After almost two months of internship, Kang Taehyun was pretty sure his body clock was severely messed up. Even more messed up than it had already been ever since he started college. Life as a nursing student was already filled with cups of coffee and sleepless nights, but he didn’t even so much as scratch the surface of what sleepless nights really meant until he began interning. So far, his longest record had been 27 hours awake.

The halls of Asan Medical Center were always bustling with activity. At some point, Taehyun realized that wasn’t exactly a good thing. Nurses fluttered here and there, checking up on patient after patient, while some doctors did the same. As an intern, and the youngest one at that, Taehyun had yet to handle harder jobs. He wanted to though, but his actions still fell under the orders of the head of the nursing staff, who couldn’t be bothered with the interns half the time.

(The reason behind that 27 hour record wasn’t one he particularly wanted to repeat, so having nothing to do was sometimes better.)

“The patient in Room 313 said her leg was hurting less today,” Taehyun reported to the chief nurse one afternoon, handing the patient’s clipboard over. Another mundane task, for another mundane day. “She has physical therapy scheduled for tomorrow.”

“Great,” the older woman said, barely sparing Taehyun a glance as she handed him another clipboard, which the brunette gladly took. “I’m putting you on permanent assignment for this one until further notice. Room 207 is a special case. That should give you more things to do.”

She paused to finally look at the younger boy, “you’re Kang Taehyun, right? Top of the class? Youngest intern this year?”

Taehyun nodded.

“Good luck,” the chief nurse said with a brief nod of her own, before walking away.

The first thing Taehyun noticed when he began to read through the patient’s files was the bright, bold red lettering on top, stating that the patient had no formal diagnosis. Choi Beomgyu, 18 years old, was admitted to the hospital just earlier that morning. Surprisingly, that was the only information presented, other than a request that someone should keep the boy company at all times. That in particular made Taehyun frown a bit.

Was he just assigned to watch over the patient?

Regardless, it was still something that fell under his job description, so Taehyun had no choice but to head over to Room 207.

Truth be told, he didn’t really like hospitals, which for a would-be-nurse. Something he always hated about the place wasn’t even the smell, but the way everything was just so white. It wasn’t even a bright white. It was a dull, lifeless kind of white, that made everything around it feel desaturated by comparison. Even if some nurses wore blue uniforms, or green emergency suits, it didn’t change that the majority of the hospital was still white.

So when he entered Room 207, Taehyun was expecting the same dull white to hit him. He wasn’t expecting the potted plants that filled the room with various splashes of colour. Red roses, yellow tulips, and even pink carnations lined the edges of the room. Right in the center, resting on the bed, must have been Choi Beomgyu. A light haired, fair skinned boy, who was currently smiling brightly at Taehyun.

“Are you the nurse in charge of taking care of me?”

Unsure how else to respond, Taehyun merely nodded, still taking in the decor of the room with wide eyes. He didn’t even know they were allowed to have live plants inside the hospital, even more so inside a patient’s room. Upon closer inspection, he was also beginning to wonder what seemed to be the problem with the patient. If he had no formal diagnosis, he shouldn’t even be in the hospital, right?

“I’m Beomgyu,” the boy spoke again. “What’s your name?”

“Taehyun,” the intern answered briefly.

He watched at Beomgyu tilted his head towards the right, then towards the left, as if examining him before the older boy pouted.

“You look way too young to be a nurse.”

“I’m an intern,” Taehyun explained, still finding the current situation weird. While he knew better than to judge via outward appearances, it was the first time he’s ever even seen a patient look happy to be in the hospital, especially since the other boy looked fine as well. There was no mistaking the radiant glow that Beomgyu seemed to have around him as he began to talk once more, unbothered by the short answers.

Choi Beomgyu spoke about the flowers in the room (“You’re probably curious, right?”) and how he liked having them around to add colour to the place. He described each flower and how much water it needed per day, along with how it had to be taken out for sunlight, too. It took the med student a while to process that doing so was part of his job. Taehyun tried his best to school his features; he was a nursing student, not a florist.

Yet, as Beomgyu smiled as he went on to say he was expecting more flowers to arrive soon, the younger boy couldn’t help but feel his annoyance wash away.

(He reminded himself that the boy was still in the hospital for some reason. The flowers must have helped Beomgyu one way or another.)

By the end of his shift, at exactly 7PM, Taehyun excused himself from the room. He was met with a cheerful wave goodbye that made him consider his plan of switching jobs with another intern. Beomgyu was a talkative person, that much was sure, while Taehyun still felt awkward about the whole situation. Maybe the patient would work better with an intern who talked more, too. But the patient was assigned to him, specifically.

