Chapter Text
“Dr. Park, how’s Jeon Jeongguk’s case going? You know we have limited rooms, if we can’t do anything for him by the end of the month, we have to transfer him.” Jimin rolled his eyes as Dr. Hui, the chief of surgery, approached him with the same thing he’d been preaching for two weeks.
Continuing to write on Jeongguk’s charts, he curtly replied with, “Dr. Hui, we have the entire fifth floor rooms, you know this. You just don’t like dealing with scoliosis patients.”
Dr. Hui was an older man, in his 60s. He was a kind man, but very stubborn. He took his job seriously. He’d had plenty of experience but sometimes he showed ignorance as if it was his first day.
“There’s nothing even wrong with them sometimes, it isn’t life threatening. They can live with it. It’s a waste of space, honestly. Just send them to another hospital.” Jimin calmly set down his pen and looked at Dr. Hui.
“With all due respect, sir, Jeongguk’s spine is all out of shape and if I don’t fix it, he could be living crooked for the rest of his life. He’s only 18. I’m giving him a chance whether it takes two weeks or two years. He’s a beautiful singer, he has excellent grades, he’s got an extremely promising future! I’m not letting you transfer him to a hospital full of surgeons who don’t give a shit. I’m gonna give him a chance. Besides, patients do better around doctors they can trust, so how is transferring him going to help him at all?” Dr. Hui sighed and placed his hand over Jimin’s. He nodded his head, turned around and left.
Smiling to himself, Jimin made his way back to Jeongguk’s room. He came in every morning and every night to check his vitals, instead of the nurse that usually did it. He’d taken a liking to Jeongguk and as shy as the boy was, he wanted him to realize he had somebody there for him that he could trust. A doctor that wasn’t just there to poke him and do tests.
He immediately noticed the large textbook sitting on the bed, a notebook laying in the black-haired boy’s lap. He had his earbuds in, not hearing Jimin walk in.
Jimin walked over and tapped gently on Jeongguk’s shoulder. The boy looked up, a tired look in his eyes, and took out his earbuds.
“It’s 10 PM already, you should be resting, not doing homework.” Jeongguk shrugged and watched his doctor write down whatever it said on his monitors. He took Jeongguk’s pulse and blood pressure, trying not to disturb him while he was doing homework.
“Dr. Park-“
“I told you to call me Jimin.”
“Jimin, do you happen to have any banana milk?” Jimin raised an eyebrow at the question.
“Banana milk?” Jeongguk nodded, “There’s none in the cafeteria?”
Jeongguk scoffed, “I wouldn’t be asking you if there was.” Jimin shrugged, setting Jeongguk’s charts down and sitting on the bed.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do for you. I’m sure I can get my hands on some for my favorite patient.” Jimin winked as he stood up, placing his hand on Jeongguk’s shoulder. “Seriously, though, please get some sleep. School can wait 8 or 9 hours.” Jeongguk nodded, setting his textbook and notebooks onto the floor beside the bed.
“Goodnight, Jimin.”
“Goodnight, Jeongguk.”
That was something Jimin liked about Jeongguk. Some days they spoke strictly as doctor and patient, but other days- most days- they had a steady friendship. Some days, Jeongguk was a normal, moody teenager, and didn’t want to talk to Jimin at all. He confided in sulking and listening to music and sleeping on those days.
Jimin understood, it couldn’t be fun being holed up in a hospital bed all day. He gave him some space on the days the hospital and his disability got to him. He knew Jeongguk had awful back pains sometimes, and though Jimin gave him as much morphine as he could, it didn’t stop Jeongguk from crying and hugging Jimin until he eventually fell asleep or Jimin had to leave for a call. Those days always beat the young doctor up the most, knowing that the pain was sometimes inevitable. That it was just something Jungkook had to regularly deal with.
Jimin exited Jeongguk’s room, immediately being met by Yoongi’s stressed out face.
“Jimin, I need your help.” Jimin assumed he needed help with a patient and nodded, ready to help Yoongi.
“I need you to get Hui to make Hoseok get on your case.” The younger stopped in his tracks, why the hell did Yoongi need him to do that?
“Yoongi... Why?” The older male shook his head and laughed softly. Jimin didn’t comment on the red, puffiness of Yoongi’s eyes.
