Chapter Text
He thinks she’s a tiny thing. He practically runs her over, dashing through the ER doors, and instinctively reaches out to keep her upright. She’s apologizing profusely, even though it’s his fault, and he feels clumsy. He’s acutely aware of her wrist completely engulfed in his grasp and her shoulder under his palm. They back away from each other except his ID lanyard is wrapped around her stethoscope and their hands collide as they both go for the mess and then she accidentally grabs the front of his shirt and he stumbles into her again and the whole thing just has him confused.
He stills when she cautiously reaches out and then deftly untangles them. He finds himself scrutinizing her fingers, nimble and capable, and remembers the first time he saw Song-hwa hold a scalpel. She’d been demonstrating something to a classmate and he’d been struck by the rightness of it. Looking down, he thinks Jang Gyeo-ul has good hands for a surgeon.
He should apologize. He should ask if she’s okay.
“What’s the status?” he asks.
She gives him the run down, conveying the important points efficiently and effectively. Curious, he asks what she thinks they should do next. She answers without hesitation and he’s reluctantly impressed; he actually agrees with her two choices. Jun-wan and Song-hwa often bemoan what their residents haven’t learned yet or will second-guess. He thinks she must study a lot, and hopes she doesn’t spend every waking minute in the hospital. It’s mid-afternoon and he wonders if she’s eaten yet.
He sees Bae Seonsaeng comforting the mother, who is weeping inconsolably. It breaks his heart. It always does. It’s the sound of a wound in the making, one that will become permanent if he and the rest of the medical staff cannot do their jobs, and maybe not even then. With every case that comes to the hospital, countless other life trajectories come with it. He can’t help but want to protect them all.
He catches her also watching Bae Seonsaeng and wonders what’s going on behind those eyes. He thinks she may not feel what he feels or hear what he hears in these moments, and for some reason feels compelled to explain it to her. The balancing act as he weighs the words parents might remember for the rest of their life. The pressure driving him to both be a better doctor and not be a doctor at all. How he envies his siblings; their path to relieving suffering is clear. Here, he’s always at the crossroads with his empathy pulling him in every direction at once. He doesn’t know how to be any other way. Maybe she does.
I told her the truth because I believed she needed to know.
He wonders what else she believes.
“You did well,” he tells Bae Seonsaeng, then goes to scrub in.
---
She startles when he beats her to the elevator button, immediately closing up, hands clasped and eyes on the floor. He thinks she might be wary of him and regrets again how unkindly he’d spoken.
“Annyeonghaseyo,” she offers.
“Ne.”
He fidgets with the inside of his jacket pockets and searches for something friendly to say. Putting others at ease usually comes naturally to him, but his guilt must be interfering with his Buddha radar because he’s got nothing but his own sanctimonious voice ringing in his ears.
Doctors must take responsibility for their words.
And boy, does he need to take responsibility.
She’s rubbing her neck and he wonders if she needs a pain patch. If only he had his bag. Surely, there would be a peace-offering in there, though maybe that would be overboard. Would that be overboard? The elevator is taking forever and the silence stretches on. He runs through a mental list of chit-chat, each topic more ridiculous than the last.
“Do you think something is wrong with this elevator?” asks Ridiculous Jeong-won.
“We don’t know yet. We’ll need to observe a bit more but I’m sure it’s doing its best,” retorts Imaginary Gyeo-ul.
“Derp,” agrees Ridiculous Jeong-won.
The elevator finally opens and he resigns himself to speaking first. She always greets him and is always polite, but never intrusive. She’s not going to start asking him about his weekend. He should say something nice. Something easy and conversational.
“What floor?” he asks.
Something other than that.
He presses seven for himself and nine for her and now they’re staring at the doors exactly like before, just on the other side. Maybe he should pretend to answer his phone. No, they’re too close together; she would know. Besides, only Seok-hyeong gets away with things like that because people expect it. Seok-hyeong…
“Yang Seok-hyeong Gyosunim has a gastroschisis case I’m consulting on. Do you want to assist?”
She’s looking at him now and somehow that’s both better and worse. As usual, her face is neutral except for her eyes. Those eyes take everything in. They take him in. He thinks they’re asking him something her mouth isn’t saying and he glances away, elaborating to the ceiling, the floor, her jacket collar.
Some of the awkwardness dissipates as they focus. He likes how carefully she absorbs the details and her thoughtful, measured responses. Even if she weren’t the only GS resident, he thinks the other surgeons would still treat her more as a colleague than an underling. He should tell her that.
