[Fic] Choices (formerly Silver Thread) (7/?)
Title: Choices
Pairings: Yunho/Jaejoong/fic
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death (later), teenage pregnancy, mild language
Genre: friendship, drama
Summary: This is a story about a suicidal moron and a moronic martyr...
Chapter 1 ; Chapter 2 ; Chapter 3 ; Chapter 4 ; Chapter 5 ; Chapter 6 ; Chapter 7 ;
Choices
Everything comes down to choices. Choosing to live, choosing to die, choosing to hate or choosing to forgive. Choosing to run away, choosing to face your mistakes. Choosing to leave it as it is, or choosing to make it better. Choosing to start again.
There is always, always a choice.
***
I stood in front of my bathroom sink once again, a kitchen knife poised aloft the remaining unscarred part of my wrist, even though the wound from the other night was still stinging badly. Judging by the number of scars on my arms, you’d think it’d be easier to get the knife to make contact with my skin. It was still a matter of forcing myself to bear a little bit of pain to get relief from the clawing in my chest. Though these days I’ve started to hesitate more and more. Something about that visit in their home has planted something in me, that something I’m trying to forget before I even realize what it is-afraid that if I do I’d be devoured alive and never come back out.
Stupid conscience should just go die a painful, gruesome death.
I looked at the mirror (what’s left of it, anyway) and almost didn’t recognize the pathetic-looking sub-human creature that stared back at me. Huh. All I needed was a couple of fangs and I’d be able to convince the whole world I’m a vampire; A sick, diseased vampire; Who doesn’t glitter; And eats people; Authentic horror movie material right there. Hah.
I sneered at my reflection. It sneered back at me.
“The hell are you looking at, freak?” I muttered. The broken pieces didn’t answer.
Sudden, frantic knocks on my door snapped me out of my thoughts and made me drop the knife on the sink. I grimaced.
“Jae…”
Yunho again appeared in front of me, this time already accompanied with tears and a distressed expression that already sent jolts of apprehension and confusion through my mind. He collapsed to his knees in front of me, bracing himself and wheezing so hard I was afraid he’d keel over right then and there.
The frightened look in his eyes and the paleness of his face terrified me to no end.
“Yunhei… hospital…”
Two words were all it took for me to grab my jacket and follow him to the hospital.
***
“What… What happened?”
“She… she was cooking dinner and we-we were talking and-and she-she suddenly… pain and-and I looked down and she was bleeding…”
I looked away from the broken form of the man beside me. He was shaking and trembling so hard that he could barely form a sentence- it was unbearable watching him. We had been sitting in front of the ER for hours and he sat there silently, his hands on top of his knees clenched so tightly that his knuckles turned white. I could easily imagine him ripping his heart out with his bare hands. I think it would have been less painful for him than waiting.
The night before was nothing compared to how I could practically feel the distress and fear he was radiating off.
I on the other hand…
…I didn’t know what I was feeling- a jumbled mix of emotions that made me sick to my stomach. Intense fear and worry and dread and guilt and mortification and confusion... They sat on my stomach like the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had, spreading to my whole body.
It also really didn’t help that the smell of antiseptic, the white-washed walls and the red light of the emergency room brought back unwelcomed memories. That room… that was the very room where Junsu died, and Yunhei was currently in there… The creeping dread was nauseating. The cuts on my arms were stinging badly. Bile rose up my throat and I fought hard to keep myself from vomiting.
It was a long, torturous wait.
The red light of the emergency room finally flashed green and Dr. Shim came out, looking tired and hassled. Yunho and I jumped up instantly and nearly tackled him to the floor. I ignored the sudden bout of lightheadedness that attacked.
“Is she okay? When can we see her?”
He raised one hand to stop us from firing questions and I was one step close to throttling him for answers.
“She and the baby are out of immediate danger-”
Both of us sagged in relief, almost ready to cry, but immediately tensed up again when the doctor didn’t finish there.
“-However, that may change. The bleeding is caused by placenta abruptio. The placenta has partially broken away from the uterine walls, which severely compromises the oxygen and nutrient supply of the fetus. If you hadn’t rushed her here minutes earlier, we might have lost the baby. Possibly the mother, too. Miscarriage isn’t something I would want for someone as young as her… The complications would be even more severe.”
Yunho’s face paled more if it was even possible. My stomach lurched and my breakfast from the day before once again threatened to come out and soil the sterile floor.