The next day, Taehyun ended up returning to the room anyway, bright and early in the morning.

“Good morning,” he greeted politely as he brought in food. “Doctor Kim also prescribed you some medicine today.”

“Medicine, huh?” Beomgyu asked softly, uncharacteristically quiet for a few seconds. “Do you know what kind?”

Taehyun took a quick look at the clipboard and tried to decipher the doctor’s scrawl.

When he did, he couldn’t help but frown.

“They’re basic painkillers,” he announced. “Do you need something else? I could try asking—“

“No, that’s fine,” Beomgyu interrupted swiftly, a bright smile back on his face. He watched with curious eyes as Taehyun prepared the tray, setting up some fruits to go along with the cereal and milk, as he talked about what food he liked eating best. All the while, the younger boy listened and took note. Maybe he could bring some for lunch, if the hospital canteen offered it. That would make him a nice nurse, right?

Taehyun glanced around at the flowers in the room, “do I bring them out for sunlight now?”

“In a bit,” the other boy said. “I want company while I eat breakfast.”

That was how Kang Taehyun found himself in a new routine that circled around the patient in Room 207. It was easy enough; arrive with breakfast, stay and talk for a bit, go out to tend to the plants. In the afternoon, Beomgyu had said Taehyun should probably help out elsewhere, since he usually took a nap. The intern would bring in lunch and then leave, dropping by only when called for (a rare occurrence), until he’s scheduled to return with dinner. His shifts still end at 7PM.

It was his 6th day on duty when Taehyun finally decided to ask the golden question.

He figured he was probably allowed to do so by now. Beomgyu had called them friends—on the 4th day and at the very least, Taehyun agreed—when the older boy had asked his own questions; like whether Taehyun actually liked his course (“Yes.”), if he was dating anybody (“No, I have no time for that.”) and what his favourite flower was (“I don’t think I have one.”) All his answers amused the other boy, who would giggle softly each time.

“Can I ask you something?” 

“Finally,” Beomgyu said teasingly. He smiled and nodded at the boy standing beside his bed, “anything.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude,” Taehyun began to say, which made him feel like he was definitely going to sound rude, but he continued anyway. “I have your patient report and all, but ever since day one, it doesn’t say why you’re in the hospital. It’s still not updated.”

“And you want to know why I’m here?”

“Well,” the younger boy fidgeted. “Sort of, yeah. I’m here to learn, after all, it would help to get all the details.”

At that, Beomgyu was silent for a few seconds before he smiled, bright and beautiful.

(Taehyun froze momentarily. Beautiful?)

“I’m dying, Taehyun,” the boy said softly. “Not even painkillers and medicine can help me.”

For the first time in along time, Taehyun regretted asking a question. When he was younger, he was always praised by the adults around him for how much of a curious boy he was, always eager to learn. He asked about everything and anything; eyes widening with delight at each answer he got, at something he could add to his inventory of knowledge. This time, his eyes widened in shock.

He wanted to ask more. What does Beomgyu mean? What kind of disease is it that it’s not even listed down? He can’t even know what he was helping with, but at some point, Taehyun figured the doctors knew. It was just kept quiet. Was it rare? New? Something, anything, the brunette just wanted to find out. He wanted to become a nurse for the sole purpose of helping other people. Right there, at that very moment, he just wanted to help.

“Why?”

“Have you heard of the Hanahaki Disease?”

Oh.

On his second week of internship, Taehyun went 27 hours without sleeping, for the first time in his life. There was no way he could forget the events that went down that day. It started like any other day, up until the emergency alarms rang, and a patient was brought in. The chief nurse had taken one look at him before telling him to help out with the situation. It was tense as the patient was rushed to an emergency operating room immediately.

He could still remember how everything looked like. It was hard to forget the image of blood and flowers mixed together. The flowers had been white, which made the blood against it an even more vibrant red, as the patient just kept vomiting them out. The man, only aged 25, kept crying the entire time, too. Something about how he just wanted everything to end already. For the entire night, Taehyun remained in the operating room.

He watched the way the flowers were removed from the man’s lungs.

Everything was extracted, down to the smallest petal.

“We get these special cases, sometimes,” the surgeon who was in charge explained by the end of the procedure. Taehyun had asked, of course, after he helped usher the patient into another room to recover. What happened didn’t seem like it was in his medicine books. “It’s known in the community as the Hanahaki Disease. Rare, very rare, and always potentially fatal. That man’s lucky he was even brought in here. He’s been refusing surgery for a while now.”

