Sehun leans back on the bench, enjoying the breeze playing across his face. It’s a little overcast, but the trees around him are full of green leaves and the flower beds are colourful. He’s on call, but he’s decided to make the most of the weather before it craps out later. 

Sehun has spent a lot of time recently thinking about moving to Busan. The small practice he saw in February has been sold, but it planted a thought that never really seemed to go away.  Speaking to Jongin about it vaguely had somehow spurred the thought along and now it has solidified into an actual plan. Somewhat. There is one very important person he needs to talk to before he can go any further along this path. 

He feels strangely nervous about calling his girlfriend. A stronger gust of wind has him shivering slightly and he pulls his light coat a little tighter around him. He's interrupted from his wandering thoughts when his phone starts ringing. He’s expecting it to be the hospital but when he has gotten his phone out of his pocked and in his hand, he sees the small picture attached to the caller number. 

“Hey, baby,” he says. 

“Morning,” she mumbles and Sehun stifles a laugh when he hears her yawn. 

“Morning? It's afternoon already. I can’t believe you’re still in bed,” he says. It rustles a little on her end as she repositions herself and sighs contentedly, as she probably snuggles into her pillow. Sehun’s heart gives a twinge. If he was there, he could lay beside her and gently push her hair away from her face and watch her smile. The image in his head makes him smile dreamily towards the grass. 

“I'm sick, so I don't have to get up.” Mikyung’s excuse is the cutest thing Sehun has ever heard. “What are your plans this afternoon?”

“I’m on call,” he tells her. “You’re not allowed to sick without me there to take care of you.”

Mikyung giggles. “It's just a cold. I wish you were here though.” She only manages to get the last word out before she yawns again. Sehun feels his heart twist again.

“I miss you,” he says suddenly. Mikyung hums and blows him a kiss he can hear over the phone and it somehow makes what he’s about to discuss with her a little easier. “I have to ask you something," he says. His voice has gone quiet, as though he’s ashamed of what he’s to say. He isn’t, but for some reason, it feels incredibly private and maybe too private to talk about on a park bench. 

“What is it?” Mikyung sounds more awake now, her voice changing in response to his. Neither of them like to have serious conversations on the phone, but the long-distance they’ve been keeping up for almost a year makes it necessary at times. Sehun realises he could - and maybe should - change over to a video call, but somehow it feels a little safer to just hear her right now. 

“Remember when I visited you in February?” he starts, then hesitates. Mikyung hums and asks him to continue. “I didn’t bring it up then because it was Valentine’s Day and I just wanted to spend it with you, but while I was there I walked past a private practice for sale and it made me think...that maybe I could leave the hospital here and go into private practice, maybe move to Busan.” His heart is beating faster by the time he's finished talking. He's trying to say it casually, but saying the words out loud is making him realise just how much emotional investment he has in what he's saying.

There’s a pause in their conversation and it feels long, longer than it should be. Sehun's heart is racing now. He chapped lips, and presses a hand to his chest to try and force his heart to calm itself.

“Do you want to move to Busan?” she asks slowly, and her tone is strange. Uncertainty makes itself known within Sehun's chest, curling around his pounding heart. “I mean, you don’t know anyone down here and you have a great job at the hospital. You’d be giving up everything.” 

Sehun clutches his phone. “I know you,” he says, and that’s all I need, he wants to continue, but he’s suddenly too insecure to say it. “Do...do you not want me to move down?” 

“It's not that,” Mikyung says. “I’d love it if you were here, of course I would, but Seoul is your life. All your friends and family are there, you have a stable job that pays well, a nice apartment and both our parents close by. Starting a private practice would be risky and stressful, and I don’t want you to mess up your life on my account. I don’t want you to have regrets.” 

A long moment of silence as they both consider the implications. Sehun's chest feels tight. He knows uprooting isn’t going to be easy, but he’s not being reckless. He’s thought it all through. If he doesn’t make it in private practice, he should be able to get a good recommendation from Hangang and find a position in a hospital in Busan. He will find new friends, meet new people. Sehun might be shy and a little introverted, but he can get past that when he has to. Doesn’t she think he’s capable?