“Well, ideally, I would want Seok-hyeong to-“
“Seventh floor.”
The doors open, like they’re supposed to, so that he can get off, like he’s supposed to. Except he’s not done explaining and he’d been about to ask her to the case conference and it feels rude to just leave. He’s leaning forward to go but his shoes stay firmly planted. Her expression says she’s wondering if he’s going to finish his sentence or leave. Frankly, he’s wondering too.
“Ahh…” His foot slides an inch and he starts to say, “We can discuss it later,” when the doors shut in his face. The elevator lurches on and there’s no smooth way out of this even if he was a smooth guy, which he is discovering he is not. Flustered, he backs up and tries to remember what he was saying except she turns those expectant eyes on him again and he can’t think for shit. He takes a deep breath.
“So, we should probably discuss-“
“Ninth floor,” the elevator chimes helpfully.
Seriously?!
“Oh, Jeong-won-ah,” Ik-jun calls out, looking oddly smug. “I’m going to the café but I’ll go up with you first.”
He eyes them both when he strolls in, then winks at her as she silently sidesteps him and sidles out. For some reason, this makes her blush. Maybe Jun-wan was only partially wrong. Ik-jun swore up and down he wasn’t having an affair, with Jang Gyeo-ul or anyone for that matter, but he had watched them talking outside and she’d certainly been smiling like she was in love, all soft and starry-eyed and pretty. He thinks she should smile more. Just not at Ik-jun.
“Ya, Gyeo-ul-ah, are you hungry? I’ll bring it to you later. Where are you heading?” Ik-jun asks her.
See, like that. Talking isn’t hard. He should just say things like that.
“Jang Gyeo-ul Seonsaeng,” he starts.
“Ne, Gyosunim.”
“We should meet later to-“
“Doors are closing,” the elevator warns.
“I’llsendyouamessage!” he blurts as they slam shut.
She is decidedly perplexed. He can tell because she’s staring right at him, brow furrowed and the line of her mouth askew. Most likely, she can see as much of his mortification as he can of her confusion because unfortunately, the elevator doors are clear. Also, because the blasted thing isn’t going anywhere.
“What the-“ Ik-jun looks up from his texting and glances between him and the blank elevator buttons. “Aren’t you going up? Or were you supposed to get off? What are you doing?”
I have not a clue.
Now he knows how those cats feel in the brain freeze videos, helplessly trapped in their Suddenly Regrettable Life Choice and wondering for the love of kimchi, when will it stop.
“I think I’m going to get coffee too,” he says, punching the first floor button rather vigorously.
He stares intently at the glowing number one to avoid her gaze. Some kid must have been eating candy because there’s a green fingerprint smeared across the bottom. It’s a good thing he is examining this so closely because now he can tell someone to clean it. Cleanliness is important in a hospital. Yep. He’s never laughing at cat videos again.
Her ponytail, fingertips, then feet, disappear from the corner of his eye and he breathes a little easier. Ik-jun is using his phone as a mirror to straighten his hair. It doesn’t seem like his hair needs the least bit of straightening but he’s holding the phone this way, then that, as if looking for the magic angle, when there’s a sudden shutter-snap sound.
“Oops, I took a picture!” Ik-jun exclaims. “Waa… this screen is so sensitive.”
His friend is such a spaz sometimes, he thinks affectionately.
“Don’t give me that look,” Ik-jun huffs, which surprises him because he didn’t realize he had a look. “You’re the one who forgot how to use an elevator.”
And now Ik-jun is the one with a look and it’s a bit too perceptive for comfort.
---
The right side of his head is throbbing so hard it feels like his brain is trying to squeeze through his eye socket. He attempts to shake it off as Bae Seonsaeng updates him with red-rimmed eyes.
“Gyosunim…” she trails off, voice unsteady, but then pulls it together and keeps going.
It has been a hard day for both of them. They lost a nine year old before they could even get to the OR and he’d barely finished explaining the inexplicable to the guardians before getting called back. He makes sure she knows it wasn’t her fault before sending her off. Wanting to spare her from another parent conversation, he does it himself.
“Seonsaengnim, please save our daughter.”
The nurse’s station is the nearest solid surface so he leans on it, rubbing his temples while they wait for Song-hwa to look at the CT scans. There’s a chart in front of him but he’s just trying to get his bearings. The vise around his head is taking his breath away so he straight out closes his eyes. The ER is a cacophony of struggle: machines and monitors, staff instructions, calls for help, rattling gurney wheels, praying. He thinks briefly of his application but an image of his mother soon follows.
