you have always been fairly good, you think. you were a good kid in kindergarten, you listen well, follows orders without question, and that of course continues until you are all grown up, even if you did not really go through a regular public education. you are definitely a law abiding citizen - maybe you can ignore that one time you jaywalked instead of taking the pedestrian crossing - all in all, you can easily conclude that you are one disciplined person.

it is not hard to achieve, really, not when your country and its people highly commend such values.

maybe she just did not go to the same preschool as you.

you stalk out of her empty room, rushing to the nurse station, relieved to see seungwan manning it. she smiles and waves cheerfully at you when you are near.

"seungwan," you gasp when you get to the counter, eyes still searching. "have you seen my patient?"

"which one?" seungwan asks, and she laughs when you roll your eyes a bit.

"you know the one."

"no, sorry, doctor, i haven't seen her," seungwan apologizes, sincere in her tone. "i was busy filing, but even if i wasn't working, i don't think i could've seen her leave her room."

you have heard gossips from the other nurses that this patient of yours is particularly fond and unfortunately very skilled in sneaking out from her bed, where she should be resting, but it is rather odd that no one has caught her in action until now.

"do you want me to page nurses in other wards? maybe someone else have caught a glimpse of her." seungwan questions, already taking out her pager.

"please." you sigh, running your hand through your hair, exhausted. you just got out of a long surgery, so you missed the time you promised you would check in on her. it is not entirely unfitting to say that you are worried.

"done," seungwan announces with a grin. "i'll keep you posted on your own pager, juhyun."

"okay, thank you. i think i'll go around and look for her as well."

seungwan sends you off on your mission with a smile. "good luck."

-----

you have searched almost the entire hospital wing when your pager finally beeps. you read it in a hurry, sighing in relief when it shows the information you wanted, and not another emergency surgery that requires your assistance.

you make your way to the place where she is last spotted, shared by a nurse from the pediatric ward.

and there she is, you see her reading from a storybook in one of the ward's playroom, a young female child attentively listening to the tale. both of them are in the hospital's blue gown.

you let her finish before you announce your presence, calling out her name. "seulgi."

she turns, the child following her closely. "oh, juhyun! there you are, i've been looking for you."

"what do you mean you've been looking for me? that's my line."

"well," she closes the large storybook shut, pouting a little. "you said you'd come check in on me. i waited but you didn't show up, so i went out to find you."

"i suppose i did say that... i'm sorry, i was just held up in a surgery."

she immediately drops her playful pout. "oh, did it go well?"

"yes, but i was just assisting the main surgeon."

"semantics, that's still a life saved."

you sigh, dropping to your knees, leveling yourself with her and the child. "you know you're supposed to be on your bed, resting, right?"

"i know, but i was dying of boredom."

"there's a tv in the room..."

"i got tired of watching all that soap operas. a person can only watch a mother trying to pull her gun at her son trying to marry a poor girl and botching her grip on the gun and not releasing the safety and-" she stops herself, brows contorted as she shakes her head, in disbelief at the poor production quality of said dramas. "look, juhyun, imagine watching a really bad medical drama, with tons of medical inaccuracies and terrible doctors. yeah, just like that, you know i can only watch it so many times."

you chuckle lightly at how upset she is with all the inaccuracies and cliches in the terrible dramas she has watched. "make sure you write this down in the patient survey we will give you before you leave. maybe they'll consider getting a better package for the cable channels."

she perks up at that. "i can leave soon?"

"possibly in three or four days. two if you behave well. so start doing that."

she ignores your warning entirely. "and i could give you points? like, rate you as my doctor on the survey?"

you can't help but roll your eyes again. "yes, seulgi, you will rate me as your doctor."

she clenches her fist dramatically. "ugh, i'm so powerful... isn't that right, jungah? you can do that too later on."

"what is a survey?" the child asks in reply, looking warily at you.

"well," you think, trying to make your explanation as easy as possible for the child to understand. "we are asking for our patients' opinions on our service. it's to see if we made any mistake, so we could grow and learn from it to become better."

"hmm... maybe you can put a storyteller in this room. like seulgi-unnie."

you let a small smile form before nodding at her precious feedback. "i'll let the ward management know."

"really? it would be so nice... i still can't read, so..."

"seulgi was reading for you, right? i hope she wasn't reading anything inappropriate."