“We would need to keep her here in the hospital for a few more days, for observation and administration of appropriate treatments,” the doctor continued. “I advise you not to allow her do strenuous activities. She needs complete bed rest for at least a week and minimum movement for the rest of the pregnancy. Anemia is a deficiency we do not want for both, and barely managed to prevent. We are currently doing the best we can to bring the mother back to optimum health in time for the delivery. Right now, we will have to monitor her for a few days.”
He looked at us expectantly.
“I…I understand, Dr. Shim,” Yunho said shakily. “Thank you for everything.”
“Oh, and Yunho,” the doctor glanced at me and then back to Yunho. “I would like to talk to you in private for a second.”
Yunho didn’t look like he was there at all. “I… I don’t have much time, doctor. I still have to contact Mr. and Mrs. Choi from the adoption center. Can you tell me what you have to now?”
Dr. Shim looked at him sharply, a bit suspicious. “Alright then. First of all, you need to stop working. Your condition is worse as it already is and you’re just… cutting down your time.”
Yunho shook his head weakly. “The hospital bills-”
“-Are all taken care of,” the doctor cut him off, tone clipped. “Don’t look at me like that, Yunho. And no, I will not accept any form of gratitude other than you stopping from working and resting like I told you to.” His eyes softened. “I’m not treating you as a charity case, in case you’re wondering. Consider it as payment for that time... I can’t pay you back if you don’t start helping yourself.”
“Charity case?” he chuckled dryly. “I’d like to be one right now… Beggars can’t be choosers, especially dying ones…”
“Second of all,” Dr. Shim’s voice cut him off again, as if annoyed. “If you talk like that to me once more, I will have to refer you to the nurses, and believe me they can be vicious with mollycoddling.
“Third, and as much as this goes against certain hospital policies that I will pretend doesn’t exist right now, I believe contacting Mr. and Mrs. Choi will not be wise as they might withdraw from the contract.”
“Then let them withdraw,” Yunho said. “If they want to bail out now of all times, I doubt they’d be able to raise a child properly…”
“Yunhei is due at the end of the month. You won’t find other candidates that fast.”
Yunho rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. He suddenly looked twice his age. An old weary man.
“I’ll find a way… somehow… Dr. Shim, I have to go.”
With that he nodded almost imperceptibly and turned away without waiting for a response. We watched him walk away. I couldn’t ignore the defeated slump of his shoulders.
The young doctor let out a frustrated breath, and then turned his attention on me. His scrutinizing eyes shifted to my wrists, and his gaze hardened. Suddenly filled with dread and shame, I hid them with the hems of my jacket’s sleeves.
“Your wrists are in a bad shape. If you don’t want to bleed to death or have your arms cut off because of infection, come along.”
I numbly followed.
***
I tried to keep from wincing as the stoic doctor applied-practically poured-what seemed to be a liter of alcohol to my arms. The stinging pain was nothing like cutting.
“You do know that as a physician, I can’t ignore self-mutilation and am obligated to refer you to a counselor. Or would you rather me prescribe you anti-depressants?” he said, deliberately ignoring my hisses of pain.
“Or maybe you could just mind your own business…” I hissed, hiding a grimace. The doctor gave no sign that he heard me.
The doctor leaned to against his seat and turned a deep searching gaze at me. “Life and death. You take them for granted.”
“When your life is hell, what’s there left to take for granted?” I answered curtly. Who was he to suddenly start lecturing me? I don’t even know him.
He took a roll of bandage and proceeded to wrap my arm. “Hm, I don’t know. Maybe life itself?”
I looked away, annoyance at what looked like an oncoming interrogation further deepening as the doctor tugged forcefully at the bandages. “You don’t know anything about me. You have no right to judge.”
He continued to roll the bandages around my arm, covering most of the wounds. “I know enough. And I know that harming yourself is a poor way to handle your problems.”
Nerves already frayed because of what happened to Yunhei, and my temper running short at the meddlesome doctor, I snatched my arm from his hold and stood up, completely ruining the firm dressing the he was working on. “It’s my life! I’ll do what I want with it! If I want to cut, I’ll do it! If I want to die, you can’t stop me! Just leave me alone!”
He snorted in reply. “If you wanted death, you could’ve cut deep enough the very first time,” he pointedly looked at my arms. “If your life was truly unbearable, truly painful, you could’ve ended it in an instant. You know why you’re still breathing right now? You’re afraid of dying.”
I laughed at the incredulity of his statement.
His stare didn’t waver. “You want to die, but you’re afraid of it. You say your life is hell, but you don’t want to die. Can you tell me why?”
I can feel something inside me cracking. “I don’t have to answer you!” I growled, not wanting to admit anything akin to defeat.
