rather useful don't you think?"

"maybe for you, i just end up getting embarrassed most of the time."

"you're so cute," she pinches the bridge of your nose and you scrunch up your face in protest. "so what are you fretting about? you found the cause of his illness."

"yes, but there's no cure."

"oh."

"he's already in the late stages, it's far too late to get stem cells or bone marrow donations... if he was diagnosed a year or two earlier, there's a chance..." you sigh, never quite feeling so helpless.

"there's nothing you can do now," she tries to comfort you, pulling you closer and your hair gently. "it's not like you could travel to the past and warn him. what you can do, juhyun, is to show your compassion for him and his family."

"compassion?"

"yes, they need to know that there is someone who understands what they're going through. they might want you to leave them while they start to grieve, or they might ask you a million questions for further clarification," she says, holding you tight. "i think that this is the hardest thing for you to do as a doctor, and i don't think it's going to get any easier from now on, right?"

you nod a little as you listen to her, her points all hitting close to home.

"but you are chosen to do this, juhyun, and there's a certain nobility to all of this that i think you've earned the right to, so you'll be fine. i believe in you."

you give her a look, both grateful and mystified. "thank you, seulgi. you always know what to say."

"i know right? could i maybe pass as a therapist? should i go ahead and clock in?"

you slap her lightly on her upper arm before slipping out of her hold, ignoring her laughter.

-----

the choi family takes the news rather calmly. minjun goes as far as questioning if he only has a few months left to live. when you answer that he has more than five years, he mutters about how long of a time that is and how much more ice cream he could eat.

they leave the emergency ward with small smiles, ready to make the most out of minjun's remaining life.

you heave out a long breath, rather exhausted. there are still patients for you to monitor and cure though, you don't really have a lot of time to space out, so you turn back to the ward.

you are just about to make your way to the nurse station when there is a huge crash to your left, close and loud. you see a body falling, your eyes widen when you recognise the ombre hair. "seungwan?"

then you see the assailant, a man in his early twenties, you think, standing over the fallen nurse, wearing the hospital gown and holding a bloody surgical knife in his hand. he growls at you, his pupils wild in search.

he pounces then, seeing that you are the next closest person, roaring madly with his hand slashing in raging succession.

you make a few steps back, but the surgical knife still catches you, leaving a few cuts. your back hits the wall on your retreat, and he still keeps coming.

you close your eyes, bracing yourself, but the jolt of pain that you think would happen never comes. instead, a body is pressed on you, and you hear a familiar voice grunting in pain.

opening your eyes in shock, you see her larger body leaving yours, and she is angry, her hair bristles with a fiery wrath that you know you have seen before.

that's right, when you had your purse snatched, it was just like that.

she grabs the mad man by his neck, and with a force that you've never seen anyone exhibit, she throws him to the ground, quickly straddling and choking him right after.

"sedate him!" you cry at the nurse closest to you, who was watching the struggle, deep in shock. "quickly, or he'll overpower her!"

the nurse sprints to get a syringe, handing it to you in a rush and then pulling back just as quickly. you can't find it in yourself to blame her from being frightened. you stab the syringe into the rabid man's vein immediately, knocking him out for good.

she stands up as the other doctors drag the now unconscious man away, staggering a little. you follow her, grabbing her arm to give her some support, all the while looking around frantically for an injury.

"oh my god," you mutter when you see it, the small surgical knife jutting out of her abdomen. "someone, help me get her on a bed!"

"," you hear her groan, leaning heavily to the wall as another nurse rushes to her other side. "ow, it ing hurts."

"of course it does!" you yell at her. it is not exactly a good work ethic to yell at your patient, but this one in particular is so darn stupid.

she is bigger than both of you and the nurse, so you pretty much end up dragging her to an empty bed, dumping her there unceremoniously.

"careful," she complains. "kind of hurt here?"

you look behind to see the previously chaotic emergency ward a little calmer. sooyoung is helping seungwan, who seems to be in great shock as well, the wound on her arm being tended by another doctor. 

you don't see the mad man anymore, hopefully they have bound him to his bed or something.

more importantly, you need to knock this cheeky woman out and save her life.

-----

"you're so stupid." is the first thing you say to her when she comes to with a groan.

"...are you always so mean to your patients?" she asks groggily, trying to get up, but fails to do so when you hold her down.

"stop moving, gods! you had your stomach cut open just an hour ago."

"ah, i knew my diminishing sleep schedule would come back to bite me in the some day... i literally can't sleep longer than an hour now." she grunts, trying to find the best position on the bed, wriggling in place.

"why did you do that?"

she lets out a heavy breath, closing her eyes. "he was about to hurt you. it was an instinct."

"well you got stabbed instead!" you raise your voice, deeply upset.

"someone had to stop him, juhyun," she argues with a sigh. "better just me than any more of your colleagues. who would do all the life saving if all of you were hurt?"

"seulgi, you don't understand. you got stabbed."

"that's right, he stabbed me to an almost death, but then you... you're a star, juhyun, you stabbed me again. to life. you stabbed me to life. isn't that what surgeons do?"

"please never become a surgeon."

"duly noted." she said with loud laugh, which then turns to a groan when she stresses her injury, accompanied with a flurry of 'ow, ow, ow.'

"stupid."

"yes, yes, okay, i'm sorry. i made my move without thinking."

"my god, what on earth should i do with you?"

the way her face lights up is a little troubling to you. "oh, i know, go out for dinner with me?"

"stop joking around, seulgi."

"i'm not, geez, i got stabbed and you still won't eat dinner with me? you bear such a high price, m'dear."

you roll your eyes. "we just went for dinner like, two days ago."

"that doesn't count, that's dinner from a food truck eaten on a bench by the riverside. juhyun, i want you in your best dress, your face shadowed perfectly by candlelights, both of us drinking expensive wine and overpriced steak..."

"you're so high, aren't you?"

"makes it all the better! won't have the guts to do this without some strong drugs."

"you jumped in front of me to take a knife to your stomach but you can't ask me out to dinner normally?"

she laughs heartily again, unbelieving of it all herself. "...the world is truly a strange place..."

"look, i'll call your employer and let them know of the situation. it was a deep cut and you need to rest. a lot."

"that's okay, they probably know already."

"what do you mean?"

"don't worry about it juhyun. it's all good."

"you're weird."

"maybe, but you owe me a dinner date, i saved your life."

she is giving you her puppy eyes now.

you wish someone would come and stab her again. 

"fine," you say finally. "but no more funny business after this okay? and don't just come into the emergency ward as you like, it's a patients' family only area!"

"i hardly think that should be your biggest concern right now... i think i tear up my stitches... was i laughing too much?"

"oh my god, it hasn't even been ten minutes and you're already at the top of my most irritating patients list."

she has the nerve to wriggle her eyebrows suggestively. "not exactly the kind of top i was looking to be, but that sounds pretty good for now."

"just... just die."

-----