"hey!" seulgi says in protest. "they only have fairy tales here."

you turn your attention to her, glaring. "so you're saying that if that kind of books are here you'd read it to a child?"

"maybe."

then you turn back to the young child. "jungah, right? i need you to do me a favor."

"yes?" jungah quips softly.

"do you know how to flick your fingers?" you ask, showing off how you usually do it, which is with a lot of force.

she seems intrigued as you flick your finger loudly against the hardcover of a storybook. "doesn't it hurt?"

"no. here, i'll help you," you adjust her small fingers deftly. "alright, so you just release this part, okay?"

"okay."

"good," you bring up your own hand to your elusive patient's head, surprising her. with a quick release, you flick her forehead hard, making the other woman grunt. "this is how you do it."

"what the- ow! juhyun?"

jungah laughs as she too flick her fingers on seulgi's forehead. it is a rather gentle flick compared to yours, but still she collapses, rolling slightly in pain, playing along. "again, again!"

"this is what we do to bad girls," you say, watching jungah repeatedly flicking your naughty patient's forehead when she gets up, only to fall again after taking another hit. "tell seulgi-unnie to be good, jungah."

"seulgi-unnie, be good or else your friend will get angry," jungah looks at you questioningly. "are you angry?"

"yes." you answer honestly.

"see? she's scary when she's angry. so don't do it again."

she lets out a pathetic whine, and jungah takes that as a sign to stop, thinking that she has understood what they are trying to say. "thank you for reading me books, seulgi-unnie."

immediately she gets up from her faux faint, pulling the small child close. "sure, kid, anytime. just tell your nurse you want to see me if you want me to read to you again, okay? don't wander around the hospital. this place is huge, you could get lost."

"okay." jungah nods quickly.

"i'm going with scary-unnie now."

jungah looks at you again, eyebrows raised, imploring. "please don't be too angry at seulgi-unnie and yell at her..."

"it's fine, i won't yell at her." you answer with a smile.

jungah seems to be satisfied with that. she waddles out of the room first, sparing one last glance and waving goodbye before she got out of the door.

you help her up, barely supporting her really. she has gained enough strength after a week, with the wound closing nicely without any sign of infection. you would be proud of her recovery if she does not pull these kinds of things too often.

"you're really not mad?" she asks as the two of you make your way back to her room.

"i am a bit, but you were out looking for me, weren't you?"

"well, part of it. i was mostly bored."

"and in your boredom you helped make a kid's day."

she shrugs. "she looked lonely."

"she really did," you sigh. "she's probably from that one orphanage located close to this hospital. they always send their sick kids here."

"she's such a sweet girl..." she mumbles, gazing at you as she thinks. "you too. you're both so strong."

you chuckle a little at her sudden burst of admiration. "where are all these coming from so suddenly?"

"shut up. this hospital is making me emo."

-----

"what's that?" sooyoung questions when she joins you at the nurse station.

"oh, uh, just a kid's file." you scroll down your tablet, eyes scanning quickly and absorbing all of the information you need.

"your patient?" sooyoung asks again, resting her jaw on your shoulder as she too, studies the file.

"no, we just got to know each other. seulgi was reading a book to her when she went missing earlier."

"hmm... so you got curious?" sooyoung squints her eyes a little at the words on the screen. "oh, man, type 2 diabetes? at such a young age?"

"yeah, poor kid. she has to depend on insulin, but you know how medications we use to treat diabetes on adults does not work just as well on children, right?"

"she's not overweight." sooyoung notes.

"yeah, it's most probably hereditary, though i wouldn't know for sure since she's an orphan."

sooyoung hums, she looks like understands now why you are curious with this case, as she sticks around, finding herself getting invested rather easily too. you eventually get to another important part in the file which is the list of medication, at which sooyoung gasps. "her body is rejecting the insulin? she shouldn't be producing the hormones that make insulin ineffective yet..."

"it does seem like it. i've gotten lab to look into that. it will take a few days though. they're quite overloaded lately."

sooyoung moves away from your shoulder and saunters over to the computer. "with the increase of diabetes diagnosed in children, you'd think there would be a specialized treatment and medications made for them..."

"that's not really our field, unfortunately," you sigh, closing the document. "what if it's worse? what if she actually has type 1 diabetes?"

"isn't her pancreas still functioning?"

"they're still running tests on that."

sooyoung gives you a few puzzled glances. "you're getting too worked up about this, aren't you? she's not even your patient."

you tap on the screen of your tablet, thinking. "how rash do you think it would be for me to go find the head of pediatric department and ask for a case transfer?"

