"The Other Way Around"

... where guardian angels walk the Earth.

Prompt: When Sungjong is sick, Myungsoo takes care of him

Myungsoo/Sungjong

± 3400 words

Dedicated to: Anncherry who for sure had forgotten about requesting this by now

To whoever who actually reads this: I'm sorry beforehand, I've never written something quite as angsty ever before... This wasn’t quite what I envisioned when I’ve seen the prompt for the first time.

A guardian angel...

Everyone has one assigned to them during their life, whether they know it or not.

However most don't know who theirs is, for they are only being watched over by them from afar. From other realm even, the realm of dead that is, most of times.

Most don't know of their guardian angel until after they died.

They don’t know their name, their gender, most of the time they are not even aware of its existence.

And yet I knew my own guardian angel when I was still in the realm of living... because at that time so was he.

- - - - -

It had been a stormy day when I met him for the very first time.

Myungsoo. That was his name.

He was like a gloomy cloud which was bringing some cheeriness into my bleak life, as strange as that might sound to some. However one would have to see him to judge.

For no words could describe how he looked that day better.

He was a medical student, one of many who had gotten one patient assigned to take care of.

That one patient for him was me.

I can't quite imagine what his thoughts on me were. Given that the first thing he did when coming into my room was freeze on the doorstep. It would be too much of a coincidence to think that it was caused by anything other than him having set his eyes on me.

The second thing he did was walking mechanically to the bed post on which my medical card was, it being followed by furiously searching for something in the papers attached to it.

I can't say I blamed him for that. After all, it must have been quite a shock for him to see me, someone whom he guessed and later on knew to be younger than him... in the ward for terminally ill.

- - - - -

It was only the next day that he truly spoke to me, the first lines being apologies for his behaviour the previous day. It had been quite unprofessional of him to all but run away from the room, he had said.

Those words only brought smile to my face.

From what he told me they had been told that they were to take care of the terminally ill. However neither of the others whom he knew had ever gotten anyone quite so young.

And as a matter of a fact, from what I later gathered of my usual doctor‘s speech, there had been a mix up and neither of the students was to take care of me.

Because the students were assigned to stay with their chosen patients until they their studies ended or until the day of their patient's passing... whichever came first.

In the end however, Kim Myungsoo decided to stay.

"That's cruel." I had said to him and in a way he agreed. But to whom was it truly cruel?

To the student, who was sentenced to see either only deteriorating, or that and passing of a person they were to meet regularly in following two years at least?

Or to the patient, who knew he was causing the student pain involuntarily, because of something which was causing them pain also? To the patient, who, if managing to survive that long, would be rid of the only sense of normalcy after the student was to leave in order to further his education?

There is a reason why some of those who had become terminally ill later in life decide to cut ties with those they knew and loved. They wouldn't want to cause them pain.

And cause pain it would.

- - -

It had been that same day, the second day of our acquaintance that Myungsoo got to know the reason for me being a special case in the student-care programme.

It was not only because of my age.

It was because of the very nature of my illness also.

Because my illness was a rare one. One that had no medication for me to take. One that had no treatment to go through. There was nothing I could have done to prevent getting it as there was no cause known for it striking.

My illness was not something many even knew of existing.

It was because of that that I was not surprised when Myungsoo asked me what the illness I had was even. I could not blame him for not knowing and I could only smile sadly when he said that I in fact don't even look ill at all, aside from the paleness, which could be put aside as a natural condition.

I could only smile because I knew it truly must seem that way on the outside. Because I knew that it was only because of that that my parents refused to believe there was something wrong with me. Because I knew that it was not to stay that way for too long.

For I was acutely aware of my own death approaching.

As a matter of a fact, I was aware of it nearing my imaginary doorstep for as long as I knew what the meaning of the phrase "terminal illness" was.

- - - - -

By the time Myungsoo’s practice was month long we had come from acquaintanceship to a tentative friendship.

We still had loads and loads of information which we did not know about the other, however that did not matter much.

We knew each other well enough to know what would make the other laugh as well as enough to know when the other was not in the mood for jokes of any kind. During those times the other just kept quiet, offering silent support.

Even then however it was not truly the easy friendship which I once had with some people, before it became clear that my illness was not something that would just go away. Before came the time I could not truly go out anymore. Before came the time where not being in hospital ceased to be an option.

I could see it on him. How uneasy he was about my incurable illness, especially about the fact that he, as a hopefully to-be doctor, could not help me in the slightest.

At least he tried to keep his unease to himself. It proved to be complicated however. After all we saw each other at least three times a week.

Not that I wished not to be in his company, mind you.

- - - - -

By the time half of a year we spent in each other’s company rolled around the unease lessened to the point it was nearly non-existent.

It had nothing to have with me getting better, but rather had loads to have with Myungsoo’s acceptance of the matter.