“Sehun, are you still there?” Mikyung asks. 

“Yeah," he says. "I...I could never regret being closer to you.”

“But what if it doesn’t work out?” Mikyung asks. Sehun rubs his sternum. He thought she would’ve been ecstatic, but the way she keeps throwing up problems makes it feel like she's against the idea. 

“I...I mean, it's okay if you don't want me there...” he starts, but he can't go on. It feels like chains are being wrapped around his ribs.

“No, Sehun, I promise it's not that." Mikyung sounds desperate, but Sehun feels like he's going to choke, all his breath crushed out of him. "I want us together so much, but I’m not going to let you give up your dreams.”

“Mikyung,” Sehun croaks. “I’m not like that. I don’t have big dreams about my career. I just..." he swallows hard. "I just want to be happy again." 

“Oh darling," Mikyung whispers. "Please don't sound like that. It's so hard to hear you upset when I can't be with you."

"I'm not upset," Sehun says, but his voice betrays him.

"You're unhappy. You have been all year. You always tell me you're doing okay on your own, and I wanted to believe you, but I knew you weren't, really."

"I am doing okay," Sehun insists, and his voice is still shaking, damn it. "It's just...I don't know. My life was empty before you...and I thought I could get used to it again, but I can't. I don't want to keep on like this.”

There are a few moments of silence while Sehun grips the phone with white knuckles and tries to breathe right. It's so hard to talk about his feelings like this. It feels like his ribcage being cracked open and pulled apart to expose his beating heart.

He hears Mikyung sniffle. “Are you crying?” he whispers.

Mikyung laughs wetly. “A little bit,” she admits. “I just wish I could hug you right now. I hate this.”

Sehun hates this too. Hearing each other suffering over the phone and unable to be together is truly the worst. 

Mikyung speaks again. "Are you really sure you want to move?"

“Yes," Sehun says shakily. "If you want me there, I want to."

“I want you here so much. Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry for upsetting you. You really should have come down and told me this in person.”

She's right, he should have. He just hadn't realised this was going to be so emotional for both of them. “I’ll come visit you really soon," he says. "Next time I have three days off, I promise."

“I’ll put you down for a second,” Mikyung tells him. When she returns thirty seconds later, she requests a video call. Sehun accepts it and the screen changes from the still-picture and into a video. She’s smiling on camera, hair sticking everywhere and a coffee cup in her hand. She’s in her pajamas and Sehun's heart finally starts to calm down as he sees her smile at him.

"Let's talk more about this when you next come down," Mikyung says, and Sehun nods his agreement. Mikyung changes the subject, telling him all about an old surfing documentary called Endless Summer Yoochun lent her on videotape. According to her, they need to watch it together when he comes down, because "it's from the 1960's and I know we weren't even born for like another 30 years but it makes me feel all nostalgic like I was really there, you have to see it!" As she chatters on, the chains around Sehun's chest slowly begin to loosen. When he can trust his voice again, he tells her about Jongin’s new zookeeper girlfriend, and how he’s going to meet her for the first time tomorrow, because Jongin is making him to go to the zoo with him to volunteer for Children’s Day. Mikyung teases him about never being able to say no to Jongin, which makes Sehun pout and whine a little. Then she tells him about the newest article she’s working on. It has been more than an hour when a notification lets him know he only has ten percent battery left on his phone.

“My battery’s going to die,” he says. Mikyung scrunches her face up sadly, then blows him a kiss through the phone.

“I love you,” she says.

Sehun presses two fingers against his lips and sends a kiss back. “I love you more,” he says. Mikyung continues waving until Sehun hangs up. He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. That was a lot more traumatic than he'd expected, but Mikyung wants him there, and he’s really going to do it. He gets up and starts to walk back towards his apartment complex. The wind has gotten stronger, but he's glad for it, because it seems to blow away some of the residual anxiety from getting worked up.

He's only just made it through the door when his phone rings again, the hospital this time.

