01. That Man Called Seung Hyun Choi
The Irreversible Beguilement
Sandara Park is five years into her practice when she meets Seung Hyun Choi.
She is a midwife and he is a Registrar in his first year of Paediatric.
Like all healthcare practitioners, it is compulsory to attend conferences, seminars, and workshops for their Continuing Professional Development points. Given that they are registered in Australia, they are required to undertake ten hours of skills development activities annually to obtain ten points.
That fateful year, Sandara and Seung Hyun attend the same conference held in Melbourne. They sit next to each other during the conference and spend their time together throughout the dinner with the other participants.
Sandara has many friends, including males, and when Seung Hyun converses about exchanging phone numbers, she thinks none of it and gives it to him.
Her career is her life. She has wanted to be a midwife since she was eleven.
At the age of six, Sandara loved accompanying her mother to her antenatal visits when she was pregnant with Sandara’s brother, Sang Hyun. Four years later, when her mother had fallen pregnant again, only to have a miscarriage ten weeks into the pregnancy, something tugged in her heart. The yearning to help others ‘build’ a family emerges. Though, she didn’t work out how she could do that until a year later when a woman from New Zealand had come to her neighbourhood. She was a midwife in New Zealand, but had to retire at the age of forty when she broke her left leg in a huge traffic accident.
Now registered, Sandara is interested in the concept of Midwifery Caseload Practice where women are cared for by the same midwife throughout their pregnancy, labour, birth, and in the early weeks following the birth of their baby. These midwives focus on women’s individual needs in their practice and are committed to these women twenty-four, seven; the support network is very strong. With this career in mind, Sandara has put all romantic relationship on hold.
However, what she does not realise is, how much Seung Hyun Choi could charm her every time they meet; either it is his humour, his twinkling eyes when he laughs, and just how comfortable he makes her feel. And how he can be indecisive on what movie to watch, what play to see, or where to hang out, but can always make the decision in his patients’ care confidently and competently—she thinks it’s adorable.
In their one year of friendship, she discovers how much Seung Hyun loves his mother. It makes her smile knowing that he isn’t one to abandon his parents even though he has a high-paying job or when he is with his friends. Family is his priority, as obvious as it is.
Sandara realises that she likes him.
Not because he is different to her friends or any other male she has known or anything sappy like that. Because the truth is, he just happens, and he makes her realise what the meaning of life is; life is what happens when you plan other things.
He isn’t with her just to get in her pants (though, it’s his goal in the end), he considers her family as a part of her. Growing up, Sandara has a quite tight family bond and even though they do have family issues here and there, they are inseparable. It would go without question that whoever it is she is going to marry must be family-oriented like herself.
Seung Hyun Choi is exactly that type of person.
He’d always remember to ask her what food to get for her parents and brother after their hang out sessions. He gets on with her family well, especially Sang Hyun, which is rare because Sang Hyun rarely likes her male friends, but he actually likes Seung Hyun like a brother he never had. Seung Hyun loves kids, he wants to have lots of kids (within reasonable number of three), he even considers adopting kids from Africa if his finance permits, and he loves his mother just like Sandara loves her small family.
But most of all, he makes her happy in the way that he gives her freedom, he genuinely respects her, and he treats her like a princess; and she has always believed that a man who treats his woman like a princess is proof he was raised by a queen.
And raised by a queen Seung Hyun Choi was.
Comments