Second Chances (Chapter 3)
Title: Second Chances
Author: VampireMadonna
Pairing: Main: YunJae; Secondary: JaeMin, HoMin
Rating: PG13...for now
Summary: Changmin's dying, forcing him to leave his beloved husband Yunho behind. A final visit from his lifelong best friend Jaejoong helps to calm his fears and makes him hopeful that Yunho will find love again when he's gone.
A/N: This chapter is a bit religion sensitive but please don't take it personally.
Previous chapter: 2
Changmin opened his eyes and smiled. He’d actually slept. For the first time in…he couldn’t honestly remember, he’d actually had a good night’s sleep. His eyes fell to the empty chair beside him. Was it because Yunho hadn’t been there? He immediately felt guilty for even considering it but that was the only difference. Wasn’t it? Perhaps Yunho’s un-ending presence was a constant reminder of his situation, his lack of control over it and his dependency on Yunho. Maybe Yunho’s negative emotions were also feeding his and unconsciously stressing him out further. He loved Yunho but he’d heard about that happening before so it was possible. If a person was sick and the people around them kept reminding them of it in their attitudes and behaviors, always hovering and coddling, sometimes it exacerbated the illness rather than helped the patient improve.
He sighed. But Yunho only affects my mood, it’s the cancer that’s killing me. The cancer and the chemo that just wouldn’t work. Chemo was essentially poison. He figured that if it wasn’t affecting the cancer then it probably wasn’t helping him either.
Suddenly, the door opened and Nurse Park strode in, her customary generic smile plastered on her generic face. “Ahh, you’re awake. You were sleeping like a log when I came in an hour ago. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I actually saw you sleep, Mr. Shim, your body probably really needed it.” She stopped talking as she put down the tray she’d brought in on the bedside table. She adjusted his bed until he was sitting upright before turning back to the tray. When she removed the cover and he saw the needle and unending line of vials that had been hidden, he was immediately seized by panic.
“Let me just get you settled,” she was saying to herself as she walked around to the other side of the bed to the IV.
“Please, just wait a minute,” he said, his voice hoarse.
He watched as she tapped the needle and prepared to inject it into the IV.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Please, just give me a moment.”
She looked up, momentarily startled. Catching herself, she smiled reassuringly. “Come now, Mr. Shim, how many times have you done this by now? There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Get out!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Eyes wide, she rushed out of the room.
Changmin collapsed against the bed, a hand clutching his heart as it felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. He was having a panic attack. He’d only experienced it once before, when he’d initially been diagnosed, but he remembered the symptoms. The shortness of breath, the pounding in his chest like his heart was going to explode, the overwhelming fear that threatened to suck him under. It was a long time coming, he knew. He’d been delaying facing it, admitting it to himself, had tried to be accepting and not fight the inevitable. But his compliance hadn’t changed the truth: he didn’t want to die. There was nothing in the world that he wanted more than to live out the rest of his days with Yunho. He still would but his days were far shorter than he ever could have anticipated.
“Why, lord? Why me?” he cried to the empty room, tears slipping down his gaunt cheeks.
He’d always been a good son, a good friend and he’d not too long ago added ‘excellent husband’ to his resume. Was it because he was gay? Was he paying for something he had no control over? He’d known that death would come knocking on his door one day, but never in a million years had he thought it would be so early. He was only 24 years old. He was supposed to be healthy, happy, looking forward to growing old with his family. He was supposed to bury his parents, not the other way around. Why had his world suddenly turned upside down? If he was to blame, where had he gone wrong?