“Maknae-ah.”
Be a mentor. Be a doctor. Be a son. Really, he just wants to be whatever he is meant to be. Surely, he would feel it if he were on the right track. Wouldn’t he? But he doesn’t yet; he still feels just short of enough. If he’s not supposed to be a priest, he’s not sure where that leaves him. Shoving the discord aside, he tries to focus so he can do what the parents asked him to do.
Please, let me be the person who can save their daughter.
Someone nearby is talking to a frantic wife and he latches on to the cadence without thinking, inhaling and exhaling with the rise and fall, and letting it pull him in. The voice comes into focus, low and steady, and he realizes it’s Jang Gyeo-ul. She’s explaining a procedure and half her initial terminology is probably going straight over the guardian’s head, but her matter-of-fact delivery is strangely grounding. She’s not trying to raise hopes or dash them, she’s just trying to help the other person understand, and patiently answers a litany of queries. He starts to hear the subtle difference in intention between how he addresses someone’s fears and she addresses someone’s questions but how the outcome can be the same. The wife calms.
He realizes he is doing the same; the pulse in his head recedes and the sensation feels familiar. He thinks he has gotten used to her voice directing him through rounds and responding during a crisis, pulling him back to center as he throws himself into case after case, answering plea after plea, worrying it’s not in him to be whoever he is asked to be for whoever calls him. Maybe he should thank her for this. Or maybe not.
“We’ll do our best,” she concludes respectfully.
He can’t help but smile a little. It’s what they all say; he even said so himself. But he thinks it’s his influence on her and feels a sense of satisfaction. Not that he has a right to feel that way. She’s not uncaring, she just doesn’t have the words yet and he shouldn’t have judged her for that, even if he had a point.
There’s a part of him that wants the right to feel that way. He wants to think she hears him as much as he hears her and that something good came out of it. Maybe his guilty conscience is just trying to put them on mental equal footing. He feels so off-balance every time she looks at him with that ever present, unspoken question, the one thing he can’t hear clearly that leaves him tongue-tied.
“Bae Seonsaengnim asked me to tell you the results are in.”
There’s a gentle tug on his shirt sleeve and he opens his eyes to find hers, wide and unguarded. Maybe it’s because he feels grateful to her for something she doesn’t even know she did, but he doesn’t look away this time. She’s taking in his expression, concerned. And he feels so seen that his world goes silent and still, like the breath he holds as he watches the ocean rise and crest in front of him while he tenses for the plunge.
He thinks she’s asking him to just be Ahn Jeong-won.
The thought hits the center of him and ripples.
He thinks she’s saying if he could, it would be enough. It would be enough for her.
Ripples become waves as he thinks it’s like nothing else anyone has ever asked of him. He’s not even sure he concretely knows what it would mean but he can feel something inside him gathering, trying, wanting, reaching. And it’s not so much that he has finally heard the question but that he realizes he has been muting the answer and everything along with it. Because practically above their heads in his office there’s a recommendation letter praising him to the heavens with three pages of reasons why he’s giving himself away to be a title, just like he’s always said he would, insisted even, except it renders every word he says while struggling to become for her instead, a promise he can’t keep and he just can’t believe he has fucking tied his own fucking hands.
“Are you alright?” she asks, hesitantly.
What can he say? He can’t take responsibility for a damn thing. He hears himself claiming he’s fine and brushing her off. She turns to leave. It strikes him how readily she accepts his dismissal, like she doesn’t think she deserves any more from him. He’s at a complete loss because it feels like it’s just not supposed to be like this, why does it feel like it’s not supposed to be like this, you don’t want to face why it’s not supposed to be like this. Is he really going to let it be like this? And then he remembers the one thing he can say.
“Jang Gyeo-ul Seonsaeng.”
“Ne, Gyosunim.”
“Earlier… with the guardian…”
She’s immediately crestfallen. She thinks she did something wrong again.
Use your words, Ahn Gyosunim.
“You did well,” he finishes, putting as much into it as he dares.
She stares.
And then she smiles.
It’s just a flash before she nods, self-conscious. But it was there for a moment. And it was there for him.
Ahn Jeong-won thinks Jang Gyeo-ul is going to be an incredible doctor. He thinks he pegged her all wrong. He thinks she still has a lot to learn but is realizing that he does too. He thinks he might even learn some of those things from her.
What he thinks of her is absolutely not the problem.