“Hoseok got put on my case, I don’t even need a neurosurgeon! You specialize in ortho, you guys need neurosurgeons sometimes. Just please! Get him off my ass.” Jimin looked at Yoongi with no sympathy. Hoseok was his husband, who wouldn’t want their husband to work on the same case as them? Apparently Yoongi.
Jimin saved him the embarrassment of begging, “I’ll see what I can do,” Yoongi cheered. Very loudly. Earning a curt, ‘Dr. Min! There are patients sleeping!’ from the nurse sitting at the receptionist’s desk.
Yoongi apologized and patted Jimin’s shoulder before running off. He rolled his eyes, making his way towards the cafeteria, when he suddenly got a page. A page for Jeongguk. He furrowed his eyebrows, what happened? He was just there five minutes ago.
He ran back to Jeongguk’s room, opening the door and seeing three nurses rushing around. One with two fingers shoved down Jeongguk’s throat, who looked to be visibly choking as an ugly, red rash ran up the side of his face and all down his neck. An allergic reaction. The other nurse had a bucket held under Jeongguk’s mouth, while the last nurse was cleaning off his mouth.
“What happened? I was just here five minutes ago!” Jimin went over Jeongguk’s vitals, his heart rate had increased and his blood pressure had risen. “He’s hypertensive.” Jimin added in quickly.
“He had an allergic reaction to the pills we previously prescribed him. Once you left, he pressed the help button beside his bed.” Jimin nodded and thanked the nurse. He grabbed a tongue depressor and a flashlight from the countertop and asked Jeongguk to open his mouth.
“The swelling in his throat is going down. That’s good. Gguk-ah, does the rash on your face and neck itch, burn, anything?” Jeongguk’s eyes were filling with tears. Jimin was well aware that Jeongguk was easily overwhelmed. He nodded his head, scratching at the rash.
“Okay, okay. Stop scratching. That’s only gonna make it worse.” Jimin comforted Jeongguk as the nurse rubbed cream all on the rash. The boy continued to cry into Jimin’s neck, hands fidgeting and neck jerking as he tried not to scratch at it.
Jimin rubbed his back, talking to him about random things to keep him from thinking about the itching in his neck.
“Dr. Park, what medicine was it that you gave him? I need to write it down on his chart and put it in his records.” The nurse asked, looking down at Jeongguk sympathetically.
“Oxycodone. We’ve usually given him hydrocodone, but since his back pains have gotten so bad, we bumped it up to oxycodone.” Jimin replied. The nurse nodded and gestured for the other two nurses to leave too. Jimin waited for the door to close before engulfing Jeongguk completely i’m a hug.
The boy’s crying had almost stopped, but he continued to sniffle.
“Jeongguk, where’s your mom? I have to tell her that you’re allergic to the medicine, so she can know and tell your other doctors.” Jimin asked softly. He felt Jeongguk shake his head.
“I don’t know, she tol-told me she was go-going o-out. I don’t know.” Jeongguk whispered, his voice hoarse from crying.
Jimin nodded and let go of Jeongguk, pushing gently on his shoulders gently, making him lay down. He held his hand and told him that he’d have to leave and call her.
“I’ll bring you some food once I’m done, sashimi and banana milk. Not cafeteria food.” Jimin promised, reassuring Jeongguk before leaving the room.
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Hoseok splashed his face with water as he washed his hands, another successful surgery done. His patient would go home and be back to normal with her family. Of course, she would have to see him every now and then to make sure she’s doing alright.
Hoseok smiled at his fellow doctors and exited the operating room. He didn’t have another surgery scheduled for a few hours and while he could spend that time teaching interns, none of the other residents seem to bother him with the task.
Hoseok walked towards the surgery board, stopping and seeing if Yoongi had any surgery now.
Dr. Jae
Dr. Kim
Dr. Park
Dr. Takahashi
Nope, perfect. Maybe he could finally spend lunch with his husband. The two men were always too busy to see each other much during the day, other than when Hoseok was put on Yoongi’s cases.
The doctor walked towards the pediatric unit, smiling at the pale yellow scrubs the doctors wore under their white coats. He’d never admit it to anybody (per his husband’s request), but it’d been Yoongi’s idea for the pediatric doctors to wear yellow scrubs.