There was something to be said for not seeing death coming. He remembered a conversation he once overheard at the beauty salon where he did his hair. A stylist and another woman, a friend or regular customer by the sound of it, had been talking about death and how they wanted to ‘go’. The stylist had said that she wanted to die quickly and painlessly, not knowing that it was going to happen. The other woman had said that she wanted time to say goodbye to her loved ones. He’d spoken up and asked her then if she would feel the same if the time given meant suffering, as in if she was struck with an illness, like cancer, or was in some kind of accident and experienced extreme pain before finally dying. She’d said yes, it was worth it to tell her loved ones that she loved them before she went. Personally, he’d agreed with the stylist, so it was more than ironic that he found himself in the opposite situation. Now that he thought about it, that incident had taken place about a month or so before he’d been diagnosed, the last time he’d been to the salon. Talk about coincidence. He chuckled harshly even as tears continued to stream down his face. Life was funny like that sometimes…
It wasn’t just what he was leaving behind that made it hard for him, it was also crossing over into the unknown. No one knew what awaited them on the other side until they got there. It was like opening a door without knowing where it would lead to: you risked walking into something horrible just as much as finding a pleasant surprise. He’d heard people talk about near death experiences and while he didn’t straight-up consider them liars, he also believed that a near death experience and death itself were not the same thing, not even if your heart stopped for two minutes before you were revived.
He’d always been faithful, always believed in a higher power, but he knew his lifestyle wasn’t acceptable to ANY religion, not even his own. It was something that always bothered him. He didn’t choose to be gay, his only alternative would have been to live with the feelings but do nothing about them, yet every recognized religion frowned upon homosexuality, even though everyone knew it existed within those very organizations. The fact that they were all bloody hypocrites did nothing to assuage his guilt, confusion and hurt on the topic. Since there was no solution to his dilemma, he’d simply tried to be the best human being he could be and not let the prejudice of a narrow-minded society affect him. It had worked to some extent: the fact that the sphere of society he resided in was quite liberal helped a lot. He’d been able to live a peaceful, contented life with the man he loved. Until now.
He was a good man, he knew he was, but he could’ve been better. He could’ve been a better son, friend, lover, husband. There were always ways to improve. Even so, he could’ve been a lot worse too. He didn’t like to judge others but there were many more people who deserved to burn in hell more than he did. As the thought flit through his mind, he immediately felt guilty for thinking it. Wasn’t that a judgment in and of itself? He didn’t really think he was better than anyone else, but the fact remained that there were truly evil people in the world that didn’t belong, didn’t deserve to live, yet he was dying and they weren’t. How, in the grand scheme of things, the balancing of the scales, could that ever be considered fair?
But life isn’t fair, is it?, he reminded himself.
Sighing deeply, he leaned back against the pillows and wiped his eyes as the tears stemmed. He was spent. As he stared at the wall across the room, he let his mind wander. It was time to go where he’d truly been avoiding. He pictured himself in his coffin, lifeless, then the coffin being lowered into the ground. His family and friends would gather around his grave. They’d cry and pray for him. Yunho would… Well, he wasn’t entirely sure what Yunho would do. His husband was a passionate man but not one to really show his emotions. Yet, death unraveled even the most stoic of men. Would Yunho cry at his burial or wait for the privacy of his bedroom afterward? The thought of Yunho’s tears falling to the earth beside his grave felt like it would be a blessing, a cleansing of sort, yet it saddened him immeasurably. He didn’t want Yunho to cry…not at all. But he would, at some point. It was as unavoidable as his death.
What lay beyond, he wondered, assuming there was anything at all? It was hard to know what to believe and that was what made dying so frightening. The not knowing was more terrifying than dying itself. Was he going to heaven? To hell? Or would he completely cease to exist altogether? If he wasn’t going to heaven, then he preferred the latter. The teachings of religion gave one comfort, something to aspire to, but there were no guarantees that gospels were actually true, that there was life for us beyond this world. As unsure as he was, he knew he believed in reincarnation. It was fascinating to consider. If he came back, would he meet Yunho again in the next life? Would Jae be by his side once more? Would he see his mother again, would he know her? It was all quite interesting to think about but, again, the uncertainty of it all was bone-chilling at times.
If the Christians were right then he was going straight to hell, there was no passing ‘go’, no collecting $200. Homosexuality was a big no-no in the Bible. That alone would condemn his soul to ever-lasting fire, regardless of all the good he’d done otherwise. It was scary to think about. But disappearing altogether… He realized he didn’t like that any more than he’d like going to hell. It kind of made living pointless if there was no silver lining in the cloud of life, no pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow. There had to be something, not so? He decided that there was. He hadn’t found Yunho in this life only to leave him and never see him again. They’d have another chance, if not in the next life, then the one after that. One way or another, he’d see him again. The thought gave him comfort.