“On-call dermatologist, Oh Sehun speaking,” he answers. The doctor on the other end introduces herself as Lee Eunsook from the intensive care unit. They have a patient with high fever and severe headache admitted to the ICU and the patient has now developed a rash. Sehun's phone has only seven percent battery left now, but he shoves it in his pocket anyway and hurries down to take the subway the couple of stops to the hospital.

When he enters the ICU, he’s immediately greeted by a nurse. “Are you the dermatologist?” she asks. Sehun nods, and the nurse raises an eyebrow. “Follow me. You might want to close your coat.” Sehun’s cheeks heat up, realising he’s only wearing ripped jeans and a printed anime t-shirt beneath his open white coat, the juvenile design clearly visible. He hurriedly buttons his coat as he follows the nurse to the patient's tiny room within the unit. 

Another nurse and a doctor stand around the patient’s bed. The doctor, who Sehun assumes is Lee Eunsook, is injecting ibuprofen into an IV line. When she’s done she hands the syringe to the nurse and turns to greet him, peeling her gloves off as she gives him the history. 

“Kim Hyeop, twenty-one years old, admitted with high fever and severe headaches after he returned from the USA a couple of weeks ago. First assumed to be influenza, but it has gotten progressively worse which is why he was transferred to us. The rash was noticed about an hour ago.” She lifts the blanket to reveal the patient's ankles and lower legs, which are covered with small, symmetrical red spots. Sehun walks around the bed and takes a look at the patient’s face. It doesn’t show any rash, at least not yet. He scans whatever skin he can see without lifting the covers, and finds the rash on the wrists and forearms as well. Definitely not influenza.

“Does it itch?” he asks.

Both Eunsook and Hyeop tell him no at the same time. Sehun presses his lips together thoughtfully and turns around to grab a pair of gloves. He’s sure he’s seen this somewhere before, and it’s not just something he read in a textbook when he was a medical student. He racks his brain for the memory.

“Where did you visit when you were in the USA?” he asks the patient as he gently lifts his arm to inspect the rash more closely. Hyeop groans but turns his head to look at Sehun. 

“Roadtrip…” he says and closes his eyes. “We went hiking...” 

Hiking. Sehun has a lightbulb moment. He saw this same rash when he was studying and working in the USA six years ago. It has the same pattern of starting on the ankles and wrists and moving up or down from there.

“Did you go to the southeastern states?” he asks Hyeop, and Eunsook looks at him sharply, obviously seeing that he has an idea. Hyeop opens his eyes again, looking a little confused. “Arkansas? Missouri? Tennessee?” The last one spikes a memory in Hyeop and he nods, and Sehun is now confident in his diagnosis. 

“It looks like Rocky Mountain spotted fever to me,” he tells Eunsook. It makes perfect sense when considered with the history and clinical signs. The illness is transmitted by tick bites endemic to the area Hyeop has been hiking in.

“How sure are you?” Eunsook asks. Sehun shrugs. He's pretty sure, but he won't guarantee it without serology.

“Infectious and tropical diseases will be able to help you more than I can,” he tells her. Eunsook heaves a long-suffering sigh, and Sehun blinks. Calling a consult is the right thing to do in this situation, and he’s never heard anybody have this reaction to the infectious and tropical disease specialists. Eunsook notices his confusion and her face transforms into an apologetic smile.

“Sorry. My best friend is hiding up there.” This really doesn’t explain her reaction, so Sehun continues to stare at her until she elaborates. “She’s a little insufferable sometimes, but I love her. It’s a joke, don’t worry.” 

Sehun decides to take her word for it and turns back towards the patient. The rash is just like the one he’d seen back then, crawling up his body towards his torso. This illness can be fatal even in previously healthy people, but the American patient he'd seen had survived. Sehun hopes Hyeop will make it out of this alive as well. The young man has closed his eyes again, and Sehun turns to leave. As he exits Hyeop’s room, he sees the infectious diseases specialist arriving. Her doctor’s coat is open to reveal a tailored pinstriped suit, and her golden-blonde hair swishes in the air above her shoulders, framing a narrow-featured, beautiful face. She looks like she's just stepped out of a TV medical drama. Sehun feels his eyes go wide as she stops in front of him and smiles up at him. Her name tag reads Kim Gwiboon. 

