"Appa, appa! Look at me swing so high!" the 6 year-old Nam Goeun squealed in delight. Her small stubby fingers gripped the rusted metal chains. She kicked higher, higher, higher.

"Appa, I'm flying!" she shouted. She let go of the rusty chains and spread her arms wide. She was flying in midair. Soaring, gliding. Until that loud thud as her chest and knees landed on the cold, rough sand.

"Goeun-ah!" her father ran towards her with a look of concern on his face. He lifted her up, but he was instead greeted by her giggling face.

"Appa, did you see my fly a while ago?" she asked him, unaware of the deep worry that she caused her father just by falling off the swings. "Appa, why are you crying? It didn't hurt me, see?"

Nam Goeun was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a con heart disease where her left heart ventricle is severely underdeveloped. The doctors discovered she had it when she was born. Due to her condition, she underwent several corrective and pallative surgery to ease the pain and burden from her heart. Her last procedure, called the Fontan procedure, was done two years ago when she was just four years old. It was the last step and last resort to save little Nam Goeun's life.

Twelve years. That's what the doctor had told her father when they went to the hospital for her routine check-up. "Nam Goeun still have twelve years left to live, in my estimate. This is already considered a long life for a patient diagnosed with HLHS. But unfortunately, there is still no known cure for this con condition. As Goeun will grow up, her body might be weak and more susceptible to illnesses and fatigue. You need to take good care of Goeun." Goeun's doctor told her father. But little Goeun paid no attention to his words. She looked out the window and out to the playground where little kids played on the rusty, old swingset.

"Appa, I want to play too!" Goeun pointed on the swing after her check-up. Her father agreed with a smile and a stern reminder for her to be careful. Little did he know that, minutes later, Goeun would be flying down and landing on the cold, rough sand.

"Appa, stop crying," Goeun comforted her father with no inkling of her father's worry. But her chest tightened. She wheezed and gasped for her breath. She could almost hear the pounding of her weak heart. "Appa..." she managed to say before she lost her consciousness in her father's arms.

Nam Goeun spent her life in and out of Dankook University Hospital in Cheonan, a city just south of metropolitan Seoul. She had lived there all her life. It was her mother's hometown, according to her father. Goeun never remembered her mother, as hard as she tried to recall. Her mother had passed away shortly after little Goeun was born. But her father never blamed Goeun. It wasn't her fault that her mother died. It wasn't her fault that she was born with that condition. It wasn't her fault that her father was overprotective of her.

Little Goeun remembered one time when she was confined at the hospital. She was around 9 or so. The nurse walked her around the hospital hallway. Goeun's small hands held on tightly to the nurse's slim fingers. They passed by a little girl, probably the same age as Goeun, with a little cage on her hand. There was a bird inside the cage that chirped and flapped its wings, but it couldn't. The cage was too small and cramped for it.

The girl giggled at the bird as she passed Goeun and the nurse. Goeun looked helplessly at the trapped bird, unknown of its fate. She always had a soft spot for birds. The birds who flapped their wings and soar through the sky. The birds whose boundaries are limitless whereever their wings might take them.

Goeun suddenly broke free from the nurse's hand and went to the girl. She tapped her lightly on her shoulders.

"Let the bird go," Goeun pleaded with the girl. "It's not a bird's place to be caged up. Birds are meant to fly high."

But the other girl wouldn't listen to Goeun's pleas. The nurse had to pull Goeun away and lead her back to her own room.

Room 505. That was her hospital room back then, and it was the same room she found herself in during her latest stay at the hospital. It was almost like a second home to her.

"Goeun-ah, you're almost eighteen," her father told her when they arrived at the hospital. "You'll be staying here from now on where the doctors and nurses can look after you all the time until... until..." But her father couldn't continue his sentence. Goeun nodded, not because she just wanted to play, but because she finally understood her situation. She finally understood all that happened to her, the reason of frequent hospital visits, the reason why she couldn't play like normal children, her father's protectiveness.

"Appa, don't worry about me," she smiled. "I'm a big girl now. I know you're busy with work and I'll be alright by myself here. Just don't forget to visit from time to time, okay?"

Goeun tried hard to be happy and to be optimistic for her father. These were her last six months, and she wanted to live her life with a smile on her face. It was hard, but she tried harder. She gave her father a tight hug as if it was her way of saying thanks for everything he'd sacrificed and given her.

From the glass window, she watched the scenery below. Little children played on the old, well-worn playground while a nurse pushed an old patient on its wheelchair. Goeun would be staying in the hospital for the remaining months of her life. The hospital where life and deathare juxtaposed together. This is the place where people live, are born, are cured, yet this is also the place where people meet their demise. And for Goeun, it would be the latter.

But despite all this, she greeted the day with a big smile on her face. Everyday, she would be waken up by the nurse even before dawn so she could take her medicines. She would then get up, make her bed, and would then do light exercises by the window. There would always be a crowd that would gather near the playground who would do stretching and Tai Chi, and at times she would follow from above her room. After that, she'll be back in her bed and read whatever interests her at the moment. She had developed a passion for literature, something  that she picked up from having been by herself all these years. At this moment, she read a collection of European Romantic poetry.

In the afternoons, when she felt good, she would go down by herself at the playground and just observe the little children who played carefree. But most of the time, she would just watch them from the comforts of her hospital room, with the thick glass window that served as a barrier of the outside world to her small private world at 505. It was through the glass window that she would watch the birds nestled homely at the willow tree right outside her window.

The birds fluttered their wings to Goeun's amusement. She had always liked birds and their ability to fly high. With her slim fingers, she lightly tapped the glass window to catch the attention of the birds, but to no avail. She pried the window open, but the scared birds flew away and back to their nests. Except for one, who looked at her open palms and eyes with its own beady black eyes.

And, thus, this was Nam Goeun's day-to-day life, who, at the age of 17, stayed at room 505 of Dankook University Hospital. Left with only half a year to live, she welcomes each day like her last and tries to live with as much hope as possible.