For now, there was one thing left to do. While he still resided in this world, he was going to make the best of it and in order to do so, he had to get out of the hospital. He’d known for a while that the chemo wasn’t working, wasn’t going to, yet he’d stayed. Perhaps, contrary to what he’d told himself, he hadn’t given up hope entirely. Now he knew with 100% certainty that he was just wasting what little life he had left by staying there. It was time to go. His eyes moved around the room that he’d spent so much time in the past year. It had become like a second home to him, except… it wasn’t. It was cold and filled with strangers. If home is where the heart is then his heart was in the house he’d built or on its way to his side, where it had been for the past 5 years. He wasn’t going to die here where he was just another room number or medical chart. He wanted to be surrounded by things that meant something to him and people whose warmth he could feel. He would take his heart home today and they’d live happily ever after until the angels called him to his other home. He smiled, the first real smile he’d smiled in a long time. It felt good.
He picked up the cell phone on the table next to his bed and pressed ‘1’.
“Yunho-ah,” he said, chuckling to himself when Yunho’s panicked voice came on the line, “I’m coming home.”
A/N #1: In regards to the chemo, I did research but it's very complicated and I wasn't in the mood to get too technical since it really wasn't pertinent to the story itself, just one minor detail, so I asked my mother about her chemo treatments from when she'd had breast cancer a few years ago and I went with that instead, ie, the vials. Hers wasn't terminal, thankfully, though she did have a mastectomy but the chemo was more precautionary than anything so the course of treatment would definitely be different.
A/N #2: Although this chapter is short, it's important because it serves as a kind of transition for Min. Plus, I had to get him out of the hospital. I actually used a lot of my own fears and thoughts and that convo in the salon really did happen to me a few months ago but it was way scarier because other topics came up that I'd rather have not heard. It's 2:20am so I hope I can fall asleep without having another soul-crisis of my own >__<
Next Chapter: 4
Author: VampireMadonna
Pairing: Main: YunJae; Secondary: JaeMin, HoMin
Rating: PG13...for now
Summary: Changmin's dying, forcing him to leave his beloved husband Yunho behind. A final visit from his lifelong best friend Jaejoong helps to calm his fears and makes him hopeful that Yunho will find love again when he's gone.
A/N: This chapter is a bit religion sensitive but please don't take it personally.
Previous chapter: 2
Changmin opened his eyes and smiled. He’d actually slept. For the first time in…he couldn’t honestly remember, he’d actually had a good night’s sleep. His eyes fell to the empty chair beside him. Was it because Yunho hadn’t been there? He immediately felt guilty for even considering it but that was the only difference. Wasn’t it? Perhaps Yunho’s un-ending presence was a constant reminder of his situation, his lack of control over it and his dependency on Yunho. Maybe Yunho’s negative emotions were also feeding his and unconsciously stressing him out further. He loved Yunho but he’d heard about that happening before so it was possible. If a person was sick and the people around them kept reminding them of it in their attitudes and behaviors, always hovering and coddling, sometimes it exacerbated the illness rather than helped the patient improve.
He sighed. But Yunho only affects my mood, it’s the cancer that’s killing me. The cancer and the chemo that just wouldn’t work. Chemo was essentially poison. He figured that if it wasn’t affecting the cancer then it probably wasn’t helping him either.
Suddenly, the door opened and Nurse Park strode in, her customary generic smile plastered on her generic face. “Ahh, you’re awake. You were sleeping like a log when I came in an hour ago. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I actually saw you sleep, Mr. Shim, your body probably really needed it.” She stopped talking as she put down the tray she’d brought in on the bedside table. She adjusted his bed until he was sitting upright before turning back to the tray. When she removed the cover and he saw the needle and unending line of vials that had been hidden, he was immediately seized by panic.
“Let me just get you settled,” she was saying to herself as she walked around to the other side of the bed to the IV.
“Please, just wait a minute,” he said, his voice hoarse.
