A text from the Emergency Room sent Byul flying down from one end of the hospital to the other end, from her office on the fifth floor all the way to the ground level. Bypassing the elevator and running two, three steps at a time down the emergency stairs. Her white doctor’s jacket a mere blur as she knocked colleagues and bystanders in the corridor down the hospital halls because the word ‘Wheein and ER’ in that text message was enough to put her brain in a near meltdown.

She was scared less.

She pushed the door to the ER forcefully, eyes frantically scanning the floor for familiar faces, her mind slowly blanking out as she could only see a throng of people, bruises, cuts, blood.

Lots and lots of blood.

The shouting was a ringing silence filling her ears as doctors and nurses bumped against her, telling her to move out of their way, they were rushing against time, and every second was precious when it comes to life and death.

“I NEED THREE MORE BAGS OF B!” the raspy voice of Hyejin shouting from across the room, jolted her out of her own mind-jail as her feet quickened to follow that voice, and carried her to that direction. When she reached, she found herself living in her own nightmare, and there she was, Wheein was lying on the gurney with her blood-stained shirt cut haphazardly in the middle.

Byul cannot believe her own eyes, angry red bruises were stretching along most of Wheein’s right chest, already taking on mottled hues of black and blue as she scanned the damages.

Byul’s ears were buzzing, and black spots started to form to obscure her vision. Her insides were roiling, her chest was burning, her head pounding, and she had to squeeze her eyes close for a second because the bright hospital light only made her nausea worse.

A rough hand grabbed her arm and dragged her slightly away from the entryway, “I’m sorry, you cannot be here,” she pushed back, but the nurse blocked her before she could move any nearer.

Swatting the obstructing hand away, she stared down at the ER nurse, “Who do you think you are telling me what I can or cannot do?”

Being one of the calmest doctors in the entire hospital, no one had ever witness Byul losing her slightest temper, “and if you didn’t notice,” there was a tremble in her voice as she pointed toward the lithe unconscious figure surrounded by her colleagues, “the woman lying there is my WIFE!”

“Her lungs collapsing!!! I need to do a thoracotomy. Get me a tube!!” Hyejin frantic voice pierced through Byul like a knife.

Pouring iodine to disinfect the area, Hyejin spread the amber liquid around Wheein’s rib before pushing a needle in, filling the syringe with air. “Scalpel!” making an incision above her ribs about two centimeters long, Hyejin used her index fingers to create a pathway toward her chest wall before pushing the tube into the incision, “Hang in there, hang in there….” She chanted as she secured the tube with makeshift stitches.

Hyejin was barely finished with the stitches when Yong made an anguished shout, “No…. No… No… No….” the bruise on Wheein’s abdomen spread the left like wildfire, growing darker, deeper reddish-purple, “She got internal bleeding! I need OR! Stat!”

Trying to ease the pressure on Wheein’s abdomen, Hyejin made a slight incision on the side of her right torso. Time seems to freeze as the small blade pierced through skin, down to the fat and meat inside, there was resistance and suddenly blood spurted out, splattering over the shocked ER surgeon.

Jumping over the Gurney, Yong straddled Wheein’s hips, hands on her abdomen, trying to stop the flow of blood pooling under the skin, shouting for more blood, and cursing up a storm asking whether the operation room was ready, “Her BP’s dropping! ing GET THE ING OR READY! She’s on the verge of coding!”   

“Doctor, its Code Black! No OR available!” Someone shouted back and Yong let out a string of curses as she piled gauze upon gauze onto the torso to try and stop the bleeding, but the flat tone of the BP machine told her that it was a useless endeavor.

“! ! !” Jumping back down she cleared the space as one of the nurses pushed the defibrillator closer toward the gurney and handed her the electrodes, “250, clear!”

Wheein’s body jerked, but the stat remained a straight line.

“Another 250, clear!”

Yong blinked the sudden moisture out of her eyes and tried again for the third time, “300, clear!” 

Another jerk, another flat line.

“Move.” The hair on the back of Yong’s neck stood up when she heard the coldness in Byul’s voice. She moved and made room for her best friend and watched as the heart surgeon put her hand together and pressed down on Wheein’s chest, counting to 100 before bending down and breathe fresh air into her lifeless wife, as in with every inhalation of fresh air, she was determined to restart her stopping heart.  

Yong and Hyejin were the only one left, watching over their closest friends with pain in their hearts and drying tears on their blood splattered face. An hour has passed, Byul’s arms felt hot as tremors ran through every musculatures of her arms, pain, mind-numbing scorching pain. Her muscles was screaming for her to stop, but her heart told to keep moving as she started pounding on Wheein’s chest with her fists instead.

Wheein cannot leave her. She cannot leave her like this. If she could beg the agent of Death to trade her life for Wheein, she would do it in a heartbeat. Not like this.

“Byul…. Enough.”

“IT WAS NOT ENOUGH!” her hoarse tear-stricken voice was thick and harsh, the pain painted clearly in every lining of her face, “Wheein cannot leave me. She just…. can’t…”  

Cradling her wife into her arms, she buried her face on Wheein’s neck and cried her heart out. No one moved a single inch or utter a single sound, they could only stood still and watched as Byul uncontrollably wept her broken heart out.  

It felt like an eternity has wrapped her in its cocoon, but it was only mere minutes when she finally stood up and backed away from the body.

She is a doctor, even in medical school, the first thing that they taught you was that death was inevitable.

“Pronounced dead, 22:12 hour, 21th February 2021.”

That was when Byul lost the fight with her conciousness and collapsed right into Yong’s arms.

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Author's Notes: 

I read a tweet asking which sub-unit will be angsty and my first thought was Wheebyul, so I made this Angsty medical AU Wheebyul. :)