“Are you the dermatologist who diagnosed Rocky Mountain spotted fever?” she asks. Her voice is oddly sharp, and her eyes gleam with intelligence. Sehun nods, and Gwiboon's smile grows, showing teeth. Sehun takes a step back. 

“Gwiboon, get in here!” Eunsook calls from Hyeop’s room, and Gwiboon stops raking him up and down with her eyes and disappears into the room. When Sehun turns to watch her go, mouth hanging a little open in his confusion, Eunsook gives him a sympathetic smile, then winks at him. 

Completely lost by the whole interaction, Sehun beats a hasty retreat.

Joonmyun gets to the larger of the lecture theatres on the ground floor of the hospital at 6.20, exactly ten minutes early. The heavy wooden double doors of the corridor entry have been propped open, and a young administrative staff member with his fringe covering half his face sits behind a plastic folding table just outside them with a tablet in front of him. The table also holds a couple of tall stacks of stapled printouts and a printed sign on a stand that reads General Practitioners Education Session #4: Implementing the new cardiovascular risk assessment (CVRA) guidance. The admin glances up from his tablet when Joonmyun approaches.

“Name and registration number, please,” he says, tapping the screen. 

“I’m a presenter, actually,” Joonmyun says. “Kim Joonmyun.” 

“Oh, sorry.” The admin loses interest visibly and gestures him through. Joonmyun picks up one of the stapled printouts from the table before he enters. His own slides are already on there, submitted a couple of days ago to the education coordinator, but there’ll be a couple of other presenters as well as himself and he wouldn't mind getting an idea of what they’ll be covering. 

Despite the fact that the presentation is due to start in less than ten minutes, there are only about five or six people already present, scattered throughout the tiered seats. Joonmyun hasn’t presented at an education session before, but he assumes that the majority of the attending GPs will arrive in the couple of minutes before the presentation is due to start. Being ten minutes early is a luxury not many doctors have time for. Joonmyun only managed it because his shift officially ended an hour ago, leaving him with not enough time to make going home and coming back again worth it. 

He takes a seat in the front row so that it’ll be easy for him to reach the low wooden speaking floor, vaguely noticing a technician setting up the projector and lectern, and flips the first page of his handout over. He’ll be presenting first, giving an overview of the new version of the cardiovascular risk assessment which has been recently released, and how it will affect referral and medication titration. He’ll be followed by an obstetrician, Dr. Lee Hongki, who will cover specific considerations for pregnant patients, then a paediatrician, Dr. Park Chanyeol, for considerations in children. Joonmyun glances through the other slides, noting that he doesn’t need to go in-depth over a couple of statistics for teenagers, as Dr. Park has covered that too.

More and more people are filtering into the lecture theatre as the time draws close to the start of the presentation, and the room goes from silent to filled with low murmurs as the arriving GPs find friends and greet each other. Joonmyun looks up from the papers as someone flops into the seat next to him.

“Hey, Joonmyun.” Jongdae’s voice sounds weary, and Joonmyun’s smile of greeting dies on his lips as he takes in Jongdae’s appearance. 

“Hi,” he replies, wondering whether he should say something. Looking tired isn’t exactly an uncommon situation in their profession, but he’s never seen Jongdae look like this. His face is pale and drawn, his hair flops limply over his forehead, and the shadows around his eyes are so dark they almost look bruised. His friend looks terrible.

While he hesitates, Jongdae sits forward and starts to flip through his printout with one hand, resting the stapled papers on his knees as he bends over them. The other goes up to his hair and twists into it, grabbing the strands and pulling steadily. Joonmyun suspects he’s trying to keep himself awake this way, though whether it’s conscious or instinctive he’s not sure.