The doctor leaned closer to me. “I’ll have to guess, then. You’re afraid of what’s waiting for you on the other side. Or maybe you don’t feel that you’ve accomplished much in your life. Or maybe you are just a coward, afraid to face your problems, spending your time running away and wallowing in self-pity.”
Head bowed. Fist clenched. Not noticing the wounds re-opening. “You have no right… No right to belittle my pain…” I cursed inwardly as I failed to keep my voice from shaking.
His eyes dimmed a little “What is your pain compared to the pain of a hundred others in this world? You don’t know how many people desperately cling to life, day by day, even though living meant starving or having no home to return to or losing a limb. You don’t know how much pain people can take, and still have the strength to smile even though they’re a breath away from death. I see them every day. What is your pain compared to a child watching his mother die in excruciating agony? Or a wife desperately praying for more time to spend with her dying husband? Or a woman losing her baby to an unexplained illness?
“Open up your eyes, young man. You are not the only one in pain. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”
I couldn’t find anything to say. The silence was oppressing.
“Sit down. Might as well finish up your bandages.”
I sat down, head bowed, and remained silent till he finished.
“I was once like you, you know.”
I looked up, trying to hide the surprise on my face.
He looked out the window, as if hesitant to share something personal. “I was once like you. Years ago. I made a mistake. A very big mistake that cost me the most important person in my life…” His eyes dimmed. “I was… inconsolable. In my grief I drove everyone around me away. I was angry. I wanted… revenge. I was… consumed by it. I spent years blaming everyone but me… I hated the world. Really, truly hated it.
“And then I woke up one day and realized something- I was alone. Completely, utterly alone, and it was all my doing.
The doctor turned his stare at me. “The loneliness… It was crushing.
“Facing up to mistakes can be hard. I’ve been atoning for my mistake till now… It’s never enough, and sometimes I think it would never be enough, but it’s a start. It all comes down to choices. . Choosing to live, choosing to die, choosing to hate or choosing to forgive. Choosing to run away, choosing to face your mistakes. Choosing to leave it as it is, or choosing to make it better. You have to remember, there is always, always a choice.”
I sat there, staring at my trembling hands as they rested on my knee, the doctor’s words stirring something in my chest that I found it hard to breath.
The announcement system sounded. “Paging Dr. Shim Changmin, to desk four, please. Dr. Shim Changmin, to desk four, please.”
The doctor stood up, grabbed his lab coat and started for the door. Having a strange urge to say something before he goes, I opened my mouth and said the first thing that came to my mind.
“Yunho… Is he… is he really…”
The doctor reached for the doorknob and lowered his head in affirmation.
I swallowed. “How… how long?”
“Not long enough.”
I had nothing else to say.
The door closed. The room settled into an unnerving silence. I buried my face into my hands. My arm continued to bleed.
When night fell and there was still no sign of Yunho coming back from where he came from, and still unwilling to go back to the emptiness of my apartment, I sat in front of Yunhei’s room, not daring to go in.
The doctor’s words haunted me still, showing no signs of abating.
***
Meeting Mr. and Mrs. Choi wasn’t the best way to wake up in the morning. I snapped awake from the hospital benches where I’ve apparently fallen asleep on as two booming voices disturbed the relative silence of the hospital. . Yunho, face tired and not seeming to have slept the night before, brought the couple over to fulfill their demands.
The two overweight, overly-loud couple who were practically walking jewelry shops turned out to be prospective parents for the baby, although spending five minutes in a room with them made me doubt their parenting capabilities without driving their children to insanity. They sneered at Yunhei, at the nurses, at the patients, at Dr. Shim, at the empty rooms, at the occupied rooms, even at the floors. They talked and argued with Dr. Shim (whose lips were tilted down to a severely annoyed frown… I swear I saw a vein popping in his forehead), remarking unkindly at the sanitary conditions of the hospital, insulting professionalism of the nurses and adamant about the ‘gross lack of reception for respectable people.’ They even went as far as to insult Dr. Shim’s intelligence, and the normally cool-collected physician looked ready to throw them out of the hospital with his bare hands.
“I assure you, Mr. Choi, that this hospital is by far the cleanest you can find in this city, and if you still find the general sanitation practices lacking, then I suggest you take it up to the board of directors or realize the unreasonableness of your demands,” Dr. Shim gritted out, struggling to keep professional as the obese man demanded to have the very floor he and his wife were standing on be sprayed with five bottles of disinfectants. Judging by the doctor’s tone of voice, ‘and get the hell out of my hospital!’ was implied.
Mr. Choi’s face slowly turned into an ugly shade of red, and started spluttering.