‘Yellow is a happy color and if there’s one emotion that kids love the most, it’s happiness! The parents love happy, nice doctors and the kids do too. Pale yellow wouldn’t be too bright like regular yellow, anyways. It only makes sense.’ Yoongi claimed, before making his way down to the Dr. Hui’s office and demanding yellow scrubs.
Hoseok made his way over towards the receptionist, smiling at her and setting his arms down on the counter-top. The bustling of doctors around him, ironically made Hoseok feel at ease. The hospital was his happy place and helping people made him feel good.
“Hello, Hana! How’re you today?” He asked the receptionist, fiddling with the fluffy pen that sat on the counter.
“I’m good, Dr. Jung. Are you looking for a patient?” Hoseok shook his head, putting the pen down and watching a kid in a hospital gown walk down the hallway, giggling and smiling with her parents. It made Hoseok smile, seeing kids who were sick being happy.
“No, I’m actually looking for Dr. Min. If he’s busy, I don’t wanna bother him, but I was planning to have lunch with him today.” Hoseok explained, watching Hana nod and check her computer.
She smiled, looking up at him, “Dr. Min is free, I think he’s still with a patient though. You can go to the physician’s lounge, I’ll send him there.” She said, returning the bright smile Hoseok gave her. The doctor nodded, smiled, and waved at Hana.
He made his way through the doctors and patients, walking towards the lounge. He noticed that the atmosphere in peds was more calm and happy than it was in his part of the hospital.
Walking down the hall, Hoseok noticed a noise. Of course, there were many noises in the peds unit, but this stuck out.
Turning his head, he noticed a small boy, sitting on a chair, crying into his hands. Hoseok assumed he was a patient, considering the small boy was wearing a hospital gown.
Hoseok couldn’t ignore him. What kind of doctor would he be if he did that? This kid couldn’t wait, Yoongi could.
He rushed over to the small boy, kneeling down to his height. He grabbed the small boy’s wrists gently, so he could see his eyes.
“Hey buddy, why’re you crying, huh? What’s wrong?” Hoseok picked up the boy, hugging and bouncing him lightly. The boy cried into Hoseok’s neck, wrapping his arms around the older man.
“What’s your name, hmm? Can you tell me your name?” The boy sniffed as Hoseok sat down on the chair the boy was previously sitting on. “Well, I’m Dr. Hoseok, but you can call me Hobi!”
He unlocked the boy’s arms from around his neck and placed him on his lap. The boy didn’t make eye contact with Hoseok but kept his head up. His eyes were red and puffy, his nose the same. His cheeks were blotchy as he sniffed.
“Kangjoon. I’m Kangjoon.” The boy- Kangjoon- whispered. Hoseok nodded, rubbing Kangjoon’s back.
“And how old are you?” Kangjoon hiccuped, tired eyes fluttering from sleepiness. He held up five fingers, using the other hand to rub his eyes.
“Where’s your mommy, honey? Or your daddy?” Kangjoon bursted into tears again as Hoseok moved the boy’s fluffy hair out of the way.
“I don’t know! I was tryin’ to find ‘em but I don’t know!” Hoseok hugged the boy again, picking him up and standing up.
He made Kangjoon look at him, smiling at the boy, “We’re gonna find your mommy, okay? I promise.” Kangjoon nodded, showing a little smile at the doctor.
Hoseok placed Kangjoon on his hip, walking back towards the receptionist’s desk.
He noticed Hana looking at him, a confused look on her face. “I thought you were going to get Yoongi, not a kid.” Hoseok chuckled, rubbing Kangjoon’s back.
“Same thing though, right?” Hana smiled as Hoseok spoke, “I need to find Kangjoon here’s parents. I found him crying alone. He said he didn’t know where his parents were.”
Hana nodded, typing something into the computer. “His room number is 358, it has a little sunshine on the door, in case you can’t find it.” Hoseok nodded, thanked her and said goodbye, Hana more focused on tickling the little boy’s leg.
They made their way down the lilac colored hallway, Kangjoon falling asleep on Hoseok’s shoulder.
354, 355, 356, 357, There we go, 358.
Hoseok pushed open the door slowly, noticing a young looking woman and a man who looked similar to Kangjoon, that must be his father.
Kangjoon’s parents gasped, walking towards Hoseok. Happiness forming on their faces.
“Kangjoon, my baby. Where did you go, honey?” His mother asked, waking her son up. He quickly woke up noticing his parents.