“You know this session is aimed at GPs, right?” Joonmyun asks. “It won’t be covering anything you’re not already aware of.” He leaves unsaid the real reason he’s saying this; that Jongdae might be better off taking a nap rather than attending this education session. 

Jongdae doesn’t look up from his papers. He’s flipped over to the slides for the presentations in pregnancy, and Joonmyun sees him blink hard, several times, as he stares down at them.

“Actually, I’m here to present this,” Jongdae says, tapping the papers on his knees. “Hongki has laryngitis. Completely lost his voice, there’s no way he can do it.”

“Ouch,” Joonmyun says, though it’s more out of concern for Jongdae than for Dr. Lee. Having to give an unexpected presentation is never fun. “Did you get time to prepare?”

Jongdae gives a strained laugh. “I only found out a couple of hours ago, and I was so busy with patients I haven’t even looked through the material yet.” He lets out a slightly shaky breath. “I’m not great with public speaking at the best of times. This is probably going to be a disaster.”

“You’ll be fine,” Joonmyun says as encouragingly as he can, but Jongdae doesn’t respond to this. Perhaps he didn’t even hear him. His lips move silently as he stares at the papers on his knees, and he’s practically radiating stress. Joonmyun checks his watch. There’s only a couple of minutes now until the session is supposed to start, but at least Jongdae is speaking second. Hopefully he’ll be able to prepare himself a little more while Joonmyun is speaking.

He glances up as a tall, broad-shouldered man stops in front of them, casting a faint shadow over them. “Jongdae, what are you doing here?” the newcomer asks bluntly. “You’re not speaking, are you?”

“I am now,” Jongdae says abruptly, not looking up, and Joonmyun winces a little. He knows Jongdae is exhausted and stressed out, and that the last thing he’d want is to come across as rude, but the other doctor won’t know that. He quickly reads his I.D. tag and finds that it’s Park Chanyeol, the paediatrician who will be speaking last. 

“I’m Kim Joonmyun,” he says, standing up and offering his hand. “Cardiothoracic surgery.”

Park Chanyeol smiles dazzlingly at him, shaking his hand as he introduces himself in return and takes the seat on the other side of Joonmyun, stretching a pair of long, denim-clad legs out in front of him. Joonmyun leans towards Chanyeol and lowers his voice. “Dr. Kim is a little stressed because he was thrown into this at the last minute,” he says quietly. “I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude.”

“Ah.” Chanyeol sends a worried glance across Joonmyun at Jongdae, who is now kneading his forehead with his knuckles, shoulders tight with tension as he keeps reading his material. “Thanks for explaining, but Jongdae’s a good friend of mine, I wasn’t offended.”

Joonmyun is relieved to hear that, but it’s tempered by his own concern for Jongdae. There’s no time to say anything else, as the lecture theatre has now filled. The facilitator takes the lectern and gives a brief welcome, explains to the GPs present how to claim the continuing education credits they’ll get for attending, and introduces Joonmyun as the first speaker. 

Joonmyun stands up and crosses the strip of floor space between the tiered seats and the low wooden speaking platform. He’s not a naturally outgoing person, but he’s not nervous in front of crowds either, and he’s confident in his knowledge, so the presentation comes easily to him. It’s not complex, just an update to the older risk assessment to take into account new guidance, and only lasts around ten minutes. At the end of his presentation he invites questions, and there are only two, which he answers easily. The facilitator nods at him from the side of the room, so Joonmyun heads back to his seat among the rustling noise of sixty people flipping their pages over. 

The facilitator is already introducing Jongdae as Joonmyun gets back to his seat, mentioning that there’s been a last-minute speaker change, which Joonmyun appreciates. Hopefully that will take away some of the pressure to deliver a perfect presentation. Jongdae stands up and immediately stumbles, knees seeming to buckle and make him pitch a step forward. Joonmyun grabs his elbow to steady him with a flash of alarm. “Careful,” he says, searching Jongdae’s face. His pupils are dilated right out, almost eclipsing the brown in his eyes, but that could just be stress. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just a bit tired.” Jongdae rubs his eyes and turns towards the platform, and Joonmyun is forced to let hi