Unfortunately, that was all Taehyun got from the doctor, but a quick search gave him more answers. Although the internet deemed the disease to be nothing more but a myth, something used in fictional stories, Taehyun knew better. He had seen it first hand. That also meant that while he knew Beomgyu was dying, he also knew that there was a cure for it. All the other boy had to do was get the flowers out of his system.

Surely he knew that, right?

“Why not just get surg—“

“I think love is a beautiful thing,” Beomgyu interrupted, still smiling; for once, Taehyun could finally see the sadness in the corner of his eyes as he spoke, along with a hint of determination. Stubbornness, more like it, as he spoke with as much conviction he can muster. “Even if it hurts, I’m happy to be in love. I’d rather not forget what made me feel this way.”

(So he’d rather die? Taehyun didn’t understand. Then again, he’s never been in love.)

Since then, a lot more things became obvious.

During the afternoons where Beomgyu was supposedly napping, the nursing intern got called in more frequently, usually just to stay in the room. Staying in the room longer meant seeing Beomgyu more often, too. That meant Taehyun experienced, for once, the way Beomgyu’s eyes would be shut tight as the other boy coughed, and coughed, and coughed, before finally a yellow petal escaped his mouth.

The first time it happened, Beomgyu had smiled sheepishly and said, “it’s like magic, huh?”

In the end, he never really napped.

“They told me not to tell you,” the boy eventually confessed one day, face twisted in confusion. “I was wondering, why not? You’re my nurse, now my friend, what’s the worse that could happen?”

“Maybe they were worried I would think you’re crazy,” Taehyun piped up. Admittedly, ever since the first day, it wasn’t hard to get closer to the other boy. It helped that they were close in age—just a year apart—and that Beomgyu managed to make everything flow naturally, despite their circumstances. In the end, he didn’t even mind playing florist to the boy’s potted plants, which felt slightly masochistic to have around the room.

Beomgyu laughed, “good thing you knew all about it already, huh? That might be why you were placed here to begin with.”

Actually, now that Taehyun thought about it, the chief nurse did acknowledge him. She definitely knew what she was doing, after all.

On that same day, in the middle of Beomgyu’s second week in the hospital, he had his first visitor. Apart from his family, nobody else really dropped by. His parents always tried to talk him into just having surgery, the boy told his nurse once, but there was little they could do. He made his mind up long ago. Again, Taehyun wish he understood. Who did Beomgyu love so much that he wasn’t willing to just let go and forget?

He got his answer when Choi Yeonjun entered the room.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t visit earlier,” the red haired boy said in a rush the moment he burst through the doors. He was holding a bouquet of poppies in one hand, which he gingerly placed next to the boy on the bed, as if careful to make the wrong move. “I only found out recently through Soobin. Why didn’t you text me or something, Gyu? You know I would have visited you every day if—”

“I know,” Beomgyu interrupted with a chuckle. “I also knew you don’t have much time for that. Thanks for the flowers. Poppies have always been my favourite.”

“I know,” Yeonjun replied with a smile of his own, before it quickly transformed into a frown. “I talked to your doctor. She said she’s not sure what’s wrong?”

“Yup,” the brunette said, catching Taehyun’s eye as he spoke, since the nurse was just standing by the door. The latter wanted to scoff, but rightfully didn’t react to anything. The whole time Yeonjun had been in the room, the boy didn’t even spare the nursing intern another glance, all his focus solely on the sick boy. One would think it was Yeonjun who was in love with Beomgyu, not the other way around, but that wasn’t the case.

After staying for an hour, Yeonjun eventually had to leave. He apologized profusely and promised to return, soon.

Once the boy left the room, Beomgyu had a coughing fit.

This time, an entire yellow tulip came out of his mouth. He looked like he had a much harder time getting it out, too.

“You wouldn’t believe how hard it was trying to keep that in,” Beomgyu groaned out to Taehyun, who was by his side immediately, rubbing circles on the other’s back. He had a weak smile on his face, “I’m glad he didn’t try to hug me goodbye or anything. I don’t think I would have been able to keep it in, but I figured I could always pretend I ate one of the flowers on display.”

“So, that’s why you keep the flowers around, huh?” Taehyun asked, keeping his tone light.

Truth be told, he was confused why Beomgyu was in the situation he was in. He could see it, clear as day, that Yeonjun definitely cared for the other boy. It was hard not to, honestly. Taehyun has never met anybody with such a bright personality as the older boy, who managed to smile and laugh at everything, despite the pain in his lungs and heart. It was admirable, for sure.

(Who wouldn’t fall in love with him?)

Beomgyu grinned, “you got me.