I think that was what the whole practice with taking care of the incurably ill was about. To make the students differentiate between the situations where something could actually be done and the situations where it was about easing the patient’s last weeks or months.

It was around the same time that I got to know one of Myungsoo’s friends, another of the medical students.

A grease ball in human’s clothing called Nam Woohyun.

Knowing that person I could have possibly done without, I thought at times. Yet during the rest of the time I was glad for having him here.

He was the one who seemed to have the knowledge to differentiate between “help possible” and “offering comfort possible” inborn to him. And he seemed to help Myungsoo a lot with it.

Woohyun’s patient to take care of was an elderly lady, who was literally at the death’s door, if I could be any judge of that.

I did not mean to sound ominous.

It was just true.

And the lady knew it too. She was in fact one of the very few to whom I found my way to.

Given that I was the youngest in the institution it was at times troublesome to keep acquaintanceships.

Though the fact that that the first person I grew to like there, a guy about ten years my senior, had died only few months after I was admitted on a “permanent basis”.

I may have grown a bit reluctant to try and form contacts after that.

Now I was glad for any contacts I could form. I did not have enough time to be picky, if I were to be sincere…

Be it as may Woohyun seemed to be aware of his patient’s state. It was one of the reasons that, as the weeks in which I knew him flew by he came to spend more and more time in the hospital.

It was during that time that I also spoke to the lady the most.

I did not think of it as quite an obligation, but she was the closest to a grandmother I ever felt about someone, my own having passed before or soon after my birth.

I could see it on her how much she appreciated having someone as cheerful as Woohyun around when she knew her end was nearing.

She was as acutely aware of her end as I was, it seemed.

Except hers had come sooner and around the time Woohyun’s practice finished its eight month he suddenly had no actual reason to come to the hospital any more. His practice was considered ended.

Even so he came often.

From what I heard he even asked to be assigned another patient. It seemed as if he had found his purpose in life.

For him it was as if easing the other’s passage on was making him more appreciative of not having his own behind the corner.

As if his way of showing his gratitude by helping the others who were not as lucky.

I somehow knew that once Myungsoo’s practice was over that would not be the way he’d take.

He had a way of taking everything to heart.

He was the kind who wanted to save everyone.

It’s a pity none of us, who were and were to be there, could not be helped anymore.

- - - - -

Once Myungsoo’s practice finished a full year, Myungsoo and I did a celebration of the “first anniversary” of our first meeting, of him first coming to have his practice in Saint Katherine’s Hospital for Terminally Ill.

“Hospital for terminally ill”… I hated that name most of the time. Because it seemed more like a “once-you’re-here-you-can-say-goodbye-to-life institute” to me.

I however could not do anything.

Not about the name.

Nor about me being there.

At least Myungsoo became the bright spot in all that.

- - - - -

Around the same time Myung’s year at hospital rolled around my parents stopped coming.

I couldn't say I blamed them.

By then the pale sheen my skin had changed into a sickly colour that more resembled grey than it did resemble the pale skin tone I had taken on during the years as my illness started progressing.

The soft hair I used to pride myself in stayed in my hands in tufts when I dragged my fingers through them.

It did not help that half the time I could not even get out of the bed without someone’s help.

All in all I was not a pretty sight to behold.

It must have caught up with them then.

The fact that I was not there only on holidays of sort… that I was not just taking time off school as most my age would.

No.

It must have caught up with them, that I truly was well on my way to dying… and that there was no way around that.

- - - - -

That my parents would not come anymore dawned on me when they had skipped our weekly meeting for the third time.

Without giving any reason, that was.

Whenever they had to skip it before that week they had excuses which seemed credible… most of the time they did at least.

That time I was not offered even that.

It was an agreement I had with Myungsoo that he would not be around when my parents came.

It was because of that that I did not quite understand why he was there that time.

Why was it that he came that day?

Why did he come just as I was just taking in that my parents would no longer come down the road which I could see through my window? He was not supposed to be there.

- - -

"How are you today?" he had asked, smiling as he brought a tray with my lunch. As usual it was only an odourless, tasteless mash of whatever was on the "menu" that day... my body could no longer stand much in the area of spices and the similar.

“Bright and shiny.” I remember replying bitterly. I was aware that my answer surprised him.

Usually after my parents were over I was in much better mood. Most the time my mood took a turn for worse after a check up.

Because really, I had no chance of getting better. Why did they insist on doing those checkups when they knew that the results would only show how my body is slowly but surely giving up on itself?

“They didn’t come again, did they?” he caught on quickly.

“No they didn’t.”

“What was their reason this time?” he asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed after he put the tray on the bedside table.

“No reason… They just didn’t come. They won’t be coming anymore.” I said, as sure of the statement as I was of the tastelessness of the food placed by my side.

“They told you that?” he had asked wide-eyed.