“I found him crying in a chair in another hall. He said he was trying to find you?” Hoseok explained, wondering where his parents had gone.
“We went down to the conference room to talk about his surgery with one of his doctors, we even told him we were going somewhere. He’s a good boy, so I expected him to stay here. But we came back and he’d disappeared. I tried looking for him, Hyunshik stayed here in case he came back. I couldn’t find him so I came back. We’ve been here for about five minutes now, thank you for finding him.” Kangjoon’s mother hugged him, while his father shook his hand. Kangjoon hugged Hoseok, muttering a tiny thank you, before letting go.
Just as Hoseok was about to walk out the room, Yoongi walked in.
“Dr. Min! There you are. We found him, thanks to Dr... Jung.” Kangjoon’s mother read off of his coat. Yoongi smirked and nodded, hugging Kangjoon’s file to his chest.
“Yes, I’ve worked with Dr. Jung many times, he’s a great neurosurgeon. Very respectful man.” Hoseok laughed, shaking his head and denying the praise.
“No, no. Dr. Min is the great surgeon here. The hospital is actually considering making him head pediatric surgeon. You have nothing to worry about with Kangjoon in Dr. Min’s hands.” Kangjoon’s mother smiled, shoulders relaxing as she bounced lightly with Kangjoon on her hip.
“Thank you, Dr. Jung. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Seo, I’m gonna take my lunch break.” The boy’s parents smiled and nodded as the two doctors left the room. Closing the door behind him, Yoongi smirked up at his husband.
Hoseok gestured towards the cafeteria, walking beside his husband.
“Finally, no interruptions. You know, I don’t know a single couple our age that gets excited just being able to have lunch together.” Hoseok said, nudging Yoongi’s arm.
“I really thought we weren’t going to when I got paged to Kangjoon’s room after his parents couldn’t find him. Obviously I like taking care of kids but... I just wish I could see you more during the day.” Yoongi sighed, grabbing Hoseok’s hand once they made it to the cafeteria.
Yoongi rolled his eyes as he looked at how many people were in the cafeteria. Today had been a busy day at the hospital so obviously a lot of people were hungry.
Hoseok turned to Yoongi, making eye contact with the shorter man. He placed his hand on Yoongi’s cheek and leaned forward, “I think we should probably just go to the on-call room to eat today.” He whispered.
Yoongi nodded, leading Hoseok towards the nearest on-call room: the neurosurgery unit’s room.
The two men walked into the room, Hoseok closing the door behind them. Yoongi wasn’t in here much. If he and Hoseok had to spend the night at the hospital, Yoongi much preferred the sunshine and butterfly stickers that covered the walls of the pediatric on-call room rather than posters of the spinal cord and the brain.
Yoongi sighed and laid down on the slightly uncomfortable bed. He closed his eyes and ran his hands down his face.
“Rough day, baby?” Hoseok asked, laying down beside his husband. He took one of Yoongi’s hands and held it, fiddling with the silver band that adorned his slender finger. Hoseok smiled, remembering the night he asked Yoongi to marry him.
Funnily enough, he asked him at the hospital. Yoongi had joked around a few years before they got married that he’d die laughing if somebody proposed to him in a hospital after watching some stupid Youtube video. Hoseok laughed along with him, agreeing because, yeah, that’d be pretty funny.
Yet the event was more endearing than funny when Hoseok had so gently gotten down on one knee in the middle of the pediatric unit and asked Yoongi to marry him.
And Yoongi, with his gummy smile and kitten eyes, had gotten so red. Not because Hoseok had proposed (well, maybe that too), but because all of his coworkers were watching and clapping when Yoongi said yes.
“Yeah, rough day.” Yoongi replied, squeezing his husband’s hand. Hoseok rolled over, halfway on top of Yoongi and kissed his jawline. It wasn’t a sensual kiss, more chaste and loving.
Yoongi chuckled, tilted his head to the side as Hoseok moved up to lay directly beside him, capturing his lips in a sweet, long kiss.
Hoseok smiled brightly as they pulled apart, keeping their fingers intertwined, “Tell me about it. What went wrong?”