"really reckless," sooyoung answers easily. "you don't even go there. you are, first of all, an emergency trauma surgeon."

"right..."

"you're not even that good with children!" sooyoung laughs loudly. "i still remember you fumbling with this one nauseated kid, not knowing what to ask to make your diagnosis, so you just poked around. the look on your face when the kid vomited all over you was so priceless."

"can we all forget that incident? god, i was not allowed entrance to any of the hospital's cafeterias for a week."

"why are you so worried over the kid anyways?"

"i'm not sure myself." you chuckle.

"didn't you say seulgi was reading to her?"

you nod.

"heh~" sooyoung sing songs, looking quite like she knows a secret nobody else does.

"what?" you demand, eyebrow raised in a challenge.

sooyoung does not take you up on it, typing away noisily. "nothing, doctor juhyun~ now you must excuse me, i need to get these documents filled in and uploaded on the server."

-----

"you look upset," she greets you once you are in for a visit. you've clocked out of your shift, so this is more of a friendly visit than that of a doctor's. "what's up? bad day?"

you slump on the chair next to the bed. "jungah, she has a type 2 diabetes."

"diabetes? isn't that what middle aged people usually get sick with..."

"there's a lot of cases for children too these days, especially with the increased rate of obesity."

she tilts her head to the side, confused. "jungah looks underweight to me. she's so tiny."

"yeah, obesity is usually the cause, but having a family history with diabetes could easily be the reason too, diabetes is hereditary, after all."

she sits up and scoots closer to you. "what are you going to do?"

"i asked the people in the lab to get a sample of her blood to see why her body is rejecting the insulin... i think that's already a breach of code. i don't think being any nosier would help."

she hugs her own body, leaning forward to study you more closely. "why are you so worried about her?"

you let out a small huff because you truly don't know, so you give her the first thing you felt when you saw her and jungah earlier. "maybe i just wanted you to read to her more often."

"that's kind of you," she blinks confusedly, not quite expecting that answer at all. "but it's not serious right? diabetes can be managed with proper treatment, yes?"

you nod. "we just need to find out what works, if insulin cannot be injected into her body, we could try metformin pills, these will help restore the body's proper response to insulin that the body itself naturally produces."

"that's good," she smiles warmly at you, taking your hand and rubbing your sweaty palm gently with her thumb. "do you feel any better now?"

"huh?"

"you looked scared, juhyun-ah. it's okay. things will be fine."

you gulp down your saliva. you should have known she would notice. she is far too perceptive for your own good. "i lost a kid like her once."

she perks up at that, always willing to listen.

"she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. back then, i only thought of stabilising her glucose level with insulin. turns out she had a rare side effect to insulin pumps that her body reacts by shutting down both her kidneys. we managed to find a donor in a short time, but the surgery wasn't successful. her parents refused to make her undergo dialysis, and she died three weeks later."

"i'm so sorry." she says softly, still caressing your hand.

"i've lost a lot of patients," you mutter, getting close to shedding tears, but you hold yourself back. it is no time to dwell on your past mistakes, but you can't help it. their ghosts hang around you, and falling to their whispers has always been so easy. "but children, they... they always affected me the most."

"you're a great doctor, you know that?"

"you know that's a lie, seulgi." you chuckle lightly.

"i'm going to make you understand," she grins, wide and warm. "i'll give you a full mark on that patient's exit survey thing. i'll write an essay on that about how amazing of a doctor you are."

"you know that thing is only the size of a small brochure, right?"

"then i'll ask for an extra paper. or two. maybe three. i'll let them know you're the best."

"you've never had another doctor here to compare me with." you laugh, finding it all absolutely ridiculous, but you are grateful the same.

"good, they will all fall under my expectations if i had them."

"now you're just flattering me."

"if that's what i have to do to keep you here, i will never stop."

"thank you, seulgi."

"thank you is a getting a bit old, you know. try bundling it together with my discharge papers?"

"no. i want to keep you here for a while more."

she huffs tiredly. "all you have to do is ask, there is no need to chain me to my bed."

at that, you scoff a little. "you are not chained to your bed."

"physically not, but psychologically, i am."

"you're right. i think you've watched one too many soap operas."

you chatter away with her until way past the time the visiting hours ended and sooyoung had to physically remove you from her room.

-----