He watched as she tapped the needle and prepared to inject it into the IV.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Please, just give me a moment.”
She looked up, momentarily startled. Catching herself, she smiled reassuringly. “Come now, Mr. Shim, how many times have you done this by now? There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Get out!” he screamed at the top of his lungs.
Eyes wide, she rushed out of the room.
Changmin collapsed against the bed, a hand clutching his heart as it felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. He was having a panic attack. He’d only experienced it once before, when he’d initially been diagnosed, but he remembered the symptoms. The shortness of breath, the pounding in his chest like his heart was going to explode, the overwhelming fear that threatened to suck him under. It was a long time coming, he knew. He’d been delaying facing it, admitting it to himself, had tried to be accepting and not fight the inevitable. But his compliance hadn’t changed the truth: he didn’t want to die. There was nothing in the world that he wanted more than to live out the rest of his days with Yunho. He still would but his days were far shorter than he ever could have anticipated.
“Why, lord? Why me?” he cried to the empty room, tears slipping down his gaunt cheeks.
He’d always been a good son, a good friend and he’d not too long ago added ‘excellent husband’ to his resume. Was it because he was gay? Was he paying for something he had no control over? He’d known that death would come knocking on his door one day, but never in a million years had he thought it would be so early. He was only 24 years old. He was supposed to be healthy, happy, looking forward to growing old with his family. He was supposed to bury his parents, not the other way around. Why had his world suddenly turned upside down? If he was to blame, where had he gone wrong?
There was something to be said for not seeing death coming. He remembered a conversation he once overheard at the beauty salon where he did his hair. A stylist and another woman, a friend or regular customer by the sound of it, had been talking about death and how they wanted to ‘go’. The stylist had said that she wanted to die quickly and painlessly, not knowing that it was going to happen. The other woman had said that she wanted time to say goodbye to her loved ones. He’d spoken up and asked her then if she would feel the same if the time given meant suffering, as in if she was struck with an illness, like cancer, or was in some kind of accident and experienced extreme pain before finally dying. She’d said yes, it was worth it to tell her loved ones that she loved them before she went. Personally, he’d agreed with the stylist, so it was more than ironic that he found himself in the opposite situation. Now that he thought about it, that incident had taken place about a month or so before he’d been diagnosed, the last time he’d been to the salon. Talk about coincidence. He chuckled harshly even as tears continued to stream down his face. Life was funny like that sometimes…
It wasn’t just what he was leaving behind that made it hard for him, it was also crossing over into the unknown. No one knew what awaited them on the other side until they got there. It was like opening a door without knowing where it would lead to: you risked walking into something horrible just as much as finding a pleasant surprise. He’d heard people talk about near death experiences and while he didn’t straight-up consider them liars, he also believed that a near death experience and death itself were not the same thing, not even if your heart stopped for two minutes before you were revived.
He’d always been faithful, always believed in a higher power, but he knew his lifestyle wasn’t acceptable to ANY religion, not even his own. It was something that always bothered him. He didn’t choose to be gay, his only alternative would have been to live with the feelings but do nothing about them, yet every recognized religion frowned upon homosexuality, even though everyone knew it existed within those very organizations. The fact that they were all bloody hypocrites did nothing to assuage his guilt, confusion and hurt on the topic. Since there was no solution to his dilemma, he’d simply tried to be the best human being he could be and not let the prejudice of a narrow-minded society affect him. It had worked to some extent: the fact that the sphere of society he resided in was quite liberal helped a lot. He’d been able to live a peaceful, contented life with the man he loved. Until now.
He was a good man, he knew he was, but he could’ve been better. He could’ve been a better son, friend, lover, husband. There were always ways to improve. Even so, he could’ve been a lot worse too. He didn’t like to judge others but there were many more people who deserved to burn in hell more than he did. As the thought flit through his mind, he immediately felt guilty for thinking it. Wasn’t that a judgment in and of itself? He didn’t really think he was better than anyone else, but the fact remained that there were truly evil people in the world that didn’t belong, didn’t deserve to live, yet he was dying and they weren’t. How, in the grand scheme of things, the balancing of the scales, could that ever be considered fair?