Yoongi looked up at the ceiling, pouting a bit. “There was a baby, two weeks old. She was fine when she was born, I remember her too, when she was getting checked. She was healthy. Perfectly healthy. Then she came in early this morning because her mom said she wasn’t breathing correctly. She kept getting tachycardic* and then bradycardic*. She wasn’t feeding apparently. We took a little ultrasound of her heart and noticed that it was way bigger than what a baby’s heart should be.”
Yoongi paused and sighed sadly, “I tried for three hours, Hobi. Three! I did everything, she was doing so well the whole time... then she just stopped. It was like her body gave up. Like it was too much or something. I don’t know what went wrong and I’ve been thinking about it all day. Did I not notice it early enough? Was the surgery too late? Would this have happened if I started the surgery 30 minutes earlier?” Yoongi closed his eyes and turned on his side. Hoseok knew he was about to cry. He always turned away from Hoseok when he became vulnerable like that, but Hoseok knew he just wanted to be held.
Yoongi was good about keeping his emotions in tact, good about controlling his sadness when he couldn’t save a kid, but around Hoseok, he couldn’t help it. It all just kind of spilled out, even when he didn’t want it to. Yoongi was thankful that Hoseok was always ready to soothe him.
Hoseok wrapped an arm around Yoongi’s body, shushing him gently. “It’s okay, baby. It wasn’t your fault. Maybe her body just wasn’t going to last anyways. It wasn’t your fault.” Yoongi cried and cried and cried, Hoseok wondered how a pediatric surgeon wasn’t so used to this by now, but he didn’t say anything and kept comforting Yoongi.
The two men were there for about 20 minutes until Yoongi was paged. He stood up and wiped his eyes, tear tracks still evident on his cheeks. He hugged Hoseok tightly, pressing a kiss to his lips before leaving to deal with whatever he had to.
Yoongi ran out of the call room and quickly hurried towards the pediatric unit. He walked into Taehyung’s room and looked at the teenage boy fidgeting on his phone. Taehyung looked over at him worriedly.
“Is there something wrong with him?” His mother asked, holding her son’s hand. Taehyung didn’t look as concerned, just tired. The door opened and Yoongi narrowed his eyes slightly at the intern that walked in.
Yoongi smiled slightly, “I got his tests earlier, but I had to go deal with another patient.” The intern beside him pulled up Taehyung’s tests and held them so Yoongi could explain what was wrong.
Yoongi pointed at the EKG with his finger as he began talking, “So, this is Taehyung’s EKG, it shows us the electrical activity of his heart to see if there’s a murmur, the placement of his heart, if there’s any damage, etc. From what I can see and what the cardiologist and I spoke about, there’s some damage to his heart, which I’ll get to larger, and it’s in the right place, but there is a murmur. As I told you yesterday, I heard the murmur with my stethoscope, so there’s no surprise there.” Taehyung’s mother nodded, chewing on her lip.
Yoongi pointed towards the echo next, “This is Taehyung’s echocardiogram, now this makes things more obvious. An echo is just an ultrasound, so like with the kind of ultrasound most people think about, with babies, you can see what’s happening. You can see what it looks like and that’s what I have here. I have a picture of Taehyung’s heart, and you see here-“ He pointed towards the bottom part of the picture, “-His heart muscle in the ventricular chamber and septum is abnormally thick, more than it should be.”
The intern put down the tests as Yoongi walked forward and set his hand down on Taehyung’s shoulder.
“That being said, Taehyung has obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The muscle in the left ventricle, which is the bottom part of his heart, is so abnormally thick that it’s blocking off blood flow. And the thickness in his septum is bulging into the ventricle, which is cause blood blockage.” Miss Kim nodded, looking down at the ground sadly, “So, we will have to do surgery. I’m thinking of adding a pacemaker to regulate his heart rate and doing a septal myectomy.” Yoongi explained, looking down from his mother to Taehyung.
Taehyung bit the inside of his cheek, many thoughts running through his brain. He fidgeted with his fingers as he looked up at his doctor, “Um, what’s a septal myectomy?” He whispered.
Yoongi nodded, like he knew Taehyung would ask. “It’s where we surgically remove some of the thickness of the muscle so it decreases in size and keeps you from having any problems. It’s usually always successful and every one that I’ve performed has had the patient back up and normal within a few weeks.” Yoongi smiled as Taehyung nodded, visibly relaxing.
“Which means I’ll get back to playing soccer again?”
“Which means you’ll get back to playing soccer again.”
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