“We are doing this out of the kindness of our hearts and the desire to let at least one child of the world the privilege to be raised in a respectable household!” the obese man boomed. “We would be feeding, clothing and sheltering the child these delinquents will spawn out of our own pockets! We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t turn out to be a delinquent like his real parents right here!” he sneered at the Yunho and Yunhei.
Yunhei kept her head down in humiliation. Yunho looked ready to pummel the man to the ground. Only Dr. Shim seemed to hold him back.
The obese woman sniffed. “It’s just like delinquents to be unappreciative of our charitable kindness. It is you hooligans who makes this world such a difficult place to be for us respectable folks. Honestly, getting pregnant in your age, and not even having the decency to go through it without any problems. Why, if I didn’t know better, you’re just pretending and trying to take advantage of our compassionate hearts to give you money! I won’t have it, I tell you, I won’t have it! Dear, I want to have this suspicious girl’s medical records reviewed by our attorney!”
Yunhei looked ready to cry. Dr. Shim looked like he was contemplating calling security on them. Yunho’s head was bowed, hair covering his eyes. I was so angry that I was ready to shout obscenities at the couple just to show them what a real ‘hooligan’ is when a soft, deadly voice stopped me.
“Forget it.”
Everybody in the room turned to Yunho who was now fiercely glaring at Mr. and Mrs. Choi. His glare could have incinerated the couple if given enough chance.
“What did you say, boy?” Mr. Choi spluttered, face turning purple in rage.
“Forget it. You can withdraw from the adoption. Wait, I’m withdrawing from this adoption. I don’t want my child or any child be subjected to you disgusting excuses for a human. If you two are examples of how parents can be, then I’m glad I’m an orphan. At least I know how to separate reality from delusions of grandeur. And between giving you my child and giving him to a beggar, I’d choose the beggar. At least I know they’d care more about feeding him than making sure his clothes are worth your money.”
The obese man lunged at Yunho in fury, but before he could get his hands on him, he was suddenly held by security people. Dr. Shim donned a triumphant smirk, not even trying to hide it.
There was nothing more satisfying as seeing the ‘respectable’ couple be dragged away kicking and screaming from the hospital.
I turned to Yunho, expecting him to be smiling in success. He was, instead, slumped across Yunhei’s bed, face buried in his hands, appearing to be a picture of defeat.
“Yunho…” Yunhei called out softly. “Are you alright?”
Yunho looked up at Yunhei and tiredly smiled at her. “I’m okay. Are you alright?”
“There hasn’t been any more bleeding. Dr. Shim said the treatments seem to be working,” Yunhei dutifully replied.
“That’s good, then.” He sighed and took her hand, holding it tight. “You had me really worried.”
She smiled reassuringly. “I’m okay now. You can stop worrying.”
My chest tightened, watching them. I don’t think they even noticed me. I remained by the door, silent.
“I would have to be gone for the next few days… Are you going to be okay till then?”
Yunhei looked at him in a silent question as to where he was going, but Yunho either ignored it or was oblivious to it.
“I have Dr. Shim watching out for me,” she gave in and replied. “The nurses are nice, too.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later, then.”
“Take care.”
Yunho kissed her hand and leaned in to cheekily whisper to her swollen abdomen: “Be a good boy for daddy.”
Yunhei responded by throwing a pillow at him. “Girl!” she insisted. “I keep telling you it’s going to be a girl!”
They bantered back and forth, as if sharing an inside joke that an outsider like me wouldn’t understand. My chest grew tighter.
“We’ll see when the little guy comes out!” Yunho teased as he scampered towards the door, eyes still on Yunhei who was adamant of having a girl. Yunho merely laughed and waved goodbye, face alight and stress seeming to melt away from him.
His laugh died down as he saw me by the door way.
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AN: Three hours! Three hours of editing! I’m ready to drop dead! Stupid convos just didn’t want to be written properly! *grumbles*
I hope the length makes up with the severely delayed update. I’ve just realized that it’s been a year since I started posting this fic up… I guess that tells me I should hurry up and finish it, huh? *wince*
I’m just enjoying writing Orange Sunset right now that between that fic and nursing school (why am I taking that again?), I couldn’t concentrate on this one for a while. AND my laptop got stolen. Somebody stole my beloved laptop (my baby!) and I couldn’t work on my fics as much as I’d like. My parents bought me a new one, but it’s the same. My precious drafts, gone! Sob.
Anyway, two chapters left + epilogue and Silver Thread (Re-Titled: Choices) will be finished. I’ll work extra hard on the remaining chapters. We’re getting there, folks! I’m unbearably slow, but we’re getting there!