But life isn’t fair, is it?, he reminded himself.
Sighing deeply, he leaned back against the pillows and wiped his eyes as the tears stemmed. He was spent. As he stared at the wall across the room, he let his mind wander. It was time to go where he’d truly been avoiding. He pictured himself in his coffin, lifeless, then the coffin being lowered into the ground. His family and friends would gather around his grave. They’d cry and pray for him. Yunho would… Well, he wasn’t entirely sure what Yunho would do. His husband was a passionate man but not one to really show his emotions. Yet, death unraveled even the most stoic of men. Would Yunho cry at his burial or wait for the privacy of his bedroom afterward? The thought of Yunho’s tears falling to the earth beside his grave felt like it would be a blessing, a cleansing of sort, yet it saddened him immeasurably. He didn’t want Yunho to cry…not at all. But he would, at some point. It was as unavoidable as his death.
What lay beyond, he wondered, assuming there was anything at all? It was hard to know what to believe and that was what made dying so frightening. The not knowing was more terrifying than dying itself. Was he going to heaven? To hell? Or would he completely cease to exist altogether? If he wasn’t going to heaven, then he preferred the latter. The teachings of religion gave one comfort, something to aspire to, but there were no guarantees that gospels were actually true, that there was life for us beyond this world. As unsure as he was, he knew he believed in reincarnation. It was fascinating to consider. If he came back, would he meet Yunho again in the next life? Would Jae be by his side once more? Would he see his mother again, would he know her? It was all quite interesting to think about but, again, the uncertainty of it all was bone-chilling at times.
If the Christians were right then he was going straight to hell, there was no passing ‘go’, no collecting $200. Homosexuality was a big no-no in the Bible. That alone would condemn his soul to ever-lasting fire, regardless of all the good he’d done otherwise. It was scary to think about. But disappearing altogether… He realized he didn’t like that any more than he’d like going to hell. It kind of made living pointless if there was no silver lining in the cloud of life, no pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow. There had to be something, not so? He decided that there was. He hadn’t found Yunho in this life only to leave him and never see him again. They’d have another chance, if not in the next life, then the one after that. One way or another, he’d see him again. The thought gave him comfort.
For now, there was one thing left to do. While he still resided in this world, he was going to make the best of it and in order to do so, he had to get out of the hospital. He’d known for a while that the chemo wasn’t working, wasn’t going to, yet he’d stayed. Perhaps, contrary to what he’d told himself, he hadn’t given up hope entirely. Now he knew with 100% certainty that he was just wasting what little life he had left by staying there. It was time to go. His eyes moved around the room that he’d spent so much time in the past year. It had become like a second home to him, except… it wasn’t. It was cold and filled with strangers. If home is where the heart is then his heart was in the house he’d built or on its way to his side, where it had been for the past 5 years. He wasn’t going to die here where he was just another room number or medical chart. He wanted to be surrounded by things that meant something to him and people whose warmth he could feel. He would take his heart home today and they’d live happily ever after until the angels called him to his other home. He smiled, the first real smile he’d smiled in a long time. It felt good.
He picked up the cell phone on the table next to his bed and pressed ‘1’.
“Yunho-ah,” he said, chuckling to himself when Yunho’s panicked voice came on the line, “I’m coming home.”
A/N #1: In regards to the chemo, I did research but it's very complicated and I wasn't in the mood to get too technical since it really wasn't pertinent to the story itself, just one minor detail, so I asked my mother about her chemo treatments from when she'd had breast cancer a few years ago and I went with that instead, ie, the vials. Hers wasn't terminal, thankfully, though she did have a mastectomy but the chemo was more precautionary than anything so the course of treatment would definitely be different.
A/N #2: Although this chapter is short, it's important because it serves as a kind of transition for Min. Plus, I had to get him out of the hospital. I actually used a lot of my own fears and thoughts and that convo in the salon really did happen to me a few months ago but it was way scarier because other topics came up that I'd rather have not heard. It's 2:20am so I hope I can fall asleep without having another soul-crisis of my own >__<
Next Chapter: 4