“They didn’t have to.” I had turned to him at that moment. “They just can no longer bear the sight of my body deteriorating so quickly. The sight of sickness overtaking my body... spreading over it as surely as poison ivy would.” I spat out.

If I had the strength to do it I would have thrown the tray off the bedside table.

Too bad I didn’t.

And even as Myungsoo tried to convince of my conviction not being true I dare say I knew my parents better than him.

I however did not tell him that. Because in the state I had been in I would have screamed at him… And that would be too low a blow below the belt. He did not deserve that from me, when he was just concerned for me.

That day however, as I went on ignoring him after that, I for the first time wondered if he regretted being assigned as my caretaker a lot.

I for one knew that I regretted that I had to saddle him with the emotional baggage being in my situation brought.

Yet he stayed with me after that day.

He stayed there as a silent, supportive presence. A presence which would have done better if it had left.

Because that day had been the true beginning of the end.

The next day I could not even sit up truly without help.

When one is dying, what should be their last thoughts?

Some people who were at the death’s door and came back say they were thinking of their families.

Some recalled the life they had, evaluating whether there was something they could have done different... whether they could have escaped death, if they did.

I had been recalling the goings of my life that also.

Except my life was not a long one to recollect.

I was just few weeks shy of twenty years old only.

I desperately wished that there could have been something that would make my end a different one.

But there wasn’t.

Because it was not a choice of mine that made my body so weak.

It was not a choice of mine that caused my breaths to be shallower and shallower each day.

It was not by a choice of mine that soon made Myungsoo a presence by my side which I knew about but could not really respond to.

The days were getting shorter and shorter for me as I slept more and more, my body exhausted from just going on.

Soon even my eyes could only see blurry shapes, rather than  pictures, because eve that would take too much strength of me…

And then that day came.. and I could see him no more.

The day when my eyes did not open anymore.

The day the last of my shallow breaths left my body, the body which had been suffocated by its own, meagre, weight. 

There was something very morbid about watching my own funeral... Yet I could not bring myself to leave.

For there he stood, a solemn figure whose eyes were wet with a sheen of tears.

Tears which did not spill, yet they meant so much more to me than the tragicomedy one of my cousins was in the process of pulling.

Though isn't it a tragedy when the hero of the story dies?

Or is this not the story in which I would have been the main character?

Musing along those lines, my eyes were drawn back to the lone figure of Myungsoo's.

'No, it truly was not me.' I somehow seemed to have been made aware, just at that moment.

Reaching my hand out, just to let it fall to my side before it would seemingly touch him... How many times had I done that already?

In life, in death.

Some things don't change, it seemed.

Because in life I did not have the courage to do so.

Why was it that even when I knew he would not be aware I could not reach my hand out to him just for the purpose of touching him?

Why was I that much of a coward even in death?

I kept on watching him after that.

As I predicted he did not prolong his stay at Saint Katherine’s, like Woohyun did.

Instead he had himself assigned into childcare branch of medical studies.

Whether I should take that as a personal offence I did not quite decide about.

Probably not.

I would have supported him in it, were he to ask me.

As I watched over him new people were coming into his life.

Like Dongwoo, his easy-going fellow practitioner in the childcare… It was Dongwoo who pointed out that maybe he could try and smile at the parents who came over with their children, not just the “little terrors.”

It did not much to help, really.

I missed his smile… Smile which, apart for the dealing with children, hadn't graced his beautiful face in many days.

I missed him most of all though.

I missed him… and I still do miss him a lot... despite seeing him every day.

I miss the ease with which he spoke to me, despite being well aware that every hour we spent together was an hour closer to our farewell.

I miss how he would take care of me even in the time he did not have to.

He always was my guardian angel.

He was the one who made my last few months much easier to live.

He was the one thanks to whom I felt the one feeling most beautiful of them all, despite not having had the chance to tell him. But who knows, maybe he knew?

I miss him so very much.

However there will be a day when we see each other again.

There will be a time when he will actually see me when he looks through the window, seemingly into empty space, but was in fact the space which I occupied.

Maybe one day I will pass on and we will meet again.

But until then I will watch over him.

Because despite not really having to… despite having a way out of it… he had been the one to watch over me.

With patience.

With kindness.

With love even, I dare say.

Now it is my turn.

It is the time for it to be the other way around. 

A/N: Uhm... I'm sorry? (OnO)'

This really wasn't how I expected the story to end up as when I saw the prompt. Especially as I at first intended for this to be out on Valentine's day (yeah, Valentine's .. you can now see why I put up "no set deadlines for now" in the Request form, right?)... but as you can see, what I ended up with turned .. eh.. not quite a Valentine-type story...

One of the reasons is a bit the fact that even though this is dedicated to Anncherry who gave the prompt, I'm sure she has long since forgotten about even requesting it... and as such I threw out the fluffy version of this prompt with which I got stuck half-way in.